Kava

This article is mostly about the historical kingdom. For the present day Kava, see Nama#Kava.

Kava is the name of a kingdom in the far southeast of Nama. Pavbwa is the name of a city settled by Subumpamese and Andanese-type people during a time in which Nama did not have control of the area. Its etymology is similar to "Baeba Swamp" and indeed it is a mostly a swamp. But it was the capital of a very powerful nation, Kava, during its time. Its people called it "Lun" rather than Pavbwa; their descendants embraced Naman culture when they were eventually overhwlemed, and then later on, Poswob cutlure when Poswobs began taking over Nama. They existed as Kava for a short time, roughly 3125 to 3348.

History

From the time of its founding in c 3125, the nation of Kava stood out from its neighbors. They were far more militaristic and their soldiers were individually far more brutal than those of other nations. After arriving in densely packed boats, they soon launched a genocidal war against the defenseless aboriginal Repilian people, who had been their traditional allies for over a thousand years. As the killing went on, the Kavans began importing slaves from southeastern Rilola to fill the jobs previously done by the people now in the military. After the killing was over, they kept importing slaves so they could have most of their work done for them and leave the day free for the ruling class. However, even during peacetime, military service was mandatory for non-slaves and began in early childhood.

After the massacre of the natives was over, they began massacring foreigners living further inland, and as they went, they promised protection for anyone of either the Andanese or the Subumpamese tribes, and held true to that promise: they conquered vast territories of land in the far north, killing entire populations as they replaced them with themselves, but they never harmed any of the smaller, weaker nations on their way that were of the same races as the Kavans. Individuals within those nations who attacked the Kavans were treated as criminals, but not war criminals.

Andanese people tended to live within other nations at this time, and those living in Subumpam were seen as "belonging to" the Subumpamese, but they also encouraged Andanese people living in nations outside Subumpam to join them. Thus, they hoped, even if the Andanese did not move to Kava, they could create angry "Kavan" minorities in nations all across the south coast, particularly the unstable and very violent city-state of Paba. The Kavan army won many battles against incredible odds.

Kava encouraged all Andanese and Subumpamese to simply join forces and call themselves Kavans, which many did. The blending of Andanese and Subumpamese families occasionally produced children with red hair, a trait that neither tribe had on its own even in tiny percentages. This is because the dark-haired Andanese had a hidden "red" gene, and the Subumpamese had many blonde people, who when given this gene develop red hair instead. This is similar to what happened later among the Pabap people. The Subumpamese were a typical tall-male tribe (norī), meaning that adult men were taller than women, as they had been all along, whereas the Andanese were tall-femaled (ṗătī). Thus, for males of both tribes, females of the opposite tribe seemed like a natural fit; they were about the same height as what the men would have expected among their own tribe. However, despite the strength and pride of Andanese culture, females of both tribes tended to prefer to marry strong tall adult men, which meant that the Andanese men would have a harder time finding a wife. The government of Kava tried to partially fix the problem by deliberately creating a shortage of males, especially Subumpamese males, by demanding long years of military service from all males and deliberately overrepresenting Subumpamese among those spending the longest periods of time away from home. However, on an individual level, the Andanese men were typically more interested in military service to begin with, to the point that some voluntarily chose celibacy if it meant they could rise to a position of power in the military. As war was seldom far, a soldier so wishing could simply abduct a female from the losing army and get whatever he wanted from her, but this did not happen often. Most of the aboriginal peoples the Kavans were fighting at this time were Repilians or Macro-Repilians, who were of a similar body type and sexual size dimorphism as the Andanese, but much taller in both sexes. This meant that adult Andanese men were waist-high measured against many of the women they were conquering, and, even given the traditional Andanese (and Repilian) preference for tall women, generally saw these potential pairings as inappropriate.

Andanese people traditionally favored an extremely rigid society, with very few people committing violent crime and strict punishments for whose who did. By contrast the Subumpamese culture had long been one of the world's most liberal and tolerant of diversity and disruption. However, Kavans were unusual because they originated as just a political subparty of the Subumpamese, lacking essentially all of the liberal traits of their parent nation and instead glorifying the strictly controlled society they developed in their new homeland. This preference for liberalism was largely due to their religion, and therefore was common wherever Subumpamese people lived. Thus, the Kavan army had to struggle with excessively non-violent Subumpamese people in the territories they conquered.

Views on gender roles and politics

As above, the blending of a unanimously tall-male and a unanimously tall-female tribe created difficult social situations that even the strict Kavan government struggled with. Although Andanese people were generally obedient, they enjoyed friendly fighting, and because their men and boys were so much smaller than their females, they considered it OK for a man to fight a woman, and surprising if the man was not injured more severely than the woman. The Subumpamese found the idea of men beating up women to be intolerable, despite the obvious fact that in these cases the man was by far the weaker party. The government passed a resolution stating that gender simply didn't matter, and whoever was stronger would be punished if they took advantage of the weaker party. But this did not change the culture, which considered women the weaker sex even when they were physically stronger. This was because even in the mixed society, women being beaten by stronger men was considered worse than men beaten by stronger women. Also, women beating up men other than in self-defense was rare. In the Ogili society 5000 years later, a similar situation occurred, but their government was not strict enough to be able to take any action; rape and wife-beating exploded upwards as the "no problem, we women can defend ourselves" Moonshine and Poswob people entered society.

Even though Kava made no apologies for the genocide of Repilians, or even the ongoing killings of Repilians in the deep north, it was considered fashionable in the Kavan Empire to have Repilian ancestry. This is not a matter of being a "strong survivor" of the genocide, but simply due to the belief that Repilians have attained magical powers through their religion that Andanese and Subumpamese cannot ever attain. Remnants of this admiration outlasted the formal Kavan Empire by thousands of years, leading to reduced resistance when the Repilian-like Poswob people began slowly dripping down from their settlements in the high mountains.

Later history

The Kavan empire did not last long enough for significant intermarriage to create a single Kavan race, but after their eventual defeat, immmigration into Kava was very rare, even after they adopted the language of their neighbors, and so the people known as Kavans for the next 5000 years were increasingly homogeneous. People from Kava founded the nation of Meromo in 3348.

Religion

Sisnasi is the native religion to Subumpam, and reached majority status among Kavans when Subumpam took over Kava, and remained after Subumpam fell. Nevertheless, minority religions do exist:

Sàŋhʷṁi (Saumfuma in Bābākiam) was predominant among Andanese people, as it was wherever else they went. The Kavan leadership did not see this as a problem because their own native religions had always been allies of the Andanese.

Sĕyepa was brought over by immigrants from the Star Empire, and was never welcome amongst the Kavans, but nevertheless a small minority remains.

Yiibam is the native religion in Bābākiam at this time, and is also not welcome in Kava, but persists in the shadows among people who have blended in with the physically similar Subumpamese people but are actually Pabaps.

Kâ is another religion brought in from Nama.

Language

Kava has always been linguistically complicated. Their home province had a language called Pisi, which was similar to Subumpamese but not particularly closely related; they simply evolved similar characteristics because they were neighbors. Later, as Subumpam blew up from a state into an empire, the Subumpamese language spread into Kava, and Kavans began thinking of themselves as Subumpamese people. The indigenous Pisi language was still the first language of most native Kavans, however, even at the peak of Subumpam's power.

Later, the Subumpamese Empire fell and its people were dominated by a series of outside nations. Even though Kava had declared independence from Subumpam in its waning days, foreigners also subjugated Kava, since it was an even more advantageous location than the rest of Subumpam had been. Many Kavans tried to learn the languages of these invaders, but they were mostly Namans, who were an alliance of nations with no common language or culture. Still, the Khulls language was the preferred language amongst these leaders when they needed to communicate with each other, and Kavans began to study Khulls in the hopes that they might someday be granted at least a tiny portion of the power of their dominators.

From its earliest days, many Andanese people also moved into Kava, and passed their language down for many generations. Andanese people in Kava actually developed two languages, one that was their primary first language and "main branch Andanese" used for book learning and spoken primarily further east where most Andanese people lived.

Lastly, Kava also absorbed waves of Babakiam speakers from Paba. This is the same language that later became Pabappa. Pabaps moved into Kava primarily as political refugees, and blended in with the Subumpamese. This was not very common, though, as the leadership of Kava made it clear from an early date that Pabaps were not welcome amongst them, as their religion demanded absolute allegiance to Paba and its gods, and even those Pabaps who formally converted still generally believed in the gods of Paba.

Most Kavans spoke Andanese out of necessity to communicate with Andanese people living in other nations, as they felt their power would grow more quickly if they relied on a small people living in many nations (Andanese) as opposed to a large people living in just one (Subumpamese). However, it was never the official language of the Empire. There was a native Kava language, grown from a branch of the Gold language near to Subumpamese and strongly influenced by Babakiam. Thus, their language was "soft" and not very intimidating, unlike their very violent society.

Today Kavans have maintained their distinct culture for over 5000 years, but have adopted Poswa fully as their only language, even going so far as to rename their historical leaders with Poswob names.

Government

Kava uses a plutocratic system of government, which means that money is the basis of power. All citizens with money thus have governmental power, proportional to the amount they have. Voting rights begin very early: upon reaching the age of five, all Kavan citizens are allotted a bank account with 100 dét in it, which they are allowed to spend however they wish. For comparison, a meal in a restaurant often costs about 5 to 10 dét and a one-night stay in a hotel might cost about 50 dét. On the other hand, items which people might want much of have government-enforced inflated prices: a piece of candy might cost 100 dét and a visit to the park may be in the thousands.

A political party named the Bubbles was represented here, but not actually native. Rather, it is a pro-Paba party based in Paba, which argued that Kava should expand its protection eastward into Pabap territory where a lot more violence was occurring.

Voting

Voting is an everyday activity in Kava; Kavan citizens are expected to put politics first and the rest of their lives second. For children, voting is done in school. Adults may go to any of many polling places at whatever time of day is convenient for them; Kavans tend to work short hours, so they may spend as much time in a polling building as at work. More than 60% of Kava consisted of slaves (who could neither vote nor own money), so the short work hours of Kavans did not put a strain on the economy.

Kavans exercise their power by voting for propositions, not candidates. Each vote costs 1 dét to cast, but any person may put as many votes on a particular bill as he wishes. Thus a citizen who feels very strongly about an issue may choose to divert most of his personal fortune toward it while mostly or entirely ignoring issues that don't matter. This ensures that the outcome of bills will not be swayed by apathetic and uneducated voters voting simply and arbitrarily.

Citizens do also vote for candidates for various governmental positions, but the "offices" held by these people are merely administrative in nature, and do not give them any more power over the voting process. Nor are they paid positions. Incumbents in office can only be replaced by a younger candidate or one over the age of 50.

Money

Kava's national currency is the dét. The economy is entirely centrally planned, with no private business at all. This allows the government to set prices on every item, lowering the prices of necessary items to zero or near zero and making luxury items extremely expensive.

Upon reaching the age of 45, or when their eldest child reaches the age of 15, citizens are required to give up all their money to their children. If they have no children, they must choose some other citizen to give their money to. Afterward, they are allowed to earn money and vote again, but they must start from zero. Often, a parent will start giving large sums of money to their children even earlier than this, since if the child starts getting money earlier he can multiply it and therefore earn more money even faster (false). Any citizen can give up any amount of his money to any other citizen at any time. The most common form of voluntary transfer is from a parent to their child. Thus much power is in the hands of the young, and Kava tends to be forever on the brink of a radical revolution led by inexperienced but powerful minds.

Abuses

The Kavan system lent itself to some early abuses. Even though the Kavan system encouraged people to be independent, organizations of people with similar political ideals formed and pooled their money, and then required all of the members of the organization to vote the same way on all issues. The members would then all vote for each other for various offices, forming a solid political entity that could not easily be outvoted. If anyone decided to take action against the organization, members could simply hide themselves and have one person volunteer to give up all his money to the other members and then take all of the blame, leaving the organization as rich as it was before.

Often, these organizations would create schools, and invite parents of like mind to send their children into the school to be educated in the political ideals of the organization. This lent a small additional benefit due to the fact that it was legally harder to take money from a child than from an adult; thus money grew slightly faster when it was in the hands of the extremely young, even if they were not allowed by their parents to actually spend it.

Children and the disabled were often robbed of their money by others who, although they could not spend the money they stole (because it was marked), sought to reduce the political power of their opponents. Eventually multiple banks had to be set up where people could keep their money and carry only small amounts with them, but this prevented people from voting as often as they would desire.

Defeat of the Empire

When they finally went down, they were defeated by a power several hundred times what they themselves had been 200 years earlier. This set off a wave of militarism in the area that lasted another 1400 years. Kava remained a fairly militaristic culture during this 1400 years, but they had submitted to their conqueror, Nama, and were thus on the opposite side of their ancestors. However, Nama was in a state of rapid decline as a world power now, because the population density had shifted further northward, and Nama was walled off from the north by the world's tallest mountain range. Instead Nama remained essentially a regional power, controlling at best only itself and the trade that went through its sea from the two empires on either side of Nama. Surrounding empires began biting off pieces of Nama, eventually leaving only a rump state comprised of the most inaccessible parts. They retained more than half of their coastline, however, so even Nama at its worst was still in a fairly advantageous location.

Today Kava considers itself to be just another Poswob district, though with a traditional Naman type of government, and its people are just as pacifistic as other Poswobs. It has a multiparty government, with minority parties being given extra power to oppose the majority.

Other information

It should be noted that even at the height of its power, Kava was not universally seen as evil. Even its enemies admired the fact that children in Kava voluntarily went to school, rather than having to be held there by the cooperation of their teachers and their parents. One incident recalled thousands of years later commemorates a group of children about 5 years old who walked to their school, found it closed, and walked three miles downhill through the woods to a school in another town so that they could complete their schoolwork. All of this happened with pre-modern technology which was primitive even compared to the other nations around them. Kava today strives to still be a place where children go to such lengths when necessary to get their education, and wholesome enough that children can walk through deep woods without fear of being adbucted. The name of these children was given as Tačês in Khulls, Takīs in Babakiam, Tačas in proto-Subumpamese, and Tačibas in Kavan.

Kavan soldiers could not vote; neither could Wamian and Vasabadian guest laborers. The only way a child could give money to an older person is by assassination (money goes to parents or godparents). Even murder is legal, because there are no crimes; punishment is decided on by votes instead of by jury.

More than half of the population consists of slaves; the slaves work much harder than other Kavans and are not paid for it. They are generally, but not always, people imported from the southeast of Rilola. Kavans tell their slaves that they should be proud to be part of such a powerful nation and that being a slave in Kava is better than being a free man anywhere else.