Charting the Western Passage
While Haneul was busy carving out concession zones in Japan and raking in the profits, Europe was taking its first tentative steps into the Age of Discovery.
In the year 3951 of the Daehan calendar, the Portuguese fleet under Bartolomeu Dias discovered the Cape of Good Hope — a route to the Middle East and India.
"Christopher Columbus, you say?"
Alarmed by this development, Queen Isabella I of Spain summoned the explorer despite the protests of her courtiers.
"Yes, Your Majesty."
"Are you certain that sailing west will truly lead us to Daehan?"
"Yes!"
Portugal had indeed found the Cape of Good Hope, but they had yet to actually reach Daehan. It was a discovery only half complete.
For Europe, the final destination, above all else, was Daehan.
Based on old records of those who had once traveled the Mediterranean from Daehan, the Europeans saw real promise in the venture, and so they kept sending ships out to sea.
"Very well. I shall grant you the title of Admiral, along with the governorship of any lands you discover and a tenth of all profits gained."
"Thank you, Your Majesty!"
After seven long years of trudging from one investor to the next in search of backing for a western route, Columbus had finally managed to assemble his fleet. He was beside himself with joy.
"I shall give it my all!"
With royal support behind him, Columbus set sail on August 3rd at the head of three ships.
He paused at the Canary Islands to resupply, then on September 8th departed once more, headed west.
Sailing across the endless open sea turned out to be far worse for one's mental health than anyone had expected.
Staring at the same unchanging scenery day after day wears a man down. Surely that's why even architects avoid designing around static, unchanging views like a stretch of riverfront — they say it can drive a person to depression.
"Admiral... it has already been a month. Should we not turn back now?"
An undercurrent of anxiety had begun to spread through the crew. In an age before refrigeration, the longest one could sail without resupply was six to nine weeks at best.
They had already burned through roughly half their provisions, which meant that if they wanted to make it home, the ship had to turn around now.
"Ho. Everyone's getting nervous, I see."
"Yes, that's right."
Outside the cabin where the two men spoke, the crew had already gathered in an anxious, fearful huddle.
One wrong word might have set off a full mutiny. In that powder-keg moment, Columbus pressed on.
"But you know as well as I do — considering the winds and the currents, do you truly believe the return journey could be made in a single month?"
"Well..."
Truthfully, nobody knew whether it could or couldn't.
"And did you not see it at noon today? That floating tree was unmistakably carried down from a river on land."
"Haah..."
The deck boss had no answer for that.
"Five more days. Just five, and then we turn back."
"Isn't that pushing it too far?"
"If we ration from this point on, we can more than make up the difference, can't we?"
"Five days, then."
Having barely talked his sailors down, Columbus pressed ever westward.
And three days later...
"Land! Land ho!"
"What did you say?!"
"There's land in sight!"
"AHAHAHAHA!"
"We did it! WAHOO!"
Amid the crew, men threw their arms around each other and wept for joy.
"Sob... I knew it! I was right all along!"
Columbus wept openly at his first triumph — the westward voyage every single person had opposed.
The fleet pressed on and drew near an island.
"So it was just an island..."
"Too soon to despair! Look at those people! They must have come from land nearby!"
"You think so?"
It was no simple matter to cross to a completely isolated island, was it? Which meant there had to be land nearby — land from which these people or their ancestors had come.
"We'll stop at the island to resupply, then set sail again! This time we head south. This must be Asia! We'll find Ming or Daehan before long!"
The men went ashore and began searching for water. Fresh water was the most urgent need.
The sailors drew water and scavenged whatever food they could find to restock their stores.
"The natives here are awfully primitive, aren't they? No civilization here yet?"
"You think? They're practically walking around in their underclothes."
"Well then, I suppose we may declare this territory of Spain!"
Columbus concluded that this could well be unclaimed wilderness.
After all, the native men wore only mid-length square-cut loincloths, while the women covered little more than their breasts with a square of cloth, along with a short skirt or trousers barely longer than the men's.
Perfectly natural for people living in a hot climate — but to the sailors' eyes, it looked like a people who lived in nothing but their underwear.
"I, Christopher Columbus, as the representative of Isabella I, hereby declare this land to be the territory of Spain!"
"Wah!"
Clap clap clap!
Columbus was over the moon. At long last, he had territory of his very own, hadn't he?
"!#@#!$!"
"!@#$!#$"
The natives, sensing some manner of celebration, wandered over and began clapping and smiling along with them.
They tried their best to communicate with the natives, but not a single word got through, and they came away with no useful information.
"The native food is truly delicious!"
"Ohh!"
Even so, the natives shared their food with the strangers, and the sailors found themselves moved by a proper meal for the first time in ages.
"Phew... what language on earth is that?"
"I'll write down what I can and look into it back home, sir."
Having jotted down a word or two of the natives' speech in Spanish, the men rose and got back to work.
"Right! Let's have a look around the area a bit more and formally claim the territory!"
"Yes, sir!"
Leaving behind the baffled natives, they finished resupplying on the island and set sail once more.
After the strangers left, the natives stood there, perplexed.
"What on earth were they doing?"
"That aside, why did they take our animal feed?"
"Just let them have it. They looked pitiful enough."
"Should've given them food for people to eat instead..."
The strangers were so gaunt and ragged, clearly from some far-off land nobody could place, that the natives had taken pity on them and shared their food.
"They're not Daehan people, are they?"
"Not speaking Daehan language, no."
These natives, you see, knew the Daehan language.
"And besides — have you ever seen Daehan folk wandering about looking like beggars?"
"Fair point?"
They had long traded with Daehan, and in their eyes, the strangers looked for all the world like destitute vagrants.
Light, minimal clothing was simply how these natives had always dressed.
"Still, they kept telling those men to go to the port, and they couldn't understand a word of it. Will they be alright?"
Sailing these waters required a permit from the port authority. Wandering about willy-nilly like that, they were asking for trouble.
"Let's just hope they don't get themselves beaten for pestering the wrong people."
"Can't help what fate deals fools who can't understand, I suppose."
With nothing more than a sympathetic click of the tongue, the natives could only watch Columbus's fleet dwindle into the distance.
"By the way, did you gather any gold dust?"
"Yup! Going to buy lots of expensive things with it this time!"
"Let's hurry to the port! Those fools will sort themselves out, whatever Daehan decides to do with them."
The island they lived on was quite a large one. Had the strangers sailed just a little further around it, they would have spotted one of Daehan's ports. Perhaps that, too, was simply their fate.
Oblivious to the natives' worries, Columbus's fleet sailed on.
"Right! Southward!"
"Let's go!"
"Onward, to find new land!"
Spirits high, they put out to sea, discovering a few more islands along the way and claiming each one for Spain as they headed south.
Then, exactly one day later, another land appeared on the horizon.
"This time it's a real continent, surely!?"
"Admiral, which way do we go?"
Columbus wavered. It was about time to head home — but should they probe further east, or strike west toward Daehan itself?
"Right! We go west. We WILL find Daehan!"
"Let's go!"
"Westward!"
And so, two more days west...
"The land just keeps going and going — it really is a continent!"
"This time it's the real thing!"
"Huzzah!"
"AHAHAHAHA!"
This time, it truly was land. Having made a tremendous discovery, the men began searching for a place to anchor.
They had seen no trace of habitation on the way here — no ports, no docks, nothing — so they assumed the land belonged to no one.
"A ship!"
"There's — there's a ship out there, sir!"
"What?!"
They had thought the land unclaimed, and now a ship appeared? Chaos erupted across the fleet.
"Just the one!"
"Only one, is it?"
"If we surround it and attack... isn't that worth a try?"
Sailors who put out to sea in this age were, by their nature, half pirates to begin with. And if the thing was sailing right toward them, why not give it a go?
"Keep watching it! Check whether there's a second ship behind it!"
In their minds, the plan was simple: plunder it, kill everyone aboard, and leave no trace of the crime.
Nerves taut, eyes darting in every direction, the sailors watched the dark-hulled warship draw steadily closer.
"Huh? What kind of ship even IS that?"
"Never seen one like it."
Since Daehan didn't send its own vessels directly to the Mediterranean, these men had never laid eyes on one.
And now, a Horned Whale was bearing down on them.
"All men, load the cannons and wait! The moment it closes in, we fire everything at once!"
"Captain, there's some strange ship sailing about. Never seen the like of it — looks foreign."
"Is that so? Let's go have a look."
The ones to spot Columbus's fleet were the crew of the Horned Whale-572. Honestly, Daehan had built an absurd number of these colossal vessels.
"Uh, Captain?"
"What?"
"Those men are loading their cannons, sir."
"Why?"
The captain was dumbfounded. They had come into another nation's waters, so the plan had been to simply ask their business and send them politely on their way.
"Hmm? Did some new method of suicide I don't know about just get invented at sea?"
"Hard to say, sir."
There was one rule that held true across virtually every sea from Southeast Asia — no, from all of Asia to the Middle East:
Do not approach a Daehan warship.
It had long since been enshrined as an immutable truth of the ocean.
Not that those poor Europeans had any way of knowing...
"Haah... fine. Ready the cannons, but raise the white flag."
"Yes, sir!"
Columbus was truly fortunate. Among Daehan's more than ten thousand captains, fewer than five would have taken this gentle an approach.
And so the Horned Whale closed the distance.
The Horned Whale swung in a wide arc, aligning its heading with theirs as it approached.
SSSHHHAAAA!
As the Horned Whale drew alongside Columbus's fleet, there was nothing any of them could do.
"What in God's name IS that thing?"
"It's bigger than all three of our ships put together, isn't it?"
Columbus's fleet consisted of the seventy-foot Nao and two fifty-six-foot caravels — toys beside the Horned Whale.
Only with all three lined up side by side did they even come close to matching it.
"Admiral?"
"..."
"Shall we attack?"
"Are you mad?! Stand down!"
That would be suicide, wouldn't it? You need to at least be in the same weight class to pick a fight.
CLUNK.
"Huh?"
A grappling hook caught their ship, and the great vessel began pulling closer. And then, drifting over the hull, came an incomprehensible tongue.
"!#$!#!@"
"What are they saying?"
"#@!$!!@#%"
"Should we... answer them somehow?"
Blocked off from the rest of the world by the mountains at Europe's western edge, these men had lived in a world of their own — and not one of them knew a word of Daehan language.
"What do we do?"
"You think they mean to take us as slaves?"
"Then why wouldn't they have attacked already?"
Dread crept slowly across the deck.
What now? If they drag us off like this, we'll never make it home — we'll end up living out our lives as slaves.
No matter how he looked at it, hooking a line and pulling alongside could only mean one thing: they meant to seize their ship.
"Sailors! Choose! Will you be dragged away to a life of slavery? Or will you fight with honor!"
Columbus roared before his men.
"Better death than slavery!"
"Isn't being alive better? We could still find a way home someday!"
The crew split down the middle, arguing over the two paths.
No one knew what horrors of bondage might await them, so half wanted to fight their way free, and half wanted to wait for an opening to escape.
The ship grew deafening.
"If we strike now, even that ship won't come out unscathed! What's there to fear?!"
"He has a point, doesn't he? Punch holes in that thing, and it'll sink too, won't it?"
Attacking first at point-blank range would give them the advantage — and the argument began tilting toward war.
"All hands, prepare to fight!"
For Columbus, it was all or nothing now.
Their intentions were obvious from the moment they'd hooked on and hauled close: they meant to take the ship.
If he was captured and never saw home again — if he lost both ship and crew and returned empty-handed — it would be utter ruin, and nothing less.