Tamta/4192

Scorpion migration

In April 4192, 5,000 Scorpions fled defeat and founded their own colony within Hōki. The Scorpions were mostly children between the ages of 10 and 14 years old, led by just a tiny number of adults, and these adults had delegated much of their power to the young members. There were also a few children even younger than this, most of whom had been abandoned by their parents just a few months earlier.

These Scorpions had recently moved in from a wilderness colony called Tāmta after a small but heavily armed group of adult men calling themselves the Leashes invaded their territory. The Leashes claimed to be friendly, and to share a common enemy with the Scorpions, but the Scorpions had insisted the men not trespass through their territory for two reasons: firstly, the Scorpions were afraid of the heavily armed Leash soldiers. Secondly, they worried that the Leash migration might draw their acknowledged common enemy, the Players, into Tamta since the Players could claim anything they did in Tamta was to protect themselves from the Leashes. The Leashes acknowledged that the children had a valid reason for keeping the Leashes out of their territory. Thus, when the Leash men decided to enter Scorpion territory anyway, the Scorpions realized the Leashes might break their other promises too, and so the children fled westward to seek a safe homeland even further from the battle fronts.

The Scorpions decided that because they had only one home, their new colony in Moonshine's refugee state of Hōki would also be called Tāmta. Young but well-educated, the Scorpions braved a difficult journey in which friendly adults protected them from traffickers, and having arrived, they pushed further into Hōki in order to select the best land. When they finally reached their destination, they set up a democratic government in which the indigenous population was invited to also participate.

The indigenous people also considered themselves refugees, though they were of diverse origins: some had been there for generations, and others had only just recently arrived. Most of these refugees were not interested in politics, as politics had driven them from their original homes. Nonetheless, the sight of an arriving population consisting almost entirely of children did not frighten them so, and so the refugees announced the formation of the Hardwood political party, dedicated to cooperation with the Scorpions, with disputes to be settled through debate rather than violence. The few adults among the Scorpions relinquished nearly all of their remaining powers at this time, leaving the children in control of the Scorpion party. Because the Hardwoods did not allow their own children to vote, the Scorpion/Hardwood party system was largely a generational division, and some Scorpions hoped that the children of the Hardwoods would therefore join the Scorpions as well. Nonetheless, they made little attempt to reach out to them, since they knew that the Hardwoods could simply eject themselves from the democracy if they felt the Scorpions were trying to loosen their family ties.

Early political reforms

Arrival census

The Scorpions had counted their population as 5,383 enrolled members along with 738 children who had joined the journey west, mostly younger ones, who had chosen not to become Scorpions (earlier, the Scorpions had pledged that they would not take care of non-members, but many of these children were orphans so young that the Scorpions softened their pledge). There were only a handful of adult Scorpion members, nearly all men. They were joining a population of about 5,500 refugees, less than 1,000 of whom were enrolled in the Hardwood party, the only other legal party in Tāmta. Thus the Scorpions were about half of the population, and had a median age of 12 years old. They were about 60% boys.

Most of the refugees were not enrolled in any party, were transient, and mostly did not consider themselves citizens of the Scorpions' new nation or of any other nation; they accepted that so long as they chose to continue living in Tāmta, they would need to obey newly passed laws that they could not vote on. The Scorpions estimated that there were 4,000 of these living in Tāmta. Of these about 2,200 were children under age 18 (not 13 as was the usual reckoning age), but most of these people did not have stable employment and only lived in Tāmta because it was by the lake where there was a stable source of food. They were legally homeless because the Hardwoods reserved the structures they had built and maintained for their own kind, and therefore slept outdoors most of the time. But because Tāmta had such a cold climate, they were welcome to sleep in various large, unfurnished Hardwood buildings that protected them from the snow but offered sleepers little comfort.

The Hardwoods had only 422 children living with them, as they had mostly been in Tāmta longer than the others and had slowed down their family formation.

The Scorpions called the unenrolled people Nuŋipe because they went out on the lakeshore and lived mostly on fish.

Demographic concerns

As a refugee territory, the land the Scorpions now called Tāmta had been overcrowded even before the Scorpions had arrived, and they now planned to double the population. The Scorpions realized that most of the population was already homeless and sleeping outdoors most of the time, as the Scorpions had themselves done for most of the past year.

Assembly of parliament

The Scorpions in their tiny nation created a Parliament of 98 representatives, serving alongside a handful of at-large officials, all under the control of two overseers who in turn reported to a single head of state. This surprisingly large government was based on an ideal system the Scorpions had used in school, and also had very short terms; for example, the parliamentarians served only for six months.

The Scorpions awarded extra power to the adult Hardwood voters, saying that since the Scorpions vastly outnumbered the adults it would be unfair to run their elections based on raw vote totals.

Treasury

Within the government, the children created a treasury department, capable of levying taxes on the rest of the population and of certain other duties involving transfer of money.

The parliamentarians made up about 1% of the nation's population (100 out of a bit more than 10,000), and the Hardwoods who held much of the money in their nation made up about 12% of the population.

The tax system was modified to pay for the parliamentarians' salaries; the Scorpions announced that between this and the other new things the Scorpions needed to get around, the Hardwood taxpayers would be paying about 10% more than they had before the Scorpions arrived.

They decided to formalize this as a new 10% monthly tax (not a 10% increase) on the Hardwoods' monthly incomes, saying that most of it would be turned back to the state and therefore that the Hardwoods would not feel the hit so hard. The Scorpions' justification for the sudden change from a 10% increase to a 10% tax was that Hardwood society was so close-knit that they were in effect paying a 100% tax each month, with all Hardwood families being equally the payors and the recipients.

The Scorpions said that they would never need help with basic necessities of food, shelter, and clothing, but that because the new government offices required some of the Scorpions to devote their time to other things, these people really would need help with meeting basic needs, so their salaries would be higher than their occupation would otherwise merit.

The Scorpions then exempted themselves from the taxes, saying that they would re-distribute money among party members. Thus the new tax applied only to the Hardwoods. Since the Scorpions had not integrated fully into the cash economy, this changed little. The Scorpions also exempted the 4,000 non-Hardwood adults from the taxes, saying they were not physically capable of extracting payment from these people. Thus the Scorpions told the Hardwood minority that it would be their job alone to shoulder the tax burden for their new nation.

Plans for the future

As a majority, the Scorpions knew that they could not rely on the work of the small Hardwood minority and would need to do some work of their own, too. Yet they claimed that they were accustomed to a much lower standard of living than the Hardwoods, even though the Hardwoods were descended from refugees, and therefore that they would be able to live comfortably even if they were able to draw only a small amount of money from the Hardwoods' taxes.

Even so, the Scorpions planned to put some money aside to allow a few Scorpions to live without working in the wider economy. These children would then have the job of finding ways to extract more money from the Hardwoods and, if possible, also from the transient adults whom the Scorpions were not yet confident enough to confront. Thus the Hardwoods would be paying the Scorpions to take money from the Hardwoods.

Further changes to taxation system

The Scorpions soon interpreted their new 10% income tax as a wealth tax, saying that because the Hardwoods shared their belongings, all income was wealth and all wealth was income. Running the numbers, the Scorpions announced that they would therefore be transferring 70% of the Hardwoods' property to the Scorpions within the first year of their power. They gave the Hardwoods three semesters (18 months) to complete the full transfer of all property to the Scorpion treasurers, and the Scorpions promised that once they owned all of the property in the refugee colony they would open it up for communal use.

The Hardwoods realized that the Scorpions had never had a proper education in the field of economics because their parents' parties, chiefly the Cold Men, had always left the job of running the economy up to a small group of trained professionals rather than the entire population.

First elections in Tāmta

The Scorpions consolidated Tāmta into a single district, meaning that all elections were nationwide. Because the Scorpions were a majority and expected almost none of their members to vote for an opposition candidate, the Scorpion candidates would win every single election under the traditional direct-vote system that they had inherited from their fathers. Knowing that the opposition would see this as proof that Tāmta was not a true democracy, the Scorpions promised proportional representation, meaning that the most popular Hardwood candidates would defeat the least popular Scorpion candidates even if these Scorpion candidates received more votes.

The Scorpions said that the Hardwood candidates would win offices in proportion to the total Hardwood vote share, not the population share, meaning that if the Hardwoods showed little interest in the elections, they would not win any posts even with the amplification system.

There were no separate parliamentary elections. The officers of the executive branch were all to be enrolled in Parliament as well, serving on parliamentary committees related to their executive branch positions.

Term lengths

Each election was for a six-month term, which they called a semester. The Scorpions were accustomed to short terms from their school system, where students were expected to rapidly advance and trade places, and therefore did not realize their term length was considered extremely short by the adult populations around them. The Scorpion leaders nonetheless believed that very short terms like this were ideal, as young children might change their interests as they grew and learned more about each position in their government.

Opponents react

The Scorpions were dismayed to realize that the Hardwood refugees were largely uninterested in their new plan, even with the concession they had made to amplify the votes of the adults to ensure some non-Scorpion victories. Many refugees stated that they did not need a new layer of government and would not respect their officials. Some said that they would not vote because they felt the new government offices were so frivolous that it would be a waste of time for any adult to accept such a post. The children realized that they might have to prop up their opponents just to get them interested in the new system, since if they had nobody to run against, they could not claim to have won a meaningful victory.

The Scorpion adult leaders told the children that the Hardwoods would start taking the children seriously only when the children won their elections and began enforcing their new laws, and stated that they might need to schedule a second election very soon after the first, once the people of Tāmta realized how the voting system worked.

Impossible victories

Although some Hardwoods did sign up for the various electable posts, the children were mostly running unopposed, and soon realized that the few Hardwood candidates might automatically win due to the proportional representation promise, meaning that the Scorpion candidates running against adults would have no chance of victory even if they won an overwhelmingly greater vote total. Thus, the Hardwoods could simply pick which offices they wanted and tell the Scorpion candidates to get by with what was left. This meant that there was no point in any candidates campaigning, as the results of each election would be chosen by the Hardwood candidates from the beginning.

The Scorpions were frustrated as they realized that the Hardwoods had not outsmarted them; it was their very lack of interest in democracy that assured the Hardwood candidates of victory. The Scorpions realized that backing down on their promise would ruin their authority, and so they did their best to find candidates to fill the list, even realizing the awkwardness of begging their opponents to run against them. The Scorpions also could not join the Hardwood party to run decoy campaigns because they were too young.

Hardwood nomination process

Once the Hardwoods realized that they would be automatically guaranteed victories so long as they held themselves to seeking a small number of positions, they began their internal party nomination process so that each candidate would accept that the office they were assigned was chosen fairly and not by an unaccountable authority. They did not know the exact number of offices they would win because they could not foresee how many Hardwood citizens would turn out to vote, but they estimated that their voter turnout would be considerably lower than their share of the enrolled vote-eligible population, which was about one seventh, and so they decided to nominate only ten candidates to run against the 100 Scorpion children. Even though the Hardwoods could have nominated twenty or thirty or even a hundred candidates of their own, and still been guaranteed the same number of wins, they decided internally that they wanted to ensure every single Hardwood candidate won their election. This was largely out of the desire to avoid the humiliation of losing an election against a very young candidate, but another motivating factor was the overall lack of enthusiasm among the Hardwoods, and the realization that if they fielded too many candidates, there was a good chance that the ones who won would be those who were the least interested in cooperating with the Scorpions, and that those few Hardwoods who actually believed in the new government would be deprived of their opportunity to make it work.

Two of the 100 positions open for election were more powerful than the rest, because the government was divided into fourteen committees of seven members each, plus two overseers. These overseers had overlapping powers, and were equal, and reported to the president rather than to each other. The Hardwoods, knowing that they could automatically win simply by running for these positions, were eager to do so, but decided internally that it was an unwise idea, as they would be forced to obey a young president who almost certainly would not want them there, and also face opposition from the angry children they were tasked with overseeing. Moreover, the two overseer positions only had single votes in Parliament, and had no special powers there. Therefore the Hardwoods forbade their members to run for the overseer positions, and instead chose ten positions in the lower-level committees.

The Hardwoods waited for the Scorpions to nominate their candidates, and then chose which ones they would knock off. The Hardwoods knew that they would automatically win because of the proportional representation system both parties had earlier agreed to. The children whom had been selected by the Hardwoods understood that they had no chance of victory, and most refused to run any sort of campaign, instead spending their time arguing that the system should be overturned.

Outcome of first elections

August 1, 4192

The elections played out as predicted, with adult Hardwood candidates pushing aside children who had obtained far higher vote totals; one boy was forced to concede defeat to a man whom he had beaten in votes by a ratio of more than 6 to 1. This candidate's low vote total was because even the Hardwoods showed little interest in him, but because the proportional representation system appointed candidates according to the total Hardwood vote share, the individual candidates' totals were irrelevant and he could have won the election with just a single vote. Even some Hardwoods agreed that the system was too generous to them.

President

The presidential election was handled differently. The Scorpions nominated several candidates, while the Hardwoods nominated only one; nevertheless, the Scorpions were assured of victory because the system they used, as inherited from their forebearers, first tallied the total number of votes for each party, then eliminated the losing parties, and then appointed the winner of the most votes in the one remaining party as the new president. The Hardwood candidate knew this and did not expect to win.

The Scorpions thus appointed a boy named the Knife (Play Mapaāpi, Late Andanese Kuuhupiku) as their new president.

Protests begin

Realizing that their democracy was deeply flawed, the losing Scorpion candidates staged a protest outside the Parliament building, intending to stop the Hardwoods, and perhaps the Scorpions, from taking their seats in Parliament. The Hardwoods knew that they could simply force their way through the crowd of children, but also understood that they would greatly improve their social status if they chose instead to address the children on their own level instead of pushing through a crowd that could not push them back. The Hardwoods therefore stood in place, accepting for the moment that they were not allowed to enter the Parliament building. They believed that the other Scorpions did not support the protestors and would soon beckon the Hardwoods to enter the Parliament and humiliate the protestors, but this did not immediately happen. In the meantime, they addressed the protestors calmly and concisely.

The Hardwoods told the protestors that what they were asking for was a one-party state run entirely by the Scorpions, in which even the worst-performing Scorpion candidates would still win their elections, and that such a system was not at all what the Scorpion party as a whole had wanted to create. However, the Hardwoods knew that one reason why the Scorpions were trying to attract Hardwoods into Parliament was that they feared a violent civil war would erupt if the Hardwoods were denied a share of political power, and that the Scorpions probably secretly would prefer a one-party state.

Proposal for reform

As the other Scorpions gathered around the protestors, the protestors turned their attention from the Hardwoods to the Scorpions. They then demanded a new election, to be run with an amended system in which any Scorpions running unopposed would be able to appoint any citizen of Tāmta to run as an opponent, enrolled in the Hardwood party even if the Hardwoods would not accept such a candidate as one of their own. These candidates would therefore count as Hardwoods and would take away some of the seats assigned to the adults through proportionate representation.

The protestors said that if the Hardwoods would not agree to this, they would create a third party and a fourth party and however many more it took to drown out the Hardwood minority to such an extent that even with guaranteed proportional representation they would struggle to win elections against the young candidates in the decoy parties.

Electoral reform bill

On their first day in Parliament, the Scorpions argued for hours about not just the protestors' demands, but other complaints that had arisen among their members in the weeks leading up to the election.

Four-party system

First, they announced the creation of two new political parties: the Beetles (Vuvama) and the Top Riders (Vavāa). The Scorpion and Hardwood parties were to continue on as they had been.

Beetles

The Beetles (Play Vuvama) were to be a satellite party of the Scorpions, ideologically bound to agree with the Scorpions on all political points. They would run for elections in which a Hardwood candidate was also running. This was essentially what the protestors outside the building had demanded.

The Scorpions set the Beetle population equal to the Hardwoods', meaning that they would be granted proportional representation as well, but the Scorpions now said that the proportional representation quota would not be on a per-party basis, but by the division of the total population between the Scorpions as majority party, granted the seats their population share demanded, versus all of the minority parties counted together as one. Therefore, the number of non-Scorpion winning candidates was guaranteed to double from 10 to 20, since there were now twice as many non-Scorpions in the voting population. (They did not take a new census, assuming that even if new people had come and gone in just a few months, neither side would complain if they were slightly undercounted.)

The Scorpions stated that their new reform would potentially allow the Hardwoods to double their representation in Parliament even though their population had not changed, but that to do so, they would need to defeat each of the Beetle candidates who would be running against them. For each election that they lost, a Beetle candidate would accede to Parliament, and if the Hardwoods lost every single election, their proportional representation promise would no longer grant them any seats at all. The Scorpions claimed that this system was more than fair, and that the Hardwoods should not complain if they were defeated in the next elections.

Top Riders

Furthermore, the Scorpions created a new party called the Top Riders, ideologically untethered to the Scorpions. A Top Rider candidate would be required to run in every election, even if there was no Hardwood candidate running, in order to prove to the Hardwoods (and some skeptical Scorpions) that the Scorpions were not fielding poor candidates and then winning merely by default.

The Top Riders were outside the proportional representation system. The Scorpions said that the Top Riders would collect all the missed votes from the total voting population of the other parties; that is, any citizen who chose not to vote for a particular office would have their vote automatically assigned to the Top Rider candidate for that seat. If a citizen chose not to vote at all, they would be counted as having voted for the Riders on all seats up for election.

The Top Riders had no formal party structure or membership rolls, and the Scorpions admitted that they would be appointing the Top Rider candidates as well, but stated that they would choose dissenters among the Scorpions, people who had proven that they opposed the Scorpions and Hardwoods equally and were not merely decoy candidates intended to take away votes from the Hardwoods without affecting the Scorpions or Beetles.

Gender split

Even before the elections, the Scorpions had noticed that most of the candidates they were fielding were boys. Their population had a slight male surplus, but the candidates who had won the Scorpions' internal elections were overwhelmingly male, and the Scorpions, including boys, worried that their slight male majority was tipping the scales in the internal elections by pushing male candidates forward, even if they won the internal elections by just slight majorities, and depriving girls of their opportunity to serve in the government.

They had considered proportional representation for girls, and even splitting the Scorpions into Boy and Girl parties, but after hours of debate, the Scorpions came up with a different solution, one that at first seemed unlikely to solve the problem.

The new system would allow the party-internal nomination process to take place, except that the nomination would always produce two candidates for each seat: a boy and a girl. On the day of the final election, the boy and girl would be running against each other instead of just having one candidate win by default. Since all the seats were now contested by at least a Rider candidate along with possibly a Hardwood candidate, the Scorpions said that whichever of their two candidates got the most votes would then surrender their vote total to the other, just as in the presidential election system where four Scorpion kids had pooled their votes against the one Hardwood adult.

Because all elections would now be competitive up until the last day, and because the boy and girl candidates would be expected to mostly campaign against each other instead of against the other parties' candidates, the Scorpions said that the best candidates would win. If they still saw an overwhelming male majority in Parliament, they promised to again take up the possibility of proportional representation based on gender.

This gender split also applied to the new Beetle party, since the Beetles were ideologically bound to the Scorpions. Therefore, every seat would have a minimum of three candidates running for it, and if a Hardwood candidate joined the race, there would be a minimum of four (the Scorpions planned to field candidates for these seats as well, but would run quiet campaigns so that the Beetles would be assured the maximum vote share).

Schedule

The Scorpions told the protestors that they had been given all that they had asked for and more, but that it would be unwise to hold new elections immediately, as the winning candidates had won legitimately under the system they had been told to run for, including the Hardwoods. They therefore scheduled new elections for three months out, and stated that the new elections would be only for the seats that had been contested in the previous election, so that the uncontested winners would not need to run again to keep their seats. The other seats would continue with their normal six-month terms.

Hardwood reaction

The Scorpions passed their new reforms over the objections of the vastly outnumbered Hardwoods. Some Hardwood representatives lost their patience at being repeatedly outvoted, and one man told the Scorpions to drop the pretense and simply turn Tāmta into a one-party state run by the Scorpions with no rights for minority parties. But most of the Hardwoods who had won seats in Parliament were unusual among their kind in that they appreciated what little the Scorpions had given them, saying it was more than they deserved, and that they preferred to compete politically against the Scorpions rather than bringing their fights to the battlefield. Thus the Hardwoods accepted the reforms peacefully even as they suspected they would lose almost all of their seats to the next crop of children in the Beetle party.

The Hardwoods also realized that they no longer had any incentive to restrict themselves to just a few offices, since they could no longer be guaranteed of any victories in the campaigns they did run. This meant that they would need to recruit more candidates to run in the next election. This would in turn trigger Beetle candidates to also run, which they felt might frustrate the Scorpions.

The Hardwoods in Parliament knew, however, that their party membership was largely reluctant to even vote in the elections, much less run for office, and that the next crop of Hardwood candidates might be of poor quality.

First days in Parliament

The 100 new parliamentarians, fourteen committees of seven each plus two overseers, were paid by a 10% monthly wealth tax on the Hardwoods. Thus they were better off than most people in Tāmta.

Although many Hardwoods supported this system, saying that the young children were legitimately better educated about politics and therefore fit for the tax-supported government jobs they had assigned themselves, other Hardwoods complained that the new jobs had never been needed before and therefore still were not needed, and that the children had most likely created positions that they had remembered learning about in school when they were even younger, rather than positions that they themselves had needed when they were living independently. This would mean that the Scorpions would perform no important work in their new jobs and would not know how to perform the jobs adequately even if they were made to. Thus, the complainers stated, the 100 new Scorpion parliamentarians were being paid 10% of Tāmta's entire budget to do nothing, and yet, because they were in Parliament, the common people could do nothing to stop these payments, and the Scorpions could dispurse them however they wished, or even raise the taxes even higher to support the rest of the Scorpions.

Hardwood plans for the future

The winning Hardwood candidates realized they most likely had but three months to enjoy their power, as they would be then forced to run for re-election against five children — two Beetles, two Scorpions, and a Top Rider — in a nation whose population consisted primarily of children. Because of the new reforms, the Hardwood candidate would need to defeat the children not just on an individual level but also on a party level, since the two Beetle and two Scorpion candidates were running against each other within each party but would have their votes combined in the end.

In the meantime, they realized they were among the luckiest people in their nation, as they were paid handsomely by the government and yet had very little work to do. They had worried that the young Scorpions would struggle with basic tasks and require the Hardwoods to do both their jobs and the Scorpions', but the Hardwoods were happy to realize that the Scorpions were as well-educated as they had always claimed, and only required help from the Hardwoods for a few very basic tasks such as translating between Play and Leaper, which had nothing to do with age or experience. The Hardwoods thus hoped that even if they lost their re-election bids and came to live in an effectively one-party state (since the Beetles were ideologically bound to the Scorpions), they could acquire well-paid jobs as translators and continue making money from the taxpayers of Tāmta.

Some Hardwoods decided that the best way to stay in power would be to do their jobs as honestly and efficiently as possible, proving their claim that they were in the right place, and then ask the young children to re-elect them instead of voting for one of the five child candidates. Most Hardwoods believed that they would still lose, but then planned to run for election again six months later, saying that they had done a better job at their post during the first three months than the children had done over the succeeding six months.

Views from the wider population

The Hardwoods soon realized that their best friends, apart from each other, were the children serving alongside them in the government, as the general Hardwood populace believed that the new government was a sham, and that any adults who agreed to obey children must have impure motives. Some said that the Hardwood officials were both lazy and corrupt, but that simply because they were adults they would perform their jobs better than the hard-working children struggling to get from place to place, and that because the children were naive, they would not realize this and would think that the Hardwoods were in fact excellent officials. Others said that both parties were about equally harmful, and that the children in the Scorpion party had just now reached the age where they, too, were capable of corrupt behavior.

Since the Hardwoods were being paid well and doing very little work, the general population was now not only disdainful but also jealous of them, and so the Hardwoods got little respect from the rest of their population. The Hardwoods knew that they could never join the children's parties, and knew that they were in danger of losing their own population's votes, and so they considered the possibility of a Top Rider victory for at least some seats, figuring that few Hardwoods would vote in the next election, but that if the Hardwoods in office performed well, the children might split their votes as well.

The children in Parliament had similar jobs, and therefore were also paid handsomely. They worked harder than the Hardwoods only because the jobs were more difficult for them due to their lack of experience and knowledge, even though they were very well educated for their age. To some extent, they were also obstructed in their work by the adult population's strident refusal to acknowledge that the new child-led government had legitimate authority, but these same people now also rejected the Hardwood officials. This drew the children and the Hardwoods closer together, and the Hardwoods again hoped for some way to break out of the system and remain in power.

Treaty with Players

The Scorpions then passed a symbolic treaty declaring the nation of Tāmta to be an exclave of the Play state of Tanaanu, located more than a thousand miles away. The Scorpions understood that the Players, including those living in Tanaanu, wanted nothing to do with Scorpion politics, and that if the Scorpions ever sought refuge in Tanaanu they would certainly be imprisoned if not killed. But Tanaanu had been known for rebellious politics in the past, and the Scorpions admired their willingness to stand up against the Players, who even at that time were overwhelmingly more powerful.

School system

The Scorpions then created a school system financed by the government, the only tax-supported education system in any of the children's nations. There were no adults in the school, neither as teachers nor as students, and therefore the Hardwoods could not attend. The Hardwoods had their own informal schools, but they did not have government funds because they had never seen this as within the scope of the government when they were on their own. Thus the Hardwoods had to pay for the Scorpions' schools but could not send their own children there. The Scorpions still considered themselves a closed-entry party and so the Hardwoods' children could not switch parties either.

Structure

The Scorpion adults were too busy running the party machine to take teaching positions, so the children taught each other and rotated the teaching role from one student to another depending on who among each class had the best knowledge of whichever subject was in the curriculum that day. The students who were serving in Parliament did not attend school either.

Hardwood party reform and new election cycle

Until this point, the Hardwood party had had no internal structure, as they had not needed one (or indeed needed a party at all) until the Scorpions came to rule over them. The Hardwoods now decided amongst themselves to create a formal internal party structure, whose elections would be synchronized with those of Tāmta. Hardwood internal party leaders need not be those serving in the Parliament, but they did allow persons to hold both offices simultaneously, as holding two offices simultaneously had been permissible in many governments of their shared cultures for a long time.

Since the Hardwood party existed for the benefit of the Scorpions, the Hardwoods allowed the Scorpions to vote in the internal Hardwood party elections. Thus the Hardwoods became the only party in the known world, apart from some slave parties, in which non-members could choose who would lead the members. But they said that the Scorpions' votes would count much less than the Hardwoods' own votes, suggesting a 10:1 ratio. This meant that the Hardwoods could outweigh the Scorpions' votes, but only if enough Hardwoods cared enough about the election to show up to vote. Since the Hardwoods in general still lacked enthusiasm for politics, the Hardwood leaders figured this was fair: if a candidate could not drum up enough support among their own population to gain a significant vote total, they deserved to have their leaders picked by children.

Results

Since these new elections were less important than the ones for the nation of Tāmta as a whole, the Hardwoods suggested that they be held less frequently, but the Scorpion-led parliament insisted that they be held at the same time and every time as the national elections. The Scorpions also voted themselves a 1/6 voting weight in the Hardwoods' elections, rather than 1/10 as the Hardwoods had proposed. At this time, only 379 adult citizens of Tāmta were enrolled in the Hardwood party, meaning that the Scorpions could pick every single position in the Hardwood party if they chose to do so, and even if every single Hardwood member showed up to vote, they would not outweigh the Scorpions.

The Hardwoods accepted this, but reminded the Scorpions that the Hardwoods still had some strong counterweights. There were other adults in the area who were still disinterested in politics and had not enrolled in any party (separate from the Hardwoods who had agreed to join but were mostly not voting), and more refugees could arrive from areas outside Tāmta. The Hardwoods also had their own child population, though much smaller than the Scorpions, which would be enrolling as they became adults. The Hardwoods also said that they might allow children to vote in the Hardwood party internal elections but not in Tāmta's.

They also reminded the Scorpions that even if they lost to the Scorpions on all of these points, they could simply revoke their original agreement to let the Scorpions vote in the Hardwood internal elections. The entire Hardwood party apparatus had been intended for the Scorpions' convenience and could be withdrawn at any time, and the Hardwoods could secede from their own party and form another if they felt that the Scorpions were gaining too much power.

Effects of new party system

Thus, the Scorpion party had split into three: the Scorpions, the Beetles, and the Top Riders (Vasuāvi). The intent of this was to make the parties more equal in size so that the amplified voting power given to the Hardwoods would no longer lead to such unfair results. Also, the Scorpions and Beetles had agreed to run two candidates for each post, always a boy and a girl, to see if their own voting population was being affected by an inherited cultural preference for male leaders. This meant that the Hardwood candidates were sometimes sharing a debate stage with five children whom they perceived as being far more closely tied to each other than any of them was to the Hardwood candidate. Some Hardwoods decided that the new political system was a parody and lost interest, but those who remained were the ones who took the system seriously, and the children's political parties respected and trusted the Hardwoods who continued to run against them.

November 4192 election

As the Play army slaughtered Lilypad children all over the countryside, the Scorpions reaffirmed their neutrality, and also stated that they considered themselves to be a rebellious faction within the Play nation, and not part of the Lilypad nation at all. Yet the Scorpions knew that the Play army was large enough that they could conceivably invade Moonshine's refugee state of Hōki, perhaps under the pretext that the supposedly pacifist Moonshines were harboring a political group who had openly declared their desire for war, and then launch a pointed attack against the Scorpions while sparing all of the other refugee groups.

By November, new elections were due in Tāmta, for the ten seats in Parliament that the Hardwoods had won. These candidates (eight men and two women) were each expected to stand for re-election against five children seeking the same office. These positions were intended for handling domestic issues such as taxation, but by this time, both the children and the adults were focused on the ongoing war to their south, and both parties agreed to put aside their differences on domestic issues to focus on the threat against their shared homeland.

Some people, especially among the Hardwoods, wanted to find any means possible to rescue Lilypad children before the Players could take full control. Many Hardwood men expressed interest in taking on the Players in direct combat, but others felt it would be futile to do so, as the Hardwoods did not have competent weaponry and the Players were far more numerous; most estimates put the Play army's total manpower at about a hundred times that of the Hardwoods; that is, roughly 100,000 to 1,000. There were actually less than 1,000 enrolled Hardwood men, but the Hardwood leaders attributed this to lack of interest in politics among the locals, some of whom had continued to live side by side with the enrolled Hardwoods, and therefore stated that their party's size was being underestimated. Nonetheless they knew they were greatly outnumbered and felt it would be best to join rescue missions instead. Some Scorpions were interested in these missions as well, but the Scorpion party determined its foreign relations by voting in party-internal elections, and therefore the election in Tāmta could not determine a new Scorpion foreign policy or start rescue missions.

Campaign begins

Thus, differences of opinion appeared, and as the Hardwood candidates realized that they were likely to lose their elections, they worried that the Scorpions might then order them to take to the front lines, as some Hardwoods had already committed to doing. Here, without adequate weapons, they would be doomed to die immediately on encountering the Play army without accomplishing their mission. Thus, the Hardwood candidates pushed ahead with their campaigns despite the shift in attention towards foreign policy.

Four-party debates

The four parties agreed to hold debates on current issues, and to take questions from the audience. Since there were ten offices up for election, there would be ten debates. Anyone was allowed to take time off from their duties to attend the debates, which were scheduled two weeks before the election, with five each day. But the candidates all agreed to set their expectations low and to expect only a hundred or perhaps even a few dozen citizens to show up to each debate, as anything much more would reduce the nation of Tāmta to a political machine with no economy whose only activity was electing its officials. The candidates left open the possibility of further debates in the last days before the election.

Speakers on stage

October 17, 4192

The candidates agreed to stand on a stage in the order of party formation, meaning that the two Scorpion candidates (a boy and a girl) would stand beside each other in either order, then the Hardwood candidate would stand to their right, and then the two Beetle candidates would stand further right, and lastly the Top Rider candidate would stand at the rightmost edge of the stage.

All four parties had agreed to this, as they all saw advantages in it. Since the speaking order was from left to right, the Scorpions felt that being first to speak would help them control the narrative on each question; the Hardwoods felt that standing near the center of the stage would draw attention to them and disrupt any attempts by the children to form a single group with identical opinions; the Beetles felt that speaking after the Hardwoods would help them get the better of the Hardwoods on each question; and the Top Rider candidates felt that going last would help them portray themselves as the better alternative to all of the others.

Additionally, they all agreed that the ordering would help the audience identify who belonged to each party. Because the Scorpions and Beetles were separated from each other by the visually distinct adult Hardwood candidate, they would not be mistaken for each other. Since everyone knew that the Scorpions were the original party, they knew to look for them on the left. Lastly, the Top Rider candidate would be on the end without a partner, as the Top Riders chose not to come to each election with a boy and a girl candidate.

Hardwoods prepare

In all ten of these elections, an adult Hardwood incumbent was facing a challenge from five children in the other three parties. Moreover the Hardwoods expected the audience at each debate to consist almost entirely of children, as the adult minority had by this time made it clear that they would either vote for a Hardwood candidate or not vote at all; most Hardwoods considered the idea of a nation run by children to be a sham, and for adults to participate in it to be even worse. Thus the Hardwoods could not count on their own people to vote for them, and had to win over the votes of the children in an election where all five of the competing candidates were children.

The Hardwoods knew that they faced a difficult challenge, but that if they were to skip the debate, they would be effectively forfeiting their election. They hoped, in fact, that it would be the other parties who would skip the debates and show themselves to be less interested in the welfare of Tāmta than the competing Hardwood candidates. They took heart in knowing that the children's parties had each separately agreed to the order of the candidates on the stage, meaning that the Hardwood candidate in each debate would be near the center. This meant that even if the children in the audience wanted to listen to only the younger candidates, they would need to walk past the Hardwood candidate even so, and would never be far away. Standing in the middle position also split the younger candidates into two groups so that they could not easily coalesce with each other and act as an anti-Hardwood bloc.

First day of debates

The five sets of candidates all gathered at the debate stage on the first day, as they all intended to watch the other candidates as well. The Hardwoods were surprised to find that a large number of Hardwood citizens had chosen to attend after all, and although there were still more children than adults in the audience, the Hardwoods realized that the adults would probably be the ones asking most of the questions and that those questions would be most likely intended to embarrass the Hardwood candidates.

The Hardwoods mentioned the ongoing Play-Lilypad war to test the children's opinions on what to do. The Hardwoods soon realized that the children were in denial, and had lost their sympathy for the Lilypads because to express sympathy would be to acknowledge that the war was real. This was an example of the Play concept of pitīpap kapuutu, the sympathy umbrella, where people who show sympathy for those in great pain show no sympathy for those in even greater pain because to acknowledge that such suffering can exist makes the sympathizer uncomfortable. This was an emotional reaction, not a logical one, and thus was separate from the Crystals' various statements of refusal of help to Crystals who were trapped in supposedly unwinnable wars (e.g. the Eggs who were invaded by men calling themselves Firestones).

The Hardwoods realized that the Scorpions had already stated at their founding meeting that they were neutral in the war and would not show sympathy for the weaker side purely because they were suffering more. Moreover, the Scorpion party constitution implied that boys and men both made good soldiers, implying that they did not see, or refused to admit, that any war in which adult male soldiers fought children would be grossly unfair to the children. But many Hardwoods believed that they could force the Scorpions' true emotions to the surface if they were gentle and subtle.

Final days of campaign

Orphans

In the final weeks of the campaign, diplomats from Moonshine expressed interest in adopting all of STW's remaining orphans without expecting compensation from STW. Most of these were children much younger than the Scorpions and other groups in Tāmta, with a great many of them being six years old. STW had been trying to find adoptive homes for them in Baeba Swamp, and stated that they would pay the adopting families, but that this money would be taken from the money that the Slimes owed STW for helping them find a home in Baeba in the first place. The Slimes denied the validity of this debt claim, saying that they owed nothing because STW's only wealth was that which had been taken from the forerunners of the Slimes. Therefore, any Slime family who adopted an orphan from STW was betraying the Slime party platform.

These orphans were now being called the Grass Walkers because many were barefoot, but they had not chosen that name and the Scorpions did not use that name either. The Scorpions called them instead paipa natuam, a term usually reserved for adolescents, implying that their hardships had so accelerated their childhood that they were grown adults as much as anyone else in Tāmta.

Moonshine's plan to adopt the orphans would take them through the refugee territory of Hōki where the Scorpions and Hardwoods lived. This was both because they felt the direct route over the ocean would be too dangerous for the children, and because a maritime journey would have only one endpoint, whereas a journey over land could see the children adopted into many different families along the way. But Moonshine worried that the Scorpions would be interested in adopting the children into Tāmta instead, as they knew that the Scorpions had a strong male surplus and that many of them would not be able to marry and raise children of their own.

Results of election

Although the ten seats up for election were those that had previously been allotted to the Hardwoods on the basis of proportional representation, the earlier children's protest had led to a compromise in which the repeat elections would be open-access, meaning that the Hardwoods were running against a slate of five children belonging to three parties, and the entire voting-eligible citizen population would be allowed to vote. Because 90% of the voting population consisted of children, the Hardwoods expected to lose all ten seats, and planned to stage a protest outside the Parliament building in which they would present the children with a list of demands, just like the protest that had taken place three months earlier. Some Hardwoods wanted to physically prevent the winning children from taking their seats, precisely because they knew the unfair physical manipulation tactic would send the children into a tantrum, perhaps even into tears, which would humiliate them so much that they might flee from the Parliament building and concede defeat.

Unexpectedly, however, two of the Hardwood candidates defeated all of the children running against them for their respective seats. They realized that to achieve victory in such a scenario, they must have gotten more votes from children than from adults, and therefore that perhaps their democracy was not such a sham after all. The two winning candidates, a man and a woman, belonged to separate committees and knew that they would rarely see each other as they served out their terms, but both said that they were honored to serve their nation and would not expect any special attention from being the only two adults among the 98 children in Parliament.

The Scorpions assigned the two highest-scoring children that had been defeated to comparable positions in the Scorpion party so that their talents would not be wasted. They pledged that from then on, all of their candidates would automatically win some position in every election, and moreover that even the losing candidates within their umbrella party (the Beetles and others) would get accessory positions where they would help the main losing candidate in their position despite belonging to a different political party.

Foreign policy platform

Many voters had expected the winning candidates to be those who had expressed vocally their support for action against the Players. Nonetheless, the eight children who defeated the sitting adult candidates were those who chose to maintain the promise of neutrality even as evidence mounted for ever greater abuses being committed by the Players against the Lilypads. Many Hardwoods returned to political apathy after this election, saying that they had been better off before the Scorpions arrived but still respected their status as legitimate refugees. Meanwhile, those Hardwoods who insisted that the new democracy was a success began to speak of themselves as sumaamna, literally meaning bodyguards but also used to indicate adults who play children's games sincerely and with no handicaps. These people believed that they would survive in the Scorpion-dominated government long enough to take part in whatever government replaced it in the future, should the Scorpion party collapse as so many other recently founded parties had.