Lypelpyp

Lypelpyp (meaning scorpion) is the most westernmost major city in the Poswob Empire (Pusapom). It was founded in a gap of settlement between thew two major aboriginal mega-nations, thus no aboriginal poipulation. It is sdimilar to the movie COngo in that it is a valley with mtns aon all sides, in which lives moneys because the humans never got to that rea. At first the monkeys were dangerous, eating humans etcm but they were subdued quickly and the new settlers of Lupelpyp forgot about the incident and soon became the least paranoid people of all, ahving no wapons and being friendly with the nations on all sides when they discoeveredf the. This led to bhem being bicitimized a lot, butr even so they had so much terrirotury thayt they grey paster than aklk oithers and mvbecame the major source of people to the rrest of the pIppla empoire.

Geography and climate

Tjhe modern climate is dry, simuilar to highland locations in California & Nevada even though it is a lowland settlemenbt. Avg temp is 39F in wint, 80F in summer, about the same as Roswell NM. It is not as dry as Roswell NM howeverm becayse evebn though it is in a velley & has mtns on all sides it is in the path of the jet stream which brings storms during winter. Not as much during summer, but there is water neabyt due to the mtns around them. THus Lypelyp hads plenty opf water. They have no agfriculart,e like no toher people as have agriculture, but they get their food from the forstts even so ... both animal and vbegetable.

The climate in Lypelpyp during its most important years was similar to the modern climate, but far more extreme. Temperatures averaged 5F in winter and 98F in summer. There were only two seasons, meaning that a hot spell of >100F days that had lasted a month could be suddenly replaced by a blustery blizzard.

Lypelpyp was historically a gap in between the two major aboriginal macro-tribes, the Repilians in the north and east, and the Sukuna/Tempy in the south and west. Geogrtaphically, it is similar to Death Valley, but colder. Mountains surround it on all sides but even though Lypelpyp is a desert, water flows down from the mountains and there is a lake in the center of the valley. An island within the lake is the ceremonial capital of Lypelpyp, but most people actually live on the northern shore because the sunlight is strongest there.

Lypelpyp is located in the Poswob state of Kava, which was named after the nation of Kava in Nama. However, since that other Kava still exists, and is now part of the same Poswob Empire (though not an independent nation any longer), Lypelpyp's Kava can also call itself Kavi ("from Kava") or Šuranom Kavi ("Šurnum's from-Kava").

History

Lypelpyp was settled by a separate branch of Pabaps, not the same as the "Thunder" people who settled most of the rest of Pupompom. Thus, unlike most of the Thunderers, they still considered themselves to be ethnically Pabap. They still identified as Thundererers, but to them Thunder was a political party rather than a nationality. Also, they had all converted to the Sonsoma religion, which was inherited from the Andanese subtribe of Pabaps, meaning that Yiibam held no influence over them until being reintroduced from the east.

Lypelpyp was the home of the most powerful Base of STW.

Yīspʷilinâ-Lypelpyp relations

To the north, west, and south of Lypelpyp was the Crystal Empire nation of Yīspʷilinâ. Yīspʷilinâ had been formed from land donated to the Crystals by the Thunderers during a time when the two empires had not yet become hostile. After relations broke off, the Crystals refused to return Yīspʷilinâ to the Thunder Empire but promised to treat the many Thunderers trapped in Yīspʷilinâ better than Thunderers in many other Crystal nations. Yīspʷilinâ's citizens had essentially no military or political power because Yīspʷilinâ 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.

Lypelpyp had long been one of the poorest areas in the Thunder Empire. However, as the Thunder Empire became poorer, Lypelpyp actually became richer because power was shifting to the Crystals, and Lypelpyp was surrounded by Crystals. The Crystals invaded the Thunder Empire through Lypelpyp in 3785 when they set up their new occupation government, but Lypelpyp itself saw very little fighting because they decided to submit completely and disobey their commanders who were loyal to the major Thunder cities of the east.

During the Crystal occupation, Lypelpyp was often the base of operations of the Crystal government, as they feared that if the Thunderers revolted, they would lose battles all over Altotta, but would still win in Lypelpyp because it was geographically distant from the rest of Altotta's major cities and was surrounded by strong Crystal armies.

The Crystals were thrown out of power in 3842, but it was by a second foreign power, Dreamland, rather than the native Thunderers. The Thunderers were depressed as they had gone from being the unquestioned military and economic champion of the planet to being an oversized, and thus soft and easy to conquer, second-tier power that seemed to have nowhere to go but down. The Thunderers complained that for the last 3000 years, their people had been uniquely vulnerable to opportunistic invasions and exploitation by outsiders. By this they meant that Paba, Kava, Subumpam, FILTER, Altotta, and the Thunder Empire were to them all historically "Thunder" nations, and all of those had spent much of their time being kicked around from one empire to another. Even though Altotta had expanded to cover a huge amount of territory at the expanse of the defenseless aboriginal Repilian people, and had never apologized for their many mass murders, they claimed that the Thunderers were still victims because they had only hurt people who were defenseless, instead of hurting the people who were actually abusing them.

The Dreamer occupation government established atheism as the state religion and put the Thunderers at the bottom of society. They declared victory when they chased out the Crystals, saying that the Crystals had weakened Altotta's army on purpose, and that resistance from the native Thunderers would be so pathetic by comparison that they didn't need to even acknowledge it. They were wrong, as it actually took about ten years for the Dreamers to finish off the last of Altotta's native army. To the surprise of all, many Repilians still lived in Altotta, and they were vigorously fighting against the Dreamers even more strongly than the native Thunderers. They had mostly forgiven the Thunderers even though the Thunderers had violently broken every treaty with them, because they saw Dreamers as even greater enemy. However, this was not a unanimous opinion, and some Repilians actually helped the Dreamers, and these were rewarded with money and power by the Dreamer occupiers.

Culture

Lypelpyp's people are descended from Pabaps, specifically the rebellious Hinku tribe that created the nation of Kava for which Lypelpyp's nation, Kavi, is named. (Howeever the entire nation was often called "Lypelpyp" during the age in which Lypelpyp had total control of the rest of the nation.) The Hinku exploreres who founded Lypelpyp still held to the old Hinku believe that Pabaps needed to be suspicious of all outside peoples, because Pabaps were physically smaller than other peoples and therefore easily abused. They were able to settle in a valley that had no human population whatsoever, so they had to fight off only the monkeys that had previously lived there. This meant that unlike most other tribes that had come from Kava, they never married into tribes of taller, stronger aboriginals, and thus they themselves never got any taller. When they joined the Thunder Empire, they were somewhat more suspicious of outsiders than most of the rest of the Thunderers, and even the mainline Thunderers seemed intimidating to the Lypels.

Yet, they were willing to embrace one group of outsiders for the sake of protection from other groups. Lypels had been relatively safe in their hidden valley, but were afraid of venturing outside, particularly to the west, as it was known to be inhabited by the Sukuna tribes who had captured Lypels and used them as slaves in the past. However, these areas were eventually conquered by Crystals, who were just as tall, strong, and intimidating as the Sukuna people had been, but were a lot less violent towards Lypels. They did not consider Lypels to be equals, but did not have any reason to physically attack them or invade their homeland either.

When STW set up shop in Lypelpyp and made Lypelpyp its primary power center, many Lypels, even those who did not join STW, were willing to go along with STW's plans because it would at least make Lypelpyp richer and perhaps more powerful and more able to resist simply being the least loved of the many struggling Thunder nations. Even though STW seemed to be controlled and run mostly by Crystal immigrants, and was causing Lypelpyp to shift rapidly from an all-Thunder city to one consisting of about 70% Crystals, STW still welcomed Thunderers as full members, and to even be considered equals was for most Lypels a welcome improvement over their usual state of affairs. Thus Lypels joined STW in large numbers and defeated their old fears of being conquered by Crystals.

Remnant traits

Although Lypelpyp passed the peak of its power 4800 years ago, modern Lypelpyp is much the same. Lypelpyp's people today consider themselves Poswobs and speak only Poswa. Historically, though, they were a separate migration of Pabap people that had little contact with the much larger eastern migration that became the Poswobs. Their religion was Sompfyma (their name for Sàŋhʷṁi), which was not the same as the original religion of the Pabaps (Yiibam or Lelpam), but rather the religion of the Andanese that Pabaps adopted after they mostly left Yiibam. Thus, the Lypels in some ways continued the Andanese culture after the Andanese themselves had been violently obliterated.

For a long time, Lypelpyp retained the original Pabap trait of having men taller than women (as was the case for most people worldwide), but eventually, they began to absorb "Feminist" genes by genetic drift from other Poswobs. They still have not completely switched over, however; some families do still have tall men. They are more likely than other Poswobs to worship male gods; their state has an alternate name of Šuranom Kavi, after the god Šuran. Despite being the most politically pacifistic people in a very pacifistic empire, this is mostly for their own protection, and Lypels in general are actually more heavily armed than most Poswobs.

Despite being one of the northernmost Poswob cities, Lypelpyp gets hot summers, and the people of Lypelpyp are nudists during the summer. This they share with the aboriginal Tempy people to their south, whom they met about 3000 years ago when a Tempy army greeted a troop of Lypel explorers by chasing them up the road and then massacring them. They had assumed they had caught a tribe of their traditional blood enemy, the Repilians, in a surprisingly weak spot. Since the Poswobs have essentially absorbed all of the Repilian tribes now, the Tempys again consider Lypels to be Repilians, and although they are far less violent nowadays they still consider them to be enemies. Nevertheless, Tempy people are an important part of Lypelpyp's economy because they have almost all of the hot tropical lowlands where pineapples grow.

Economy

Lypelpyp is actuallyt very poor, hacving no economic activity other than just surviving. They do not generally import or export anything. However, they are a major stopover for trade passing *through* their area, as it turns out that their hidden valley is actually a very convenient place to build a road, and the people of Lypelpyp itself built a road into Baeba Swamp a few hundred years ago. Even so, most of the things that Baeba produces (tropical fruits, palm oil, etc) can also be found in southern Pusapom and so their trade is mostly with areas that are simply closer to Baeba than to the rest of Pusapom.