As far as anybody knows, the first sapients to dwell in the area now known as San Diego were early dragon turtles. At the time, some 50 million years ago, that part of the world was underwater, and dragon turtles would set up territory near the Pacific coast of North America and lie in ambush for ancient whales.



Much later, during the last ice age, the land was still underwater. The sapients this time were dolphins and porpoises, with some evidence of proto-sahaugin (though the last is controversial since the proto-sahaugin has only been positively identified in the Mediterranean at this time). But things would soon change.



You see, the Pacific Plate is moving northward as the North American Plate moves west. Add in the spreading center under the state of Nevada and you get a confused tectonic situation. What really matters is what all this geologic movement does to southern California; it’s moving north and being uplifted at the same time. The coastal ranges of southern California are young. Some may even be younger than Man. To make a long story short, between the end of the last ice age and modern times the land where the city of San Diego now stands literally rose out of the sea, and continues to rise even today.



By 10,000 BP (Before Present) lizard men bands were settling the new land. Soon after the first humans appeared on the scene.



The humans, being a more adaptable species, soon displaced the lizardmen, who took refuge in the hills and mountains. This was how things would remain for nearly 10,000 years.



In the year 1390 the Chinese landed at what is now San Francisco bay. Over the next century they would explore up and down the coast, establishing trading posts at suitable locations. By 1430 there were Chinese settlements from Eureka bay in the north to San Ignacio lagoon in the south. But then the government changed.



Where once the Chinese were eager to seek new lands and new opportunities for trade and profit they now turned inward. They abandoned their overseas settlements, taking the colonists back. Even those of mixed blood. They became so paranoid about national security they did all they could to erase any sign they had even been there. Fortunately they did not succeed.



They had an impact on the aborigines they encountered for one. The locals took up rice farming (wet and dry), and expanded on their oak tree cultivation. In addition they worked out how to make rice paper using technigues adapted from Chinese paper production, and developed a number of inks to write with. By 1440 the aborigines were living in permanent settlements, and were undergoing a population explosion. Looking for new land to settle a number of bands invaded the mountains, forcing the native lizardmen east into the desert.



There was some effort to change official Chinese policy, but it fell on deaf ears. By 1490 the last junk set sail from San Francisco Bay. The Chinese would not return for almost 400 years.



The next visitor from far away was the English explorer, pirate, and half-elf Francis Drake. In the period 1590-1592 he sailed up and down the California coast, capturing Spanish treasure ships, trading with the natives, and leaving descendents most everywhere. In his memoirs (written during his trial for treason) he remarked that the natives were a most cultured and courteous people, an unusual trait among savages such as these. Opining that such civilization as they bore had to be the work of elves. (At the time the elves had yet to decide whether or not they would establish settlements in the New World, and so could not have had any influence on any group of natives. But try telling that to Drake, who was an ardent elf lover.)



Sir Francis took samples of what he’d found in California back home with him. Only to have his gifts thrown out when he was charged with treason and thrown into prison. He was cleared of those charges. Unfortunately he was soon embroiled in the conspiracies surrounding her son, Prince Henry (Later Henry the 9th) and was subsequently tried, convicted, and executed. His diaries and logs would molder unread until 1998. At that time his account of his first landing in California was scanned and placed on the British government’s website. Two weeks later the file would be found through a database search of the site. By then the original had been recycled. When apprised of this horrific historical mistake the British government spent nearly $50,000 U.S. to get the documents restored. Which required the development of special document restoration dweomers, and supplying a teenage boy with a brand new video game console and all the games then published for it. This to get ahold of his lunch bag.



The Spanish were next.



Spanish explorers made landings along the California coast during the 17th century. They traded with the natives, visited the local tourist spots of the time, and sent reports back to Madrid. Being busy with her current holdings, and short on money, Spain decided not to do anything with the information.



This all changed when Great Britain went through a California craze.



The fad was set off by a fictional account of a visit to the Isle of Califia. Based very loosely on a (more or less) factual account written by one of the sailors on Drake’s expedition to California, it was a thoroughly disreputable effort filled with half truths, outright lies, and the sort of thing now found on the typical daytime television drama. Even when it was shown to be a fraud the outcry remained as strident as ever. Britain would conquer California in the name of God and King. Spain couldn’t allow this.



So it was that a colonization expedition arrived in California on July 17th, 1769. Led by the Franciscan priest, Fr. Junipero Serra. By which time the British had lost all interest in California.



The Spanish didn’t know this. In any case, they were there, so they might as well establish a colony. They set up camp where Old Town stands today and set about getting in touch with the natives.



At first relations were friendly, but differing ideas regarding personal property, religious belief, and social ranking led to animosity. By 1773 the indians had had enough. On the night of November 13th/14th 1773 the natives gathered together to attack the Spaniards and slaughter them. Awakened by a disturbing dream Fr. Alonzo Mercurio dressed and walked to the indian village. There he recounted his dream to the assembled warriors. it was then that an indian shaman (name unrecorded) revealed that he had had the same dream. It would take a year of hard negotiations, but by November 15th 1774 both sides worked out an arrangement. The Treaty of San Diego (ratified by the Spanish Crown on June 13th 1775) would change how the Spanish Empire dealt with her subject peoples.



Thanks to the treaty relations between the two groups improved remarkably. By 1800 Spanish settlement in California had spread well inland. In 1802 successful contact with the lizardmen of the high desert was finally made, and many of the bands converted to Christianity. Farming and ranching proved to be successful, and mining for precious stones began on a small scale. While not as lucrative as the old gold and silver trade of days ago, cowhide, lizardmen plumes, and precious stones did serve to make trade with California profitable. Things would’ve remained thus but for Mexico’s declaration of Independence.



In 1820 Spain recognized Mexico’s independence, and Mexico’s claim on California. By 1821 the Spanish troops had been replaced by Mexican and the Spanish flag by the Mexican flag. Other then that there was no real change. By this time elf, dwarf, goblin, and gnoll colonists had settled in the area. It was also at this time that the Great Kobold Revolt occurred.



The first kobolds to arrive in San Diego did so in the year 1782. As slaves. They were kept for menial tasks, since they didn’t have the strength for hard labor. Many a San Diegan kept a kobold as a personal servant. When a bill was passed by the revolutionary Mexican goverment in 1812 declaring slavery illegal in the Republic of Mexico it had a provision declaring such creatures as goblins, orcs, and kobolds animals. This, in effect, meant that those people could be kept as slaves, only now they would be called domestic animals. (Gnolls were going to be included in that classification, but the gnoll philosopher and historian Roberto Ojeraz (a member of the Mexican Congress at the time) made a stirring speech against it and soon won his people’s freedom. Nobody thought of allowing goblins, orcs, and kobolds to speak on their own behalf.)



So the goblins and orcs found another way to make their opinions known; they went on strike. By 1816 they had made their point, and were reclassified as true people. No such luck for the kobolds.



You see, the only Mexican community with kobolds was San Diego. Indeed, only the German states had any kobolds at all. The spread of kobolds to all corners of the world would not begin until 1880 after the new German Reich began its bloody and shameful persecution of the species. The 25 kobolds then living in San Diego could expect no help from anyone in authority.



With the exception of an American sailor by the name of Jeremiah Bondsworth. Jeremiah, an expatriate Englishman and deserter from the merchant ship Wanderlust (a Portuguese ship captained by a Greek and manned by halflings from Latvia) was without a job at the time, and feeling more than a little sympathetic towards the oppressed. In 1818 human and kobolds found each other.



Filled with revolutionary fervor (or so he would claim in his memoirs in 1832) Jeremiah took up the kobold cause. Educating himself in Mexican law he earned a degree and a license to practice as a solicitor in 1818. In 1819 he earned a license to practice as a barrister. Between November 1819 and March 1820 he presented no less then 46 petitions to have the kobolds of San Diego declared persons, with the full rights thereof. Everytime his petition was denied. His attempts to appeal to Mexico’s Supreme Court were turned down without comment. He returned to San Diego in May of 1820.



On June 3rd 1820, a week after Jeremiah returned and reported to them, every kobold in San Diego gathered at the Mission San Diego de Alcala at the head of Mission Valley, sat in a circle, and declared they were now revolting against the Mexican government. When the declaration was done the eldest kobold (fellow going by the name of Heinrich Burstein) cast a spell that encompassed the revolutionaries behind a fiery barrier.



it would’ve ended with a Mexican victory (for the Mexicans had better wizards than the kobolds could muster (Heinrich being their only wizard)) but for a wandering hobgoblin wizard and his new invention.



Rabbi Leon Stauffel (a convert to Judaism) was visiting San Diego as part of a grand tour of the world. (Which would end with the good rabbi’s death in Tibet of a stubborn, magic resistant bone infection.) He had also just perfected a new spell he wished to try out. The dweomer (lost with his death and not replicated until 1905) allowed Stauffel to get communicate with his friends and family with full sensory immersion instantaneously. Something up until then considered impossible by leading theoretical thaumaturgists. Leon got word of the kobold revolt and went to investigate. When he arrived he decided to tell his family and friends all about it. All 22,956 of them. Including the king of Spain and his holiness, the Pope.



On June 4th 1820 a government representative teleported from Mexico City to San Diego, at great expense, with a special edict from the Mexican president declaring the kobolds free and extending them full citizenship. The Mexican Congress passed legislation a year later making it permanent.



It didn’t stop there. Thanks to the revolt, and the work of anti-slavery advocates inspired by it, most European nations had outlawed slavery by 1835. In 1852, in the Dred Scott decision, the U.S. Supreme Court declared Mr. Scott a free man, the judgement leading to a mass exodus by slaves from the southern states north. Faced with a sort of fiat accompli southern legislators decided to make the best of a bad deal. In 1854 the Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution declared all slaves free and outlawed slavery anywhere in American territory. It took three months to get the amendment ratified. Every slave holding state voted for it. Thanks to 25 desperate kobolds in a small California port town millions of humans, elves, dwarfs, goblins, orcs, halflings, hobgoblins, gnolls, and other species would have their freedom by 1883, when the Empire of Brazil become the last country to outlaw involuntary servitude.



By that’s all getting ahead of the story.



In part two of this history we will cover the Californian War of Independence, the Mexican/American War, and the U.S. “conquest” of the Republic of California



(Confession time. I didn’t expect it to get this long. It was supposed to be half this length and take the reader up to the present day. dang thing got away from me. So this part of the series may take as many as three or four parts to cover. I hope you appreciate all my hard work. More tomorrow.)



Alan