Atlam

Tōžetăna is the Khulls name for a country located at the southern extreme of the continent of Rilola, the home of all humans on planet Teppala. It is similar in size and shape to Subumpam but its climate is much warmer. Tōžetana stretches from 10°N to 14°N and from 9°E to 13°E. The climate of the entire nation is tropical savanna, with little difference from place to place because the topography is flat. There is a marked dry season during the Northern Hemisphere winter, but the air remains humid because of the nearby shallow sea, and water is plentiful throughout the year. The summer monsoon hits land early in the season and remains throughout the summer.

Tōžetăna was founded in 2131 as Tūġyaităna. Tūġyaităna was an alliance of independent, self-sufficient nations inhabited by aboriginals of the Kxesh tribes, who had lived in the rainforest for tens of thousands of years. In 2131 this alliance signed a treaty with the much larger Star Empire which transformed their multinational alliance into a single large nation and introduced the official language of the Stars, the Gold language.

In many ways, Tūġyaităna resembled the distant empire of Subumpam, which had been founded just a few generations earlier on the opposite side of the Gold Sea, about 2000 miles to the north and east of Tūġyaităna. Both empires were of similar size and shape, and had been founded along the south coast of their continent. Both had humid climates ideal for humid civilization, with Subumpam having a temperate climate rather than Tūġyaităna's tropical one.

Like Tūġyaităna, Subumpam had originated as an alliance of previously independent states who had banded together into an alliance after signing mutual peace treaties with each other and disbanding their armed forces. The Subumpamese tribes were blonde, blue-eyed people who resembled their eastern neighbors in Paba but were not closely related. And both empires had signed treaties around the year 2100 pledging their allegiance to the much larger and stronger Star Empire, and later the Gold Empire.

Language

At the time of its founding, Tōžetana spoke the Gold language. This language soon came to be called Khulls. However, the Gold Empire's control over Tožetana was very weak, since the tropical climate allowed the inhabitants to be self-sufficient and not need to rely on the Gold Empire for food. Thus, in Tōžetăna, the Gold language soon developed into another branch of the family, no longer mutually intelligible with Khulls despite their intimate contacts with the peoples of the other areas of the Gold Empire.

Although Pabappa had been introduced to them by hostile invaders claiming loyalty to Dreamland, Pabappa was also the language of the enemies of those invaders, who helped the natives of Tōžetana fight off the invaders. Thus Pabappa came to be spoken by some native Tōžetanians.

Phonology of the proto-language

Tōžetana inherited from Gold a four-vowel inventory (/a i u ə/) with three tones (/ă à ā/) and the following consonants:

/p b m w t d n s z l č ǯ j k ġ ŋ h g ḳ ʕ/

A /w/ could follow any other consonant in the syllable onset, but the unusual coronal pairs tʷ dʷ nʷ and the fricative hʷ were far more common than other combinations.

In final position, the consonants /k ḳ l n s ʕ/ could appear. There were also syllabic nasals/ ṁ ṅ ŋ̇/.

Geography and climate

Tōžetana has a tropical monsoon climate, typical for its latitude and points northward. As the southernmost point of the entire continent of Rilola, Tōžetana has the warmest and wettest climate of all. The monsoon rain is persistent and reliably covers about seven to eight months of each year. During the remainder of the year, the climate is hot and humid but sunny skies predominate and rainfall is scarce.

Historically, Tōžetana has been a refuge for tropical species of both plants and animals during the planet's cold periods, and therefore has the world's greatest diversity of tropical fruits. Yet the dry season in winter has kept the region free of many of the pests that are found on the tropical islands of Laba far to the east.

History

Early history

The earliest inhabitants of the area now called Tōžetăna were the dark-skinned Kxesh peoples. Kxesh was not a nation or an ethnicity; the tropical climate of Tōžetana had led humans to form many individual compact, self-sufficient nations within the rainforest with relatively little need for trade between each settlement. Their identification as Kxesh people came only when outside powers began to encroach on their territory and the various tribes agreed to form a military alliance for their common interest. However, subdivisions within the Kxesh people soon re-emerged, and Tōžetana declared itself an independent nation; they still claimed allegiance to the Kxesh military alliance but became formally autonomous. Tōžetana did not collect taxes from its people because the people were almost entirely hunter-gatherers with no cash economy, and each family finished each day with no possessions other than their homes and their clothes. Thus Tōžetana was the poorest nation in the world, despite its people generally living healthier lives than the various peoples in the drier climates to their north.

Contact with Subumpam

Around 722 AD, a fleet of ships piloted by blonde, blue-eyed sailors from Subumpam reached Tōžetăna's eastern shore. These people did not consider themselves Subumpamese, since Subumpam was an alliance of nations of people who had settled there, whereas these sailors had seen Subumpam and passed it by. They believed that the tropical rainforests of Tōžetăna would enable them to live a richer life than they could have ever achieved in a temperate climate.

Calling themselves the Fùba people, the blonde sailors set up makeshift camps along the immediate coast and began to fish the sea. They wanted to show the natives that they would be self-sufficient, taking most of their food from the sea, and would not threaten the aboriginals' food supplies.

Political unification and conflict with Kxesh

Tōžetăna was founded in 2131 as Tūġyaităna. Its inhabitants were the dark-skinned "Atlam" people, who considered themselves a single tribe of people united by their shared religion, language, and way of life. By declaring themselves a nation, they were seceding from their parent empire, Kxesh, and seeking an alliance with the rival empire of Lobexon. Lobexon considered Tūġyaităna to be a part of Lobexon, but had long been unable to field an army large enough to occupy it.

Kxêsh ruled that Tūġyaităna's secession was illegal, and immediately launched an invasion. Kxêsh quickly defeated Tūġyaităna and annexed the territory back into Kxêsh, but the rival empire of Lobexon promised Tūġyaităna that all was not lost, and that they would be willing to fight a wider war against Kxesh in order to liberate Tūġyaităna.

Contact with Subumpam

Tūġyaităna had early on established cultural links with Subumpam. Tūġyaităna and Subumpam were at opposite ends of the enormous Gold Empire, and served as the cultural barriers between the Gold Empire and the rival empires around them. To the southwest was the empire of Kxesh, a large but disorganized association of various aboriginal tribes who had lived in the tropics for tens of thousands of years. To the northeast was Paba, a very large pacifistic empire which had established the world's strongest navy and unified itself under the philosophy of pacifism and ceased participation in all wars, thus stopping the territorial advancements its people had made in their early history.

For more than 2000 years, Tōžetana maintained itself as a simple but self-reliant tropical nation having little contact with its neighbors. Immigration into Tožetana was rare, and the various minorities were gradually absorbed into the wider population, making Tožetana a nation with a single unified tribal identity once more.

Contact with Anzan

In 4145, Tōžetana invaded the Empire of Vaamū, which had gained nominal possession of Tōžetana in a recent treaty but had no military presence there. Vaamū was much larger than Tōžetana, but was weakened by many internal conflicts and could not pull from its entire population to raise an army. So the tiny nation of Tōžetana quickly defeated Vaamū, and some immigrants from Tarwas, which had signed an alliance with Tōžetana, moved into Tōžetana. People from Tarwas were dark-skinned but were taller and had different facial features compared to the natives of Tōžetana.

In 4162, an army of dissenters from the empire of Anzan moved to Tōžetana, bringing with them their atheistic culture and two languages: Late Andanese and Pabappa. 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 Tōžetana. Within two years, the colonists turned hostile and overthrew the government of Tōžetana, making Pabappa the official language. They were able to do this because of naval support from the nation of Wax.