Amade

Amade was a tropical empire located between 13°N and 17°N, centered west of Taryte, at around 20°E. Its people were often politically hostile to Taryte.

Language families

Amade has long been very diverse linguistically. Since it was not a political unit for most of its early history, the aboriginals were split between the Star languages in the extreme east and the languages of Kxesh covering the remainder of the territory. Merar settlers brought their Tropical Rim languages, while a smaller number of Mumba people added loanwords to these languages. Soon, the Pejo languages of Amade came to be seen as a third aboriginal family and became internally diverse as its people built nations in the rainforest and focused on internal affairs.

Later on, Play explorers fled into Amade from the north, bringing their dialect of the Bābākiam language. Another wave of conquerors fleeing from Anzan also brought Bābākiam, which then wiped out all of the other languages.

Tropical Rim languages

This language was spoken by the Pabap settlers but quickly died out. Those few speakers who persisted were bilingual with the Pejo languages around them and SEA therefore came to have Pejo-like sound changes.

Early history

There were four tribal groups in early Amade:

1. Kxesh people, the dark-skinned aboriginals native to the area.
2. Star people, the dark-skinned aboriginals who inhabited the lands to the east, had a small foothold in eastern Amade.
3. Lenians, the light skinned, and typically blonde settlers who had built colonies in Paba, Thaoa, and other places along the tropical south coast. Also known as Mumba. This is the southernmost empire in which Lenians formed a major part of the settler population, but they were quickly absorbed.
4. Lĕba, a tribe of very tall, dark-skinned seagoing people who had settled in various other places along the tropical south coast. Despite their very different appearance, they were culturally related to the Lenians.

Unlike most nearby areas, these four racial groups got along peacefully and formed into a single tribe of varied appearance. They were still dark-skinned, but taller and somewhat less dark than the Tarise people. Yet they were outwardly aggressive, and Amadean pirates captured slaves of all racial backgrounds from nations both near and far.

Amade soon became the economic and political capital of the Star Empire. When Nama defeated the Star Empire around the year 2095, many Stars fled to Amade because its jungle provided shelter from the Naman warlords and because Naman slavery worked better in a dry climate. Amadeans believed that Nama would soon fall and the Star Empire would again be ruled from Amade.

However, although Nama was a very delicate ruler, they maintained control of what had been the Star Empire through naval supremacy, and the political center moved to the extreme north, near Nama's border. Thus, when the Gold Empire became the world's greatest superpower, Amade was left far behind. Tribal wars flared up, with the weak tribes such as the Pabaps and the Crystals forced to flee from the place they had fled to for safety. The winning tribes were the Pejo speakers, who had married aboriginals and come to be seen as aboriginals themselves, but yet drew a firm distinction between them and the poorer, weaker tribes who had lived in Amade before them. All slaves were killed in this war, as the winners promised to abolish slavery by killing th slaves.

But even as the genocide continued, new immigrants arrived in Amade, protected by private armies from the dangers around them. These people had various political goals and did not consider themselves allies even of each other.

Later history

This writeup assumes that mentions of Atlam in the history of Anzan refer to Amade.

Contact with Anzan

In 4145, Amade's aboriginals invaded the Play Empire (Vaamū), which had gained nominal possession of Amade in a recent treaty but had no military presence there. Vaamū was much larger than Amade, but was weakened by many internal conflicts and could not pull from its entire population to raise an army. Additionally, Amade had signed a military pact with Tarwas, which flanked Vaamū from the east. The Players began to refer to the alliance as "the Kala Alliance" due to alternate names of both Tarwas and Atlam^sic that began with the same letters. The tiny nations of Amade and Tarwas quickly defeated the Players, and some immigrants from Tarwas moved into Amade.

Four years later, Vaamū was overthrown from within and renamed Anzan.

In 4162, an army of atheists from Anzan moved to Amade, bringing with them their atheistic culture and two languages: Late Andanese and Babakiam. Their loyalty was to yet another empire, Dreamland, which had made them unwelcome in Anzan. However, they were so militaristic that Dreamland did not support them either, and they chose to seek refuge in Amade. Within two years, the colonists turned hostile and overthrew the government of Amade, making Babakiam the official language. They were able to do this because of naval support from the nation of Wax. Therefore, all Amadean languages, both of the aboriginals and of the Crystals, went extinct shortly after the invasion of 4162.