Baeba Swamp

Baeba Swamp is thge largest city on the continent of Rilola and among the largest on the planet Teppala. It is the capital of Amade, and thus legally part of the Ogili empire, but most inhabitants are aboriginal Baebans who are paid by Ogili to be friendly to Ogili instead of siding with the rest of the aboriginal nations (tempom) to thge south. It is a major trading post in both directions: bringing pineapples and palm oil northward into Ogili, and bringing wood and metals south into Tempom.

Its economic importance derives from its being both wet and near the ocean. The surrounding territory is mostly deserts, but Baeba is at the mouth of a major river, and this river flattens out into a delta near Baeba, allowing plants and even trees to survive. The climate is very hot: despite being at 27N, the temperatures in winter are almost as warm as those at the Equator. This is because Baeba's climate is heated by the shallow sea to its west. The sea absorbs more heat from the sun than deeper water does, and therefore heats and moistnes the air very well.

The geographical environment of Baeba is much like northerh Egypt on Earth, particularly the Nile Delta, except that the Baeba River originates from the north, and temperatures therefore drop very quickly from the mouth of the river to its source. Although cold temperatures are not a problem for humans on planet Teppala generally, and Teppala has many major cities in climates far colder than the upland Baeba watershed, the inhabitants of Baeba are not interested in hunting animals for a living and consider this territory useful only as a military defense. THus few people live in the upper reaches of the Baeba watershed. This trait helfd true even as Baeba's government changed from one empire to the next many times.

The name Baeba is from Poswa; Baebabwa is "Baeba Swamp". The Khulls people called it Kàkʷado, and the river Lagis.

Languages

See Ogili II.

The aboriginal language belonged to a large family, but that family was isolated from all other languages, including other aboriginal languages. Thus the family is simply called Macro-Baeban languages.

Aboriginal Proto-Baeban language

NOTE, it is not certain if this is better placed as proto-Macro-Baeban or merely Old Baeban, a language for the capital city alone.

The Proto-Baeban language was typical for the area in having a vowel system of /a i u ə/, a minor contrast of high vs low tone on open stressed syllables only, and a consonant inventory of

Labials:               ph  p   m       w                  
Alveolars:             th  t   n   s   l   r                         
Palataloids:           č       ň   š   y     
Velars:                kh  k   ŋ   x                  
Labiovelars:           kʷh kʷ  ŋʷ  xʷ
Glottals:                          h   ʕ

The plain voiceless stops were allophonically ejective before a stressed vowel, but this was weak and noncontrastive, so aspiration as shown as the marked feature.

Pre-Baeban sound shifts

The language had recently lost all its voiced obstruents, and therefore nasals were more common by comparison than in languages of the Gold family. The remaining plain voiceless stops and fricatives had voiced allophones when occurring after a nasal, but were otherwise voiceless; the aspirated stops were voiceless even after nasals.

Even earlier, there had been a lenition shift that changed /ph p/ > /f b/, /th t/ > /s r/, and /č/ > /š/ in some positions, but left /kh k/ and the labialized versions untouched. Later, /f/ > /h/ and /b/ > /ʕ/ almost unconditionally. Thus Proto-Baeban has relatively little of /ph p th t/, but lots of /kh k/.

Vowels

There are four underlying vowels, the same /a i u ə/ found in nearby languages, with the others being diphthongs and/or vowels colored by neighboring consonants. The diphthongs are /ai au əi əu/. Nonetheless, diphthongs and allophones are so common that the native script has 10 vowel signs.

The true vowels /i/ and /u/ get two script vowels apiece: /i y/ and /ɨ u/.

The mid vowel /ə/ gets three script vowels: /e ə o/.

The low vowel /a/ gets three script vowels: /æ a ɒ/.

Therefore, each of the four vowels can be either spread or rounded, and each of the two lower vowels can also be either front or back, but there are no low or mid front rounded vowels.

PHONOTACTICS OLD INFO

Baeban has a very complicated system of phonotactics to ensure that its phonemes all fit together well. Instead of treating phonemes singly, Baeban groups them into 8 overlapping categories of varying composition, and these are the smallest meaningful phonological units that words can use. The following abbreviations are used below for these categories:

• S = (a, i, u, pa, pi, pu, ma, mi, mu, ta, ti, tu, na, ni, nu, sa, si, su, la, li, lu, ra, ri, ru)
• G = (_, i, u, pa, pi, pu, ma, mi, mu, ta, ti, tu, na, ni, nu, sa, si, su, la, li, lu, ṗa, ṗi, ṗu, ṁa, ṁi, ṁu, ṭa, ṭi, ṭu, ṇa, ṇi, ṇu)
• T = (0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8)
• Z = (pa, pi, pu, ma, mi, mu, ta, ti, tu, na, ni, nu, sa, si, su, la, li, lu, ra, ri, ru, ṗa, ṗi, ṗu, ṁa, ṁi, ṁu, ṭa, ṭi, ṭu, ṇa, ṇi, ṇu, k, x, ŋ) + ASP
• P = (_, p, m, t, n, s, l, u, i)
• K = (_, k, ŋ)
• V = (a, e, i, o, u, ø, ə, ɨ, œ, y, æ, ɒ)
• U = same as V, but with choice of 4 tones

The /œ/ may be a mistake for capital oe. The entire setup looks like a square .... 3 vowel heights, front/mid/back, plus a column of front round vowels.

An underscore stands for silence; the clicks are spelled ṗ ṃ ṭ ṇ (sometimes dot on top); all vowels are IPA (see history for SAMPA).

Thus the consonants are:

• /p m s l k r t n ŋ x ṗ ṃ ṭ ṇ/, where th dotted letters are clicks. /j/ and /w/ are common but are not considered consonants.

The tones are:

0 ă

A low tone, the commonest one, essentially "neutral" and level.

1 à

High, but considered as "mid" in some contexts.

2 á

Even higher tone.

3 ā

"Rising then falling", sometimes spelled with cirumflex.

Tones 4 through 7 are repeats of these, but weith phragynealization. (spelled ʕ/. Tone 8 is a whispered tone, i.e. a voiceless vowel.

Very unusual is that all word stems are either GVTVK or PVZUK. There are no single-vowel words at all oither than a few particvles. Thus the odd traits of the languaga are:

Characteristics

• All word roots must end in a vowel, /k/ or /ŋ/. Affixes are made of "S" syllables, which are all (C)V and have only 3 possible vowels, of which the /a/ is often elided. THus all words ending in a consonant other than /k ŋ/ actually end in an elided /a/.
• All word roots must have 2 vowels, even if those two vowels are the same and have no interveneing consonant.
• Since pharyngealizedf vcowels can only occur in "GVTVK" stems, they can only occur in stems with no consonants in the middle. This is partly because pharyn gealization originally came from a central consonant that was bled out.
• No word can begin with a velar consonant (/k ŋ x/). Words with central consonants cannot begin with a click or an /r/.
• Singlw vowel words are particles that cannot occur alone, and they can only have the vowel;s /a i u/.

Earlier, the Proto-Baeban language had had a phonology more like its neighbors. Proto-Baeban allowed only bisyllabic roots, with the accent always on the second syllable. Word-initial velars were allowed and there were no pharyngealized vowels. The split in the two types of words occurred when all voiced stops and fricatives were deleted from the language, and intervocalic ones bled out into pharyngealized vowels. This is why pharyngealized vowels only occur in words which have vowel hiatus (even if it is two of the same vowel). Later, all word initial velars were deleted. Clusters like /kj/ and /kw/ changed to /tj/ and /pw/ (note that these are not considered palatalized and labialized, but rather true clusters). Thus, Baeban could be said to be a "P" language, like Ogili, because it shifted its palatals forward and also shifted its labial-velar clusters forward into labialized bilabials. There are very few velar consonants remaining in modern Baeban, excluding clicks.

Note that the click consonants existed even in proto-Baeban, although they had arisen not long before from the collapse of clusters like /pk/ and /tk/. This was a defining feature of the Baeban settlement area, as these clusters had also existed in languages spoken to their north and south, but both of these other language groups instead created ejectives from the stop+stop clusters and homorganic clusters from the nasal+stop clusters.

Star immigration

A fleet of Stars immigrated to Baeba Swamp in the year 2095. Only a few thousand arrived safely, but they nevertheless established a foothold in the Swamp and were not assimilated into the aboriginal population. Their language was, at the time, identical to that of the Crystals, but after 1,200 years of long-distance separation the two languages diverged considerably far apart.

Crystal language ("Middlesex")

The Crystals invaded Baeba Swamp and annoyed the slaves so much that some of the slaves fought back against the Crystals who were trying to free them. These people retained their aboriginal language for a considerable period of time. The aboriginals who remained in Baeba, including the former slavemasters, soon submitted to Crystal rule and adopted their language, Middlesex.

Some characteristics of proto-Baeban are found in Middlesex, such as the presence of coda /k/ but not other stops, and the presence of word-final (but not other coda) /h/.

Leaper language

Around 4108, the Leapers crushed all of the other armies. Here again, a Middlesex-speaking underclass remained, but it was no longer the language of the Crystals, because the Crystal political structure was defunct; rather, Middlesex was the language of refugees who spilled out into Dreamland (particularly the state of Susileme ) and of people who were not able to join the ascending Leaper power structure. When the Leapers themselves collapsed, their language remained, because the incoming military powers had long since made Leaper their primary language as well.

Early history

Aboriginal era

The aboriginals of Baeba Swamp considered themselves to be but a single tribe, and that there were no tribal divisions within the borders of Baeba Swamp. They were nominally friendly towards the large but sparsely populated empire of Dreamland, because even though Dreamland had taken its entire territory from aboriginals that had once pledged allegiance to Baeba, and even though the Dreamers killed or expelled these people as they took over, the Dreamer expansion was in fact largely peaceful, as the Dreamers had had superior technology and thus had outgrown the aboriginals.

The aboriginal tribes of Baeba and its environs were dark-skinned, perhaps the most dark-skinned people in the world. They were probably of shorter stature than the dark-skinned Pejo tribes near the Equator, and would certainly have had different facial features. They were most closely related to the aboriginals of Kxesh, but most would have been visibly distinct even from the Kxel tribes.

Slavery and class structure

During the Gold Era (roughly 1600 - 3300), Baeba Swamp supported slavery. What was unusual about slavery in Baeba Swamp was that there were different classes of slaves, and some of the slaves could even own slaves. The lowest class was typically prisoners of war and their descendants. Next lowest was criminals (whose descendants were forgiven), and above that a system resmelbing medieval Europe on Earth with "serfs" and then classes og landowners. Yet people could sell themselves into slavery for money, without having to give up their own slaves. Many adult males left Baeba Swamp to work as slaves in Lobexon, knwoing that the money would go to their families. This was ironic because Lobexon saw Baeba as a paradise where everyone was wealthy, when in fact only the extreme upper class was wealthier than the peasants in Lobexon.

Class divisions among the aboriginals of Baeba

It is possible that the Baeban aboriginals held the descendants of abducted Dreamers and Repilians among their slaves, but Baeban society was stratified by class, not by race, so any such slaves would have gradually entered the wider slave pool. Baeba was officially hostile towards Nama, and Nama declared that if they were ever to conquer Baeba, the aboriginals would be enslaved along racial lines, and therefore that the entirey of Baeba would be enslaved. However, this was a formality, as Nama and Baeba had for thousands of years chosen to mutually respect each other's land, and this is why Baeba did not try to stop Nama's invasions of the nominally pro-Baeba nations of the tropics. Baeba thus supported Nama's Gold party and was nominally represented in the Gold government despite having no cooperatively occupied territory.

NONETHELESS, MANY DREAMERS WERE CAPTURED IN A SINGLE WAR AND BECAME SLAVES, SO THERE WAS DE FACTO RACIAL SLAVERY WITH THE BAYWATCHERS AS THE LOWEST CLASS, AND PDP SLIGHTLY ABOVE THEM.

Note also that Dreamers did not reach the vicinity of Baeba until fairly late, and that prior to their arrival, the people inhabiting this area were closely related to the aboriginals of Baeba.

NOTE, AN EARLY WRITEUP ALSO CLAIMS THAT THUNDERERS WERE PRESENT IN DREAMLAND.

When Baywatch lost a war against Baeba's aboriginals, they denied the results and said that they would not launch a rescue attack to free the 67000 Dreamer slaves in Baeba's western districts (called Malapala) because Dreamers were not capable of losing a war.

Contacts with the outside world

In 1974, some migrants from Subumpam tried to sail to Baeba, but their mission failed, and it was not the Baebans but rather the Stars who stopped their ships. This proves, nonetheless, that knowledge of Baeba existed, and that occasional migrations across the intervening territories likely took place. Furthermore, the Stars' control of the seaway implies that some Stars may have by this period already moved to Baeba themselves.

Crystal conquest

In 3370, the Crystals brought their language, [1] Middlesex, with them to Baeba Swamp. Itr was not the same as Leaper and not closely related.

Contact

The Crystals were much weaker soldiers than the Baeban aboriginals, and the aboriginals additionally had the advantage of fighting on their home territory, whose terrain was difficult. The only reason the Crystals won their war was that they promised to free any slaves who joined the Crystals, and Baeba's population at the time was almost half slaves. Thus the war was a civil war, with Baebans fighting enemies both inside and outside their borders.

Aftermath

After the Crystals chased the Gold-allied Baeban aboriginal government out, they made Baeba their new capital. Much of the surrounding territory was added to Baeba, and the name of the nation was changed from Baeba to Ƥē. (Atlhough Miniyiupi was chosen as an altername, as the people were multilingual now.) The Crystals were far more violent and repressive than the Gold government had been, but nevertheless abolished slavery very soon after taking power. They thus won the favor of the entire former slave population and many of these people were willing to fight battles for the Crystals as they attempted to expand their empire even further. The Gold government had been the most liberal and diverse government the world had ever known, but they were so liberal that they had allowed empires within their borders to become extremely repressive. Almost all dark-skinned people in the Gold government had been enslaved, such that people who lived in cold climates in such poor living conditions that they did not even have roads in their town, still nevertheless considered "slave" to be a synonym for dark-skinned people living in tropical climates. However, the Gold government did also allow slavery of light-skinned people such as the Macro-Repilians, but here the slaveowners were generally members of the same tribe rather than a thin upper crust of foreign invaders.

The Crystals thus had created a new nation of liberated dark skinned people that was also a strong military power. All other "free" nations of dark people (called Kampa as a cover term) were very poor nations in the tropical rainforest that were just shy of the reach of the slave lords to their east, who were even brave enough to send ships into their territory to abduct more slaves (they had stopped kidnapping lighter peoples such as Pabaps because their navy was no longer able to reliably reach Paba). Even though the Crystal government was repressive, denying power to anyone who did not convert to their religion, the standard of living they prvoided even those who refused to convert was far better than slavery, and there were no attempts at revolt.

However, the Crystals did not let the conquest of Baeba distract them from their thousand-year mission. They signed a treaty with the Thunder Empire to their north and east, which had been growing even more aggressively than the Crystal Empire. Both empires had started out as tiny colonies repressed by Nama, with the original Thunder state being called Kava. Kava only came to call itself the Thunder Empire (native name Altotta) later on, as Thunder was the name of a political party that arose from within Kava rather than a term for Kavans as a whole, but Thunderism soon enrolled 100% of the population of Kava. Kava had been violent even when it was tiny, because they had invaded a very soft, weak part of Nama, whereas the Crystals had been forced into the desert and gone through a period of losing every battle they fought and only after more than a thousand years finally getting a taste of victory.

The new Crystal-Thunder alliance was called the Vora Empire, after a native cymbidium flower. Even the natives of the Vora Empire questioned the decision to use a beautiful but very delicate flower as the symbol of what all of its members thought of as the world's greatest military power. The Thunder people, despite their name and history of violent conquest, were very feministic, often promising that one day men would be equally represented in their government but seeming to confine all male leaders to accessory roles. The love of flowers, they felt, was a sign of this feminine power. The leaders explained their symbol by saying they wanted their people to grow like flowers, and spread out all over of the land, making people happy. Moreover, they claimed that peace would soon come, and that they would not necessarily need to conquer their enemies to achieve peace. They merely needed to conquer the enemies that posed a serious threat to their empire, such as the Repilians and the suddenly renewed immigrants from the rainforests of Laba.

Internal divisions

NOTE, this probably refers to Lãro, which is east of Baeba, not west. Malapala was similar in some ways, but its Lenian population was of Dreamer ancestry.

The Western Baeban region of Malapala was given independence and passed strict racial discrimination laws against the Baebans who supported them. Malapala only allowed people of the Vora tribes to have children; this was their term for the Lenian Thunderers, but included Thunderers who had converted to Crystalism or to other parties.

Baeba's Crystals chose to support the racial discrimination against their people because they felt that the party identification would in the end overwhelm racial divisions, and that Malapala would become a Crystal territory. Malapala was historically Lenian territory after all, since Baeba had earlier invaded it, but the Thunderers in Malapala did not claim their rule was justified by this, because they had no intent of forming an alliance with the descendants of the Lenian slaves captured by Baeba's invasion, who were almost all supporters of Dreamland. Likewise, because Malapala allowed Lenian Crystals in, the Crystals as a whole were benefitting from the discrimination laws, even if Baeban Crystals could not.

Malapala had at least three languages: Oyster, Middlesex, and the PDP holdover language from the Dreamer slaves. It is not clear which of these became the dominant language in this era.

Contact with Dreamland

While Dreamland was invading Baeba Swamp, a loose alliance of Dreamer soldiers called the Nunabetari settled in the deeper parts of the swamp and set up colonies. By this time, Baeba Swamp had signed a pact with a racist nation called Sàkʷalō, which banned dark-skinned people such as Baebans from living there, but yet supported Baeba's war against Dreamland. Sàkʷalō told the Baebans that they were not allowed to kill the Nunabetari, and that furthermore, the Baeban people needed to ensure the Nunabetari were healthy and well-fed despite their plans to live in Baeba without doing any work. In return, Baeba gained access to a trade route connecting them to the vast Thunder Empire occupying the eastern half of the continent.

In 3915, a revolution in the Thunder Empire ended the enslavement of dark-skinned people. In response, some Thunder slavemasters fled into Baeba Swamp and joined the Nunabetari, promising to bring the fight for slavery to the territory of their intended slaves. The Nunabetari declared allegiance to Dreamland and tried to push Baeba to revive the war against Dreamland so the Nunabetari soldiers could eat Baeba apart from the inside. They heard a promise that a new war was coming, as king Adabawa of Laba had promised to station soldiers in Dreamland and strengthen its military so that Dreamland could once again invade surrounding nations. However, it soon became clear that Adabawa's target was not Baeba but the Thunder Empire, and therefore the war would force the Nunabetari to fight against their cousins. This led to dissent within the ranks of the Nunabetari, and they realized they would be extremely vulnerable during the war because they could not expect the Thunderers to fight for them. They voted to betray the Thunder Empire because the government of the Thunder Empire at that time was not their own, and therefore they joined Adabawa's side in the war. The strong tribalism of the Nunabetari actually led some Thunderers to defect, and therefore the Thunder Empire was engulfed in civil war by the time Adabawa's army reached its border.

Climate

Baeba is located at 28°N latitude, at the northeast corner of a tropical shallow sea. This sea increases the average temperature in Baeba, even in summer, to a level considerably higher than areas further east at the same latitude and elevation.

Leaper era

The Leapers invaded Baeba Swamp around 4149, restoring slavery after nearly 800 years of freedom. They also made Leaper the official language, and the official motto was "Everyone's Happy in Baeba Swamp!" as they implemented a strict social hierarchy with the Leapers at the top and everyone except the slaves enjoying intermediate social privileges.

The Leapers were proudly amoral, saying that the pursuit of good or evil would never distract them from their goal of achieving financial and thus military supremacy over the whole of the known world. In 4132, upon learning that the Players' orphan crisis had grown to the point that 200,000 young children were living on the seacoast with no adult assistance, the Leapers sent their navy towards the Play beaches in order to abduct and abuse as many Play children as they could grab before the Players realized what was happening to them. The Leapers had never apologized for this, and used their kidnapped children as ransom to negotiate a treaty with the Players (though the Players refused to rescue these children, and let them simply grow into adults while in the Leapers' hold). The Leaper navy had also, further back in the past, declared war on its own people in order to profit financially from their enslavement. They thus resembled, in some aspects, parties such as the Raspara and Zenith, whose primary appeal was their power and not their morals, and just like the Raspara and Zenith, they refused to make alliances with other parties, even other parties declaring themselves to be above morality.

The Leapers in the tropics had had what they called an elected tyranny with no single head of state. In Baeba, they set up a new system of government resembling that of the Gold party, and called it a parliamentary democracy even though they reserved special privileges for the Leapers. The Leapers declared that they would forever be the ruling party, even if they never broke 10% of the popular vote, because of various legal loopholes which were well known to other parliamentary democracies of the time such that territories could be promoted and demoted in various ways. In particular, the Leapers carved out their section of Baeba and declared it to be a layer above the rest, such that all of the other people in Baeba could vote and outnumber the Leapers, but still lose because the separate Leaper-only Parliament, acting as an unner house, could vote them down without hesitation.

Outreach to the Crystals

The Leapers were tall, thin, and dark-skinned, similar in appearance to the Crystals whom they displaced, and therefore appealed to the Crystals' racial sympathies, even knowing that the Crystals were politically diverse and had factions that stridently opposed racism alongside those who believed in various mutually incompatible racial hierarchies. For example, the EE2 sect of the Crystals discriminated against their own members because they believed their link to power relied on allying themselves with the light-skinned peoples to their north, including but not limited to the Moonshines. By contrast the Phoenix sect, while opposing racism, also supported slavery and had a pool of Lenian slaves mostly with light skin and blonde hair, traits which they promoted specifically in order to antagonize the Dreamers and other enemies of their party.

Nonetheless, very few Crystals became Leapers, as the Crystals had retained the knowledge of their ancestors, some of whom had lost nonviolent political struggles against the Leapers in their original tropical homelands. (That is, the Crystals defeated the Leapers in a war, only to be thrown out of power as the Leapers outsmarted and out-financed them.)

Cosmopolitan Age

See Cosmopolitan Age.

Legacy of invasions

Between 4149 and 4221, many light-skinned people invaded Baeba Swamp and left their mark on the population. They nearly all invaded from the north, so even within the Swamp, the natural skin color gradient prevailed. However, some light-skinned people were pushed to the coast. The invading armies all had their own languages, but many learned Leaper, the official language of Baeba Swamp. The indigenous Crystal language was adopted by very few of the invaders, however.

In 4221, the Iron (from asala/hana "metal") army invaded Baeba Swamp, and defeated all of the other invaders. The Irons originated from an alliance between the weak, ruined empire of Nama and the predatory Zenith tribes who had abused Nama's people for many generations but had themselves fallen into despair as many of their soldiers began defecting to rival powers. Thus, the two defeated armies put aside their differences, and Nama's leaders promised that the Zeniths could abuse them in any way they saw fit, simply because they saw even this abuse as a better way to live than risking annihilation at the hands of the other hostile armies. The Zeniths took full control of Nama, but signed a treaty saying that they respected Nama and that they would keep Nama's governmental institutions in place rather than ruling through tyranny. They thus declared that their new empire was a continuation of Nama, and changed their party's name from Zenith to Iron. The new name was an ironic reference to STW's private currency, the asala, which were coins made from iron that had once been more valuable than their weight in gold, but had declined to a miniscule fraction of their former value as STW's economy imploded and they came to rely entirely on slavery.

The Iron Army spoke Khulls but also retained tribal languages that they had inherited from their long period of dormancy in the Mountains of Wisdom.

Early tribal alliances

The victorious Iron soldiers had light skin and dark hair, but were descendants of the Zenith tribes, who had often won wars by forming counterintuitive tribal alliances in the past. Thus, some Iron leaders proposed an alliance with the dark skinned aboriginals. However, the rival Ghost army adopted the same strategy and won the allegiance of many of these aboriginals.

The Ghost Empire had a toehold in the extreme east of Baeba Swamp, and had much outlying land to itself. Ghost leaders planned to conquer Baeba by stirring up dissent from within it. The Ghosts soon passed many laws enforcing racial discrimination against light-skinned people, even though the Ghosts were descended from Lenians and other light-skinned tribes. They proved their sincerity by demoting their leaders and appointing dark-skinned aboriginals to replace them. They promised that there would be no secret path to power for light-skinned people in the Ghost Empire, and that racial discrimination would continue until economic and political power was distributed equally.

The Ghosts assigned the lowest social status to people with blonde hair, as these people were often descended from the historically hostile Dreamers, and thus looked down upon by people with fair skin but dark hair. In fact, the Ghosts' constitution referred to these people as Patin, equivalent to "Pissies". This was actually a name that had earlier been used against the Ghosts for an unrelated reason. In northerly areas, the Ghosts quickly began emphasizing hair color rather than skin color as the defining feature of their tribal alliance, as they hoped to woo the typically dark-haired Moonshine tribes onto their side as well, or at least prevent a war. The Moonshines refused the Ghosts' alliance, but their pacifist-led government refused to prepare for a war.

Meanwhile, the Ghosts had hoped that placing the dark-skinned people at the top of their hierarchy would entice the dark-skinned Baeban aboriginals to join the Ghost party and overthrow Asala's tribal occupation government, but many aboriginals simply moved into the Ghost Empire, thus weakening the Ghosts' influence in Baeba. The Ghosts accepted this, and the immigrants accepted that they might soon be called upon to lead a war against their homeland, but for the meantime the Ghosts held back on declaring war. They realized that many dark-skinned Baebans had remained loyal to Baeba's earlier Rock government, which distrusted both the Irons and the Ghosts, but had been leaning towards the Irons merely because the Irons were the unquestioned party of power in Baeba.

Relations with Lenians

The Irons claimed to be allies of the tropical empire of Laba, which had not participated in the war and had long remained aloof from the politics of the continent. Laba was now the primary home of the blonde Lenian tribes, and Laba aligned itself against the Ghosts' racial discrimination policies because the Ghosts had chosen to put blonde people at the bottom of their hierarchy. But Laba said that because the Lenians in Ghost territory were not Laban, Laba had no obligation to protect them. Lenians became an underclass in Baeba Swamp as well, because they were not part of the Iron tribal coalition and were treated badly by the aboriginal majority, who followed the Ghosts in associating them with the hostile empire of Dreamland. Moonshine also banned Lenians from moving there, saying that their refugee operations had shut down when the refugees had turned against them and conquered Hōmoya. Thus the Lenians realized that all of the parties with power were against them, and came to consider themselves Dreamers even as the nations they lived in turned ever more against Dreamland.

The Irons offered to help Lenians move to Dreamland, which was the only nation on the planet that was willing to adopt them. However, the Ghost Empire pushed the Lenians into slavery even as their leaders came to feel that antagonizing the Lenians was a mistake that would deprive them of the opportunity to later fight a war against Moonshine in which Lenians would die to increase the territory of the Ghosts.

Iron leaders often disagreed with each other, as their philosophy encouraged dissent, and therefore some Irons wanted to form a tribal alliance with the Lenians, figuring that Laba was so large that any empire aligned with it would be impossible to defeat, but others believed that Labans were in fact very poor soldiers and felt that even a small population of Iron soldiers could dominate the entire planet by keeping Laba confined to its west and controlling all trade to the north, east, and south. They pointed out that Laba's only victories were wars in which Dreamland had done most of the fighting, and that Dreamland had twice forced Laba to stop a war.

Role of the Questors

As life became worse for the Lenians in both empires, many descendants of the Swamp Kids and other armies came to consider themselves a fourth race. They did not want to ally themselves with Dreamland as the Lenians were doing, and yet they knew that they could not expect to join a tribal coalition either in Baeba or in the Ghost Empire. They came to call themselves the Quest people (Play Žetifus; Late Andanese Nauna), and said that they had abandoned their ideological beliefs in order to organize as a tribe and wield power in the gaps where other tribes were weak. They stated that in the future, when other parties came to respect them, they would return to ideological politics, but that they needed to use tribalism to protect their own interests, as other parties were not interested in fair treaties with a physically small and vulnerable tribe such as the Quests.

They were mostly descended from slaves of the Doll tribes, and therefore spoke Play. Their main distinguishing feature was their short stature, and that is why they did not feel comfortable joining any of the other tribes. Because their physical appearance was more variable than the other groups, however, they expected they could be a meeting point for the other tribes and could in the future evolve away from tribalism. However, other Quests considered themselves to be part of the Iron tribal coalition after all, and survived by living on the outskirts of Baeba where they were mostly locked out of power but not seen as enemies. In this, they were continuing their age-old practice of gâya, living in poor conditions where nobody else would go. Even here, however, they sometimes fought against other tribes such as the descendants of UAO.

Ghost representatives in Baeba Swamp

Even though they suspected a war was coming, the Irons allowed the Ghost party to exist in Baeba, and Ghosts living in Baeba could vote in the Ghost Empire's "heartland" government without living there. The heartland Ghosts hoped to stem the flow of Ghosts into the heartland by declaring war and forcing the Ghosts in Baeba to fight on the front lines. But they knew that Baeba was far too strong to conquer, and that they would need to build an empire in the north before sweeping down to attack Baeba.