User:Soap/Mallard Wars

An apparent gap in the timeline between 4179 and 4182, possibly extending to 4184 or 4186, shows the Swamp Kids invading Player territory, although it seems that the Players were provoked into launching the first attack.

Timeline

In 4179, Xema provoked the Play party into declaring war against the Swamp Kids.

It is possible that this is an error, and that it is a duplicate of a war that was fought in 4192 (sic; not 4182).

The red notebook has the Players admitting defeat also within 4179, but another source suggests they held on until 4184 or possibly longer.

In 4190, Šasuasa (Janila) first appears. "early writeups" lists her as being a student at the school that came to be called Tee Vauva, but she continues to appear until 4221, so her early childhood is hardly relevant.

In 4192, the Players invaded Nama, even though according to the red notebook they were already at war with Nama. The Swamp Kids who had remained in Anzan probably renamed, possibly reverting to Cold Men. They experienced a baby boom immediately, making their population much like the Players.

In 4206, the Players admitted defeat, surrendering to both Nama and the Swamp Kids/Cold Men, but kept invading Nama anyway, knowing that Nama could not stop them alone and that the Cold Men were unlikely to continue fighting once the war had entered a stage where only the Namans were being targeted.

Ideological separation

The Cold Men and the Players were the last armies standing among more than a dozen powers who had been competing for the forests of the east and interior. They had more things in common with each other than arguments to fight over, and when they drew ideological boundaries between their tribes, their differences were more about lifestyle than politics.

For example, the Cold Men represented masculine power, whereas the Players represented feminine power.

The Cold Men fought with cold weather and artificial creations, whereas the Players responded with warm weather and nature. Nevertheless, it was the Players who were known for living in cities, and the Players considered themselves cold-hardy as well.

New school systems

School systems arose that followed the model of STW. A new school for militantly anti-Play children called Napaba ("Stand, See, and Feel") was formed. Its full name may have been something like Šapei Napabapei.

Napaba was not a rival, but fully an enemy of the Players' Tee Vauva school, even though the children in the two schools admired each other and disliked war. This shows that the adult populations were provoking the war, but that both the Cold Men and the Players had populations dominated by large numbers of children who saw no reason to fight. Thus, the fertility rate was not declining, and may have been accelerating.

Napaba may have been identical with the Jafa movement. They may have had their own language, at least ceremonially, because the original Jafa language superficially resembled Play but did not use /p/. Nonetheless, their alliance with Nama would bring them into contact with the languages of Nama.

Advantage of Nama

Although Nama sided with the Cold Men, in fact by this time the war had evolved to a two-sided conflict: the Players and the Cold Men were fighting over which of them would control Nama, with neither side caring much about the Namans. The Cold Men and the Players still differed ideologically, but their ideologies were in a sense bound to their habitats, making it a disguised tribal conflict.

It is likely that the fertility rates of both the Cold Men and the Players were very high at this time, though the Players most likely still had the advantage. They both felt they needed Nama because their populations were growing so quickly.

Pacifists at this time acknowledged the intractable differences between the Players and Cold Men, and urged them to create a world government similar to Baeba's in which the two armies would participate as political parties: the Play party would be led by women, and the Cold party would be led by men.

Thaoa

After 4268, the Players likely would have tried to reconquer Thaoa, which they surrounded because it had never been actually connected to the Cold Men's territory even when it was fighting for the Cold Men in the war around 4190. Thaoa was feminist, even if for a different reason than the other areas: they had earlier been part of the Feminist Compact. Thus, Thaoa was a feminist nation that was pro-Cold even so, and later became hostile to Moonshine. (the Hiboh Era)

Thaoa had fallen behind in population growth because of its difficult geographical situation — bounded on land and sea — and was thus easier to conquer than it had been before.

Dawn of Cosmopolitan Age

In 4221,^?? Nama reasserted itself as a world power, but with the Iron party in charge, and the focus of all world politics in Baeba Swamp. The ruling Iron party did nothing to stop the ongoing conflict in upland Nama between the Players and the Cold Men, which continued until 4268. Even this was voluntary, likely because the conflict had been slowing down and the rate of civilian casualties was not enough to relieve the two nations' overpopulation problems; they realized that the only solution to their overpopulation problems would be to kill each others' female populations, which they were unwilling to do.