Dreamland

Dreamland was a nation founded in the northwestern corner of the continent of Rilola by immigrants from the islands of Laba.

Language

The language was closely related to that of its enemy Kava. The proper name for their shared proto-language is Meromo. It has many loanwords from Pejo, and Pejo itself was spoken by some of the early settlers.

Phonology and diachronics

NOTE, try to evolve a "Nomisitamīlina" type phonology here (that is, mostly or entirely CV, with vowel length, and with an /l/ and a mostly polynesian-type setup otherwise). Unless it's Kava that has that.

Since dreamland was a mix of fun and labans,it can be that the phonology was the intersection of kava & laban .

Thus e.g. all sibs>s,labs>b/p,etc

Consonants of proto-Dreamlandic

Labials:       /p b m f β w/
Alveolars:     /t d n s z/
Postalveolars: /č ǯ ñ š j ž/
Velars:        /k ŋ/

Note that /ŋ/ was realized as nasalization of the preceding vowel except before a stop consonant, in which case it assimilated to that consonant. Thus, the sound [ŋ] is actually very rare.

Unlike the closely related Kava, the voiced stops /b d ǯ/ were preserved. However, there was no corresponding voiced velar stop /ġ/.

Vowels of proto-Dreamlandic

/a e i o u/

There is a four-way contrast of à/ă/ā/á for tones, although á is rare.

Early depalataization

The palatals /č ǯ ñ š ž/ changed to /k d ŋ f v/ before the back vowel [u], and to the coronals /t d n s z/ elsewhere. This new /ŋ/ was a true sound, unlike the old ŋ which merely nasalized the preceding vowel, even between two vowels. However, this new sound proved more stable, and the only ŋ also became a true velar nasal. Note that the /f/ above can be considered a variant of |h| but that this language simply did not have an /h/.

Further changes

/f/ > /h/ in most positions, possibly sometimes to /p/.

Then, /β/ > /v/ unconditionally. (Possibly a spelling change for convenience, not a true sound change.) Due to Laban influence, possibly sometimes to /b/.

Any remaining tones or tone residues are smothered here, leaving only vowel length. Long vowels may be spelled double (think of "Peepa" etc) rather than with macrons as in other languages, but this is a stylistic choice rather than a feature of the language itself.

Further growth

There will be little further growth here, as the formation of Dreamlandic may have been as late as 3700 AD, which is only a few hundred years from their participation in wars against their larger neighbors such as Anzan. The language used for names in the stories can therefore be assumed to be equivalent to the proto-language rather than a daughter of it.

NOTE: It's possible that this language will fill a void left by the removal of Ogili and Ogili II from the storyline. If so, it is because, although Anzan conquered ~80% of Dreamland, the original Dreamlandic language survived in the other 20% and then spread back outward, probably dividing into various daughter languages as it did so.

Geography and climate

Climate

Dreamland is oriented primarily east-to-west, but with a slight tilt that puts the eastmost cities at higher latitudes than the west. As a whole, Dreamland stretches from 17°N to 35°N and from 32°W to 3°W.

Temperature

Latitude has little influence on temperature in Dreamland; the climate of any given city is determined primarily by its location with respect to the seas and mountain ranges that define the terrain of Dreamland.

Cities south of the peaks of the mountains experiences southerly winds year-round, with no significant wet season. The air is very humid because of the influence of the wide but shallow Sea of Baeba to the south, but rain is uncommon. Irregular tropical storms provide much of the rainfall to coastal areas. Temperatures are warm in winter and very hot in summer.

Inland summer temperatures are even hotter: as hot as those of deep-inland locations such as Lypelpyp, and considerably more humid, thus giving Dreamland a claim to the world's hottest summers, about level with those of inland areas in AlphaLeap, Taryte, and the desert of Dahàwu. The capital of Dreamland, Fakadàne, is founded on an inland lake surrounded by small mountains. Here, the summer temperatures are the same as Lypelpyp's, but the humidity is much higher; during winter, the temperatures are much warmer than Lypelpyp's and never fall below freezing.

Along the north coast, the wind can blow from any direction in any season, and the wind direction determines the type of weather experienced. Yet, frost is entirely unknown in winter even at the highest latitudes along the north coast. This is in sharp contrast to locations further east at the same latitude, where frost occurs on more than half of the winter nights and snow is common for several months of the year. During the summer, the temperatures equal or exceed those of deep-inland forested locations such as Blop, with maritime cooling being limited to offshore islands and a few scattered headlands with long west-facing shorelines. The temperatures along the north coast are not as hot as those in the desert locations mentioned above, but they are still fairly humid, so even the north coast of Dreamland is known for its oppressively hot summers.

Even in the highest mountains, winter temperatures are still mild, since there is no source of cold air nearby. However, summer temperatures are considerably cooler in the highlands than along the coasts due to the thick cloud cover and very frequent rainfall. Thus the coolest areas of Dreamland have the most vegetation and, often, the healthiest wildlife populations.

Rainfall

As above, the coastal areas of Dreamland never experience frost, even in the extreme north at 35° latitude. The far north experiences a short rainy season during the late winter, but for most of the year remains dry. There is no summer monsoon, so the rest of Dreamland is relatively arid all year long, despite a high relative humidity. However, rainfall is common along the south slopes of the mountains, and in winter, also some of the north slopes. Thus, lakes and rivers provide Dreamers plenty of water to build cities to live in, and tropical agriculture is possible.

Wildlife and natural threats to humans

Dreamland's climate is ideal for human habitation. However, it is among the least densely populated areas of the planet for humans because it is also the ideal climate for many species that prey on humans.

Firebirds

Chief among these is the firebird, a close relative of the seagull which in recent evolutionary history evolved from a fish-based diet to a diet consisting almost entirely of land animals, including humans.

Firebirds cannot digest hair, so their choice of land prey is limited to humans, preferably those wearing loose,skimpy clothes. Pigs have sharp teeth here and thus do not make easy prey. Humans have ounterattcked the firebirds by building large cities, in whi b the humans can fight the firebirds by swarming, but the success rAte is still very low. These cities are most on the coast where easy prey in the form of fish is also available for both humAns and firebirds.

Firebirds are ambush predators, preferring to remain out of sight, hidden by shelter or other natural formations, and then swoop on a human from behind. They prefer to dive on a human from above at maximum speed, push the human to the ground, and then incapacitate the human by biting off a hand or other vulnerable body part. By this time, in most cases, the human has already suffered rapid blood loss from the impact of the bird's beak cutting into their body at high speed, and further resistance from the human tends to be weak.

Because their first attack is almost invariably to bite off the human's right hand, humans' defense is limited to small, one-handed weapons that are little threat to firebirds. In most cases, the human will bleed to death from their rapidly accumulated wounds without effectively fighting back against the firebird, but if the human is able to counterattack, or strong enough to stand up and flee, the firebird can quickly retreat to safety and attempt a second attack when its human prey is further weakened by blood loss and other injuries.

Other land predators

Firebirds mostly stay close to the seacoast despite their diet, as the high temperatures of the interior in summer will quickly exhaust them. But humans are not safe inland either because the interior of Dreamland is home to several other predators who hunt humans, such as pigs, desert wolves, and wildcats. There are also eagles, who hunt humans in a very similar manner to the firebirds near the coast, but humans are not their preferred prey.

Animal attacks at sea

Off the north coast of Dreamland, humans are even more vulnerable, because they are preyed upon by sharks and other fish, as well as, to a lesser extent, by seals and other aquatic mammals. Firebirds are also known to travel miles out to sea, using their keen eyesight to spot humans on their watercraft from the distant shore. However, the ocean is also the primary food source for humans in Dreamland, even those living far inland, and therefore humans on boats are keenly aware of their predators and will put up a ferocious struggle to survive an attack by any of the aforementioned animals. Dreamers generally build themselves large boats with sheltered areas into which they can retreat should they be attacked by a firebird. Seals generally hunt by ramming their bodies through the lower deck of the humans' boats, to which the human response is to use their fishing spears to fight back against the seal.

Humans as prey of pack animals

Most of the predators of humans are solitary hunters, and will attack humans at their most vulnerable: when they are alone, and generally when they are unarmed. However, firebirds have been known to attack in flocks as well, in which dozens or even hundreds of firebirds will simultaneously descend on a human city and carry out the same types of attacks they use when they attack one-on-one. Generally, each bird will alternate between stages of actively attacking and resting on top of buildings, out of humans' reach. A mass firebird attack can last for an entire day. The birds on the buildings keep watch for the others, and will attack any humans attempting to flee. Because a human attempting to flee has a reduced ability to defend themselves, these people are the most vulnerable and the most likely to die in a mass attack. Humans who stick together have a better survival rate in these battles, even though they are likely to face multiple firebirds attacking them from all directions. Humans always cluster together in circles where each individual faces outward, meaning that firebirds can only attack them from the front, where they are stronger and better able to protect themselves. Here, sometimes two birds will attack the same human, usually with one biting off the arms or hands and the other attempting to break or otherwise disable their legs and feet. When this happens, the humans who are free for the moment will attempt to grab onto the wings of each bird and pull them off of the other human. Since this requires the use of both hands, this leaves the humans open to attack from behind from another bird, and in some cases chains of birds and humans biting and grasping each other will form long lines or even loops as each animal tries to get the better of the other.

Politics and government

Founding and early history

Dreamland was founded in 3373 by settlers from the islands of Laba who spoke only the Pejo language and had been completely isolated from the wars and politics of the mainland for thousands of years. Dreamland was an explicitly political nation: rather than being founded on the basis of membership in a particular tribe or belief in a particular religion, people living in Dreamland were made to agree to certain political beliefs.

The dark-skinned Pejo people partnered with the typically blonde, blue-eyed Meromo people local to the area to form a new nationality, Gãm, in which people of all races and religions would live in harmony and cease all internal conflicts and wars. The Gãm leaders announced a new constitution prohibiting the use of the army except for defensive wars. The new society was named Dreamland and consisted of preexisting settlements along the north shore of the peninsula around Baeba Swamp.

After a few months in Dreamland, the Gãm leaders launched an all-out war against the Crystals, whom they said were frustrating the Gãms' attempt to build a society of racial harmony. They declared that nobody of the Crystal race would be allowed to enter Dreamland, and conversion would be forbidden. Since the Crystals' capital city, Baeba, lay only a few hundred miles away from Dreamland, the Dreamer military generals realized that Dreamland was in fact fighting a defensive war, because if they did not invade and conquer Baeba Swamp, the Crystals might one day in the future be able to mount a counterattack against Dreamland.

Early subdivisions

Shortly after its founding, the Dreamers divided their nation into six states. These corresponded loosely to six preexisting Crystal nations which they had taken over. Dreamland considered itself a single nation, but its constituent states had more independence than did the states of the nations of the other empires.

Latiki War

In 4132, Dreamland declared war against the famine-struck empire of AlphaLeap. AlphaLeap had recently moved its capital to the ancient city of Paba, whose population consisted largely of young children whose parents had starved to death or been killed in recent wars and natural disasters. When theses children learned they were being invaded, they surrendered 90% of their empire to the Dreamers, and stated that they would only fight back if the Dreamers decided to also invade the remaining 10%, which contained Paba and some other important cities.

The Dreamer generals celebrated their hard-fought victory over the starving children of AlphaLeap, but considered it dishonorable to invade a country and not finish the job. Therefore, they decided that they would indeed invade Paba and fight it out in the streets against the local peasants. The Pabaps had been expecting this, however, and learned of the continued invasion beforehand by communication from trade routes. They evacuated most of the Pabap countryside, leaving the farms barren throughout the harvest season. Instead, farmers retreated to the southern coast, which still had a plentiful supply of fish so long as the people were willing to sail great distances out to sea. Paba itself remained settled, however, and the Pabaps expected that a great battle would soon take place there.

First combat

Paba had long been a strong proponent of pacifism. However, when AlphaLEAP had taken over their empire and relocated its capital there, they integrated the Pabaps into the wider Leaper military and developed a more conventional military policy. But the reputation for Paba's poor performance in past military conflicts had spread, and the Dreamer generals told their soldiers that Paba would fall easily to an invasion unless the Pabaps were able to call in soldiers from those areas of the empire that had been ceded to Dreamland upon the original declaration of war. Since Dreamland had already occupied much of this territory, and seen that the cities were mostly still populated, they concluded that Paba likely had not been able to draw in many soldiers from these areas, and that their original prediction of an easy war would be correct. Furthermore, as they realized that Paba had a very young population, they realized the city of Paba itself would be likely overrun by orphaned children who would surrender to any soldier willing to adopt them.

Although it was true that Paba had relatively few adult males, and that they had not been able to call in many of the adults from the ceded areas of their Empire to fight, the Pabap generals were nevertheless able to field a conventional army consisting of adult male soldiers to wait for the invading Dreamers at a safe distance from Paba's city center. They also constructed a second front near the coast, figuring that the Dreamers, who were also a seagoing people, knew that Paba's food supply relied on the ocean and that, if the Dreamers pushed the Pabaps off the coastline, both civilians and soldiers would starve.

The Pabap army put up stiff resistance, such that the Dreamers were unable to break through and reach Paba itself. More Pabaps than Dreamers were dying in this war, but most Pabap casualties were due to disease and continuing struggles with finding food, since the soldiers' supply of food from the sea was unreliable.

Latiki counter-invasion

After six years of war, the Dreamers still had not yet sieged Paba. Without formally admitting defeat, the Dreamer generals began to pull back their soldiers and focus on building new Dreamer settlements in the countryside that the Pabaps had surrendered to them at the beginning of the war. But they also suspected a counterattack was coming, and that the target would be Dreamland itself rather than its colonies, since the Dreamer military had been largely excused through the six years of war.

The counterattack was led by a group of Pabaps calling itself the Latiki party. Throughout its long history, Paba had always been a monarchy, and political parties had never existed until they were conquered by AlphaLeap, which allowed only the Leaper party to hold power and considered political parties to be synonymous with nations. But now for the first time, dissent had arisen within a nation, and Paba had two political parties.

The Latiki party rejected pacifism and stated that Paba was now a military champion and could seek its own interests rather than forever being subservient other, more violent empires as they had throughout their history. They decided to launch a direct invasion of Dreamland, exactly mirroring Dreamland's invasion of Paba six years earlier. They restored Paba's claim to all of the land that they had earlier ceded, and claimed that they would reconquer it back for Paba after they had first defeated the home nation of Dreamland.

As the Latiki army roved towards the north, they faced some resistance, both from the Dreamers and a few citizens who had decided to side with the Dreamers. The strongest of these was the small nation of Puap (Pwâet), located in the region of Subumpam. However, the Puap army decided to spare Paba and instead attack the tail of the Latiki army that was heading towards Dreamland. They thus stated that they were not declaring war against Paba, but against the Latiki political party, and that Puap considered itself loyal to Paba.

Latiki-Leaper relations

The Dreamers soon learned that Paba's young population had become even younger, with the median age of many Pabap cities in the single digits. This was due to many factors: the war, the famine, and the tradition among Pabaps to put the lives of children ahead of their parents', even if it meant orphanhood for the survivors. With children left to fend for themselves, Paba collapsed into pestilential conditions and the intensity of the famine increased even as the weather began to turn in their favor. Disease coursed through the population, killing many of the orphans who no longer had doctors to care for them.

To compensate for the drastically reduced population of able-bodied adults, Paba's ruling Leaper party instituted child labor, with a focus on personal hygiene in order to reduce disease and dispose of waste. Earlier, hygiene had been abandoned, with Pabap nurses simply throwing dirty diapers into a pile in the middle of each city, figuring that local animals would take care of the problem over time. THe Leapers realized that it would be cruel to force children to work, but that it was far less cruel than putting them into the army, and that both the army and the civilian labor force were necessary to keep a nation's population alive and healthy.

But the local government of Paba, which consisted entirely of women and children, refused to institute child labor, and became increasingly loyal to the militant Latiki party, claiming that the Leapers had merely made Paba the latest in a long series of societies which the Leapers had victimized. Since the Latiki party had launched an invasion of Dreamland, the army was now also loyal to the Latiki party, which meant that the Leaper government was no longer able to enforce its rule in Paba.