STW

Save the World (STW) was an organization founded in Altotta by a man named The Cold Sword in the autumn of 3915. They were famous for being very wealthy, seemingly perpetually turning poverty into riches wherever they were found. They owned restaurants and other stores, and openly charged customers far higher prices than the label price for the items they sold, but customers kept coming back. This was partly because STW had achieved monopolies on many of the items they sold, and partly because some customers hoped to reach the inner circle of STW's power structure at which the prices were actually lower than advertised. They took their power from the native Thunder people (Altottan citizens are called Thunderers, although this is the name of the primary political party, not an ethnic name.)

STW was notable for thriving on increasing immigration into Altotta, which had in 3886 been taken over by the Thunderers, a strongly racist political party that despised all outsiders. STW promised to despise outsiders just as strongly, but they had a different definition of who the outsiders were.

name

Also known as *primer ordo mundi*, but used mostly derisively by antis who thought stw was taking a role itdidn't deserve.

Business model

See Kava for background information.

STW used slavery both directly and indirectly to achieve its otherwise unbelievable gains. They invited slaves living in Subumpam and Lobexon, which had not long ago been the economic powerhouses of the planet, to move to Altotta and work for STW.

They sold the items the slaves produced at high prices, and charged customers even higher prices than what they advertised. A pineapple sitting on a shelf might be labeled as costing 500 dét, but when the customer picked it out the cashier would tell her that it actually cost 1500 dét. Another customer behind her might get the same pineapple for 550 dét, depending on the cashier's whims; all of the power was in the hands of the cashiers. Some customers placed their orders and paid, then waited patiently only to be told that STW had decided to move on to the next customer and not fulfill their first customer's order. THen they would be forced to walk out empty handed or pay a second time and hope to get their food sometime before sunset.

Other things STW was notable for included raising the price in the middle of a transaction "It just went on sale for five times as much!" etc And having cashiers argue with each other over what the price of an item should be. One cashier was allowed to file a dispute with another for not overcharging a customer enough, in the middle of a transaction, and force that cashier to raise her prices. Sometimes, a cashier would yell out a number, and the customer was required to pay the cashier an additional fee of that many dét if they wanted to be allowed to continue the transaction.

Coupon Heaven

As above, though, an inner circle of loyal customers were granted the coveted privilege of getting their products for prices that were actually lower than the shelf label prices. None of the customers knew what they needed to do to get this privilege, nor were they told what the secret was once they had been granted it. These people became very powerful in their society, since they could buy things for their friends at low prices, and STW allowed them to resell their merchandiese. In towns where STW approached monopoly status, the resellers with the discount privilege became very rich, and most chose to make power-shopping their career, collecting the royalties from their secondhand customers. STW allowed this because even the reduced prices were still usually profitable for STW, and the large purchases of the resellers guaranteed them high profits. STW reserved the right to revoke the discount privilege if a reseller attempted to open an actual physical store with preowned STW merchandise in it, or was seen buying goods at low prices for an immigrant from the hated empire of Dreamland or one of STW's individual enemies.

STW called its rival businesses "the Empire" and stated that Altottans should shop at STW because it was a political organization opposed to the monopoly on power held by the government of Altotta. STW claimed that governments should have rivals within their own nation in order to keep them from becoming too corrupt. STW claimed to be interested in expanding worldwide, but had bases only in Altotta. Often, STW placed their stores near rival stores with lower prices but poor selection, and then claimed to be superior.

STW store managers often robbed rival stores, but generally restricted these actions to stores run by immigrants, particulaly Dreamers, because they knew that the public opinion of STW would turn sharply negative if they were seen attacking their real enemy, the ruling class of the native Thunderers. Also, Crystals were generally welcome in STW, and their businesses were not targeted. STW was using the same plrralistic strategy that Kava had been born from almost 1500 years earlier. The original Kavans, called the Hinku, were openly racist against all of their enemies, but they themselves were diverse internally because they allowed all of the tribes of the Subumpamese Union, plus all of the Pabaps and all of the Andanese, to call themselves Hinku, and therefore claimed that "Hinku" people were being oppressed in nations where any of those people had become established. THis strategy had worked well, because even though the Subumpamese, the Pabaps, and the Andanese did not have a lot of things in common, there were never any major wars between any of those three groups, and even though they had not previously considered themselves allies, it was easy to do so since there were no old feuds to settle.

STW was not anti-immigrant in general, and in fact was inviting Thaoans to move into Altotta and join STW, even though Thaoa had generally been seen as a hostile and at best untrustworthy nation. The least among the Thaoans was considered superior in STW to the greatest among the non-STW Thunderers. But below even the Thunderers STW placed the already hated Dreamers, and celebrated each successful robbery, as if to demonstrate that STW was fighting for the interests of the many people in Altotta who hated all Dreamers, while the normally aggressive Thunder government did not seem to care that Dreamers were living in Altotta and making money off of its people at all. They put up signs outside their stores advertising that they were selling merchandise that had been stolen from the immigrants. The immigrants were unable to retaliate because all of STW's stores were heavily guarded. The national government was unable to help the immigrants for the same reason, along with the fact that if the national police were seen helping Dreamers even indirectly, they could put themselves at risk of losing their jobs or being attacked by a mob. The reason why the government of Altotta did not concede to STW and start violently attacking Dreamers alongside STW is that Dreamland was still much richer than Altotta and the Dreamer immigrants provided Altotta a second link (the other was the Crystals) to the warm wet nations of the west coast.

Note, also, that the national government of Altotta did not punish non-STW storeowners who also stole merchandise from the Dreamers, but that this happened less often because these people did not have their own army whereas STW did.

Restaurants

STW also owned a chain of restaurants. Here, they were much less abusive of their customers, because there was no realistic way to achieve a monopoly in this part of the market other than building a restaurant in the middle of the woods and then building a new town around it. Nonetheless they did annoying things such as tightening the lids on the bottles they sold, knowing that customers would need to ask for help, and could then be charged a higher price.

Currency

STW had a second currency that only STW members could own: the asala. This was awarded for good deeds, and had no limit. The asala was constantly getting weaker against the dét because STW kept minting new asala coins and new dét coins were printed only very slowly. Graduating to a new grade also conferred an award in asala, with the amount almost doubling for each grade.

Schools

STW also owned its own school system, and those schools specifically competed with the government-run schools of the empire of Altotta. The schools ran from first grade through eighth grade, but these were not strictly delineated by age. Everyone joined as a first-grader, regardless of their age. Some students (particularly those who had had some education in a government school) rose through the ranks quickly, graduating in less than a year. Other students never made it out of the eighth grade at all. Like Kava, STW encouraged its students to "outparent their parents" and come home from school each day having learned a new skill they could teach their parents and increase their parents' dependency on their children's rapidly growing power.

Recruitment and growth

New members joined STW by invitation, and each new member had to be approved by the chief. A newly founded Base generally started with a small membership consisting of leaders who had moved in from another Base, bringing their children with them. These children would meet the other Thunder children in day to day life, and make friends with them even though they did not go to school together. Then they would invite their friends to join STW. Adults were recruited less often, despite their much greater economic value, because the economy of Altotta at this time was such that adults could not easily bring their jobs with them to STW. However, a non-STWer who had children in STW would be treated better by STW than Thunderers who refused to let their children join STW.

Early growth

STW got its first taste of power in the Thunder Empire city of Lypelpyp, in the state of Kavi, near the Thunder Empire's border with the Crystal Empire. Lypelpyp was located on a trade route in a valley in a very rural area. There were no significant settlements nearby except the national capital, Wempy. Lypelpyp was more powerful than its state's capital, however, and people early on came to refer to the entire state simply as "Lypelpyp".

Politics in Lypelpyp had long been dominated by the uneasy relationships between the people of the Thunder and Crystal Empires. Previously, the two had been one, but racial and religious conflicts drove them apart.

Contact with the Crystals

See Lantern Empire and Thunder Empire.

The Crystals were descended from slave laborers on the tropical plantations of Lobexon, whose entire native population had been enslaved after losing a war against Nama. They hated Nama from the very beginning of their existence, and never wavered. However, Nama had always been an extremely open and welcoming empire, and allowed Crystals to move to Nama and be free from persecution. The Crystals had, early in their existence, alienated themselves even from their fellow slaves by promising to only work to secure the rights of Crystals, while being perfectly content to watch their neighbors such as the Gilgosi and Kampa people remain in slavery indefinitely. Unwelcome even among the very bottommost members of their society, those Crystals who managed to escape their plantations preferred to exit Lobexon entirely rather than seek out a life in the rainforest where they knew they were likely to be killed by any outsiders.

However, the Crystals were good at waiting patiently, and they realized that Nama was actually a very weak empire, perhaps the weakest in the world. Nama's military had two insurmountable problems: first, despite Nama's enormous size, it had only a tiny coastline, in the extreme south, and that coastline was walled off from the rest of Nama by the world's tallest mountain range. Nama had north, east, and west coasts as well, but they were all entirely icebound, as was the land beneath it. The few people in that area of Nama actually lived entirely on the ocean, fishing through holes in the ice, rather than on the land which had no nutrition at all. The second weakness was Nama's tiny population. Even though their land was huge, the world was recovering from a severe ice age, when its food supply had been very low, and even as temperatures increased the food supply stayed about the same. THeir invasion of Lobexon had helped get them access to vegetables, but very little of this food ever reached the core Naman population in the north.

In 2246, the Crystals were the junior partner in a war against Nama in which they won decisively. They had attacked Nama's weak southern coast. When the war was over, they realized that Nama had not even counterattacked them, and had participated in the war only to try to evacuate refugees from the invasion to other areas of Nama. Even after all that, Nama did not persecute the Crystals living in Nama, and the Crystals were able to plan further attacks against Nama from the relative safety of their homes in Nama.

However, other groups were also aware of Nama's weaknesses, and therefore also invaded. In fact, in the War of 2246, the Crystals were not in charge; they were following an army known as FILTER. FILTER was a radical feminist group that put women in charge of their entire society, including the military, and even went so far as to use female soldiers in close combat.

In 3884, the government of Altotta had been overthrown by a group of Thunderers who wanted to restore their nation's original intolerance of immigrants. The government that they overthrew had been run almost entirely by immigrants from Dreamland who had impoverished Altotta and gave the money to Dreamland. The government before that had been run largely by the Crystals, who were also mostly outsiders. They said that Altotta was a nation for Thunderers only and any other groups found living in Altotta would be subject to slavery or exile. Thus, most Crystals living in Altotta became slaves. These new Thunderers also went further and endorsed racism, meaning that Crystals could not simply convert to Thunderism to achieve equal status. The Thunderers were quite diverse, because they had grown over a large area and married many aboriginals, but they had grown almost entirely over Repilian territory, and the few areas of their Empire that were not Repilian had seceded anyway. Thus, like their Kavan ancestors in 2371 AD, the Thunderers in 3884 AD were all light-skinned people, usually with blonde or light brown hair. The Crystals, on the other hand, were also very diverse, but they had spread mostly over areas whose aboriginal populations were very dark-skinned, just like the original Crystals in the 1500s. To the Thunderers, all of the Crystals looked alike. There were dark-skinned Thunderers and light-skinned Crystals, but almost all of these were the offspring of Crystals who had moved into Altotta and married into a Thunder family. Only a tiny number of true religious converts existed. Since Altotta had been run by the Crystals for sixty years, most of these families were several generations deep. There had been similar contacts further back in history; even as far back as the 2370s, when Kava was only four years old, a troop of Crystals had invaded Kava and set up plantations. These people were welcomed because at the time, Kava was so weak that its government was forced to pretend that the invasion was an invitation. These settlers were mostly adult males, so the Crystal settlers and the Kavan women had had many children. This was terribly embarrassing for Kava because Kava had been founded on the same principle of being a nation for Kavans only, but a foreign army had just invaded their territory and taken their women. But now the Thunderers banned all people known to have any Crystal ancestry from identifying as Thunderers, and put all but the upper class of the Crystals into slavery.

The Thunderers hated the Dreamers much more than they hated the Crystals. Unlike the Crystals, the Dreamers could in fact sometimes blend in physically with Thunderers. This was because the Dreamers were descended from a mix of Thunderers with immigrants from Laba.

The Thunderers also endorsed atheism, even though the government they had overthrown was also atheist, but they considered religion to be of little importance in their society and did not prevent the Crystal slaves from practicing their religion. They even managed to remain formally an ally of the Crystals' home empire of Baeba, despite being openly racist against Crystals. This was because they both hated the empire of Dreamland even more than Altotta hated the Crystals. Moreover, Altotta offered to repatriate Crystals to Baeba using trade routes and to ensure that the slave labor the Crystals worked was much more lenient than that assigned to the descendants of the immigrants from Dreamland.

Immigration

In the very early years of STW's existence, it relied largely on immigration to grow. These immigrants were all illegal, because the Thunder government had shut down immigration entirely to protect itself from the threat of yet another coup leading to a new government dominated by foreigners. STW thus was embarrassing Altotta by proudly violating the laws, but Altotta couldn't stop the immigration because the STW members stuck firmly to each other, and STW was popular enough that even Thunderers who were outside STW did not call for the closure of STW bases simply because they were hosting illegal immigrants.

Shortly after the founding of the first STW base in Lypelpyp, the temperature in Lypelpyp plunged to below —50°F for several days in a row. Many natives of Lypelpyp hoped that the shock of the cold weather would repel the Crystal immigrants, who mostly came from the hottest part of the tropical empire of Baeba Swamp. But the Crystals were prepared to deal with the weather, and did not leave.

Only four years after STW's founding, the Thunderers overthrew their government yet again. This time, however, the group taking power also considered itself a Thunder organization, and merely wanted to reform the government rather than replacing it. They released the Crystal slaves (but not most Dreamers) and allowed immigration to return in limited numbers. They did not publicly admit that what they had privately known: that immigration was going to continue no matter what the law was, and that by legalizing immigration they could at least potentially limit the power of STW. However, they were still worried that immigrants would all favor STW, and that if STW became powerful enough they could find themselves living in a society with Thunderers at the very bottom and the Crystals and the other immigrant groups piled on top of them.

Lypelpyp seeks power

STW was strong mostly in the western edge of the Thunder Empire, in cities such as Lypelpyp. Lypelpyp was part of the Thunder nation of Kava, which had been named after the original Kava. Since the original Kava had been cut off from the Thunder Empire by one of Nama's few military victories, there was generally no confusion between the two nations. However, in diplomacy, people in Lypelpyp's Kava renamed their nation Kavi ("from Kava"). Lypelpyp's people were of a different ethnic group than most Thunderers, but still considered themselves Thunderers and did not distinguish between them and the others. Lypels who moved to other areas in the Thunder Empire were treated as equals. Lypels had not undergone the repentance of 3915 when the Thunder government had repudiated racism and liberalized its court system; they preferred the old, hyper-aggressive Thunder philosophy. This was pasrtly because, being of pure Hinku descent, they were physically intimidated by all of the taller, stronger people around them, and partly because Lypelpyp didn't see a need to apologize for enslaving Crystals when it was well known to them that Crystals were still abusing (but not enslaving) Lypels.

But they actually favored Crystal immigration into Lypelpyp for several reasons:

• Lypelpyp was at the western edge of the Thunder Empire and until the Crystals had met them there, they had been surrounded by hostile enemy tribes. Now they were instead surrounded mostly by Crystals, who looked down on Lypel people but remained generally nonviolent. The Crystal nation nearest Lypelpyp was Yīspʷilinâ, which had earlier been part of the Thunder Empire but was handed over to the Crystals fairly early on. The Thunderers that had been living there had mostly remained, and were treated well even if they did not convert or marry into a Crystal family. Thunderers were no longer allowed to move to Yīspʷilinâ, but this policy was being dictated to them by Baeba, and Yīspʷilinâdid not strictly enforce it. STW actually helped Thunderers leave Altotta just as much as they helped Crystals get in. So they favored Crystal immigration into Lypelpyp because they knew that Crystals would likely not attack a nation with a sizable Crystal minority, and that if they did, they would have to deal with a revolt in their own nation since there were many Thunderers there and those Thunderers were not preventing from owning weapons. (Crystals sometimes punished criminals by banning them from using sharp objects, meaning that they had difficulty even obtaining food.)
• Although at first, the hard-working Lypels seeing Crystals who had lived in Lypelpyp for only a few years getting rich merely by joining STW were violently jealous, the fact that STW opened its arms to Lypels just as much as to Crystals made them realize it was better to be on the same side. They thus threw aside their ethnic and even their religious identity in favor of merely belonging to STW. Then the few pro-immigrant organizations in the rest of Altotta came to see Lypelpyp as a model to follow, even though Lypelpyp was draining the economy of the rest of Altotta simply because STW had not yet expanded far outside of Lypelpyp.

Debate

STW was firmly on the side of the immigrants now, especially the Crystals, and even though the immigrants were legal, most Thunderers' attitudes had not changed since before 3919. Most immigrants into Altotta were Crystals, the same people who had driven Altotta into poverty just 80 years earlier. Altotta already had a sizable Crystal minority, which had just been released from slavery, and the Thunder leaders figured that the Crystals would be even more hostile towards Altotta than they had been in the past. Some Thunderers wanted to move to the Crystal Empire, figuring that they could at least prevent a Crystal takeover of Altotta by threatening to cause problems in the Crystal Empire itself, but the Crystals wouldn't let them in. They realized that the Crystals' nonchalant attitude towards Altotta's slavery program had been due to the fact that the Crystals treated Thunderers quite badly as well. Frustrated at their people's sudden helplessness after being the most powerful empire in the world for hundreds of years, the Thunderers considered formally outlawing immigration once again since they figured at best it would fill them with a second hostile underclass and at worst lead to yet another government led by foreigners.

In a formal debate, the Crystals defended their right to send their people to colonize Altotta while not allowing Thunderers to move to Crystalland by saying that Altotta owed the Crystals a lot of territory for doing nothing when invaders from Laba had invaded Crystal territory in the mid-3700s and deprived the Crystals of their entire north coast, calling it Dreamland, while sparing Thunder nations that were immediately adjacent. The Thunderers reminded the Crystals that Dreamland had in fact invaded Altotta, and had run the entire government of Altotta for 40 years before getting thrown out of power, and still had its people living in Altotta, albeit now as slaves. They also reminded the Crystals that Altotta had previously been conquered by the Crystals and run by them for eighty years, for which the Crystals had never apologized.

The Thunderers who opposed immigration generally opposed STW, since STW to them was a tool to make even the native Thunderers tools of the immigrants, since STW was so wealthy and powerful that even anti-STW Thunderers in Lypelpyp were shopping at STW, and promising to oppose any attempt by the national government of Altotta to shut down STW. Even though STW allowed native Thunderers to join, they realized that most of the members were Crystal immigrants, who seemed to be favored by STW for promotions.

And thus even the anti-STW, anti-immigrant Thunderers in Lypel were forced to hide behind the shoulders of the Crystals when the topic of immigration came up because they relied on the Crystals for most of their economic well-being. STW meanwhile embarrassed the national government of Altotta by leading violent robberies of businesses owned by Dreamers, then blaming Altotta for not caring about the problem of immigration. (STW still refused Dreamers the ability to join STW.)

Hierarchy

Each establishment of STW was a "Base", which was governed by a chief. Like a corporation, each chief had absolute irreproachable power over their members, but no power over any of the other bases. The chief had the only vote in accepting or denying membership in STW, although in bases that were very large, they delegated their authority to trusted members. Below the chiefs and co-chiefs were captains, who were ordinary members, and thus had no power, but were being given jobs in which they exercise authority over other members in preparation for a future promotion. These were generally very few, as each STW base had only one chief.

All new STW members were required to attend the local STW school, even if they were adults who had already graduated from a traditional school. All new members started in the first grade, no matter whether they were three years old or thirty. Adults, however, tended to rise through the grades (there were eight) very quickly. STW's membership tended to consist entirely of children when a new Base first arrived in a city, except for the authority figures. Even in cities where STW had been around for hundreds of years, however, the membership still consisted mostly of children, as adults could be expelled for minor misdeeds, and were generally not let back in. Even the worst of these expelled people were treated as superior to people who had never been members of STW at all, in the hopes that they might decide to put down their weapons and allow STW to rescue them from their evil ways.

Most people kicked out of STW were males, which meant that STW's leadership was primarily women, and the husbands of these leaders worked under the close management of their wives. Often, a husband was given a second-in-command role, but other chiefs preferred to give their husband a job with only "soft power" where he did not see his wife very often and was treated as an extension of her authority. STW had many jobs for adults, but most of them carried no official power because the hierarchy of power in STW was very flat. However, STW did reward its hardest working members with large paychecks, and money was necessary to advance in power anyway.

While STW's leaders were mostly women, their worst enemies were almost all adult males. STW did not consider itself feministic, but their teachers taught that the primary difference between women and men is that women enjoy helping people, and men enjoy hurting people. Sometimes the motto was strengthened to "Women create life, men create death". Although the rest of Altotta respected STW, they had little sympathy for female STW chiefs who were murdered by men they had kicked out of STW after twenty-five years of hard work.

There were many internal conflicts between the different STW bases that were as important and dangerous as their conflicts with the expelled leaders they had kicked out. Only the president of STW could demote a chief; there was no intermediate level of power even when STW grew to several hundred Bases. The most powerful Bases historically were Base 7, Base 34, Base 44, and Base 91.

STW kept its secrets very well, and non-members were not allowed to even enter the schools.

Below the normal members were the slaves. Slaves were not considered members of STW, but STW distinguished between ordinary Thunderers and their slaves. Because STW consisted largely of women and children, they preferred slaves to work in areas that were physically separated from the STW schools and other central buildings, but some slaves worked directly for STW and therefore interacted with STW members other than their masters every day. These tended to be the ones involved in heavy manual labor that most STW members were physically incapable of. These slaves tended to be males. Note that many STWers did not have the tall-female gene, and thus men were much stronger than women, but they still tended to be small in comparison to many foreigners. Small children were given control of some of the slave laborers, typically those consisting of slaves that did menial jobs for the children such as preparing their meals and cleaning their bathrooms. Young children returning from their first day at STW would walk home and tell their parents they had been waited on hand and foot and felt for the first time in their life what it truly meant to be powerful.

History and politics

Early history

Early STW supported the Zenith. The Zenith originated from a tribe of people living on the south slopes of the Sučithasi mountains who were famous for their aggressive hands-on promotion of violence against women. Unusually for an ethnic group, they were more than 50% males, and constantly were looking for more women to add to their tribe. Over time, the Zeniths broadened their appeal somewhat, and began also promoting violence against children, young animals, the elderly, and wounded soldiers. They gained the respect of the feministic cultures around them when some of those feminists, such as FILTER, became even more violent than the Zenith.

From the very date of its founding, STW was at war with Dreamland, although this was because it had allied with the Scope party, which had declared war on Dreamland. STW even then consisted mostly of unarmed children, and they painted expensive murals on the city walls portraying diapered STW toddlers repulsing an invading Dreamer army. In reality, however, STW protected its members very dutifully, and STW's contribution to the war was mainly derived from providing food and supplies to the far more robust Scope army.

STW created the name Lindasi for iteslf in contexts where it wanted to be seen as a country. Names like "Lindasia" for their territory thus were created. The Zeniths wanted to wipe out all that was not from them, including Baeba Swamp and the Crystals. Some Zeniths were atheists, and others had different religions that didnt get along. This was unusual for this era since most political parties had only one religion. STW declared that it was not a political party, but merely a political and economic organization, and therefore STW also allowed multiple religions within its power structure.

Early STW strongly hated the enslaved Crystals living in Altotta, as did the Zenith. They also wanted to take over Baeba Swamp. Even though they happily imported Crystals into Altotta, and promoted them to positions of power within STW, this was only because all STW members had sowrn loyalty to STW above even their nationality. STW still disliked Crystals as a whole as much as the rest of the Thunderers did. STW also declared a symbolic war against Laba, a distant enemy that could neither harm nor be harmed by STW. This was because immigrants from Laba had founded their primary foreign antagonist, Dreamland, and the leaders of Laba wanted to expand into Thunder territory. However, although Laba was a very boat-heavy culture, there was only one route from Laba to Altotta that did not pass through many other smaller nations, and Laba realized that most of those other nations would likely side with the Thunderers. The one route from Laba to Altotta with only one intervening nation was through Dreamland, and the Dreamers were not interested in such a war as they knew it would hurt them far more than it would hurt Laba. Morever, Dreamland was the most geographically distant nation of all.

In 3919, the Thunder government was overthrown by dissenters from within who wanted an end to state-sponsored racism and newer, more liberal laws. STW had horrified the Thunder government by rapidly changing Lypelpyp into a Crystal-majority city, when the Thunderers prided themselves that they had thrown off the yoke of the Crystals. As STW grew richer, the Thunderers realized non-STW Thunderers were going to be at the bottom of society with STW and all its immigrants on top. Although the government was overthrown only four years after the founding of STW, and the borders re-opened, social attitudes did not quickly change, and many Thunderers assumed that anyone not a member of the Thunder "race" was an STW member.

For 400 yrs, the dark skinned Crystals and the pale skinned Thunderers had traded places as to who was abusing whom. STW fixed the problem by putting themselves on top of both of them. Anyone who joined STW ceased to a member of either of the other groups.

The new government still called itself the Thunderers, because it had the same ideology as the old THunderers. The new Thunderers did have a few differences, however. They did not believe in judicial organizations, meaning that they were going to get rid of the entire court system and make law a private matter negotiated between individuals. The enslavement of Crystals was ended, although slavery of other groups continued.

By 3948, a woman named Ende became very powerful in STW. She was 3/4 crystal, but had converted to Thunder. She was the chief of STW Base 7, which was based in Lypelpyp, displacing a man named Endofi. She was very young, having barely graduated the eighth grade when she became chief. But Ende had grown powerful enough to gain the president's approval to act on behalf of (and against the will of) other Bases. The situation was very similar to Afunyū's authority over the president of Pipaippis in 1950s Subumpam, except that Enodab (also Ende, Entece, etc) was supplanting the president of her own organization rather than the government. Enodab spent much of her time promoting pacifism in Nama and Dreamland, hoping those two empires would become so pacified that Enodab herself could personally rule over them. She focused mostly on Nama, even though a lot of other empires were also focusing on Nama.

In August 3948, Nama decided its government was so pathetic that they stopped allowing Ende's missionaries to visit, since many desperately poor Namans seemed to believe the missionaries who claimed that Nama's ever-declining fortunes would finally improve if Nama became even more pacifistic and allowed Altotta's army to intrude even further inside them. Nearly all of Altotta's huge territory had been taken from Nama in a series of wars spanning more than 1400 years, and yet Altotta still insisted they needed more land. Soon the missionaries moved on from Nama to Paba, although by moving to Paba they escaped Ende's control and were no longer directly working for her interests.

Also in August 3948, the proto-Moonshine people (PMS) seceded from Lobexon and began marching t northward through Naman territory in search of a safe place to live. They refused to make any alliances with any outside powers, although they happily accepted help from allies such as Nama.

War with Paba

Ende then decided to invade Paba, bringing back slaves to work for her in STW. Many of the people who had been kicked out of STW had moved to Paba to find a place where they could again feel powerful, and many of these had created their own micro-nations in Paba, where Paba's government was too weak to enforce its laws. By this time, however, Paba was so foreign that many STWers had never even heard of it. Paba had abolished its military earlier and Pabap diplomats told STW that they would refuse to fight back against the invasion, preferring to focus on Paba's many internal problems instead. However, as STW was still very small at this time, Ende's army was abducting mere hundreds, not thousands, of Pabap civilians back to STW.

Altotta's own army also refused to participate in this war, but the shock of learning that a new war had been declared with no participation whatsoever from the government of Altotta, and the realization that any retaliation from the enemies would surely hit mainline Altotta instead of Lypelpyp, threw Altotta's leaders into a panic. Traditioanlly Paba had dealt with wars by sending their diplomats to cry on the shoulders of the leaders of foreign nations such as Thaoa since Paba had no army of its own any longer. The Thunderers knew that STW consisted mostly of children, and could not seriously expect to fight a war even against a pacifist nation by itself, and that their strategy would likely rely on forcing Altotta into the war by murdering innocent people in Paba and blaming Altotta.

War with Laba

The king of Laba, Adabawa, was attempting to build a coalition of nations on Rilola to fight back against Altotta and the rapidly growing STW. (Although Laba contained hundreds of nations, some hostile to their neighbors, there was a "king" in the sense that all contact between Laba and the rest of the world was controlled by the nation that dominated the northern coastline, and that nation identified itself simply as Laba when dealing with diplomats from the mainland. Lohi was the name of a coalition of dissenters in Laba, but they had no power because they had no navy.)

Treaty with Lohi

Lohi signed a pact with Altotta promising to fight a humanitarian war against Laba, and renouncing all claims to the mainland. At this, some conservative-leaning politicians in Altotta called for war against Lohi, saying the treaty didn't go far enough, and that Lohi needed to send its soldiers to destroy all of Nama and then give it to Altotta so that Altotta would be able to use only Naman soldiers to fight the war.

Soon the Thunderers began to talk of a new war against the Electric Army, a group of Thunder supporters based in rural Nama.

The Thunder military generals promoted their plans for conquest by explaining that , by attacking their own allies, they would have the element of surprise and would win an easy victory, particularly given that their allies were poorly equipped for war. Only once their allies had been vanquished, the Thunderers promised, would they pursue a war against their enemies. They wanted to destroy their allies so that, if they were able to win the wider war, the victory would be theirs alone.

Wars against the pacifists

Meanwhile the Thunderers also began talking of a new war against the various organizations of pacifists within their territory, as well as in foreign empires such as Moonshine. Moonshine was a feministic empire that had been founded only a few years earlier by refugees from the Crystals, and the Thunder leaders figured they could score victories against the women in Moonshine with one wing of their army while invading Laba, Lohi, and Nama with the other. Since Moonshine was pacifistic, the Thunderers figured the women would refuse to fight back against their army, and the Thunderers could build military bases in Moonshine if they lost the war against Laba.

Adabawa reacts

STW relied on Altotta for support, and so STW's and Altotta's foreign policies were the same. Thus Adabawa figured that the only way to destroy STW was to destroy Altotta. So STW's symbolic war against Laba became real, although it was being fought mostly in Baeba Swamp for the time being, with a second front opening in Paba. In both of these territories, Lenians were the ones fighting for Adabawa; Adabawa's own people did very little fighting because they lived on the islands of Laba. In fact, Adabawa was training his soldiers to launch a war against the Lenians in Baeba Swamp once the Lenians had eliminated Adabawa's other enemies.

Adabawa had kidnapped a woman named Maninapa from the infant nation of Moonshine. Moonshine's political philosophy was pacifism, and they often sent their people into battle zones without any weapons or armor in the hopes that they could help heal the wounds of soldiers on both sides of the war. Adabawa kept Maninapa as a political prisoner for a short time, but then explained to Maninapa that her new job was to go back to her homeland and pretend to have converted to a pro-Adabawa orientation, and to repudiate pacifism. He warned that if Maninapa was not successful in convincing Moonshine to support Adabawa, Adabawa would simply invade Moonshine and force them to surrender.

However, Paba still held to its 2000 year old doctrine of pacifism, and promised not to fight back against either side if attacked. This angered Adabawa, who saw Pabaps as useful and easy prey. He was still unwilling to risk Laban troops to fight a war in Paba, however, and looked for ways to starve their economy until they submitted.

Adabawa captured most of the fake pacifists that Ende had sent to Nama and had moved to Paba. From them he learned military secrets, and vowed to make an alliance with Altotta, and then invade and crush Paba before Altotta could. (He was willing to offer them much of Nama however.) However, in 3952, Altotta rejected Adabawa and shut its foreign diplomacy program with Laba entirely. THey had held a debate in central Nama between Adabawa and Maninapa, and Maninapa won the debate. Thus Altotta became more pacifistic, because the only alternative presented to them was to make an alliance with Laba. Other nations respected Altotta now and stopped their wars. Thus it was now Laba that was isolated.

However, Adabawa still had the comfort of knowing that if Ende attacked Nama or Paba, they would submit to Laba instead of Ende. Altotta decided to launch an all-out war against Dreamland, Baeba Swamp, Nama, Lobexon, Subumpam, Paba, Thaoa, Repilia, Taryte, Ihhai, and Katō. They planned to occupy Paba so they could use the Pabaps as pawns to propel them to power.

In 3953, Adabawa defeated Altotta, the first time in over 2000 years a Laban army had won a war in Rilola. However, Adabawa did not have the manpower to actually occupy Altotta, so instead the Thunderers abdicated power in favor of the Loporomo party, thus creating the First Loporomo Empire, often called Loporomo I. They maintained their native languages, chiefly Meromo.

Loporomo rule

In 3977, Laba underwent a civil war which took all of Laba's power out of Altotta. This civil war lasted a very long time, and spread to Rilola, and did not end until 4107 when the Gold people took power once again. Gold people actually settled Laba now, the first major back migration in all of history. note, though, that these Gold people were ethnically Neamaki, and spoke a Dreamlandic language.

Decline

STW's rise to power depended on its presence in a sympathetic host empire. When Dreamland's hostile Baywatch party overthrew the Thunder Empire in 3958, STW panicked, but their private army protected their members and afforded the frightened Thunderers a safe place to send their children to school. Thus, STW's power actually grew as that of their host empire declined, because the majority of the subject population was sympathetic.

In 4108, AlphaLeap displaced the Baywatchers and moved the capital of the empire to Paba. AlphaLeap's economic model closely imitated STW's, and STW's currency's value began to decline. But AlphaLeap was not politically hostile, and therefore STW continued to thrive in areas where they maintained control of trade and skilled labor.

But in 4127, the extremist Play party overthrew AlphaLeap. They opposed child labor and all luxury products, and quickly closed all STW stores in areas they controlled. Around 4140, the Raspara overthrew the Players. In 4149, the Tinks overthrew the Raspara. A few months later, the Crystals overthrew the Tinks, but the Tinks soon took power back again. The Tinks disliked STW but supported its right to exist.

However, the Tinks soon realized that they only had control of their capital city and the roads leading into it, and had no feasible claim to the wider Empire. For STW, this meant that trade was no longer safe, and that their private military would need to protect STW's schools and stores. This made trade unprofitable, and STW's private currency collapsed to the point that its laborers could only afford to buy things from within STW. Their child laborers had once been richer than typical non-STW adults, but now they were little more than slaves.

Children in combat

For more than 200 years, STW had been known around the world as a school where children of any age could earn wages fit for adults by working hard and studying hard, served by a private army to protect their interests at home and abroad. But as hostile armies closed in, their child laborers could no longer sell merchandise or perform unskilled labor for the common people around them, and STW began to draft young children into their army to help fight the war. STW promised to always protect child soldiers by surrounding them with adult soldiers, and tried to keep families together so that fathers would be protecting their own children as they fought. However, this soon became untenable and STW fielded armies consisting entirely of children as they lost more and more battles against their enemies. These child soldiers fared even worse than previous armies such as the #Flower Bees had; although they were able to slow the progress of advancing armies, none of STW's child armies ever won a battle, even with immense numerical superiority.

In 4190 STW sent a troop of children to face off against the Matrixes in Tata. Although these children were fighting on the winning side, the Matrixes quickly located the weak, disoriented children and added them to their already large pool of slaves.

Contact with ZDE

That same year, a troop of very young STW children assigned to hold Paba found themselves trapped between the slave-seeking #Raspara soldiers marching from the north and the small army of #ZDE invading from the south. The children obeyed their orders to fight both armies simultaneously, but were quickly overwhelmed as the two armies met up and split the spoils between them.

ZDE was delighted when they discovered who they were fighting, as ZDE was one of the weakest sovereign nations in the world and their home territory was an icecap more than a thousand miles north of the war's epicenter. ZDE decided to focus entirely on child abduction and avoid traditional combat, and they promised the kids that although they would all be slaves, they would be safe from harm and thus better off than they had been in STW. By contrast, the Raspara considered STW's child soldiers no different than their traditional enemies, and herded them into slave camps alongside adults.

By turning child soldiers into slaves, ZDE claimed the moral high ground, and began releasing pro-ZDE propaganda intending to get STW kids to desert their positions and join ZDE. None ever came, but some other armies in the area became sympathetic to ZDE, and ZDE had a clear path to abduct children whenever they could find them.

Raspara secession

Amidst all this, an alliance of adult male STW soldiers rebelled against STW and declared themselves to be Raspara. They thus joined the Raspara's war against STW and focused their attacks on the children who were serving beside them in STW's army.

Formation of TCT

When news of such incidents spread to STW's remaining students, a group of about 500 orphans at Base 7 revolted and declared themselves an independent nation with no army, land, or adult leadership. They took the name TCT, and soon absorbed another group of children called STS.

Although STW allowed its chiefs to expel children, they had long prided themselves on not doing so, and the children still retained the right to spend money since STW's currency was still valuable within STW. The chief of Base 7 obeyed the children's request to forsake their obligations, move to a tropical paradise at 15°N, and order their slaves to build them a resort called Šāaā ("Comfort City") to live in, even though the labor spent in doing so weakened STW even further. This resort was in Kxesh.

After the orphans voted to forsake their duties by defecting from STW, the leaders held a conference to find a new role for STW in their changing world. STW admitted that they could no longer be a child-focused organization, and although they retained the formal structure of schools and stores that they had created upon their founding in 3915, they freed their remaining children, discouraged parents from enrolling new children, and apologized to lifelong STW members who were eager to raise their children to positions similar to their own. They shut down their orphanage operations; although they still offered to protect orphans, they warned them that the life of an orphan in STW would be no better than the life of a slave, and STW encouraged childless families of all political parties to adopt their orphans.

By expelling its child population, STW shrank from about 36000 members to just 6000, most of whom were adult men. Most women left STW when the children did, as the men in STW's army preferred to control their own affairs.

Finally, STW told their remaining members that their organization had become an army. They stated that the only difference between STW and any other nation was that STW did not have a contiguous territory to rule over. However, like many other armies, they planned to remedy this by seizing control of Baeba Swamp. Thus , they began closing bases far from Baeba.

Soon after their apology, STW leaders around Baeba began collecting orphans and sending them to plantations in STW-held territory. The Baebans soon learned that STW had not changed their philosophy; they had merely resolved to limit their slave operations to children from hostile tribes.

Rule from Baeba

Wars against the Dolls

In 4206, STW seceded from Altotta (which had renamed itself Rapala) and declared war on all people, even Zeniths, except for the Raspara. They refused to recognize the existence of Rapala and Baeba, saying that they both were just loose alliances of slavemasters who really each had their own countries. They still used the acronym STW, but began to increasingly refer to themselves as Lindasia as they sought to acquire a contiguous territory.

Most Raspara people were STW members now, which meant that their attempt to infiltrate STW had succeeded, and STW no longer consisted mostly of children ruled over by women. They helped STW improve its military by giving them leaked Slope military plans and weapons. They also had their own armies of slaves, which they donated to STW for free. STW's army was still smaller than most of their opponents', but they hoped they could make allies of neutral parties and new arrivals to the Swamp.

By this time, the Swamp Kids had moved their army to Baeba Swamp, surrendering all of their claims to the vast eastern empire. Though the Swamp Kids had had an embarrassing military history, they were strong enough to reach Baeba and hold their own against the armies they met there. But the Raspara army soon pounced on them, and after the Raspara came several other armies. Thus Baeba Swamp became the epicenter of the world's deadliest war.

Parcels of land within Baeba Swamp were given to coalitions in the hopes that an army with land of its own would not seek to invade neighboring lands. Three republics were founded in poor natural environments, called Tahifòka,Tahalmana, and Sahahămi. These were given exclusively to the Doll tribes, who were mostly slaves, and who had previously never had a nation of their own. The various Doll groups were divided by political ideology, not tribal identity, but Baeba's ruling Rock party referred to the groups as tribes in order to justify the creation of three nations rather than a single nation with three competing political parties.

Baeba expected that the newly free Dolls would immediately submit to their enemies, as they were poor soldiers and had in the past put up little resistance to capture by hostile armies, but they considered this preferable to having the Dolls scattered around other nations as a slave class.

War in Tahalmana

When STW learned of the three new Doll-led republics, they drew up plans to invade Tahalmana, which had been assigned to a league of Dolls who called themselves the Cupbearers. (Tahalmana consisted mostly of a mix between Slopes and Dolls). They considered the Swamp Kids and other armies unimportant and did not care whether the Swamp Kids were for or against them in their new war. They decided that the best way to conquer Tahalmana would be to convince the Cupbearers to support the overthrow of their abusers and the replacement of the standard Rapalan philosophy with STW's powerful version of Rasparism. They planned to raise a vast underclass of children in Tahalmana that would after about fifteen years come to outnumber the non-Doll adults and overthrow them. Then they would adopt Tahalmana into the already-conquered Vutagô, and then STW's army would kill off all of the teenage Cupbearers who had fought so hard to let them in.

STW members and slaves went on missions preaching pro-STW politics to the Dolls, and Baeba Swamp promised to defend STW in a war. However, STW's plan called for a delay of fifteen years before mobilizing their army, whereas the Swamp Kids had already swept into Tahalmana and won the Cupbearers' surrender. STW realized that strategies that had served them well in the distant past were no longer valid.

The Cupbearers had surrendered to the Swamp Kids in the hopes that the Swamp Kids would enslave them but also protect them from the other armies. Instead, the Swamp Kids expelled the Cupbearers and declared Tahalmana to be a new republic for Swamp Kids only. After they built forts, they charged through Tahalmana towards STW's conventional army.

Most of STW's soldiers were from tribes physically similar to the Swamp Kids, and many STW members spoke Bābākiam, so both sides planted spies behind enemy lines. In the Battle of Tahalmana, STW's army defeated the Swamp Kids, blocked all roads leading to Tahalmana, and announced that they had realized their plan fifteen years early. However, the land they won had been entirely depopulated because the Swamp Kids had pushed out the Cupbearers, and therefore STW gained very few slaves. Moreover, though they had won the battle, they had lost many soldiers, and the survivors realized that conquering the other three Doll republics would likely be out of their reach. Thus they had no reaction when the Matrixes invaded Tahifòka and set up a coalition government whose other half was an alliance between the Slopes and a new wing of the Raspara calling itself LTU.

War in Tahifòka

Baeba's Rock party had assigned Tahifòka to a Doll party calling itself the Bottom, but the Bottoms quickly surrendered their nation to the Slopes. The Slopes had emerged from the Zenith, who had occupied much mountain territory. Thus, the Bottoms chose their name as a pun intending to show that the Slopes would help them connect with the Zenith. The new Slope-Bottom coalition aligned itself with STW and supported STW's recent war against the Swamp Kids.

However, the Bottoms were unprepared for the abuse that the Slopes soon dealt to them. The Slopes had acquired many plagues from their previous battles, and they passed these plagues onto their slaves without providing them proper medical care. The Slopes told the Bottoms to replenish their population by having many children. But some Bottoms rebelled against their masters and fled into a Matrix-held territory in the core of Baeba Swamp. They promised to work hard for the Matrixes so long as the Matrixes spared them from plagues. The Matrixes abducted the Bottoms and soon realized that, since the Bottoms were able to flee their Slope masters, the Slope army must have become weaker recently, and thus launched an invasion of Tahifòka.

The Matrixes and the Slopes were both legal parties in Baeba Swamp, and they both shared power in Baeba's coalition government, but since Tahifòka had been granted independence, the Matrix invasion was legal, and the Slopes could not order them to pull back. Nevertheless, they quickly signed a treaty with the Slopes to stop their war, and annexed the territory of Tahifòka back into Baeba Swamp proper. The Matrixes had a strong majority in Baeba's central government, so this new treaty decreased the power of the Slopes. However, the Slopes still had de facto control of much territory in the upper mountain regions from which they had derived their name. This territory was called Gatohăna.

The Slopes launched an illegal war against the Bottoms now, claiming that the perpetrators were renegades from Gatohăna that the mainline Slopes could not control. The Bottoms then fled uphill into Gatohăna, meeting their enemies' swords with their open arms. The Matrixes then launched an illegal war against the Slopes, promising to hurt the Slopes as much as the Slopes were hurting the Dolls. The Matrixes had no sympathy for the Dolls; they merely could not stand to see their potential slaves go to waste. However, Baeba's ruling Rock party had retained the power to overrule their parliament, and so even though the Matrixes had a clear majority in Baeba's central government, their new war triggered the Rocks to eject the Matrixes from Baeba's government and reassign their seats to other parties, chiefly the Slopes. Thus, the Slopes were the new majority in Baeba, and their illegal war against the Bottoms became legal.

Settlement of Ḳēḳ

The Matrixes consolidated their army into the district of Ḳēḳ. They brought with them many slaves belonging to the United Pacifist League (UPL), and claimed that they were a fourth Doll republic with the Pacifists as their willing servants. (They had abducted the Pacifists from the republic of Sahahămi, but were unable to conquer Sahahămi.) The Matrixes had also abducted Cupbearers who had earlier attempted to submit to the Swamp Kids, and when the Cupbearers realized that they were now outnumbered by Matrixes, they attempted to escape Kēk and locate the Swamp Kids again. Some UPL members defected to the Cupbearers, and soon most of the Dolls in Kēk considered themselves Cupbearers.

Settlement of Vutagô

The Cupbearers (HLP) fled to dangerous habitats in the center of the swamp, where predatory animals kept people out. They declared themselves to be yet another new republic, called Vutagô, but Baeba's ruling Slope party refused to recognize them. Despite their dire situation, the Cupbearers had brought many animals and plants which they hoped to establish in Vutagô. The Cupbearers had very few weapons with which to defend themselves; they didn't even have spears like the Slopes did. Thus, they could not kill most animals, and they had to settle for a very restricted diet.

Since the Cupbearers were at this time a very poor people, they had few clothes and fewer weapons, and had to be ever alert for their predators. Soon, however, the Slopes decided to invade Vutagô and take their chances with the animals. They sent heavily armed Slopes out to capture young Cupbearers, and warned that they would not stop until HLP promised to obey the laws of Baeba Swamp.

The Cupbearers refused, but they realized that they were unarmed and would not stand much of a chance in a battle because they derived most of their strength from their animals. So they fled yet again and attempted to create another new town in Baeba, far away from where they had been living before. Since Baeba was a large nation, the Cupbearers figured, there would be plenty of room for everybody. The Cupbearer troop headed slightly west and then north. The leaders of the expedition were deeply worried about the possibility that their people might revolt and kill them, and worried that they would end up being led back to their homeland, which was now being taken over by Slopes who were attempting to kill all of the animals that had afforded the Cupbearers protection from the Slopes.

But nevertheless, the Slopes caught and abducted the unarmed Cupbearers. STW offered to help the Slopes oversee their newfound slave population, so long as the Slopes agreed to let STW members take back some of the Cupbearers to STW as well. The Slopes agreed. With the aid of HLP slave labor, Slope society grew rapidly. The STWers in Baeba, who quickly came to call themselves Slopes, provided the society with valuable technology and quickly accomplished in a few months what the Slopes had been trying to do for 70 years: kill the most dangerous animals in the Swamp, and replace them with more harmless ones.

Birth of the Clouds

Rapala's governors now considered STW their primary enemy, and were interested in making STW their only enemy by forging alliances with all non-STW parties. They renamed their empire Panu in honor of the Swamp Kids, and created a new league called the Clouds, open to anyone who opposed STW. They realized that they would need the Swamp Kids on their side if they were to conquer STW. Many Swamp Kids were still enslaved by other leagues, and the Swamp Kids had refused to enslave the willing Cupbearers who had surrendered to them in Baeba Swamp, so the governors of Panu promised to put the Swamp Kids at the head of the anti-slavery coalition if they were to join.

The Swamp Kids at first refused to join the alliance. They demanded that Panu release all their slaves — Swamp Kids and others — or else face simultaneous attacks from the Swamp Kids and STW. But the Swamp Kids' leaders were desperately seeking allies, so they agreed to the new treaty even though they suspected that Panu would never give up their slaves. The merger of the Swamp Kids and the Clouds produced yet another new league called the Key. They wanted to unite all of the slaves and all of the people who opposed slavery into a single army, leaving only STW on the opposite side. They claimed to have won the support of the Slopes, and began referring to their adult male members as Slopes, but in fact most Slopes had refused the alliance because they did not want to give up their slaves.

The Key leaders released all their slaves as promised, but maintained the right to conscript supporters into the military. The Swamp Kids realized that they had been tricked, since they figured the Key's "military" would consist largely of slaves doing plantation labor to produce food for the soldiers. They remained a part of the Key alliance, but tried to occupy territory in which mostly ex-Swamp Kids would live so that they would not be quickly captured by slave drivers.

Interactions with Panu

None of Rapala's towns had any powerful anti-STW resistance movements anymore ... even the Slopes had begun to support STW because Rasparism appealed to them. Slopes were very open-minded people whose political allegiance was never for certain, however, so STW realized that they needed to be able to kill all of the Slopes should the Slopes later become powerful and then turn against STW.

They figured that the Slopes were really not much stronger, per capita, than the Dolls had been, so they decided to attack with much the same strategy they had used to kill the Tahifòkan Dolls. Rapala had advanced weapon technology, however, and if all of Rapala were to unite against STW a very destructive war could result.

Clouds attempt to adapt

Meanwhile, STW itself was beginning to break apart over the issue of slavery. The slaveowners were not the richest ones, because they spent so much time abusing their slaves that they got less work done than did those who used free labor.

Relations with Janila

Joja had now just begun to recognize the problem Janila was presenting. Like a parasite, Janila took power from STW and gave nothing back. She promised war against non-Rasparas, but had done nothing yet that was not selfishly motivated. Also, many STW members were being dragged into Janila's effective slavery by lopsided agreements with Janila. Many STW leaders, sympathetic to Janila, had signed away much of their power to Janila, getting nothing in return. Joja became the most vocal of the anti-Janila group, as she had the most power (Joja had more or less merged STW with the national government by this time). She threatened to shut down many of the nation's services if trade with Janila did not stop.

But in July 4209, Janila gave Piplap all of her military secrets, and signed an alliance with Piplap because she believed Piplap was going to do his best to conquer Enasisimi and force its people to work for the benefit of Janila's empire. In 4209, Piplap enlisted some Laban soldiers into his army, and fled with them to a new location with a ship he had just had built for him. He changed his name back to Iplabe. He invaded many parts of Enasisina and managed to steal over a million slaves by using Janila's stealthy kidnappers. Janila also let Iplabe use some of her soldiers, but these soldiers, called the Rappes, were not yet strong enough to actually invade Enasisina, and could only attack with chemicals.

Nama's last war

Due to the war with Taboo (the Key), Janila fell from power in 4221, but Elasisima fled away. However, a new enemy for Elasisi had emerged in the form of Asala, a union of people who had immigrated from Anzan to Nama. Previously, Anzan had invaded Nama and abused its people many times. Now Nama was looking for assurance that the two empires could still be friends even though Anzan had always abused them in the past. Asala decided that this cry for help meant that Nama was incredibly weak. Anzan asked for permission to simply take over all of Nama, and Nama agreed, although money was paid to the previous leaders to help them find a new way of life. Thus Nama became part of Anzan. However, the Andanese chose to let an independent state named Nama continue to exist, because its unique form of government appealed to its many people, even if it meant its military was prone to rot and wither away a little bit more every century.

Then Asala, acting as Nama, entered the war by attacking both sides simultaneously, sparing only those few people still alive that pledged allegiance to Nama.

Nama's old leaders then then attacked Asala, saying that the Asalans had gotten out of control. They responded by declaring war on the old leaders too, meaning that they were at war with the entire world. But these people were now powerless, as they only had the allegiance of certain parts of the civilian population of Nama, whereas the entire military had signed on with Anzan purely on the rationale that they figured they might occasionally win a battle with Anzan backing them up whereas as Nama they were guaranteed to lose even in their own homeland.

With STW and all its slaves gone, the Asalans decided to explore the outside world some more. They had had some exposure in previous years, such as when they invaded Lobexon, but now they began 'the Cosmopolitan Age' when they tried to present Nama as just another nation among many on the planet.

Religion

Yiibam was the official religion of STW, atlohugh people of other religs were allowerd to join.

Beliefs

Mottos:

• Tall or small, up or down, we can turn the world around.
• Technology and intelligence give work power.
• From women springs forth life, from men springs forth death.

Some of the commandments for STW members were:

• Accept that you may have to forfeit things you love to help.
• Neither cling to your life nor be afraid to take others.
• Keep power in competent, honest hands.
• Treat others as kindly as possible but do not love or hate them.
• Be totally and eternally hostile to the outside world.
• Do not help other workers unless a medical emergency arises.
• Be prepared to back up your threats.
• Never buy anything expensive unless it is absolutely necessary.