Crystals

The Crystals were a religion and political organization founded in Lobexon around the year 1500 AD.

Language

The early Crystals had adopted the Gold language which had come to them about a thousand years earlier as Lobexon was being settled by light-skinned colonists from the other side of what came to be known as the Gold Sea. In this time period, the known world was ruled by Nama, and Nama granted military protection to any tribe that had its own language. This incentivized tribes to adopt a new language, even if it hindered communication with friendly neighboring tribes. In the case of the Crystals, they adopted the Gold language because they identified themselves as a transnational religion and did not want to be thought of as simply another tribe among many in Lobexon.

Over thousands of years, the Crystals developed their dialect of the Gold language into Khulls.

Religion

Like their neighbors, the Crystals worship a pantheon of deities who have conflicts within their ranks. Most of the deities are female and are depicted as resembling ordinary human women.

Màlamen is the goddess of pregnancy, childbirth, and good health. She is worshipped as Saaha in the nation of Thaoa and has many additional names.

Kʷătena is the goddess of abortion, miscarriage, and sickness.

Ĕni is a goddess with the power to shapeshift and control people's behavior. She is responsible for punishing evildoers.

Nŏmpa is a goddess associated with peace and intimate relations.

Mŏto, the goddess of fish and the ocean, is also associated with peace and friendly relations.

Culture and sociolinguistics

The Crystals considered themselves to be feministic pacifists. They believed that they could overcome the masculine powers around them by practicing "feminine diplomacy" and avoiding war. Many Crystals were slaves, and a treaty signed in the year 2057 made all of them slaves, so being in a passive position was familiar to all Crystals.

However, the Crystals' insistence on fighting only for themselves quickly made them enemies of other feministic tribes such as the Repilians who made up much of the population of Nama, the same Nama that ruled their homeland of Lobexon. Thus, though they remained feminists, the Crystals refused to make alliances with other powers on the basis of feminism.

Early history and growth

The Crystals' homeland, Lobexon, consisted of a long stretch of tropical and subtropical lands, oriented southwest to northeast along the southern coast of the continent of Rilola, ranging from 13°N at the border with Kxesh to 27°N at the border with Nama. There were no major mountain ranges in this area, and the entirety of the land was humanly habitable. Thus, Lobexon was a very large area, many times the size of Paba, and could support a large and strong military. However, the Crystals were, for much of their history, just a minority in Lobexon, one group among many, and were geographically dispersed, with no land set aside for Crystals only within the borders of Lobexon. Thus, the Crystals sought to expand outward and claim land for themselves outside of Lobexon.

Settlement of Dahàgʷu

The Crystals mostly moved westward, into land that was also tropical but much drier than Lobexon. For this reason, few humans lived there, and they were able to move into the land without facing violent resistance. The Crystals called this largely uninhabited land Dahàgʷu (in Gold; the later Khulls form of the name was Laxàġʷu). Dahàgʷu was very large; in fact, it was larger than Paba. However, being centered around 20°N, its climate was very dry, and major rivers from which a reliable supply of food could come were absent. Thus, the Crystals in Dahàgʷu remained mostly rural nomads, but a sizable number of Crystals also moved into the aboriginal city of Baeba Swamp.

Settlement of Baeba Swamp

The Crystals' growth was very slow. Nevertheless, none of their political enemies were willing to invade the desert of Laxàġʷu to defeat the Crystals, and their military power increased gradually throughout the centuries. Finally, in the late 3300s, after almost 2000 years of slow growth, the Crystals managed to capture Baeba Swamp, and they then declared it the new capital of the Crystal Empire. They also changed the name of the state Baeba was in to Ƥē, and made Khulls the official language of Ƥē and Baeba Swamp.

The Lantern Empire

Foundation of Dreamland

In the early 3700s, the Gâm people, immigrants from the islands of Laba, declared war on the Crystal Empire and launched an invasion of the northwestern coastal area. They claimed that the invasion was political, and that Crystals who defected to the Gâm would be welcomed and given citizenship in the Gâm empire once the Gâm victory had been secured. Very few Crystals defected, but many Thunder people from the neighboring Thunder Empire did. The THunder Empire w as bound by a military alliance with the Crystal Empire but had not been invaded, and the Thunder Empire refused to help the Crystals fight off the invaders.

As the Gâm began to win battles against the thinly spread Crystal army, the Gâm generals began settling civilians in the conquered areas, and took over two pre-existing Crystal cities as their own. These cities were Gadanas on the north coast and Xʷakaràna in a valley a few days' journey inland.

note, it is possible that the Gams settled in 3373 AD, which would mean their war was simultaenous with the Crystals' conquest of Baeba, and that Baeba was forced to choose which of the two empires to submit to. also, this would mean that Gadanas and Xʷakaràna were never Crystal cities, since they were north of Baeba, and they would need to be renamed.

Crystals in Lypelpyp

In 3884, the Thunder Empire established racial discrimination and enslaved all Crystals. Crystals were denied the ability to convert to Thunderism, and thus could not buy their way out of slavery. Furthermore, they passed a law forbidding the immigration of any person with dark skin, even those who claimed allegiance to the Thunder party, as the Thunderers intended to keep their vast empire racially homogeneous.

In 3915, several hundred Crystals moved to the Thunder city of Lypelpyp, near the western border of the Thunder Empire. Within months, the city of Lypelpyp was divided equally between the illegal Crystals and the local Thunderers upset that their government refused to protect them from the Crystal invasion. However, the Crystals were not violent; they chose to live in Lypelpyp as though it were just another Crystal city that happened to be outside the borders of their Empire. The lack of violent resistance from the Thunderers told the Crystals that the Thunderers' promise of a racially pure nation was a lie, and that the Thunderers would allow invaders to colonize their Empire at least at its edge.

Birth of the Moonshines

See Proto-Moonshine culture.

In August 3948, a group of Crystals announced the formation of a new political party, the Moonshine party. Like the mainline Crystals had done thousands of years before, the Moonshines considered themselves feministic pacifists, and stated that they would ensure the survival of their people by practicing feminine diplomacy and refusing to engage in warfare, even in self-defense. The Moonshines were far more strict than the mainline Crystals in their definitions of feminism in pacifism, and claimed that the Crystals were scarcely different from their enemies in this regard.