Lantern Empire

The Lantern Empire (also called Vōra, one of its native names) was created from land the Thundererrs had conqeuered from Nama. Vōra soon became the Thunderers' stronghold, and took over Altotta.

Geography and politics

Prehistory

The Vora Empire originated as an alliance between the Crystal Empire in the tropics of the west with the Thunder Empire in the subpolar climates of the far north and mountainous areas of the temperate zone. The land area was thus enormous, far larger than any previous empire other than Nama. And Nama was not a true empire in the sense that it did not control its people; it simply left most of its territory to complete self-government because they bordered the icecap and thus had no fear of invasion. And now the Thunderers had carved out much of Nama's territory for themselves.

Naming

The official language of the Lantern Empire was Khulls, and the native translation of "Lantern Empire" in Khulls was Gonkʷímilyi (gonkʷí means lantern, and was used by itself as an adjective). Pabappa was not an official language, but it was spoken at the edges and in some central areas of the empire, and both Pusi and Wunipa were used as names for the empire in Pabappa. The Empire was also called Vōra, after the name of a flower that was symbolistic of the Thunder side of the empire.

There was never a Lantern political party; Gonkwímilyi was a coalition government of single-party toparchies that combined with each other to form a supranational government that resembled, in its whole, Nama's multiparty government further south. The rulers of each nation had absolute power and generally did not tolerate any dissent. However, the nations were mostly small, and transportation was good enough that an unpopular ruler would be forced to either fight their own people or allow them to move to a different nation. This, on the other hand, caused some nations to grow very large after all, particularly on the Thunder side of the empire.

Early Thunder Empire (Kava)

The Thunderers originated as an army from within the nation of Kava, which had been settled by a rebellious tribe of Pabaps named Hinku who rejected the pacifism of their homeland. They claimed Paba could have easily conquered the entire planet, but chose instead to do nothing as literally all of the nations bordering them, and some quite distant nations, sent their people to trespass all over Paba and abduct the Pabap people as slaves. They claimed that Paba's survival was not due to its large, obedient navy but due to the fact that none of their neighbors wanted to let the world's most submissive slaves become the exclusive property of just one nation, and formed "alliances" with Paba solely to ensure that they could forever continue to exploit and abuse Paba.

Thus the Thunderers openly hated pacifists and felt no shame when in 2371 they invaded the very core of Nama to set up their new nation. Nama was not officially pacifist, but that was only because its imperial government was so liberal that it allowed its subject nations to go their own way on nearly every issue, and Nama rarely fought wars because there were few wars that all of its subject nations, or even a majority of them, could all find common interest in. Moreover, Nama had a very small coastline for such a large empire, and this seacoast happened to be cut off from the rest of Nama by the world's tallest mountain range. Thus, although Nama's south coast was strongly defended navally, any invading army who managed to slip past that barrier would face almost no resistance from Nama's land army unless they wished to push beyond even the mountains into the rolling plains to the north.

The Hinku invaders had an advantage because they were Pabaps, and most trading ships visiting Nama at this time were Pabap ships. Thus, the Hinku army actually originated as naval pirates who took Pabap trading shapes and then headed for Nama claiming to be the traders they had killed. Even though they knew that Paba would be horrified when the news broke, and would likely be punished severely by Nama, the Hinku pirates had sworn off all allegiance to Paba, and indeed, all allegiance to anyone but each other.

They pushed their way through the Naman navy entirely unopposed, and immediately began a land invasion of Kava. Unlike many Naman nations, Kava had only one major race of people, which meant that there were no internal divisions to exploit in order to weaken them. But the Hinku nonetheless easily conquered the entire nation of Kava with just the small army they had brought over on board their fake trading ships. Although the Hinku found the native Kavan women attractive, they were forbidden to marry them, and so at first the population of Kava grew slowly. (They did not generally kill aboriginals, seeing them as even weaker than the Pabaps back home and therefore not a serious threat.) Kava was very poor, since they had brought none of the wealth of Paba with them. They were nudists even during winter except for a few who had settled in the small area of Kava that was mountainous, and even these people only wore skirts and crop-tops, often taken from native women. The Hinku renamed themselves Kavans and presented themselves as a new nation.

Nama was so weak by this time that they never even mounted a counterattack on Kava; they only offered to resettle the Repilian aboriginals in poorer areas of upland Nama. Kava was not surprised; Nama had also done nothing when the FILTER army carved out an even larger Naman state, Nèye, in 2246. Nor did Nama punish Paba, as Paba had quickly denounced the war and promised that Kava would never become an ally of Paba even if they repented and became pacifists in the future.

Although Kava and FILTER shared the same handicap of having secure borders on land but no navy, both were primarily interested in settling the interior of the continent, even if it meant eventually losing their coastline in a war similar to the "war" they had fought against the defenseless Repilian aboriginals to get in.

Early Crystal Empire (Nèye)

THe Crystals had originated from the slave plantations of Lobexon. Technically, they had arisen before Lobexon was enslaved, but even most Crystals did not realize this, as they did not form a strong identity until the oppression began. They were a political party with their own religion, and for most of their history had been a tiny repressed minority in every nation they lived in. Nevertheless, they had spread out quickly and were present in a lot of nations even as early as 2175. They realized that they had enough people to form a safe, solid nation if they could only call in all of the Crystals living dispersed throughout the tropics, including the slaves, to come together as one.

Their early attempts at this were not fruitful, however. The naive Crystals living on Sulasali Island moved as one to Paba in order to take advantage of Paba's very generous welfare benefits. They had heard that Paba's government paid ethnic minorities a welfare stipend that was greater than what the Pabap lower class made in a full time job. Although even the Crystals realized that they would not simply be given money simply by beaching on the shores, they figured that Paba was a place where they would be welcome and knew that they could get at least some money from the government because they couldn't speak Pabappa and thus couldn't work in most jobs.

However, they quickly exhausted the patience of even the notoriously tolerant Pabaps. Crystals refused to send their children to school, and most refused to learn Pabappa, which meant that they were unemployable and their quickly growing population drew a quickly growing share of Paba's welfare benefits. Moreover, Crystals used their free time to harass Pabaps in city streets, and those few who did speak Pabappa still did not have jobs but instead went around trying to convert Pabaps to the Crystal religion.

To solve the problem, Paba made thbe Crystal religion illegal and cut off their welfare benefits. Paba was unwilling to use force against the Crystals, both because they honestly believed in pacifism and because the Crystals had used their free time gained by not working to build themselves dangerous weapons. In fact, the Crystals had privately made an agreement to settle only in Pabap cities in which the Crystal minority was armed well enough to kill the entire population of that city. They drew murals on stone walls in the cities depicting helpless Pabaps being boiled and eaten alive by Crystal armies, saying that each mural would be the site of an actual massacre in the near future in the Pabaps did not give them a nation of their own inside Pabap territory. But now Paba had defeated them, since the Crystals realized that they could only survive by hunting animals in the wilderness, but they had settled in areas where this was difficult. Some Crystals walked all the way to northern Paba, figuring life would be better among the poorer and weaker Pabaps of the mountains, but most decided to leave Paba for Subumpam.

Subumpam turned out to be even more explotable than Paba. Although Subumpam was not a pacifist empire, its people were poorly armed and its army was smaller than would be expected for an empire its size. This is because it was overseen by Nama and Nama didnt want a rebellion. Subumpam did not even have a navy; its coastline was patrolled jointly by Nama and Paba. Nevertheless, the Crystals were soon captured into slavery in Subumpam, with the exception of those who were FILTER members. FILTER had earlier agreed to merge with the Crystals inside Subumpam only, while maintaining separate identities in other nations. Thus only about half of the Crystals were enslaved. The FILTER Crystals had escaped because they were visually indistinguishable from the mainline Subumpamese and mostly spoke Subumpamese. Although the FILTER Crystals did not attempt to rescue the enslaved Crystals, they did communicate with the Crystal establishment in Nama that they knew what had happened and predicted that Subumpam's slave camps were mild enough that few, if any, Crystals would die. Then FILTER declared war on Nama.

FILTER marched on foot all the way across Subumpam and then conquered the Naman nation of Nèye. They killed every man, raped every woman, and enslaved every child they found. THis was a far more brutal war than any that had occurred in recent history, and it was one of the fastest victories ever achieved. Nama had no reaction to the war other than to close down FILTER's representation in Nama's government. FILTER retained total control of Nèye for itself but invited Crystals from all around the world to live in Nèye, thus providing the Crystals their first true nation in which they were welcome. However, FILTER had reasserted itself as an independent organization now, saying that although they were allies of the Crystals they had not themselves become Crystals. The merging of the two parties while inside Subumpam was a deliberate attempt to make the most of a very desperate situation as they were both very violent but very small, and did not want to waste each other away to nothing when they had a golden opportunity to make a new nation in front of them. Notably, however, most FILTER members at least inside Nèye had retained elements of the Crystal religion and incorporated them into a new branch of their own religion, Sisnasi. The Crystals moving into Nèye accepted this, as they had decided that they would no longer fight any religious wars except against atheists.

Growth

Nama saw Kava and Nèye as being like two sharp teeth biting into the soft, defenseless flesh of the Naman heartland. The southern extent of Nama's territory resembled two human legs spread out, and in this analogy, Kava and Nèye had both taken big bites out of her left thigh. From here they both wanted to grow northward, and Nama hoped that as the two armies won battle after battle they would turn on each other and burn themselves out before they got too high up in the body. Previously, the spread-legs analogy had been the subject only of indecent jokes, but now the Kavan and Nèyean military commanders took it to heart and began drawing up maps of their proposed colonization routes with each nation in the Naman empire given the name of the corresponding female body part. The anology hinting at cannibalism and rape generally did not bother the mostly female military leaders of Nèye, as they had proven very recently that they had no problem with real rape, even mass rape, so long as it was their own men doing it and their enemies' women receiving it. Moreover the sight of the many male Kavan military commanders wearing white miniskirts and white crop tops while drawing invasion plans for the world's largest empire meant FILTER women were too busy suppressing laughter to be offended by anything they said. They accepted the name "Teeth" for their armies and declared themselves The Tooth Alliance shortly after 2371. In this alliance, Kava promised FILTER could have open access to Kava's territory and FILTER promised they would use it to help the male population of Kava develop a better sense of fashion.

As above, Nama was not a pacifist empire, but it was extremely poorly defended, particularly in the north, where the various nations of Repilian aboriginals had been left to self-government for thousands of years. Many Repilian tribes really were pacifists, and were totally unprepared for the arrival of well-armed invaders from the south. At first, Nama's land army was totally impotent and could at best only chase the invaders northwards as they went, even though these invasions took years to move just a few miles north. The invasions were slow because both Tooth armies saw that their enemies were essentially defenseless, and could be coerced into building forts and weapons for the invaders instead of simply being slaughtered on sight. The Naman search teams were slow because Nama's infrsastructure was so poorly developed in the north that the only way Nama learned an attack had taken place was when a trade supply route suddenly failed. Nama was afraid to send its best soldiers against the Teeth, knowing that the Tooth soldiers were armed to the teeth and would win, man for man, even over Nama's best. Moreover, both Tooth armies had whole families of civilians just behind the front lines, as again, they figured their enemies were so pathetic that they couldnt even conceive of a sneak attack behind enemy lines. FILTER additionally tended to have both male and female soldiers in its army, with women generally in control at the highest levels of command.

Soon, Nama did develop a northern front, and stationed a large land army there, but this meant that their military power in the south had decreased even further. The soldiers in the northern army knew that they were never going to be let home, because both Kava and FILTER favored very slow warfare in which whole families would move in and take over the territory one village at a time. FILTER was particularly good at this, and they managed to do it while still maintaining a very high birthrate, which meant their population was growing very quickly. Kava's growth was slower, but still substantial.

Nama's land army was now spread across 2661 miles of territory, from Nama's west coast to its east coast. (Note that these "coasts" were both entirely icebound, and thus could not host a navy. This is why Nama speaks of itself as having only a small amount of coastline, in its extreme south.) The number of soldiers stationed on each mile of the front was so small that even Nama realized their attempt to stop the invasion would likely be useless, as either of the Tooth armies could simply burst through the paper-thin Naman army and find that the Repilians living to the north of the border were even weaker than those in the south because they had been told they were being protected.

The two original nations of the Tooth Alliance, Kava and Nèye, had been very small. Kava was smaller and was slightly west of Nèye, but soon the two nations came to share a border and Kava actually became slightly larger. However, due to their alliance with the Crystals, FILTER also began to sprout up nations to the west of Kava. Thus there were no longer only two Teeth in the Tooth alliance.

The Crystals enter the coalition

The Teeth realized a potential future problem with the entry of the Crystals into the alliance. Previously, FILTER and Kava had agreed to grow quickly but separately, forming no mixed nations and respecting new borders drawn up by the other Tooth when the other Tooth got to a new settlement first. But the Crystals were so different from both groups racially, religiously, and culturally that all three Teeth worried that the differences between Kava and FILTER would blur and fade away, or that FILTER, seeing itself as naturally belonging to the Crystals, would unite with the Crystals and suffocate Kava between them as they focused on reuniting with each other rather than attacking Nama. They signed a new treaty that further strengthened the prohibitions on competition between the Teeth, saying that even friendly competition between the Teeth was forbidden; they could only attack Nama, they could not even peacefully attempt to force a newly conquered settlement to join a different conqueror, and they could not build mixed settlements. To prevent Kava being smothered by the FILTER/Crystal coalition, they drew up a map of Nama with proposed borders for all three Teeth. They figured that Nama was so pathetically weak now that there was no chance of Nama mounting a defense strong enough to make a difference in their plans, and that they could confidently draw up borders in 2400 AD for a nation that wouldn't exist until 3400 AD, simply because they knew Nama would never be able to keep them out. (This is similar to negotiations during World War II, in which the three Axis powers — Germany, Italy, and Japan — drew up plans for a total conquest of the entirety of Asia far in the future, giving each of the three nations specific borders for territories they would only achieve far later on. In this analogy, Nama plays the part of Asia.)

First mixed nations

FILTER and Kava, however, found that they could not keep themselves apart. Their nations mostly directly bordered each other; that is, there was no "deep Kava" nation surrounded only by other Kavan nations; they all bordered either FILTER or a weak Naman nation they saw as soon to fall. Despite forbidding intermarriage, intermarriage became quite frequent among the lower classes of both nations. They responded to this by saying that it was culture, not race, that separated FILTER from Kava, and that any mixed families would simply need to adopt the nationality of the empire they were living in. However, FILTER nonetheless decided to classify Kavans as a distinct and inferior minority in their nation, while Kava welcomed such mixed families and treated them as equals. This had the effect of keeping FILTER essentially pure while making Kava a more mixed society. Previously, Kava had been essentially 100% Hinku, which was a tribe of Pabaps, but now they became more diverse. However, the FILTER people were not greatly different from the Kavans except t hat they tended to be significantly taller. This was essentially a reflection of their own mixed Subumpamese and Repilian ancestry; both of these tribes were fairly tall, but not so tall as to make intermarriage with Kavans a taboo.

Thus, although they retained separate identities officially, the further north that Kava and FILTER grew, the more they blended together, and it soon seemed like there might soon be only two Teeth in the alliance after all. Meanwhile, since Kava was the central nation in the alliance, it also bordered the Crystal territories, though this border was much smaller than its border with FILTER. This is because whereas FILTER and Kava had both entered Nama through the "thigh" and pushed their way inwards, Crystal armies had come in from the extreme west, in the "finger" territories of Nama's outstretched right hand, and rushed through her right arm. There was little contact between the Crystals and the other two groups at first other than diplomacy; the Crystals killed Repilians in the west, and the FILTER/Kava armies killed Repilians in the east.

The War of the Perfect Societies

By 3115, as Kava and FILTER massacred more Repilians every day, an assortment of Repilian tribes responded by creating The Perfect Society. In the Perfect Society, nobody would be allowed to own weapons, except for a few people who needed them to hunt and fish. They considered FILTER and Kava to be as one with each other, and discouragedf their people from moving in, but stated because they were pacifists they wouldn't fight back if some tried to move in as long as they were unarmed. In 3125, The Perfect Society declared its independence (Kava and FILTER had claimed this land already, but not settled it), and defined their borders. The borders of the Perfect Society included the entire icecapped area of Nama, plus most of the territory behind Nama's army's front line. All in all, they claimed about 1/3 of the unglaciated part of Nama as their own.

Also in 3125, the Kavan settlers living in northern Nama created a new nation they called The Perfect Society. In The Perfect Society, all Repilians would be slaves for Kavans and would be forced to breed with the Kavan masters. The Repilian religions would be illegal and anyone caught practicing them would be placed in a special class of slaves that were specifically allowed to be tortured and abused. In 3125, The Perfect Society declared its independence and defined their borders. Nama accepted the new nation but renamed it to Nipanu-Malamuppa to prevent confusion.

Nama's government admitted that its north was hopelessly a lost cause. Kava and FILTER had destroyed much of the Mirror Project, and occupied areas of Nama that had not seen a war for more than a thousand years. Nama had always thought that its south coast was its weak spot, because it was cut off by tall mountains, but they now decided their only hope in surviving lay in moving their army to that very south coast in an attempt to starve out the home nations of Kava and Nèye.

Even though they knew that there were by now far more Kavans living in Nama than in Kava, Kava's original homeland on the south coast was still its only sea access. But Nama was frustrated by the inability of its constituent nations to even agree that Kava was evil. In 3137, yet another major war erupted in Nama, but it was between the two nations both calling themselves The Perfect Society. The long, spread-out army that Nama had held in place for centuries to keep the invaders out was thus repurposed to help fight the Perfect Society War on the side of the Repilians. Nipanu-Malamuppa won the war, and in 3138 declared that the "Era of Happiness" (Yeisu Kasu) had begun. They had defeated their rival nation, their own rebellious slaves, and Nama's land army in a single year. Most of the deaths in the war, even on Nipanu-Malamuppa's side, were Repilians.

The treaty ending the War of the Perfect Societies assigned to Kava all of the territory that had been claimed part of the Repilian victims' Peace Bubble nation. Thus Kava now had the entire icecap to itself, although they promised to respect preexisting FILTER settlements there, and they also had almost all of the territory that had previously been northern Nama. Because of the agreements the three Teeth had signed with each other more than 700 years ago, this war was considered no different than any of the other battles that had previously been fought, meaning that all of the territory won in the war was assigned to Kava and not the other Teeth, and that this voided even the Teeth's own preexisting plans drawn up 700 years earlier in which the tundra would be divided amongst the three armies. Nevertheless, the Crystals were focusing mostly on building settlements in the west anyway, and did not complain, whereas FILTER had grown so close to Kava now that they realized they could send their people into the new territory as much as they wanted to and not feel unwelcome.

The Treaty of 3565

In 3565, the Thunder Empire took over all of the Crystals' territories. (3564 had been the last Crystal attempt to fight back.) They called their new society the Lantern Empire. The Lantern Treaty, signed in 3565, merged the two empires into one. The people had many differences, but many things in common. The Crystals had wanted the new imperial capital to be in Baeba Swamp, which was the Crystals' own earlier capital. The Thunderers wanted it to be in Blop, a major Thunder city, although not the capital of the Thunder Empire. As a compromise, the new capital was set up within Crystal territory, but not in the capital.

Nevertheless, politics in the Lantern Empire were strongly influenced by the differences between its two major peoples. Although both had adopted the Naman ideology of defining people only by religion, rather than by race, religious conversion between these two religions was very rare, and they were almost entirely hereditary.

The Crystals were descended from escaped slaves from the tropical plantations of Lobexon. Like their neighbors, they were very dark-skinned people of moderate stature. They thus could blend in well with their neighbors. This is because they were the aboriginals of their homelands, and their homelands had never been invaded until Nama invaded them in the War of 1989.

The Thunderers were more diverse, because they originated as a blend of the blonde Hinku people with the aboriginals of Nama, particularly the Repilians. The Hinku had been the shortest people in the world, but marrying into Repilian families gave their descendants extra height, and they became almost as tall as the Crystals. But although they married many diverse people, all of the people they met were of similar body type, and all of them had light skin and sometimes light hair. Thus the Thunderers were light-skinned people of small to moderate stature, and had many different hair colors. Often, Thunder women were taller than their men. This is because they had been settled partly by the people of the FILTER army. The Thunderers living in Lypelpyp, near the border with the Crystal Empire, had been pure Hinku, and thus were short and blonde even more so than other Thunderers. They found both the Crystals and the other Thunderers physically intimidating, and had more protectivist politics than most other groups. However, they remembered being invaded by even more dangerous aboriginal people far back in the past, and welcomed the alliance with the Crystals because they believed it would help protect them from any future dangers.

The Lantern Treaty was not actually an attempt to get the Thunderers and Crystals to merge themselves into one people. Both sides were quite proud of what they were, and how different they were from each other, and did not want to change. As above, mixed marriage was rare, but when it happened, the child had to choose one identity or the other. There was no concept of a Thunder-Crystal hybrid. Thus, the two ethnicities remained entirely separate for hundreds of years. This was another trait they had borrowed from Nama. In the early days of their growth, explorers had identified themselves with a tribe: e.g. the Hinku were a tribe of Pabaps. Tribes split and merged quite commonly, and the Hinku were remembered only because they were the ancestors of the nation of Kava. Religions, on the other hand, tended to survive unchanged for long periods of time, even if they were essentially monoethnic religions that did not seek new converts. Indeed, most religions were really more about politics than spirituality, but neither Nama nor its neighbors had ever developed the concept of separating political opinions from religions. Thus two people might have the same opinions about the spirit world but different opinions about distribution of fishing access rights, and they would consider themselves to be of two different religions. Thus politics was also mostly hereditary.

Pumpkin-Pointer alliance

The Lenians settled Tarwas and set up two new nations, Pointer (Lakī) and the Pumpkin (Nahalmi). These nations became very powerful, although their militaries were controlled directly by Tarwas rather than being devolved to the nations. The Pumpkin-Pointer alliance was not interested in supporting Tarwas, but had fled there because they were opposed to the governments of their home empire.

Foundation of Sàkʷalō and Ḳotagʷùṭi

The nation of Sàkʷalō was formed early in the settlement of the Empire. Originally, Sàkʷalō did not have borders; its founders claimed all land that was not claimed by any other nation. Since far northern tribes were generally nomadic, this meant that the Sàkʷalonians could live within those other natiosn without being ocnsidered invaders. However, most Sàkʷalonian settlements soon became concentrated in an area stretching from 40N to 47N and from 20E to 38E. This was still far larger than any other nation in existence at the time, and most fortunately, it was along coastline, so food was plentiful. Even though the coastline was icebound much of the year, food remained easy to get even then.

Even so, Sakwalo was well to the north of what had been until then the highest possible latitude for human self-sufficiency.But because it was on the west coast, its winters were considerably milder than those experienced further east. Heavy snow was common throuigh half of the year, but absolute minimum temperatures along some parts of the coast were no colder than those of Lypelpyp.

In the late 3560s, a female military warlord named P created the nation of Ḳotagʷùṭi (hereafter Kotagwuti), whose largest settlement was on a lake at around 42°N 29°E. She had taken her land from Sàkʷalo, but was unopposed by Sàkʷalo because Sàkʷalo was focusing on settling the coast, evne though the coast was colder.

P had attacked Nama just as Nama was winning a major war against Kava in the south. Her philosophy, Pism, was very welcoming to outsiders, and proved popular from its very beginning. P invited Crystals to move into Ḳotagʷùṭi, which was unusual for the Thunder side of the Empire.

P was the Khulls word for schoolteacher, and she had been trained as an elementary school teacher in early life but decided she preferred politics and war. The name is pronounced as just a single consonant with no vowel. She used her unusual name to modify words by adding a /p/ in front of them. e.g. the name of the planet, Lîġʷă in Khull,s would be Plîġʷă if she took over the planet. Although these newly coined words simply meant "teacher planet", "teacher empire", etc., the choices of words made the context clear.

Crystals were welcome in Kotagwuri, which was unusual in Vora. Kotagwuri soon became the largest nation in Vōra, whereas before it had been second to Sàfiz.

Another difference between Sàfiz and Kotagquri was the spirit of free enterprise that P taught her children to follow: people were allowed to live for themselves, rather than for the good of the state, as was the case in both Cila and Sàfiz. Thus, she insured that there would be a steady stream of people seeking refuge from the difficult lifestyle of Sàfiz by sneaking into Kotagquri. And she welcomed them, because she wanted the population to grow as fast as possible, regardless of the fact that everyone who lived there would be allowed to have as many children as they wanted, so long as they could support their own children. Thus the population of Kotagquir grew very fast from the late 3500’s until by 3720 it was almost twice the population of Sàfiz.

Meanwhile, they had also managed to bargain away with Sàfiz for the use of large quantites of old Sàfiz land, and they had gained unseeable amounts of land in the northern part of the continent as well. By 3720, Kotagquri had coastline on the “north”, south, and west coasts of the continent, and more than twice the total land area of its nearest competitor. Sàfiz had shrunk so much that it was even smaller than Cila now, and conflict within Sàfiz had resulted in the formation of two breakaway republics that also took away land from it and often provided economic support to kotagquri. The Vorans refused to change, however, although they began in the late 3600’s to realize that Kotagquri was the new lord of the continent and that they should submit to Kotagquir if they wanted to continue to exist at all. Thus they adopted a policy of total cooperation with Kotagwuri and began to freely allow their citizens to move to Kotgwuri.

Climax of power

An Aze (Gaze believer) named P had founded Kotagwuri in the late 3560’s, just as the greatest chaos of Nama’s sealing Kava off was occurring. She established the nation to be a haven for Vorans to live in, but she also welcomed in Crystals and others who wanted to join the political alliance. (Vora means "cymbidium flower" in Khulls.) Thus, there was no law of unanimity in Kotagquiri, unlike in Sàfiz, where only Vorans were allowed to live. (Meanwhile, Cila had absorbed a wave of Crystal immigrants. (Although there was not much difference between the two groups anyway.))

With the loss of their refuge-seeking people, the Vrans, led by 2 women named Cyclops and Wolfspider, figured that those who had remained must be very orderly, disciplined people, and they began to make their own laws stricter and stricter. Cyclops was a powerful warlord who had managed to set aside some Sàfiz land for herself to raise a second community of Vorans, and the citizens of Sàfiz were upset by her large purchase of land (she had taken almost 1/3 of what had then been Sàfiz), but they could not object and had to obey her. Wolfspider, meanwhile, was ill and could not be an effective leader. She was tormented by Sàfiz's lack of leadership and the resulting flow of people into Kotagwuri and even into CVila, but could do nothing about it. In fact, the Pists promised that newcomers into Kotagwuri would be treated even better than regular citizens, and many of them actually became governors of regions within Kotagquri, and some of these regions were geographically larger than the entire nation of Sàfiz.

Government

The three female leaders were seen as a pack even though it was really an alliance of two against one. Outsiders said the Vora Empire was ruled by "a tall woman, a short woman, a fat woman, and a man". Cyclops was very tall, much taller than the tallest males known to her, and had blonde hair and wore an eyepatch, hence her byname. Wolfspider was fairly tall as well, but very obese despite her vegetarian diet, and actually weighed more than Cyclops. P was considered "short" but was in fact of fairly tall stature as well. Cyclops and Wolfspider were both married but spent little time with their husbands and a lot of time with each other. Yet, in this culture, no one accused them of lesbianism; they were seen for what they were: hard working politicians doing double duty as military leaders who simply had no time for their families. Moreover, Wolfspider was much older than Cyclops, at about 65 years old during the peak of the action to Cyclops' 32. For her own measure, P had more than 400 children, but only 7 of these were biological children; the others were adopted. She treated the adopted children as equals of her biological children. Her husband was disabled and did not spend much time with any of the children. P herself did not spend thatm uch time with her children either, leaving most of the care to be done by the older children. Cyclops and Wolfspider had no children.

Male leaders did exist in Sàfiz, and were officially suprerior to Cyclops and Wolfspider, but had signed away most of their powers to the women and did not generally exercise even those powers which they had chosen to retain. When they did exercise that power, it was mostly against low-level people and other male officials. Thus Cyclops and Wolfspider, as a team, had near total power in Sàfiz and P had absolute power in Kotagwuri. The male leaders of Sàfiz did not ocnsider themselbes poor rulers; netiehr were they feminists. They just felt their duties were best confined to other lines of work and that Cyclops and Wolfspider were doing quiet well despite their losses to P. Meanwhile, the president of Cila, the third most powerful nation, was also female; her name (in Andanese) was Wakala. But her nation was not really a major regional power; indeed Cyclops and Wolfspider were considering an invasion.

Smaller states

Olansele (also known as Mé) was a nation that started where Poise and its neighbors ended and then extended northward into colder regions. It was a northern workshop for people just like the others, but its people were militaristic and demanded total submission to the leaders of the nation. Unlike the other workshops, its citizens were not allowed to retain citizenship in other nations while they were in Mé. Mé broke away, and became mostly separate from other nations, although they never drifted far from their alliance with their northern neighbor, Ḳotagʷurî.

Mé had no coastline becuase the entire northern "coast" of Belopal was now occupied by a nation named Popa (also known as Nōnala-lixʷ), part of the Dreamer Federation.

NOTE, THIS WRITEUP MAY HAVE NONANALIX AND PYULIX REVERSED. There is both a PUPA and a MPOPA, and I may have used Popa for both inconsistently. THE PLACENAME ELEMENTS /-UPA/ AND /PU-/ APPEAR IN THREE STATE NAMES.

Pyulix was almost certainly intended to be the state that the Raspara moved to, but it was confused in an early writeup with the Baywatch homeland, perhaps because both ended in "-lixʷ" in the Leaper version of the name. This means that Nōnalalixʷ must be Mpopa and that Nōnala is Pupa. The FED state was simply not mentioned in this writeup.

Contact with Dreamland

NOTE, need to find the names of the two states east of Lohi. Neyîta is the old name of one of them.

Mpopa

MPOPA (also known as Pyulix and Teyexīl; this is the Baywatch home territory) was an economically advanced nation, in some ways more so than all others, but it had very poor mechanical technology and its society was in chaos. They were part of a small minority of Labans in Belopal, and many non-Laban people wanted them out. Thus, even though the Thunderers were all descended from Laban immigrants, they had been living in RIlola for a few thousand years now, and considered themslves aboriginals. Any further immigration from their ancient homelands was condifered a bad thing.

THIS IMPLIES THAT DREAMLAND ONCE EXTENDED ALL THE WAY TO 46N. Alternatively, the lack of coastline could have simply been due to the icecap, or it could be that the Dreamers controlled the immediate coastline economically and had the support of the population but did not have states of their own.

Senampattore

SENAMPATTORE is missing the placename element AMPUA, which is the same morpheme at the beginning of the name MPOPA.

This is only a placeholder name because it is in Baywatch. A possible DPR name for it is Boresēbaka, but this is still not its native name.

Pupa

PUPA was a LARGE state, walled in by Mpopa. Mpopa was actually named after Pupa, but Mpopa was much larger and had the coastline to itself.

Even though Mpopa was named after Pupa, and Pupa is almost certainly older, they were likely settled by two different groups of Dreamers, and may have been named after a geographic element.

Lohi

LOHI was a state with many names. Among them were Bharom, Nʷakòli,Kilga,FED,Mperi and others. was within this region as well. It is probably the westernmost state, actually bordering Susileme, despite being the one that was later linked with the east.

Lohi is not the "breakaway" zone of Laba, which "had mostly failed". This writeup suggests that there were at least 3 nations that broke away. It also states that Laba was a migratory society. This also explains why pacifists were able to appear from within Laba; note, though, that they soon clustered together into an area with defined geographical borders.

notes ob below

The Nōnala state is labeled as Neyîta on an early map. It would make sense for this to be Pupa, since its name is contained within one of the alternate names (incorrectly) for the state of Mpopa, though the name Neyîta seems to have been transposed from the northeast.

Raspara migration

An early Raspara organization in Senampattore had developed a strong sense of patriotism for the workshop nations of the north, particularly Olansele, and wished to free those nations from the reach of Popa that encircled the entire "coast" of the continent. Thus there was a war in Senampattore , and the Raspara were kicked out and sought refuge in Ƥē. In Ƥē they were mostly executed, but a few fled all the way across Ƥē into Kotagquri and Asup, where they found refuge.

A few people in Kotagwuri and Sāto had set up alliances to form their own nations, but these two nations were both very small and politically and militarily unimportant other than the fact that they cut into Sāto's land. The main reason for breaking away was to experiment with a different lifestyle that even Kotagwuri would not allow.

A nation called Altotta North had been set up by rebels from Sāto who had attacked Cila, but it was little more than a series of forts, with no real population. Alotta North's motto was “do it or die”, and their symbol was a thunderbolt, because they liked to attack with sudden bursts of power and greatly endanger themselves in the process. So many Altists died in battle that their population had to keep being refreshed with volunteer fighters from Sāto and Kotagquri just to keep it level. Altotaa North was a very small nation, but it was militarily powerful.

Meanwhile, during all this time, the Crystals had been reproducing so quickly that they were unstoppable when they began to flood the mostly barren, harsh western half of the continent. They had in fact extended their nations all the way up to the “northern” border of Belopal, and overall they had about the same amount of land on Belopal as did the Vōra.

Miniyiupi

Their first and most powerful nation, which had bet set up in the late 3600’s, was called Miniyiupi. In just 40 years Miniyiupi had by far the largest population on the continent. They were also the strongest nation militarily. However, these Crystals were a liberal sort who were friendly to Kotagwuri and the other Vora nations, even though the reverse was often not true. Miniyiupi had sent soldiers into Pompomim's nation of Vega to help topple the corrupt dictator Pompomim in the year 3719. Miniyiupi had almost all of Belopal’s western coast, and it extended as far north as Baeba Swamp, which it shared with other Crystal nations that were inferior in status to Miniyiupi but were mostly sympathetic to it.

Immigration into the Crystal Empire

In fact, the Crystals were a much less warlike people than the Vora in general. Though they had many nations, they rarely fought against each other, and they also had very liberal immigration policies as well. Vora people were invited to enter the Crystal nations and reproduce there so that the populations of the nations could rise even faster and overcome that of Kotagwuri and the other Cymbidium nations. As the Vora began moving westwars into Crystal territory, a few Crystals moved eastward into Vora territory, particularly into Kotagwuri, but they were never welcomed as regular people. With the exception of one nation called Laslala, a breakaway from Miniyiupi, Vora people were welcomed in all of the Crystal nations, and in fact Cila was now more or less a Crystal nation, and Alt was essentially useless as a weapon against Cila because the only soldiers willing to fight against Cila were mostly people who were not welcome even in Kotagwuri anyway.

Malapala

Bordering Miniyiupi in Baeba Swamp and also further west was a nation called Malapala, a nation of people who cooperated with Miniyiupi but were not comfortable living in it. Malapala had in fact been founded on territory stolen from Dreamland, and included the ancient site of Pego Lake as well, which had been taken from the Thunderers.

Malapala had essentially no military and was politically submissive to Miniyiupi, and its citizens envied Miniyiupiand disagreed with many of Miniyiupi's political moves, but they were not angry enough to seek to form an alliance against Miniyiupi.

Malapala also had a large population of Vora people (that is, Thunderers) and they disliked non-Vora outsiders more than did most Crystal nations, and crucially, Malapala didn’t allow any non-Thunder people to have children. Thus, the people of Malapala had established racial discrimination against the dark-skinned tribes who ruled them, but not against the Crystal party in general, which had won converts from the blonde locals.

On the other hand, they had a great deal of religious tolerance, allowing Vora to continue in the beliefs of their respective religions, something Miniyiupi didn’t do.

Note that Malapala's people are the descendants of the Blush and Trap parties, and became pacifists by 3370, but this does not imply that they were pacifists in the meantime. They may have retaken control of their home territory either by peaceful or violent means, only to become pacifists in the end because they were surrounded.

Yīspʷilinâ

Yīspʷilinâ (Yapalina) was a nation set up around 27°N that contained the geographical center of the continent. It was mainly a trading place and a welcome home for people of all races and religions to live in. It had been created from land donated chiefly by Kotagwuir but also by many other nearby nations. The downside of living in Yapalina was that its citizens had essentially no military or political power because Yapalina was designed to be politically neutral. On the other hand, it had one of the most well-developed economies of any nation because of all the trade that went on within its borders.

Sucumihha was a nation set up by people from Kotagwquri , but it soon developed a well-mixed population of Vora, Crystals, and people from outside Belopal. It was not a nation composed of ordinary people, who lived there by birth, but rather a large industrialized area whose citizens were born in other countries and came to Sucumihha to work. They were paid well to live there, and the governors of Sucumihha took only very small profits for themselves. Similar to Sucumihha was the nation directly to its north, Vunubū (in Pabappa). Vunubū was slightly smaller, but was richer and more important. It also happened to border on Boé's private dictatorship, Kikolariso . Relations between Kikolariso and Vunubū were very good.

Keti

Keti, also known as Saaawilalalaihawi and Mikagu, was a nation that was located between Xoxʷammaʕʷista , Sucumihha , and Vunubū . It was like Sucumihha and Vunubū ; that is, a workshop for foreigners, but its citizens did work that would have been outlawed in the other nations, and this is the only way the nation survived, because its citizens often were not as industrious as those in the other two nations and spent less of their time working. It was also true, however, that the citizens of Saaawilalalaihawi were working in unfavorable land, and they had been forced to resort to illegal manufacturing in order to keep the land productive. Most other nations understood this, and only the uneducated people in some nations opposed Saaawilalalaihawi . Also, those people who were the most opposed to Saaawilalalaihawi tended to be people living very far away from it, and therefore were unable to do anything to shut them down.

Relations with Tarwas

The land of Tarwas, east of Belopal, was populated mostly by dark-skinned settlers of the Merar tribes. But a few Lenians now lived in Tarwas as well. They had fled after being chased out of Belopal by Lanterns who were angry at their political aspirations. They set up the nations of Pumpkin and Pointer in Tarwas, and the Pumpkin-Pointer alliance quickly became powerful for its size, although Tarwas had a lot more nations than Belopal. Tarwas was no longer a single homogeneous nation; they had nations like Kuburubuidem and Klaminoste carved out from their territory.

Another place that Lenians settled in was Mevumep; here they were mostly alone.

Lobexon & Sbumpam was still a tiny, very poor area, and at this time was still unheard of by many people oinm MNa,ma, but there was one nation that had recently taken a strong interest in their politics: Wax. In 3650, the elected, but totalitarian, Council of Wax had banned females from Was except with permission of their immediate relatives, and abolished family altogether. This radical restructuring of the society was intended to turn Wax into a nation even more focused on war than before. AlphaLEAP took in all of the females from Wax and dedicated itself to friendly competition with Wax, intending to increase the strength of both planets without damaging their already old and sturdy alliance.

Betrayal

For hundreds of years the Crystal-Thunder alliance worked well, but in the later 3600's, the Crystals began to talk about subjugating the Thunder Empire and adding it to their own. The Thunderers were a primitive people, they said, who had only developed a "2nd order" society. The Crystals were a third-order society, and believed that they were the only such on the entire planet. Thus, they wanted to conquer the Thunder Empire to help the Thunderers rather than to hurt them, but as the Thunderers repeatedly told the Crystals that they weren't interested in being subjugated, the Crystals began to consider the prospect of violent conquest.

They had the advantage, however, of the many Crystals who had moved into Thunder territory during the past three centuries, who promised to cooperate with the invaders as the invaders promised them they would be spared. The invaders promised to spare any Thunderers who converted to Crystalism as well, but realized that a wartime conversion was unlikely to be sincere. The Crystals did not believe in slavery, so they did not enslave the Thunderers who had moved into their territory, but they denied them the right to own weapons or, for criminals, to even use sharp objects. Thus these people could not even eat without asking for help, and very few Thunderers lived in Crystal areas.

The Crystals were planning for a war in the far future, not in the immediate present, so they were able to do things that seemed meaningless to the contemporary Thunderers but proved advantageous later on. For example, they took away most of the civil rights of the Thunderers living in the Crystal Empire, and stated that they did not care if the Thunderers did something similar to the Crystals living in the Thunder Empire. The Crystals did not hate the Thunderers, but they figured that oppressing their Thunder minority at home would encourage the Thunderers to slowly convert to Crystalism to escape the oppression, with the sense that they owed it to the Crystal Empire for taking them in in the first place and could not legitimately claim to be an oppressedd minority.

At the same time, however, they knew that if the Thunderers started oppressing Crystals even nonviolently, almost none of the Crystals would convert to Thunderism, and even if they did, they would still almost definitely fight on the side of the Crystals when the Crystal invasion finally came. Thus the new discrimination laws actually strengthened the Crystals on both sides of the border. The Thunderers decided not to discriminate against Crystals at all, but sporadic violence against the lower class of Crystals began when word of what was happening to Thunderers in Crystalland reached the Thunder underclass. Some Crystals used this to argue that the Crystals really were superior, because they were not violently attacking the already oppressed Thunderers in Crystalland, even though they were planning an invasion.

The Crystals figured they would weaken the resolve of the Thunderers by weakening their economy, which had contracted because it had come to depend on trade with Crystalland, which had the only coast, for food supplies.

The Crystals also restricted the power of some of the more liberal Crystal nations, such as Yispwilina, which had welcomed Thunderers in the past and which the Crystals figured would be unreliable in a war. Yispwilina was actually a Crystal nation built on territory donated by the Thunderers, and many Crystals in Yispwilina stated that they would prefer to go back to the Thunder Empire even if the Thunderers went so far as to start oppressing Crystals. The Crystals realized that Yispwilina was the only sensible place to start the invasion, and that it had the possibility of turning into hostile territory even before the war began, and so the Crystals moved much of their standing army to Yispwilina in order to ensure that the Yispwili did not rebel.

The Crystals began supporting a movement in Altotta called (in Pabappa) Wemba Pubblelas, meaning "tilted road sign", whose logo was a road sign that had been bent over and no longer stood solidly straight up. This was in contrast to the mainline Thunderers' use of tall, erect, perfectly vertical road signs in all of their streets. However it soon became clear that most Pubblelists in Altotta were neither Crystal nor Thunder: they were a different minority, actually a collection of minorities, who held no allegiance to the Crystals and preferred to remain loyal to Altotta.

First battles

Settlement of the coast

In the early 3700's, immigrants of mixed Laban and Thunder descent settled the north coast in an organized, preplanned effort, and created the new empire of Dreamland. They stole all their territory from the Crystals. The Crystals called these people Wamians, but they called themselves Dreamers after the name of their political party. Both the Crystals and the Thunderers hated the Dreamers, even though the Dreamers had not attacked the Thunder Empire and stated that they did not ever plan to.

While the Thunder Empire was genuinely hostile to the Dreamers, the fact that the Thunderers had done nothing to defend the Crystals whose land was stolen, and that the Dreamers had apparently deliberately avoided attacking the Thunder nations out of racial sympathies, led those Crystals who were still opposing a war against the Thunder Empire to reconsider their ideas. Previously, the main divide in Crystal political opinion was between the Crystals who wanted to invade Altotta to help improve the quality of life and the Crystals who preferred peace and help from a distance. Now the main divide was between Crystals who wanted to invade in order to help and those who wanted to invade in order to take revenge on the selfish, primitive Thunderers for not joining the war against Dreamland. But even so, both Crystal camps knew that they needed to wait a long time to start the war, as the Crystal population needed to be far larger than the Thunder population to ensure success since the Thunderers had the advantage of having nations to their east upon which they might be able to call for help.

Tarise War

In 3704, the Crystal nation of Taryte invaded the Thunder Empire. This was an independent invasion, and Taryte did not expect the other Crystal nations to back them up. Taryte believed that the Thunder people were impotent and greatly overrated as a military power, and that Taryte could win a war against the entire Thunder empire by itself.

Tarytean citizens (called Tarises) were extremists who promised to completely eliminate the entire Thunder population, along with all of the other Lenian tribes. The Taryteans said that even slavery was too good for the Lenians. They perverted the Lantern flag by replacing the yellow with red, saying that they would cut off the many blonde heads in the Thunder population and drown them in their own blood. However, many Tarises considered the dark-skinned Crystals to be inferior as well, and planned to declare war against the Crystals after they had defeated and enslaved the Thunderers.

The Thunderers were aware of the existence of Taryte and its radical ideas, and had been asking the Crystals to protect them by strengthening the borders of Taryte. Taryte was hostile to the rest of the Crystal Empire, but they considered Crystals superior to Thunderers and did not want to fight a war against other Crystals. The Crystals refused to acknowledge that Taryte was so dangerous that it needed an internal blockade, however, so they refused to protect the Thunderers. Thus the Thunderers realized they needed to build up their own military instead.

When the Tarises broke through into Thunder territory, they immediately began slaughtering Thunder civilians. The Thunder Empire was too large to patrol the entire Crystal-Thunder border, but they had promised all of the citizens in the border towns that they would station their army well outside the town in order to give the citizens time to flee in the event of an invasion. The Crystals had actually allowed the Thunder army to move a few miles into Crystal territory even though they also felt that the Thunderers were too full of fear.

The Tarises were primarily interested in destroying hospitals, as that was where the Thunderers were weakest. They preferred female victims as well. But the Thunder army reacted quickly and pushed the Tarises back into Crystal territory, where the regular Crystal army took over the fighting.

In 3707, however, Taryte invaded the Thunder Empire again, and occupied the major city of Peepa. After three years of losing battles, the Thunderers signed a surrender treaty giving control of Peepa and much of the surrounding territory to the occupying army. Some of the Thunderers converted to Crystalism, because the Tarises had told them that unlike many other Crystals, they actually accepted converts. However, they were given no power in the new government.

By this time the Crystals all admitted they had underestimated the power of Taryte. They apologized to the Thunderers for doing nothing as the Tarises slaughtered tens of thousands of innocent Thunder citizens, and agreed to all of the earlier Thunder demands about denying Tarise access to Crystal roads that led into Thunder territory. Then they declared that Tarises were no longer Crystals, and declared war on Taryte. However, they still made the Thunderers agree to put the Thunder army in patrol of all of THunder territory, meaning that the Crystals would not help them fight the Tarises occupying Peepa.

Civil war in the Thunder Empire

Two nations from within Kotagwuri broke away in the early 3700s. THey formed an alliance with each other, and both were led by power hungry dictators. The eastern nation, Ḳíkòlarisò, was led by a dictator named Boé who was hated by all other nations. He was both mentally and physically ill. Kikolariso invited refugees such as the Crystals and even the Xʷugâ to move to Kikolariso, because he wanted to grow his population immensely even if it was made up of people who would have a hard time getting along. However, very few people moved to Kikolariso.

The western nation was called ʕʷēga (hereafter Vēga), and its dictator was even more power-mad than Boé. His name was Pompomim (he was Pabap) and he believed in a cult religion that told him to break away and set up his own nation. Unlike Boé, he was at first well liked in other nations, but in 3719 he launched a military assault on Kotagwuri, and managed to kill more than 5% of their population. Not only that, but he had mainly attacked children and women, the most defenseless people of all, and had attempted to kidnap many of them back into Vēga to force them to work for him. Eventually the P army, led by JDS, drove Pompomim out of Kotagwuri (JDS province) and he returned to Vēga to find his own people armed and in revolt against him, and he was killed immediately and Vēga was annexed back to Kotagquri. Kikolariso remained an independent nation but never gained any significance, but Pompomim's cult died down as the Kotagqurians invaded the land and forced the citizens to convert to the Gaze religion.