Dolphin Riders

The MFZ Empires were three unrelated political empires that arose at the dawn of the Cosmopolitan Age. The original Empire, Mayuvas, was Dreamland, which acquired the byname after it came to be dominated by the Gold party, as the word for gold in Play was mayu. The other two empires, Fayuvas and Žayuvas, were then named as puns based on Dreamland's model.

There was no common trade union between the three empires, and they did not see themselves as an alliance. Their diplomats only met through a fourth party, Baeba Swamp, which at the time was run primarily by the Iron party, an offshoot of the much older Zenith party. Baeba Swamp was a single city, and not an empire, but it had a strong economy and was the center of world diplomacy. The common bond among the MFZ powers was that they were strong enough to achieve economic independence rather than depending on trade with Baeba; nevertheless, Mayūas and Fayūas traded with Baeba and with each other.

Note that the best transliteration of the names in the original Play language would be with the long vowel ū, giving Mayūas ~ Fayūas ~ Žayūas, but that from the earliest stages of Play exploration, their language was already resyllabifying sequences like these into having sequences like uv (pronounced as IPA [uw]).

Mayuvas (Dreamland)

In 4011, Dreamland's navy sealed off its southern coast and prohibited travel in both directions. They also fortified their land border with Baeba Swamp to the east. The Dreamers explained that the blockade was necessary because Dreamland's multiparty democratic government had allowed the growth of dissent movements within its territory, and that to allow Dreamers free travel to foreign nations would mean allowing defectors to assist Dreamland's enemies in war.

Free exit was nonetheless maintained along Dreamland's north coast, which faced the pacifist empire of Moonshine and a few small nations with weak militaries. The northernmost land border, with Tata, also remained open, because even though Tata's peasant class had traditionally been hostile to Dreamland, they had never acted alone, but only through their nation, which as a whole had been friendly to Dreamland.

Structure of Parliament

Dreamland entered the Cosmopolitan Age under the control of the Dolphin Riders, who had declared themselves to be the seventh iteration of the ancient Gold party. As such, they governed Dreamland according to Gold ideals, meaning that in their Parliament, every tribe was given equal representation regardless of their size. In the Gold Empire and Nama, this had led over time to many tribes with very small populations governing their empires much as royalty would, since they had vastly disproportionate power over the larger tribes making up the common population. But in Dreamland, this process had not had ample time to take place, even though some tribes were much larger than others.

Recognition of new tribes

Historically, the Gold party had held the sole authority to determine what was and was not a proper tribe; this is why earlier Gold empires such as Nama had not simply disintegrated into thousands of single-family "tribes" each claiming full representation in Parliament. However, once the Gold party recognized a tribe, no future action by the Gold party could take this status away.

Because the Dolphin Riders were creating a new Gold government in a fresh territory, they drew all of the tribal boundaries themselves, and chose boundaries that they felt would help ensure a strong pro-Gold majority well into the future. This meant recognizing many different tribes among peoples who they believed would support the Gold agenda, while lumping historic enemies into the same tribe whenever possible. The Riders recognized that any group of people with its own language was an independent tribe, as previous Gold governments had done, and therefore had to concede the existence of hostile tribes such as the Tippers who had arrived from overseas, but areas of traditionally anti-Gold politics among the native Dreamer population were lumped into the Gold tribe, defying the traditional Gold practice of treating political parties with hereditary membership as equivalent to tribes. Therefore, the only way for any anti-Gold citizens of Dreamer descent to have a voice in the new Gold government was to learn a new language and attempt to join the tribe that spoke that language.

Yet, even as they denied the creation of tribes along political lines, they created dozens of new Dreamer tribes defined by geographical boundaries, claiming the minor dialectal differences between adjacent Dreamer territories represented separate languages, and that these were therefore separate tribes entitled to equal representation in Parliament. The Gold party realized that they could not count on these discrete geographical regions to all support pro-Gold policies indefinitely, but hoped that they could always maintain a pro-Gold parliament by rewarding pro-Gold tribes with extra representation as they created further divisions within those tribes while refusing to recognize any divisions within hostile tribes.

Many purist Dreamers opposed this procedure, saying that the Gold party's long history of stability derived from its practice of respecting the rights of minority tribes and parties.

Family planning

The Dreamers planned to lower the global birthrate across their empire, saying that they had already achieved the ideal population for their territory, and that continued growth would be detrimental in a peaceful world. They also shut off immigration, even though they knew that immigrants had been strong supporters of Gold politics in the past.

To encourage lower birth rates, the Dreamers championed homosexuality for both men and women, and disincentivized large families, doing precisely the opposite of what the Players were doing in Žayūas. The Dreamers also promoted a traditional male-led society, in contrast to the feminist societies to their east.

Language

The Dreamers continued to speak their inherited Dolphin Rider language in daily life, but unlike Dreamers of the past, they promoted bilingualism for common people and scholars alike, and those near Baeba Swamp came to speak Ogili, the descendant of the Leaper language that had taken root there.

Hipsoft War

Despite their stated opposition to immigration, in 4150 the Dolphin Riders voted to resettle thousands of hostile pro-Moonshine immigrants in Dreamer territory. Despite Moonshine's firm commitment to pacifism, these immigrants, calling themselves Tippers, disobeyed their claimed ally and soon slaughtered more than 6,000 Dreamers while themselves losing only a tiny fraction of that number. Most of the Dreamer casualties belonged to the militant Hipsoft party, and had not been allowed to purchase weapons or armor to protect themselves, whereas the Tippers had had access to proper military equipment and even piloted ships in the Dreamer navy.

Dreamland's ruling Dolphin Rider party had excused their nonparticipation by saying that the Hipsofts had started the war, and that the Tippers were merely acting in self-defense. Yet, once the Hipsofts had been destroyed, the Tippers dispersed into the countryside and began attacking Dreamers indiscriminately, even those who were known to be sympathetic to the Tippers. The Tippers now stated that Moonshine was an enemy of Dreamland, and that they were fighting the battles that the Moonshines were too pacifistic to carry out on their own.

The Dreamer military strategists realized that they had lost 6,000 soldiers to the Tippers, and that the Tippers had not even invaded Dreamland, but rather had been invited. They realized that in the event of a traditional invasion, their military prospects would likely be even worse. Dreamland had prided itself on its strong navy, preventing invasion by sea for nearly two hundred years, but by 4183 the Dreamer navy had become so weak that they had been unable to stop the Tippers from boarding their own ships, sailing through the Dreamer naval blockade, and breaking through the naval blockade again as they moved their ships to nearby Dreamer ports.

Meanwhile, Dreamland's military performance on land had also been embarrassing. They had lost a war against the Play party in 4138, and then suffered tens of thousands more deaths from a plague that the Play army had spread to them.

Contact with the Matrix

In 4188, Dreamland's leading Dolphin Rider party surrendered control of their entire empire to the tiny but powerful Matrix army based in the nearby nation of Tata. The Matrix army consisted of only about 3,000 soldiers, but now had formal control of more than 500,000 Dreamer civilians. The Dreamers had surrendered in the hopes that the Matrixes wpuld help revive Dreamland's historically impressive military performance. The Matrixes opposed Moonshine, and therefore opposed the Tippers, but refused to commit a battalion to the unrelated western conflict. Thus, Dreamland had been defeated by their much smaller eastern neighbor, whose border they had earlier consciously left open in the belief that an invasion from Tata was unrealistic.

Nonetheless, within a decade, the Matrixes were distracted by internal affairs and pulled out of Dreamland.

Growth of the Kapa corporation

An umbrella corporation called Kapa (in full, Nobolē Kapa) arose and soon controlled much of Dreamland's economy. The kapa part of the name literally meant Teen Bone, with the understanding that teenagers were the backbone of its social network. (The name of the corporation could also be represented in English with a name like Teens for Tomorrow, though this is not a literal or even metaphorical translation of the native name.)

Kapa's founders had consciously modeled their new corporation after STW; although Dreamland did not have a large population of orphans or children seeking to run away from home, Kapa's membership was youth-oriented and soon enrolled much of Dreamland's teen population. Kapa was "cephalist", and thus anti-"sarabist". In the long term, these things also characterized the growing Bottom party (UPL) to the east.

The Teenbone corporation was a top-down enterprise owned and controlled by the Yukiese family, who did business only with customers who did not own weapons. Slowly over time, political parties declined in importance as they all came to either strongly oppose or strongly support the Kapa corporation.

Because Teenbone relied on an unarmed population to maintain their control, they demanded that Dreamland's armies destroy their weapons and relegate themselves to environmental cleanup duties. Because Teenbone knew that this would make Dreamland vulnerable to invasion, they allowed the navy to remain, a strategy that had been used long ago by the pacifist empire of Paba. This navy was also involved in trade, and therefore served the interests of Teenbone , as they relied on trade with foreign nations to bring in consistent profits. As a formality, Teenbone purchased the ships of the Dreamer navy, saying that this legitimized their control over Dreamland's trade and naval affairs. They also formally registered the Teenbone political party, forcing the Dolphin Riders to reorganize the government to give the Teenbones formal control.

Development of new political parties

Two-party system

The Teenbone party supported policies that strengthened their corporation. They thus supported unregulated capitalism, and the ability of corporations to draw funding from the government. They opposed representative democracy, knowing that in a truly democratic Dreamland, the common people could vote the Teenbones out of power. They opposed the right of the common people to own weapons, or to have a standing army. They also came to support feminism, believing a society led by women would be more peaceful and easier to control than a society led by men. This put them squarely at odds with Dreamlandic tradition, as they had been a masculine holdout in an increasingly feminist world.

In reaction, the Dolphin Riders came to support any position that weakened the Teenbones. Though the Riders had initially supported capitalism as well, they backed down and came to support sarabism, the practice of distributing weapons to the common population to protect them from harm.

The Teenbone leaders realized that, in empires to the east, a radical party had come to be seen as a moderate party by fostering the growth of an even more radical party to serve as a counterweight. They thus sought to create a third party in Dreamland favoring an even more extreme interpretation of traditional Teenbone policies such as feminism, pacifism, and capitalism.

Creation of new parties

But the Teenbones realized a potential benefit of the original Gold system: by creating more than one pro-Teenbone party, they could create the illusion of choice for the public, while herding opposition voters into a small number of parties, whose platforms would also contain a variety of pro-Teenbone policies, with no party permitted that opposed the entire Teenbone platform.

To create the appearance of legitimacy, the Teenbones began promoting and indirectly funding the Comb party which had opposed immigration in 4150. At the time, the Teenbone corporation had been unimportant, and the Combs had been at odds with the Dolphin Riders, but by the early 4200's the Riders and Combs had mended their ties, readmitted Susileme into Dreamland, and come to agree on important issues. (The Dolphin Riders had in fact opposed immigration before supporting it in this one instance.) Thus the anti-immigrant Comb party returned to power even though few people were interested in migrating to Dreamland any longer.

The Teenbones also restored the Hipsoft party to legal status, knowing that they were no danger to either the immigrants or to the Teenbones. They hoped Hipsoft would serve a role similar to Fayuvas' Seashell party, drawing in militants without any feasible means to carry out any threats. Although the descendants of the Tippers remained alive in Dreamland, the Teenbones hoped to push the Hipsofts into opposing other groups of people, in order to turn the militants against Dreamer society in general rather than just focusing on the immigrants.

The new Carriage party (āliki) was created to draw in loyal pacifists who supported an unarmed population but also opposed the Teenbone corporation's unrestricted growth. Thus, the Carriages supported wealth redistribution but not weapons redistribution, and would not arm their own members.

The new Pointer party (Pēbobi Lisuelesi) was created to control Dreamers who supported both unrestricted capitalism and an unarmed populace, but believed in a traditional male-led society. The Teenbones hoped that this party could serve a purpose similar to Fayuvas' Tadpole party, in that it could adopt positions which were even more extreme than Teenbones', except on the issue of feminism. It was the only party identifying itself as a pēbobi.

The Permission party was similar to the Pointers in that they also supported a male-led society and an unarmed populace, but also supported wealth redistribution like The Carriages.

For reasons of symmetry, the Teenbones also created the Butterfly party, which stood as a third feminist party supporting extremist positions like the Pointers. Thus both the Butterflies and the Pointers would make the Teenbone party seem moderate by comparison.

Minor parties

The Frame party also appeared.

Fayuvas

Note that there is no convenient way to represent the Play-language pun in English, as no English word rhymes with dream and yet also relates to the meaning of the empire's name in Play, roughly "thornland" or "sharpland". The founders were pacifists, originally from the Bottom party, who denied their members the ability to own weapons or armor, making them "soft" (nuufa), even as the rival parties around them remained heavily armed, and thus "sharp". The Play language distinguished between two words for softness: fubap describing something soft and thus flexible, and nuufa describing something easily cut or torn apart. As humans, the Bottoms realized that they were well described by both terms, but that the latter term was more relevant.

Dedication to pacifism

The founding Bottoms declared that pacifism could stand alone, and that they would win over the rival parties without violence; they promised even if they were slaughtered in their own homes by their enemies, the Bottoms would never carry weapons to defend themselves. They soon drafted a party platform denying their members the right to hunt animals or even uproot plants, saying that as humans they were meant to submit to nature rather than seeing themselves as part of nature.

Indeed, many Bottoms and other defenseless pacifists were abused and killed during the early decades of Fayuvas, though the violence was mostly disorganized, because the ruling Hailstorm army policed both their own members and those of any other groups that retained the right to carry weapons. The Bottoms had tried to survive without police, but on their own they had been unable to push out the other groups within their territories, and were forced to admit that their ideal of pacifism had a dangerous flaw.

Nonetheless, as the Bottoms ceded more and more control of their nations to the Hailstorm police force, the incidence of violent crime declined; the police ordered all citizens, not just the Dolls, to disarm and live in submission to nature; the police were exempt because they were not citizens of the Doll nations.

Žayuvas (Creamland)

Žayuvas got its name when the rebel Tink army invaded their ally, the Play party, and the Players responded that they would sooner ally with their historical enemy, Dreamland, than to make peace with the Tinkers. The Players' own party name had been a pun when first coined, and they were fond of puns even in wartime, so the name of their new empire came to be used in diplomacy and regarded as a legitimate name of the Play territory; nevertheless, they also called their territory Memnumu.

Like the Dreamers in Mayūas and the Hailstorms in Fayūas, the ruling Police faction took control of Žayūas and laid out long-term plans for their empire's stability. The Police were the ruling class of the Play party. Their empire's longstanding problems with poverty and education turned into an advantage: their people spoke many languages rather than one, and thus had access to much local knowledge, handed down for many generations, that was out of reach of all foreign empires. Although the Leapers had burned many books, others had survived. Furthermore, the Players had spread their own language far beyond their borders, and thus had access to knowledge of the happenings of the foreign empires as well.

The Player peasantry surrendered physical control of their empire to the Police, and like the Bottoms in Fayūas, disarmed their entire population. Unlike the Bottoms, however, the Players (dominated by a group calling themselves the Magic Combs) never wrote pacifism into their constitution, and still had the power to overrule the Police on some political issues provided that the Police respected their democratic process instead of ruling by brute force. The Magic Combs' native name was unrelated to that of Dreamland's contemporary Comb party.

Rather than relying on preexisting legal loopholes to overrule the majority as in Mayūas and Fayūas, the Police drafted a new constitution stating that while their empire would remain a democracy, the Police were entitled to five times as many representatives in Parliament, per capita, than the Magic Combs, and that therefore the Police would be stronger than the Combs for the foreseeable future. (Note that both the Police and the Combs apportioned representatives according to the size of the adult female population only.)

Evolution from factions to parties

The Play charter underlined the need for the Players to rule a one-party state; outside parties bring conflicting interests, they said, and therefore must be banned. The Players allowed an unlimited number of factions in their party, so long as these factions adhered to the beliefs laid out in the Play party's charter.

Over time, Play diplomats conceded that their party's factions were similar in many ways to the independent legal political parties of foreign nations, and that non-Play parties in Play territory were similar to what other nations referred to as illegal parties.

Party membership

The Police party restricted membership to adult females, and therefore maintained their membership only by relying on mixed marriages. This served as a check on their power, but also helped them keep control of other parties, since there would always be Police in the homes of the men of other parties such as the Combs. Because the first generations of Police were typically much taller than the people they ruled over, they preferred husbands who were taller than average for their tribe, and the resulting marriages led to the Combs becoming even shorter than they had been before; however, since only women could be police, the male children of these mixed marriages remained in the Comb party and therefore the height gap between the Police and their subjects gradually decreased.

Tribal conflicts

Background

Tribal conflicts returned suddenly to the Play nation around the year 4144. Though Memnumu had long been home to a diverse population, the strongly unitary Play ideology had taught the nation's young population to identify with their nation and not with their ancestry. Thus, the internal conflicts of the early Play party were about hygiene, food distribution, and issues that affected the nation as a whole.

However, the violently abusive Raspara party had always opposed tribalism, and had used this to explain their forced marriages to Play women during an invasion. Furthermore, a second invasion from the rebellious Tink army, who opposed tribalism as well, underscored the Players' negative feelings towards the concept of tribal harmony.

The new Play tribalists strongly opposed the Raspara, and stated that it was unnatural for a tribe like the Raspara, with such a strong and muscular body type, to live among the small, slender Players. Likewise, they also opposed the Tinks, even though the Tinks were closely related to the dominant tribes among the Players.

The tribalists also united in opposing the very tall Repilian tribes, even though Repilians had never been known for invading or abusing the ancestors of the Players. At this time, Repilians lived mostly in the far north but also had some territory in the mountains along the northern fringe of the Play-controlled territory, which obstructed the Players' paths to the northern reaches of the Anchor Empire.

Furthermore, the tribalists all agreed that they were part of the Play party, and therefore agreed to all of the core tenets of the Play party philosophy. Thus, even as the tribal divisions within the Players opposed each other, they remained more closely bound than breakaway factions led by teenage runaways such as the Flower Bees and the Rusted Pearls. They also served alongside each other in the Play army and navy, whose centralized structure prevented the consolidation of battalions along tribal lines. Because the military enrolled the entire adult male population, there was no feasible way for a tribe to raise an independent military of its own,

Nonetheless, scattered violent conflicts broke out between the Play tribes, mostly between groups of men, though women, in their duty as the nation's police, also committed acts of scattered violence.

Conflicting tribal definitions

Different tribalists disagreed on the boundaries of each tribe, and therefore had difficulty recruiting members. Most groups agreed that the majority of their nation's population was of Lenian ancestry, and that the Lenians had been traditionally defined by their trait of light skin, blonde hair, and blue eyes; but the Players were darker than most Lenians on average, as well as more internally diverse in appearance.

Many Play tribalists wanted to exclude the Palli-speaking tribes of the east on linguistic grounds, even though the Palli speakers had an even lighter skin and hair color than most Play and Andanese speakers. They produced racist propaganda describing Thaoa's Palli speakers as barely human, but did not mention their physical appearance, which they typically admired. Meanwhile, other Players considered the Palli speakers to be part of their own tribe after all, and said that it was the dark-haired Players near the capital whose membership was suspect.

Thus these new tribalists were fighting not only other tribes, but members of their own tribe who refused to organize along tribal lines.