Teppala

Teppala or Tebbala is the planet that contains the human population in Soap's conworld. The diversity of spellings (Teppala, Tebbala, Tippala, Tipala, and even more rare ones) is due to the fact that no one language ever reacghed majority status on that planet.

Notes on languages

Becuase my conworld spans more than 20000 years, many of the proper names would change every few paragraphs if I attempted to use the historically accurate name in every occurrence. Instead, I pretend that this is an encyclopedia written in the year 8773 AD on Teppala, mostly written by Pabap people, giving "modern" (8773 AD) names to ancient cities and rivers. Some of the names were historically important in a way that distinguishes them from their modern forms, so in some stories, the older names are preserved. This is similar to how on Earth, many familiar Biblical names are modernized (Jerusalem, Eve, Noah) and others are kept in the original language (Dorcas, Gabbatha, Siloam).

Most of my writing concerns the period from 633 AD to 4208 AD, with very little description of events in the 4500 years after that except in a few cultural descriptions. Thus, well over half of the names in my writing are "wrong" because they are in 8773 Pabappa rather than whichever of the many phases would be appropriate for the particular time period being described. It helps that Pabappa, like most languages on planet Teppala, is fairly conservative, and it was common for a placename to survive 8000 years of sound changes without simply whittling itself down to just a single CV syllable. However, some names are indeed "replacements" for the original because the original name had been lost over time either through sound changes or through a change of hands in the government.

Mostly towards the later part of the history (towards 4208 AD, that is), there appear many names in English, mostly for political parties, but some also for people. This is partly because I don't have enough conlangs to give them all native names, but mostly because I wouldn't expect anyone, not even myself, to keep straight hundreds of foreign names that all look the same, particularly since they change very quickly in the last century before 4208 AD. Some of the names seem to have little meaning (Tink, Zenith, Matrix, etc) but they are at least consistent. Other names are related directly to a symbol of that person or political party (the Red Sun, the Soap Bubbles, the Cold Kids, Old Faithful).

Climate

Humans share the planet with many other sapient animals, and are at the mercy of the more powerful ones. For example, in the very center of the Poswob Empire, from about 7700 to 8200 AD, "the Great Feast" occurred, where the population of humans and rabbits began to swell enormously, leading them to spread out and be attacked by predators such as cats and some birds. After 500 years the human population was whittled down to a few survivors in hard to reach places, as it remains today, but the rabbits survived the attacks and became the dominant species even though they are still fighting off those same predators today.

In the year 0, the average temperature along the south coast of Rilola was about 40F (at places like Paba) with almost no change in seasonal temperature bursts. This is because the eccentricity of the planet was twice as severe then as it is now, and it was balanced such that the perihelion was at the same time as northern winter, and the aphelion was during northern summer. Inland, sumemr was actually colder than winter, and indeed, the eccenticity was so strong that the whole planet south of aboyut 45N had its seasons all at the same time, and therefore winter cold ruled the world and even the tropics got snow. However, in the southern hemisphere, summer was extremely hot, with places such as 20S deep inland averaging -10F in winter and 170F in summer. 220F temperautes were not unheard of, as even the inland sea of Kandino had bvoiled awau nmow/. THus life was impossible there even for the hardiest of animals, and life retreated to the coaasts.

Temperature averages (°F):

10000 years ago (1300BC)
                 Global     Global
                 Summer     Winter

North Pole        -54        -39                                    
55N Deep Inland   -55        -42   
45N Deep Inland   -22        -51
30N South Coast    61         27
Equator Coast      92         15         
20S Deep Inland   158        -21

Today
                January      July

North Pole        -27         22                                    
55N Deep Inland   -32         20
45N Deep Inland    17         45
30N South Coast    46         82
Equator Coast      78         96         
20S Deep Inland   121         93

Thus it takes up until 45N for the seasons to be in their "proper" order. Also, note that in 1300BC, winters actually become colder going from 30N to the equator. This is partly due to cold air crossing the ITCZ and penetrating the northern hemisphere. But it cannot get all the way to 30N generally. This is similar to the very rare phenomenon found on Earth where a very strong cold wave from Antarctica will chill out the Amazon rainforest and occasionally peep up over the equator into the Caribbean, making for a cold wave in summer that's colder than any cold wave in winter.

However, it is also due to the logic of alignement of "high sun" seasons with distance from that sun, meaning the summer in the N Hempishere coincided mostly with the weakest insolation and thus the warmest month was not the same month as further south.

Global Warming

Even as recently as 4500 AD, roughly the time of the founding of the major cities of the Wamu Empire, the climate was much colder. For example, winter in Paba was about 15F colder than present. Lypelpyp was 45F colder than present. Summers in Paba were about the same, but were much shorter and the warmest time of the year was the vernal equinox. Summer in Lypelpyp was even hotter than present ... their winters averaged about -5F and summers about 98F ... thus arly Lypelpyp was a difficult place to live. However, it did have more rain than at present.

Climate of Early Cities


              Warmest     Coldest
               Month       Month
Blop             78          8
Paba             82         37
Lypelpyp         98         -5

The persistence of cold into fairly recent times is the main reason why pine trees are the dominant type even in the present-day subtropical south coast (areas like Paba).

Asteroid Impact Event

In the year 0, an asterioid smashed into the area near the Equator, killing most humans, animals, and plants instantly. The outdoor temperature soared to over 500°F and melted hte rocks and boiled away the water. For more than three years after the impact, atmospheric temperatures in this region often exceeded 150°F, and there was almost no rainfall. In the southern hemispgere, the temrpature was as high as 260°F, killing most of the dinosaurs living on Gitaipanu. (The asteroid actually hit slightly south of the equote, so the impact was wors there.) Humans had to live in that environment, survivning by staying mostly underwater in order to keep cool. In the mountains, humans ducked into caves to stay cool (teh caves did notget as hot as the outdoor environment). Since there was almost no rain on the whole planet for several years, most plants and animals died. However, rapidly melting glaciers provided a source of fresh water for much of the mainland and even some islands.

The record-breaking temperatures produced towering thunderstorms that delivered as much as 150" of rain per day on those few places lucky enough to receive them; these were mostly in high mountains.

Glossary

This is a list of names and terms used in Teppalan history books. Unlike the rest of what I write here, this page allows fourth-wall terminology such as "I created", etc, and mixes timelines that are thousands of years apart. Moreover it sometimes uses old names that shouldve been dead 20 years ago, but I havent gotten around to replacing. e.g. "Camia", which is a name I created in the year 1992 after visiting Mt. Washington in New Hampshire, USA, and learning that cold weather was powerful but humans w2ere afraid to expose themselves to it. Camia is not the name of any nation in my current conworld, but is the cover term for several other nations yet unname4d.

A

Abawa/Aboa

A nation on Laba. Apparently also used for a nation on Rilola, however, at least during the reign of the Swamp Kids.

Adabawa

A king of Laba who tried to take over the world.

Anzan

The name of the Andanese nation-state founded in the year 4145. For most of their history, the Andanese people had preferred to live in other people's nations rather than founding their own, but the increasing violence all around them led them to band together in self-defense. However, Anzan was still not a traditional nation-state because even most of the Andanese were banned from living there. It was instead the stronghold of a political organization called the Tinks (Lislilasila), whose primary enemies were the Crystals.

B

Bābā

Literally meaning "maternity ward", this is the old name of Paba. They had a very high birthrate.

Bloppabop

An old name for Poswa and its people. Really just means "milk language people". However, the name Blop has been repurposed after all because it by coincidence happens to also mean "eye".

C

Camia An idea I created in 1992 after visiting the peak of Mt. Washington and realizing that cold weather was more powerful than warm weather, despite the persistence of global warming (which at the time was just beginning to be noticed, as the 1970s and 1980s had been quite cold). Years later, after literally walking a mile uphill to school in -33F weather, I realized I had found my power and essentially became a Camian for life. (I just now checked, and it was 1.02 miles.) The name is from "Cold Men", as I was too young then to have an actual developed conlang.

The name "Camia" refers to many different countries throughout many time periods. It could be said that it represents the spirit of aggression, but with a certain personality that has many open weaknesses for its enemies to grab onto. For example, Anzan was a "Camia", in that for their entire existence, they were at war, and won many impressive victories against their enemies, but they allowed enemy soldiers to colonize their homeland and repeatedly besiege their capital city because they believed that they could conquer their enemies based on the sheer size of their empire and its rapidly increasing population due to an immigration policy that invited even the empire's enemies. They did not learn their lesson even when they were repeatedly terrorized from enemies living inside them because they thought that their enemies would come to think like Camians if they were allowed to live in Camia.

By coincidence, one of the nations that is a "Camia" was originally named Kamèa, and I have kept this name, but it is in the wrong time period for the country it represents and so I've pushed it forwards with 8000 years of sound changes to become Kava. I have totally lost all memory of the language that the name Kamèa came from but I know I wouldn't have chosen such a name on purpose.

E

Erala

A rare name of "Camia". From Tapilula "yabala", from an even earlier "Rapala".

H

Halasala

Halasala is one of the names of Paba during the time it was occupied by AlphaLeap. It was more famous as Waamū/Vaamū, however.

Hukuku

A state of "Camia" (Kava?) that is run by "heroes". Also known as Sopato, but this is a "bad" name because it doesnty belong to the native language.

M

The Matrix

I had this name before the movie was out. It was actually earlier "the Grid", but I decided Matrix sounded more intelligent. The Matrix was a coalition of Cold Men and pro-Laba Thunderers, who therefore believed in a "complex" two-dimensional philosophy that could only be placed on a grid rather than a line.

The Mirror Project

More than 10000 years ago, the empire of Nama ruled much of the world and had only one enemy in the world, the Sukuna tribes to their south. They used their seemingly endless land area to repurpose themselves to mirror the rest of the world: any political organization, be it a religion, a political ideology, or just an ethnic group needing a new home, could found itself a new nation inside Naman territory and live in peace, protected by Nama's land army against all outsiders. Moreover they were even allowed to vote in Nama's own government at the highest level, because they were indeed a fully recognized nation within Nama's empire.

At first the Mirror Project produced little growth, because most of the peoples friendly to Nama were already living in Nama and thus the Mirror nations generally corresponded to where people already lived. Occasionally, though, a Sukuna tribe that had previously been hostile to Nama would make peace and Nama would agree to resettle their people somewhere in Nama. For a long time, these new nations were along the south coast, in the choicest land, but the coast eventually filled up and the Mirror nations were instead placed near the geographical center of Nama, just north of the Gimbanaikata mountains.

The Mirror Project survived for over 10000 years but its territory was so poorly defended that it was almost completely eaten up by the invading armies of the Vora Empire in the so-called "War of the Thigh".

P

P

P is a female military leader who in the 3560s established a monopoly on settlement of the far north for her people, the Ḳotagʷurî.

Pornopia

From porno "claw", this is a name I created when I was 11 years old for a continent that later became reimagined as merely a country that clawed its territory away from all of its neighbors.

Okay, to be fair, the original name was merely Bornovia, but Pabappa changes both initial /b/ and medial /v/ into /p/ unconditionally. (Initial /b/ in Pabappa is from /pr/.) I usually use the name Tarwas for this country now.

So why is this here? Am I just giggling about the name? It seems, looking at an old source, Pornopia might be a separate country from Tarwas after all as it was founded as a militant colony inside a nation called Vaamū that had invited them in, hoping they could become allies if they lived together. Still, for now, I will mostly use the alternate name Tuvunup, which is simply the same name pushed backwards about 4500 years in time. The etymology is the same: tuvunu means "claw".

S

STW

Save The World is an organization founded within Altotta, specifically the Vora Empire, in the year 3916. Though it aimed to be a transnational organization, it was entirely confined to Altotta. I seem to have created it from the very beginning to be absurd, as I found in a notebook I wrote in 23 years ago "STW is a nationwide club for all ages, that contributes to efforts for saving the deteriorated world of Teppala before the Teppalans can wipe out the Earthlings and move to Earth themselves."

Swamp Kids

The Swamp Kids were a political party founded in Waamū in the year 4149. They were workers who had defeated their bosses by becoming so efficient that all other buesinnesses wnt down, and even the military was controlled by the laborers now. They refused to hand over their weapons and therefore overthrew the ruling Zakap government. The name "Swamp Kids" refers to their desire to settle in Baeba Swamp, which is very far from Waamū, and a cultural trait in Waamū to see all but the upper class of adult males as being boys. Alternate names for the Swamp Kids are Ikahaa (in Andanese) and Pipissimba (in Pabappa). Most of the founding Swamp Kids were people who had been in the Latiki party a few years earlier, and Latiki became defunct shortly after the creation of the Swamp Kids. Thus the Swamp Kids could be said to be a continuation of Latiki. Howver, they had different politics and different enemies.

T

Tarpabap

The Tarpabap people were a collection of tribes originally from the tropical rainforests of southern Laba who had many different languages but shared in common an extremely tall body form, dark skin, and certain facial features. They moved primarily to Paba, a nation populated by the world's shortest people, with their adult males averaging about belly-high to chest-high on the Tarpabaps. The Pabaps were typically very pale, with blonde hair and blue eyes. The Pabaps saw all the gigantic immigrants from southern Laba as so different from the Pabaps that their differences in language and culture were invisible, and the Pabaps came to group them all together under the cover term Tarpabaps. Within a few generations, the various tribes came to see themselves as a single group as well, and later immigrants from their homelands came to quickly assimilate into mainstream Tarpabap culture.

Tarwas

Tarwas was a nation founded in the year 2144 by Tarpabaps who had moved to Paba and found it unsatisfying. The Tarpabaps were known for being much taller than all of the peoples to their south and west, and significantly taller than the peoples to their north and east.

U

UPL

The United Pacifist League was founded by a female army general named Nìyempe in the Thunder Empire who wanted to save her soldiers from being juiced by the many stronger armies around them. At this time, the Thunderers were very feministic, even in the military, and saw nothing unusual about putting a woman in charge of an army. They were also strongly antipacifistic, however, and considered the idea of a pacifist running an army to be the same as surrendering to the enemy. Nìyempe's soldiers were loyal to her, however, and promised that they would flee the country if the Thunderers tried to replace her with a different general.

The United Pacifist League survived the war. When, in a much later era, Pusapom outgrew its monarchy and developed multiparty politics, the United Pacifist League won the majority of the votes for thousands of years.

W

Waamū

The name of a nation mostly consisting of Paba, Subumpam, and a few outlying territories around the year 4200. In the previous era, it had been known by its Andanese name, Halasala. It was founded (as Halasala) in the year 4108, after losing a war against the Gold Empire, which caused AlphaLeap to move in and occupy Paba and its western neighbors. Thaoa was spared from the invasion.

Wamia

A name for a nation of people that is the antithesis of Camia. Like Camia, Wamia is not a single nation but a name for various nations that appear in various time periods. Unlike Camia, there are multiple Wamias existing at the same time during some periods. For example, both Dreamland and Tata are "Wamia": Tata is the "Wamia" of Anzan, whereas Dreamland is the "Wamia" of the world.

Camia embodies the spirit of aggressive masculinity, and Wamia tries to do the same but always fails. Their society malfunctions in every possible way. Their environment is consistently polluted and overcrowded (environmentalism always seemed masculine and "conservative" to me; I never really understood why it was associated with the political left until I became an adult and learned about the problems of money). They identify themselves with tropical climates and abundant sunshine but yet their people suffer from sunburns every day, whereas the Camians, some of whom inhabit climates just as sunny as the most tropical parts of Wamia, are at peace with nature and therefore entirely immune to such embarrassing reminders of their frailty.

Wamia's education system is generally portrayed as inferior to Camia's, although I made some exceptions to this in my later writing when I came to realize that my comically overpowered kid superheros were growing up almost entirely without school, and it would be difficult to conceive of how a nation, even one set up deliberately to be Camia's punching bag, could possibly have an education system even worse than this. Besides, part of the gimmick was that Wamia was actually much richer than Camia and was so pathetic that they somehow managed to fail even given their many advantages.

Typically, Wamians are either too short or too tall compared to the people around them, depending on which Wamia is being spoken of, and even the ones that are too tall are terrible soldiers and are frequently conquered by invaders who could walk under their armpits. (And presumably find that the Wamians, obsessed with hiding body odors, have carefully distributed expensive deodorants even to their front-line soldiers, whereas the Camians either just don't smell bad or don't find it bothersome when they do.)

X

Xʷugâ

The name of an ethnic group living in Thaoa, Paba, Subumpam, and Nama. THeir tribal lands in these four empires are all interconnected. They claim the Subumpamese state of Vuʒi as their homeland, but have no nation of their own.

They are well known for their aggressive promotion of violence against women, especially within marriage but also in public between unrelated people.

They have been generally hated by all other ethnic groups, even the other ethnic minorities in the nations they live in. The only exception to this is Nama, which has long had a tradition of welcoming people of all races and religions. This has led the other empires to believe that the Xʷugâ are native to Nama rather than Subumpam. The explanation for why the Xʷugâ are living in the other three empires would then be that they were living in those areas of the other three empires that were originally conquered from Nama.

The Xʷugâ have many names in different languages, such as Suxaŋ in Thaoa, Fužai in Subumpamese, and Fua in Pabappa. (Xʷugâ is the Khulls name, where Khulls is the official language of Nama and many territories to its west.) They find the name Fua offensive, however, and prefer to have Pabaps refer to them by one of the other names. The Pabaps inturn refer to them using dysphemisms such as Pispitam "kings of cutting", but the Xʷugâ generally find these attempts at being offensive actually less offensive than using the name Fua.

Y

Yīa

The central god of Yiibam.

Yiibam

The ancient religion of Paba.

Yuyabhoybakopa

I love this name. I created it in the late 1990s, and have remembered it ever since. The language it is from no longer makes sense in my conworld, but I want to keep the name. There was no /bʰ/ in this language, it simply had a cluster /bh/. The name means "one who deposes human kings" and was originally meant for a "car" (a type of car-like animal) but got transposed to a hedgehog when the cars themselves became recast as hedgehogs. This is actually a return to an even older idea of mine where giant hedgehogs dominated the wilderness. No, I wasnt inspired by SOnic the Hedgehog, these hedgehogs were quite true to the Earth form of the species in being very slow and careful in movement. The only difference is that they were much larger than humans, as were all other animals. See Mystic Quest where tiny humans fight gigantic animals for what actually inspired me.

Note: I just realized, technically the above is not true. I wasnt drawing hedgehogs in 1992, I was drawing "echini" (singular is echinus). I didnt realize until many years later that echinus was the Latin word for hedgehog; at the time I just knew from 6th grade biology class that echin- meant "spine, spike", and I seemed to think that most or all Latin nouns ended in -us. (e.g. i remember writing "solus, lunus" in a comic book, and also created the words "electrus" and "Terrus"). The echini of my early drawings actually resemble turtles more than they do hedgehogs, and I think I considered them reptilian, although with the limited knowledge I had at the age of 11 it could just be that I didn't know better. They had loud voices and had a lot in common with dinosaurs. (Why are dinosaurs assumed to have had loud voices?)

Z

Zeniths

The Zenith is the name of a political party in the 4100's AD. THough its roots can be traced back to the Xʷugâ tribes of a much earlier day, it was not a true political organization until very late in its history. This type of transformation was common in this era: organizations that began their life as simple, apolitical tribal governments branch out into true politics when they find they have a common interest with a different ethnic group, or when the original ethnic group divides into two based on religion or politics.

The "ZZ" Zone

An area where dolphins live. Dolphins on Teppala have nations with defined borders, much the way humans do. However they do not have cities within those nations; the nations are each simply an amorphous whole.

A region of the ocean controlled mostly by dolphins. On Teppala, dolphins are powerful animals capable of running their own governments and see humans as equals. Some dolphins prey on humans, and some humans prey on dolphins. But among both species are pacifists who want the two species to get along.