Šima

THe Šìma are a collection of tribes of Khulls ancestry that live in the Poswob Empire. They are stereotytpically associated with bananas, despite living in temperatre climates with no easy access to the tropics.

Language

The Sima language is very conservative compared to its relatives. The phonology of Khulls was highly unstable, and unlike Moonshine, Ogili, Sarapios, etc, which all changed it rapidly into something completely different, the basic topple-prone structure of both the vowels and consonants is mostly intact in Sima. However, the inventories are noticeably smaller. There are no labialized consonants, no ejective consonants, no long vowels, no pharyngealized vowels, and no new phonemes of any kind.

It is less subhuman-sounding than its ancestor Khulls, but still stereotyped nevertheless as an extremely guttural and aggressive language. "Everyone speaks Sima when they're pooping in a field" is a common example of stereotype.

Culture

Šìma people are aggressive and boastful of their status as slaveholders in the Poswob Empire, and their lack of empathy for the abuses they inflict on the Poswob slaves. The United Pacifist Treaty, signed about five thousand years ago, gives the Sima (and any other Khulls-descended tribe) unrestricted rights to rule the Poswob territories forever, and to use Poswobs as slaves. The treaty gives the slaveholders power far beyond what the original authors of the treaty had ever intended. The Šìma are the people whose abuses go even go beyond that, and largely consist of people who are unwelcome in their own home country because of their crimes, or because of political or religious exile status. Sima do not share a common ancestry beyond being Khulls (a very large category), but they do share a common language because they need to closely cooperate with each other in order to survive. By mutual agreement, anyone not learning the Sima language is not considered a Sima.

For example, a group of mostly Amadean and Safizian Khulls people named the Ghosts of Comfort was expelled from Amade for their beliefs. To survive, they massed together and rode over the mountains into Pusapom. Here they took control of a previously mostly-free town along a narrow point of a river, forcing the population to build it up into a large city, and install floating waypoints along the river so they could collect tolls from any Poswobs wishing to pass through. Although the Treaty doesnt dforbid this, it had been common practice for the preceding 5000 years that slaveowners are generally not allowed to take money from slaves, either their own slaves or anyone else's, because any money a slave manages to create after fulfilling the work of his master is considered inalienable. The Crystals in Safiz consider taxing slaves to be a crime even when it happens in another country, but cannot feasibly do anything about it because the Ghosts, like most other Khulls tribes, built their city so deep inside the Poswob Empire that it would be a dangerous journey just for the Safizians to get there.

Later, these same settlers declared

We will at last overcome our oppressors, having endured the unspeakable horrors of our enemies' endless abuse of our efforts to work relentlessly to set things right.

They considered Poswobs to be oppressors because Poswob civilians had massed along the border of between the Poswob state of Popypobbem and the Khulls state of Safiz, as they were told to do in the wording of a treaty. They were using themselves to try to stop the Ghost army from attacking the nearby nation of Safiz, which was for the most part an ally of Pusapom despite being the home of many of the most abusive slaveholders. The Ghosts solved the problem by slaughtering the entire Poswob population of Popypobbem as they passed through, compensating the slavemasters by contributing some newly captured slaves as replacements. However, their victory against the unarmed Poswobs was beset by a decisive loss against the heavily armed people of Safiz, and Safiz finished them off by riding uphill and taking control of their fortress city.

Geography

Sima people prefer to live far away from the other Khulls nations, since for the most part, the Khulls nations are far more intimidating to the Sima than a potential slave revolt is. They also realize that these nations would refuse to repatriate escaped Poswob slaves to them.

Furthermore, the SIma generally avoid mountainous areas and areas that are cold or thinly settled. Lastly, they avoid the national capital, Blop, and most other large cities that have a previously existing power structure, be it headed by Poswobs or a different tribe of Khulls people. Thus they have what they call the Kòro, a collection of territories in the west-central part of Pusapom. For ease of administration, they respect the Poswob state boundaries and have not tried to redraw them.

The Sima consider it their duty to keep the rich natural resources of the land from reaching the Poswobs, but they allow some "free" areas in each territory they administer to remain. For the most part, these are swampy or mountainous areas which have few natural resources. Poswobs are not allowed to leave the slave plantations, but when it happens, Sima are entitled to buy a new slave rather than attempt to track down the escapee. Generally, the life of an escapee is even worse than the life of a slave, so the Sima tell Poswobs they are protecting them from the dangers of nature.

History

The Sima are not just a mass of peoples who got together and created a new identity; the name, howeever, is new. There was an original Šìma tribe, native to the south coast of Nama, that mostly abandoned their small, tropical, seaside kingdom around the year 6150 and began building slave plantations in the Poswob heartland. These people called themslves Kàtisigo. They worked their way northwards very slowly, and began absorbing the incoming waves of people from the north and west when they realized that their way of life could be in danger and needed to buy allies even if they were otherwise untrustworthy foreigners.

The original Kàtisigo kingdom still survives, but does not practice slavery and does not generally participate in politics outside its immediate geographic neighbors. When Nama was invaded in the late 7700s, Kàtisigo did not fight back, because they considered the invaders to be enemies of the Poswobs rather than enemies of themselves. Nonetheless, the Poswob army never rescued them, and they still retain their coastline but no longer have complete control of their economy.