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| '''Merar''' was a nation of people who had immigrated from [[Babakiam|Paba]] to [[Subumpam]] during the late stages of the [[Vegetable War]] after they had pushed the battlefronts westward out of Paba. After the war they stayed in Subumpam and married Subumpamese women. THey set up a new government stating that only military officers were allowed to hold government posts. Without irony they told the Subumpamese that they had a history of being submissive to outside powers and that they had come to put an end to it by turning Subumpam into the world's strongest military power. The Merar claimed that they themselves had moved to Subumpam but were here to stay, and held no allegiance to any other nation, and thus were themselves not an "outside power". | | :''Not to be confused with [[Meromo]].'' |
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| ==History==
| | :''NOTE ALSO THAT THE SAME PEOPLE CALLING THEMSELVES MERAR LIKELY ENCOMPASSED THE FERN MIGRANTS AND THEREFORE SPOKE AT LEAST ONE FERN LANGUAGE. THESE PEOPLE WOULD HAVE OUTNUMBERED THE TARPABAPS EVEN AFTER MANY FERNS MIGRATED A SECOND TIME.'' |
| ===Politics===
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| The Merar promised the Subumpamese that they would never allow Subumpamese people into their government; Merar had conquered Subumpam, and Merar would rule Subumpam. However, many of the women that the conquerors had married had had previous children from a Subumpamese husband, and these children were adopted into the new families and, provided they converted to the Yiibam religion, were considered as Merar. Thus Merar was no longer a true race but rather a racially mixed but hereditary upper class.
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| The Merar party made pacifism illegal and required that all males serve in the military. THis did not mean that all males were eligible to serve in the government, however; only soldiers who advanced sufficiently high in the ranks of the military were given roles in the government. This in fact brought Subumpam far closer to democracy than it had ever been before, even though power was restricted to a small subset of males; for the first time in history, the seats of power were not simply handed down from one family to its children. And also, the Merar held to their promise of not allowing Subumpamese people to be promoted in the military, which meant that they could not hold government power. However the primary distinction now was a linguistic and religious one rather than an ethnic one, as Subumpamese people who learned to speak Tarpabappa (the Merari language) and converted from Sisnasi to Yiibam were welcomed as new Merari people.
| | '''Merar''' was the language of Paba's military caste, which consisted mostly of Tarpabaps and other ethnic minorities. |
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| ==Language==
| | Merar was a nation of people who had immigrated from [[Babakiam|Paba]] to [[Subumpam]] during the late stages of the [[Vegetable War]] after they had pushed the battlefronts westward out of Paba. After the war they stayed in Subumpam and married Subumpamese women. THey set up a new government stating that only military officers were allowed to hold government posts. Some Merari people claimed that they had created the '''Third Star Empire''', named after the dark-skinned [[Star languages|Star]] tribes of the far southwest; however, though the geographical boundaries were similar, the Merar empire was governed from its north, not its south. |
| Subumpamese remained the common language of the Subumpamese people after the conquest; the Merar people spoke a dialect of Pabappa called Tarpabappa, and although this dialect soon split from the trunk and developed into a language of its own, the Merar preferred to learn standard Pabappa and thus Tarpabappa came to be associated only with people who were ethnically Merar but locked out of access to the ruling class and its power.
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| ==Culture==
| | In 3041, [[FILTER]] took over Subumpam, and therefore the branch of Merar that was spoken in Subumpam went extinct early on. This was an ironic change of fate, since FILTER was originally a Subumpamese language, and Merar had earlier swept out all of the original Subumpamese languages. |
| ===Religions===
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| The dominant Merar people believe in the '''Yiibam''' religion, which worships gods who are physically present in both Paba and Merarvas. Their Subumpamese subjects believe in the '''Sisnasi''' religion and consider Yiibam to be primitive and overly violent.
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| ===Ethnic minorities=== | | ==Languages== |
| | This is a branch of [[Paleo-Pabappa]], not Gold. |
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| ====Ethnic groups in Subumpam====
| | This is the indigenous language of Paba, before its people switched to speaking Gold under the influence of Nama and AlphaLeap. Its population was about 90% Pabaps and 5 to 10% Tarpabaps (the same people later called Merar). The Tarpabaps were the military caste of Paba and were much taller and stronger than the Pabaps. |
| Since the national boundaries of Merar's new country corresponded exactly with those of Subumpam, the ethnic minorities of Subumpam remained ethnic minorities in Merarvas. The war had killed most of Subumpam's population , but it had killed indiscriminately: no group was spared more than another.
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| '''Merar''' The Merari people are soldiers from Paba who had conquered Subumpam, and the children they had with native Subumpamese women. They are the only ethnic group legally entitled to hold political power in Merarvas. Their religion is Yiibam, the same religion practiced over the border in Paba, but they consider themselves independent from and superior to Paba. They had previously been a minority mostly living in Paba, but since they had filled most of the posiitons in Paba's army, and the war demanded mobilization of the entire population of Paba, very few of them did not immigrate to Subumpam during the war.
| | Originally, the Tarpabaps came from the same port of origin as the Pabaps, despite their greatly different body types. They thus spoke the same language. However, even from the very beginning, new migrants were patrolling the coast, and later migrations to Paba brought different tribes of people who joined the Tarpabap caste. These had their own languages, but in order to rise in rank in the military, they had to learn the main language of Paba. |
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| '''Tarpabaps''' A small number of conquering soldiers did not marry Subumpamese women and thus referred to themselves using their old name rather than "Merar". They were legally considered identical with the Merar people, however, particularly as immigration of Tarpabaps increased after news of the creation of the new government reached Paba.
| | By around 2100 AD, the small-bodies Pabaps could no longer control the Tarpabaps, and left them to use their own languages. Thus the Tarpabaps who had learned the main language no longer had a special avenue to power. |
| | Many of these new migrants moved right through Paba and settled [[Tarwas]], but some people in Tarwas later moved back to Paba. |
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| '''Subumpamese''' The [[Subumpam]]ese had been an alliance of eleven nations sharing a temperate climate with lots of rainfall, and they merged their countries into one in the 1700s. They mostly practiced the Sisnasi religion, and were not pressured to convert to Yiibam unless they intended to marry into a Merari family. Over the last 1000 years, many ethnic minorities had married Subumpamese people and the Subumpamese had absorbed their culture. The Sukuna had been the largest minority for a long time, as they were the aboriginals of most of Subumpam's land area, but by 2700 almost no people identifying themselves as Sukuna were left. They had all married into Subumpamese families and became Subumpamese. The original Subumpamese had been uniformly blonde, blue-eyed, light-skinned people, and Sukuna were very dark-skinned, but even in 2700 the Subumpamese people were still predominantly blonde, and thus had absorbed the Sukuna entirely and thus become, in the eyes of the Merar, the true aboriginals of their nation. Other ethnic minorities such as Repilians, Pabaps, Nik, Namans, Stars, had also married Subumpamese people, but in lesser numbers and most of these tribes still considered themselves to have survived the war as a distinct tribe rather than as merely part of the Subumpamese. | | ''THIS COULD MEAN THAT THIS LANGUAGE IS A DEAD END AND THAT THE MERAR WHO OCCUPY THAOA, LOBEXON, AND SUBUMPAM ARE ALL SPEAKING VARIOUS LANGUAGES OF THE FERN AND PABAHAIS FAMILIES.'' |
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| When Merar took over the government of Lobexon, they revived the name "Subumpam" for their home nation, and renamed the Subumpamese ''Sipuipmi'', later ''Sipremmi'', although actually this was their name for Pabaps living in Subumpam and got transposed to the Subumpamese.
| | ===Paleo-Pabappa to Raspara=== |
| | | This branch reduces its vowel system due to Gold influence, even though the shift took place more than a thousand years after Gold's. It may even end up with /a i u/ instead of /a i u ə/. |
| '''Andanese''' A tribe of very small-bodied people who preferred to live in other nations rather than build their own. Most Andanese were killed in the war, and few returned to settle in Merarvas after it was over, so their importance was greatly dimished in the new country.
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| '''Pabaps''' A tribe of small people believing in the Yiibam religion, who had previously been economically powerful in Subumpam but now lived as an underclass and primarily dealt with their fellow Pabaps across the border in Paba rather than the other Merarians. They had always preferred to live close to the seashore and deal with trade and fishing, but the new treaty took away their boats and their role was reduced to merely holding positions of servitude aboard the ships of the new Merari navy. Others worked in agriculture, particularly winemaking, but they were no longer the dominant group even in agriculture.
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| '''Stars''' Immigrants from Lobexon, previously known as the [[Star Empire]]. They are actually a large number of cultures rather than one, but who nevertheless, when immigrating into Merarvas, came to identify themselves simply as Stars rather than as immigrants from their original home state.
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| '''Sukuna''' A dark skinned aboriginal minority in Subumpam. Though very numerous at the foundation of the Subumpamese Union in the 1700s, Sukuna people had mostly assimilated to Subumpamese culture by the 2700s.
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| '''Repilians''' A light skinned aboriginal minority in Subumpam. Known for their strong tendency for their women to be [[Moonshine culture#Culture|taller than their men]]. Most Repilians were killed in the war, but Repilia was a large place, and Repilia itself was not greatly affected. Repilia is part of Nama, but its people do not consider themselves simply as "Namans".
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| '''Namans''' Non-Repilian immigrants from the very large and diverse Empire of [[Nama]]. As above, they are not a single culture, but a cooperation of hundreds of distinct tiny nations, with no majority and no single dominant culture that controls the others. Nevertheless, once in Subumpam, they have always tended to stick with other Namans and to give up their subnational identity in favor of just calling themselves "Namans".
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| '''Nik''' A tribe of very tall, thin, dark-skinned people who immigrated from Laba. They are not closely related to any of the other dark-skinned groups and are not generally interested in assimilation. Like the Pabaps, they preferred to settle close to the coastline and make a living through fishing, but the new treaty took away their boats and they were reduced to servile positions aboard the ships of the new Merari navy.
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| ====Ethnic groups in Lobexon====
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| '''Polotta''' A group of slavemasters from upper Nama that had rebelled from the other slavemasters. They won in 2175, but never even considered freeing their slaves.
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| '''Tarise'''' Indigenous people of the state of Taryte. Originally, they had just called themselves Stars, but the Naman slavemasters wanted to prevent the emergence of an empire-wide slave revolt and so they divided the slaves geographically and told them they had different interests so that even if slaves overthrew their masters in one area they would be less likely to help slaves in another area.
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| '''Katô''' A name used by people of Amade for their slaves, patterned after Taryte (lit. "apple tree"). It means a banana plant. Katō was their new name for Amade.
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| '''Pōsa''' A name for the descendants of captured Pabap and Subumpamese slaves from the 1700s who had been freed by Nama, but then re-enslaved by new groups of slavemasters who had rejected the treaty. These lived only in the far south, in tropical areas, where Nama's control had always been weak.
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| ==Relations with Paba==
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| The Pabaps (also known as Lenians, Pilipupu or Sipuipmi), the people of Pupompom (Lenia), were seen as "children" by the Tawans because they were very small people and had a tendency to be both violent and easily frightened. The Pabaps living in Subumpam lived very primitively and did not travel much.
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| The Yiibam religion was filled with superstitious beliefs about where people could and could not go, and they all had to practice certain complex rituals at certain prescribed times of the day and year or they would fall out of favor with their god, who was "the unknown" and was not always a very nice god. Their god often told them to kill or enslave people in their society for committing crimes that in other nations would have been considered very minor. These penalties were not set in stone, but rather were made by people who the Pabaps believed had the ability to hear the voice of god and judge properly. Pabaps were a very religious people, and they took their religion seriously, to the point of being extremely superstitious.
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| A breakaway nation of Pabaps calling itself the Mrlu were very technologically advanced and were always attempting to take over all of Pupompom, but found themselves thwarted by the great military force of Pupompom and other nations. The Mrlu were very closely related to the other Pabaps, and they still considered themselves Pabaps. They had made their small territory a very dangerous place to live, and even the THaoans would not go there.
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| The only reason the Pabaps liked the Thaoans is because of the trade agreements they had set up with the Pabaps, even though these were very unfair agreements, usually involving a single Thaoan commanding a great number of Pabap slaves and paying them little. Still, this resulted in an economy superior to what those parts of Paba untouched by Thaoan slavery could produce, so the Pabaps remained loyal. Also, the THaoan slavemasters were careful not to mistreat their slaves, because they realized they were vastly outnumbered by Pabaps as long as they were in Paba (or Pupompom), and the Pabaps at times retaliated by capturing the slavemaster, stealing everything they owned, and then making him a slave to everyone in their village, meaning he would have to perform unpleasant jobs that ordinary Pabap citizens did not want to do. This was an extremely harsh punishment for the Tawans to have to endure, as well as one that was very embarrassing. Thus, they did their best to avoid it, and treated their slaves nicely.
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| The Pabaps , meanwhile, were mostly content with the life they were forced to live, and people strongly discouraged others to even move out of their village, which meant that for the most part, everybody in the village was closely related to everybody else in the village. In some parts of Pupompom this rule was not as strongly enforced, but it did lead to some very large villages at times, as families grew rapidly and death rates fell during times of prosperity. Around 2600 AD, there were more than a thousand settlements in Pupompom, and some villages had populations of over 10,000. Their villages often spread over many square miles, despite the fact that the Lenians preferred to live very close together because their culture condemned privacy as being the greatest cause of xenophobia and contempt for other villagers, and also because many of them were afraid to live alone, as they believed that God liked to kill people who tried to survive by themselves.
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| Pupompom was quite a hilly place, and the Pabaps mostly settled in valleys. The climate there varied considerably through the centuries, and because their territory was so large, at times some parts of it experienced ice and snow while the southern parts would be experiencing extreme heat and drought. Paba often they fought battles with the Merar people to their east and west, people who were often literally twice as tall as the Pabaps but were roughly an even match for the Pabap armies who wanted more tropical land to live on. Paba attributed their survival to God, and said that God had blessed them with good luck and could take them away at any time, and many believed that the reason other peoples such as the Merar could only do evil was because they had rebelled against God and God had taken away their powers.
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| ===Influence of other religions===
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| Merar people had a difficult time believing in a religion run by people who told them that they were evil. Many still did believe, but others came to consider Yiibam to be a religion intended for weak, childish people to keep them comfortable facing dangers that they could not control. The Sisnasi religion, still alive and well in Subumpam amongst the Subumpamese aboriginals, appealed to them because it had been so stable for such a long time and its people were apparently not prone to schisms amongst themselves with the exception of breakaway movements of atheists.
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| The Emon religion had survived in low numbers in Subumpam throughout the many wars, but its home was in Katō in southern Lobexon, and few Merars were interested in moving to Lobexon.
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| ==Notes== | | ==Notes== |
| <references />
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| [[Category:Teppala]]
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- Not to be confused with Meromo.
- NOTE ALSO THAT THE SAME PEOPLE CALLING THEMSELVES MERAR LIKELY ENCOMPASSED THE FERN MIGRANTS AND THEREFORE SPOKE AT LEAST ONE FERN LANGUAGE. THESE PEOPLE WOULD HAVE OUTNUMBERED THE TARPABAPS EVEN AFTER MANY FERNS MIGRATED A SECOND TIME.
Merar was the language of Paba's military caste, which consisted mostly of Tarpabaps and other ethnic minorities.
Merar was a nation of people who had immigrated from Paba to Subumpam during the late stages of the Vegetable War after they had pushed the battlefronts westward out of Paba. After the war they stayed in Subumpam and married Subumpamese women. THey set up a new government stating that only military officers were allowed to hold government posts. Some Merari people claimed that they had created the Third Star Empire, named after the dark-skinned Star tribes of the far southwest; however, though the geographical boundaries were similar, the Merar empire was governed from its north, not its south.
In 3041, FILTER took over Subumpam, and therefore the branch of Merar that was spoken in Subumpam went extinct early on. This was an ironic change of fate, since FILTER was originally a Subumpamese language, and Merar had earlier swept out all of the original Subumpamese languages.
Languages
This is a branch of Paleo-Pabappa, not Gold.
This is the indigenous language of Paba, before its people switched to speaking Gold under the influence of Nama and AlphaLeap. Its population was about 90% Pabaps and 5 to 10% Tarpabaps (the same people later called Merar). The Tarpabaps were the military caste of Paba and were much taller and stronger than the Pabaps.
Originally, the Tarpabaps came from the same port of origin as the Pabaps, despite their greatly different body types. They thus spoke the same language. However, even from the very beginning, new migrants were patrolling the coast, and later migrations to Paba brought different tribes of people who joined the Tarpabap caste. These had their own languages, but in order to rise in rank in the military, they had to learn the main language of Paba.
By around 2100 AD, the small-bodies Pabaps could no longer control the Tarpabaps, and left them to use their own languages. Thus the Tarpabaps who had learned the main language no longer had a special avenue to power.
Many of these new migrants moved right through Paba and settled Tarwas, but some people in Tarwas later moved back to Paba.
THIS COULD MEAN THAT THIS LANGUAGE IS A DEAD END AND THAT THE MERAR WHO OCCUPY THAOA, LOBEXON, AND SUBUMPAM ARE ALL SPEAKING VARIOUS LANGUAGES OF THE FERN AND PABAHAIS FAMILIES.
Paleo-Pabappa to Raspara
This branch reduces its vowel system due to Gold influence, even though the shift took place more than a thousand years after Gold's. It may even end up with /a i u/ instead of /a i u ə/.
Notes
