Nova Iberia

Nova Iberia is a Second Generation world seeded by Surrogates with people from Spain beginning in 1337 Terran count. By chance, one of the first abductees was a Dominican monk, Diego De Soto, who was visiting his home village of Lugina when the ship from the stars arrived. A Thomist scholar, he was the only one among the first wave of abductees to be able to make sense of the situation and to calm the others enough to make the best of their situation.

It was De Soto who preserved the organization of the Church on their new world. Cut off from the Church hierarchy back on Earth, unable to perform ordinations according to canon law, he instituted the Stewards of the Church, who ordained priests "provisionally" and prayed that the Lord might accept this. They also adapted the Church calendar to the natural calendar of the world they christened Nova Iberia. Besides carrying out the duties of the Church in exile, the provisional priests established academies to encourage learning, and to reconcile Catholic teaching with the facts of a universe that was clearly not created for men alone. The last ship of the Surrogates departed in what was reckoned to be 1395, and the Scalnatrans -- much to the surprise of the Nova Iberians -- arrived in what was reckoned to be 1401 to open trade.

By then Nova Iberia had developed a flourishing agricultural economy, along with a prosperous merchant class centered in the capital, Nueva Lugina. Its exports consisted primarily of exotic foods, textiles and handicrafts. Gabriel Molina, a merchant wealthy from both the domestic and export markets, was the first to acquire a Velorian Companion, Liz'bet, about 1444. Ju'lette, another Companion, was acquired some 30 years later by Don Alfonso del Rey, a would-be monarch on a world where legal fiction had it that the only true king was the King of Spain, whoever that might be at the time.

When the Arions attacked about 1477, using a captured Scalantran ship, del Rey sided with the invaders, setting up a puppet regime. But Liz'bet and Ju'lette joined forces to defeat the invaders. Ju'lette, freed of her indenture by del Rey's death at the hands of his own people, set off for Velor on a Scalantran ship to bring warning of the increasing aggressiveness of the Arions. Liz'bet remained with the Molina family, even past her indenture. In a religious schism a few generations later, the Molinas were among the founders of the Christla -- some of whom migrated to Reigel 5, Kelsor 7 and other worlds.