Crystals

The Crystals were a religion and political organization founded in Lobexon around the year 1500 AD.

Language

The early Crystals had adopted the Gold language which had come to Lobexon in waves between 1103 AD and the 1500s, carried by settlers from AlphaLeap, the economic powerhouse of the tropics. In this time period, the known world was ruled by Nama, and Nama granted military protection to any tribe that had its own language. This incentivized tribes to adopt a new language, even if it hindered communication with friendly neighboring tribes. In the case of the Crystals, they adopted the Gold language because they identified themselves as a transnational religion and did not want to be thought of as simply another tribe among many in Lobexon.

Over thousands of years, the Crystals developed their dialect of the Gold language into Khulls.

Culture and sociolinguistics

The Crystals considered themselves to be feministic pacifists. They believed that they could overcome the masculine powers around them by practicing "feminine diplomacy" and avoiding war. Many Crystals were slaves, and a treaty signed in the year 2057 made all of them slaves, so being in a passive position was familiar to all Crystals.

However, the Crystals' insistence on fighting only for themselves quickly made them enemies of other feministic tribes such as the Repilians who made up much of the population of Nama, the same Nama that ruled their homeland of Lobexon. Thus, though they remained feminists, the Crystals refused to make alliances with other powers on the basis of feminism.

Lang

In khulls & PMS, possessive is used for animacy hierarchy violations alongside the direct/inverse constructions. It thus no longer implies literal possession, but merely association. E.g. the bug that's biting me = my bug.

Early history and growth

The Crystals' homeland, Atlam, was within Lobexon, which consisted of a long stretch of tropical and subtropical lands, oriented southwest to northeast along the southern coast of the continent of Rilola, ranging from 13°N at the border with Kxesh to 27°N at the border with Nama. There were no major mountain ranges in this area, and the entirety of the land was humanly habitable. Thus, Lobexon was a very large area, many times the size of Paba, and could support a large and strong military. However, the Crystals were, for much of their history, just a minority in Lobexon, one group among many, and were geographically dispersed, with no land set aside for Crystals only within the borders of Lobexon. Thus, the Crystals sought to expand outward and claim land for themselves outside of Lobexon.

Settlement of Dahàgʷu

The Crystals mostly moved westward, into land that was also tropical but much drier than Lobexon. For this reason, few humans lived there, and they were able to move into the land without facing violent resistance. The Crystals called this largely uninhabited land Dahàgʷu (in Gold; the later Khulls form of the name was Laxàġʷu). Dahàgʷu was very large; in fact, it was larger than Paba. However, being centered around 20°N, its climate was very dry, and major rivers from which a reliable supply of food could come were absent. Thus, the Crystals in Dahàgʷu remained mostly rural nomads, but a sizable number of Crystals also moved into the aboriginal city of Baeba Swamp.

Settlement of Baeba Swamp

The Crystals' growth was very slow. Nevertheless, none of their political enemies were willing to invade the desert of Laxàġʷu to defeat the Crystals, and their military power increased gradually throughout the centuries. Finally, in the late 3300s, after almost 2000 years of slow growth, the Crystals managed to capture Baeba Swamp, and they then declared it the new capital of the Crystal Empire. They also changed the name of the state Baeba was in to Ƥē, and made Khulls the official language of Ƥē and Baeba Swamp.

or they might just speak baeban.

The Lantern Empire

The Crystals followed AlphaLeap in building small nations with nontraditional population structures. For example, some nations had very few adult males, and others had few women or children. Some toparchies were set up for political purposes, intending that residents who disagreed with the politics could move to a different nation. Because these were all independent nations, the rulers could make any laws they wished; however, they were still bound to military allegiance with the Empire.

The Lantern Empire also included territory run by Kava and FILTER, and these tribes soon also built nations with nontraditional populations and laws.

Some Lantern nations were racially restrictive. For example, Sàkʷalo banned non-Lenian tribes such as the Crystals from living or even traveling there, even though the Crystals were the most powerful of the three entities within the Empire and could have easily forced Sàkʷalo to admit them.

Tribes within the Lantern Empire

The Lantern Empire was an alliance between three empires that were already large on their own. These three empires were run by the Crystals, the Thunderers, and FILTER.

The Thunderers considered themselves an alliance of Lenian tribes rather than a political party. Thus, there were many avenues of political dissent within the organization, but all of their supporters were of the same blonde blue-eyed body type. Many Thunder-held areas passed racially discriminatory laws to prevent dark-skinned people, or in some cases even dark-haired people, from living or traveling there.

The Crystals were a political party, and therefore they had only one set of opinions, but their party was open to all races and tribes. Even so, almost all Crystals were dark-skinned aboriginals, as they ruled mostly in the tropics.

FILTER was in between: though they began as an association of blonde Lenian tribes, they early on submitted to the dark-skinned aboriginal Sword people, and the two tribes melded together to create a third empire with a racially diverse population. Yet, they still thought of themselves as tribes, and excluded foreigners who were not of provable FILTER ancestry. They ruled in diverse climates ranging from frigid to tropical wetlands even hotter than the Crystals', and their racial boundary was east-west rather than north-south. Thus, many Lenian people soon came to live in the equatorial regions where there previously had been only dark-skinned aboriginals. FILTER allowed political parties, but FILTER itself was given special powers to keep the dissenters from challenging their authority. Since FILTER had been originally the light-skinned tribe, more Lenian-like people occupied the highest posts of power even after hundreds of years, but there was no racial discrimination and any dark-skinned people could register as FILTER members to join the power structure. Soon, most Filterers were of racially intermediate body types.

Nations within the Lantern Empire

NOTE, SOME OF THESE NAMES ARE EXONYMS. Also, this list includes nations with widely spaced founding dates, so some are thousands of years older than others.

Time Passes Slowly

This nation was founded by FILTER, not the Crystals. In TPS, the laws were codified upon the founding of the nation, and one of those laws was that no changes could be made to any laws for the first 2500 years of the nation's existence.

The climate here was very cold, and upon its founding, still contained many glaciers. The land had actually not been conquered yet at the time of the founding, but since it was so cold, the Filterers knew that they could move in and face no organized opposition from the Naman aboriginals.

Sàkwalo

A large nation with a long and bountiful seacoast. All non-Lenians were banned by law, however. Two women ran the government: Wolfspider and Cyclops. These women made tyrannical laws that forced all citizens to adhere to strict behavior codes in order to retain the right to live in Sakwalo. Anyone could leave at any time, but Sakwalo was rich and therefore there were few refugees.

The two women did not consider themselves feminists; the Lenians and especially the Thunder tribe were simply known for supporting female military leaders.

Hōmoya

The founder was a woman named the Teacher, who allowed Cryastals to move in. Hōmoya soon overtook Sàkʷalo, largely due to its rapidly increasing population.

Mikagu

Powered by illegal labor.

Vēga

Run by a dictator.

Kikolariso

Also run by a dictator.

Foundation of Dreamland

In 3373 AD, the Gâm people, immigrants from the islands of Laba, declared war on the Crystal Empire and headed towards Baeba Swamp. They claimed that the invasion was political, and that Crystals who defected to the Gâm would be welcomed and given citizenship in the Gâm empire once the Gâm victory had been secured. Very few Crystals defected, but many Thunder people from the neighboring Thunder Empire did. The THunder Empire was bound by a military alliance with the Crystal Empire but had not been invaded, and the Thunder Empire refused to help the Crystals fight off the invaders. However, the Dreamers never reached Baeba, and Baeba remained the capital of the Crystal Empire.

Crystals in Lypelpyp

See Lypelpyp.

In 3884, the Thunder Empire established racial discrimination and enslaved all Crystals. Crystals were denied the ability to convert to Thunderism, and thus could not buy their way out of slavery. Furthermore, they passed a law forbidding the immigration of any person with dark skin, even those who claimed allegiance to the Thunder party, as the Thunderers intended to keep their vast empire racially homogeneous.

In 3915, several hundred Crystals moved from the Crystal state of Yīspʷilinâ to the Thunder city of Lypelpyp. Lypelpyp was near the western border of the Thunder Empire, and easily accessible from Yīspʷilinâ, but distant and not easily reached from the Thunder Empire's major population centers in the east. Soon, more waves of Crystal settlers followed the roads up from their homeland and settled in Lypelpyp.

Within months, the city of Lypelpyp was divided equally between the illegal Crystals and the local Thunderers upset that their government had refused to send its army to protect Lypelpyp from the Crystal invasion, or even help them put the Crystals into slavery. After attempting to fend off the Crystals on their own, the Thunderers suffered a disastrous loss in the Battle of Lypelpyp and surrendered their city to Crystal control.

However, the conquering Crystals quickly became peaceful; they chose to live in Lypelpyp as though it were just another Crystal city that happened to be outside the borders of their Empire, and treated the Thunderers as welcome neighbors. Yet the total lack of resistance from the Thunder military told the Crystals that the Thunderers' promise to protect the borders of their empire was a lie, and that further Crystal penetration was possible.

Birth of the Moonshines

See Proto-Moonshine culture.

In August 3948, a group of Crystals announced the formation of a new political party, the Moonshine party. Like the mainline Crystals had done thousands of years before, the Moonshines considered themselves feministic pacifists, and stated that they would ensure the survival of their people by practicing feminine diplomacy and refusing to engage in warfare, even in self-defense. The Moonshines were far more strict than the mainline Crystals in their definitions of feminism in pacifism, and claimed that the Crystals were scarcely different from their enemies in this regard.

Meanwhile in Baeba Swamp, the local Crystals came to reject the Moonshines and came to call themselves the Rocks, saying that they were what was left of the Crystals when all of the shine had been removed.

Anzan

The Battle of the Sexes

Less than a year after Anzan established its power as the successor state to Vaamū, a fifth civil war erupted. This time it came from women and girls who objected to the treatment they were given by the all-male government that the Tinkers had established. The Tinkers believed that feminism made men weak, and that weak, submissive men were responsible for the many humiliating invasions of their territory over the last 400 years. Although many men in Anzan considered themselves at peace with their wives, the Tinks actually set up meetings for men where the men who had not yet beaten their wives into complete submission would be beaten by those who had.

The feminist Andanese rebels were helpless to attack the Tinkers, but promised that they would win in the end because they knew that all babies, even boys, needed soft women to survive, and the more the Tinks oppressed them the less soft they would get. They drew depictions of themselves with all the curves of their bodies replaced by sharp corners, saying that, even though they were still female and thus still physically soft and weak, their minds were dangerous, and they would find a way to ensure, metaphorically, that any man who touched them would be cut by their firm, sharp bodies. They promised that there would soon be a Milk War (mama yas) in Anzan, and the winners of the war would be women.

Foundation of the Female Party

The women announced the creation of a new political party they called simply the Female Party (tuepas bisuap), and they began to refer to the Tinkers as the Male Party (nup tuepus bisuap). They said that because their nation was a democracy, they could seize power nonviolently simply by convincing all of the females in Anzan to vote for them, since in Anzan, females outnumbered males by a significant margin. They claimed that although they did not want to oppress males, the sex ratio in their nation meant that any just government would give females more power than males. As for their own membership, they welcomed males into their party, and told male members that young, single men who voted Female would be able to marry multiple Females at once and be sure that their wives would not cheat on them. Thus, the Females endorsed polygamy, but only if the husband was pro-Female.

Female Party Platform

The Females promised that they would govern their nation according to feminist principles, which to them included a pledge to resist using violence. Even though they lived in a very violent nation in the most violent time period the world had yet known, they said, they would achieve victory entirely by resisting that violence and uniting their people under the power of pacifism. They said that if members of the Male Party attacked them, they would not fight back, and said that they would be sure to achieve victory in the end because they would attract most of the female population into their movement, and they knew that the Males could not run a nation with no female population, or even one in which females were massively outnumbered by males, without facing a steep population decline.

Allegiance to the Crystals

In the end the Tinkers surrendered, thus violating their promise to never deviate from their original philosophy. The victorious all-female rebels renamed themselves the Crystals (Šinap), saying that all other parties were false and that only they were the true Crystals. Thus the oppression of women stopped, and the entire government was opened up to the Crystal leaders.

Once the Crystals became a majority in the new government, they repudiated their parent party's pacifist platform, saying that their new allegiance to the Crystals had superseded their allegiance to the feministic principle of power through peace. They declared that the predicted Milk War had begun.

The Milk War

When the Tinks heard that they were now facing a "Milk War" (Mama Yas) from their female opponents, their soldiers stood at attention and prepared for a messy but easily won battle. However, they were soon taken by surprise: the Crystals ordered all Tink governors to kill themselves and turn over their weapons to the girls.

Facing death either way, enough Tinks complied with the Crystals' orders to put the power of authority firmly in their hands. The new Crystals were almost completely uneducated, and they had no plan for their government. Weeks later, they were attacked by the Tinks.

Third Loporomo government

Immediately the Tinks ordered the killing of all "Crystals" and the return of absolute power to the Tinks. They did, however, allow the very few pro-Tink women to have some power in their new government, which they called Loporomo 3. That is, the Tinks saw themselves as a continuation of the government that had been put into place when the Thunder Empire had lost its war against Adabawa more than 100 years earlier.

Civil war against males

But within a few weeks, the Crystals convinced the Tinks they had found a way to turn all babies into girls and thus deprive the nation of its entire male population. The Tinks realized they had been defeated once again, and swapped all their power to the Crystals.

Crystals regain power

The Crystals took power once again, but they could not understand exactly what it was they needed to do to keep the nation working. They had thought that the governors simply gave orders and watched their workers follow the orders. This had been true during parts of the Vaamūan era, when their empire had been richer, but it was true no longer. The Tink governors in fact had worked even harder than the workers themselves; the Crystals had mostly never had power. So they surrendered power to the Tinks, who granted them total control of "women's needs", and partial control over some of the rest of the roughly 150,000 people still surviving in Anzan. They even allowed the girls to have some ability in Loporomo 4 to recall the Tinks themselves, because they were afraid that a new revolt was about to happen anyway.

Fourth Loporomo government

This time the Tinks wasted no time in getting their agenda accomplished. They were running out of weapons, but they figured they still had enough to kill off all of their enemies. They had planned to kill all non-Tinks in the entire country, except for the Crystals. But they had to settle for instead going after only the Crystals, which they immediately set forth to do. The Crystals protested that most of them were females, and if the Tinks killed all the Crystals, then they wouldn't have enough women left to marry. This confused the Tinks, and some of them protested the killing of the girls, but the other Tinks reassured them that what they were doing was right. The Tink commanders told their soldiers to kill their own wives and daughters, promising them that there would always remain enough women in their nation for all the men to start new families. The only women they promised to let live were those who pledged loyalty to the Tinks, and these women could only do so by agreeing to be carried off to a temporary slave camp operated by the male Tink leaders.

Because the Tinks valued obedience to authority even above loyalty to their families, the soldiers largely did as they were told, and killed their wives while they were asleep the next night. As for those who refused, they came home the day after the command had been issued and found that their wives and daughters had instead been killed by other Tinks. The massacre happened very quickly: because the girls were unarmed and could not defend themselves, nearly the entire population was killed within a single day, and the rest had been wounded and captured by the Tink leaders.

Soon, however, the Tink leaders realized that they had a population problem. Most of the men had killed their wives in this battle, and those who were unmarried had killed other men's wives. As they buried their dead, the Tinks realized they had made a dangerous mistake: They had killed so many women that their population was now mostly male. They thus realized that the Crystals had been correct all along that a nation needed a female population in order to survive; now that the Tinks had killed off all of their girls, they had nobody left to give birth to the next generation of Tinks. The Tink leaders apologized for killing all of the wives and daughters of their soldiers, and promised to find a solution to their population problem as soon as possible.

So the Tinks decided to start killing young boys; they wanted to completely wipe out the population of Anzan and start completely over again. So the Tinks, with virtually no opposition, attacked and killed all of the unarmed babies and young children that they could find. (They also killed some Raspara living in the wilderness that had been surviving by eating Andanese people.) One week later, only the Tink leaders, the captured female Crystals, and a small population of babies that they had decided to save remained alive in Anzan. At least the Tinks realized that they would have plenty of food for awhile, although there were virtually no workers left.

The Tinks realized they needed to increase their population madly to avoid an invasion. Some female Crystals had only been severely wounded, but not killed, in the battle, and some of these were still alive a few weeks later as the Tinks began to rethink their population policy. Soon, the Tinks established a power-sharing agreement with the wounded Crystals, and they came to call both the girls and themselves Crystals. "Breasts" (a wave pattern with dots in the center of each wave) were added to the flag to show that their new empire was run by both sides of the family.

First meetings with the Raspara

The Tinks' efforts to spread the world's first democracy often got them into trouble. For example, the Raspara party, which was descended from the Thunderers, and was the largest minority party in the northern parts of the Empire, didn't recognize any of the other parties and preferred to govern its people without any elections. Their official name was the Cold Men, but because other parties had used that name, when they dealt with any other parties they preferred to call themselves the Raspara. This is a Pabappa name; the Khulls was Laslala and the Andanese Lahalala.

They believed in the philosophy of Rasparism, an ideology created during the Halasala government detailing the best possible way for a minority ruling class to control and exploit an easily oppressed majority population while keeping that host population strong enough to defend the occupiers in a war, yet weak enough to be unable to throw the oppressors out of power. Rasparism stressed the need for the ruling class to restrain its population growth in order to avoid accidentally becoming a majority, as the resulting shortage of people to abuse would lead to a crisis within the Rasparist ruling class. Thus, Rasparists preferred to settle in nations in which they would be swamped by the much more numerous populations around them.

Raspara belief system

Some of the basic tenets of Raspara philosophy were:

• The Raspara must always be actively enslaving a subset of the host population.
• The Raspara must always spare another subset of the host population from slavery, in order to divide the middle and lower classes against each other.
• The host population, not the Raspara, is responsible for military defense of the nation.
• The Raspara people should be settled throughout the nation, but must have at least one Raspara-exclusive colony, ideally in the center of the nation, into which they can retreat in the event that the host nation is invaded. If the Raspara cannot be present in every city, there must be in their place a different minority that is willing to collaborate with the Raspara. The host population cannot have any territory completely to itself, even in the poorest parts of the nation.
• The Raspara must always remain a minority in their occupied nation, in order to ensure a plentiful supply of people to dominate. If the Raspara birthrate becomes too high, a new war must be launched in order to increase the supply of people to rule over.
• Living standards in the Raspara colonies must be superior to those in the nation as a whole.
• Public criticism of the Raspara should be at best illegal and at least frowned upon by the masses of the host population. Raspara people should be seen as superiors who are immune from criticism and reserve the right to attack without fear of retribution.
• Raspara people should be nominally represented in areas in the government in which they are not already fully in control.
• If a host population considers itself to be a male-dominated society, in which men are responsible for protecting women, prostitution of a very abusive sort must be openly practiced and promoted in cities dominated by the host population, but strictly suppressed in cities dominated by the Raspara. To avoid the appearance of impropriety, these prostitution operations should be run not by Raspara in disguise but by members of a different minority, distinct from both the Raspara and the host population. Additionally, the customers of these prostitutes must be members of the host population rather than the Raspara.
• Crime must be punished more harshly when committed by a member of the host population, particularly a male, than by a Raspara.
• Raspara people are not allowed to work for companies in the host country unless all of the people above them in the corporate hierarchy are also Raspara. If no such employer can be found, a new company must be created to find jobs for the Raspara.
• Politically successful members of the host population must be targeted with invitations to join the Raspara, in order to deprive the host population of its most powerful defenders. On the contrary, unsuccessful members of the Raspara population, including criminals, will forever retain their right to remain a member of the Raspara.

The Raspara rejected democracy, since they figured that in a democracy the oppressed people could simply vote the oppressors out of power. Previously, the Raspara had been hindered by their struggle for a weak, gullible population to rule over, and had been forced to prey on each other, but when the Raspara heard that they had been conquered by an army calling itself the Tinks, they selected the Tinks as their new hosts and began plans for their climb to power.

The Tinks permitted the Raspara to exist and to run their areas of the nation as they wished, but insisted that the people living in those states must be given the ability to vote for the Tinks. The Raspara agreed to a compromise: they would hold elections and allow their people to vote for the Tinks, but they would ignore the results and always keep the Raspara leaders in power anyway. The Tinks realized their relationship with the Raspara people to their north was going to be a very interesting one.

The Tinks did not allow women to vote, but as above, they were the only party that allowed common people to vote at all, and women generally did not complain about this, as there were other more pressing issues at hand. Even the Raspara party, which the Tinks had overthrown, was legal, although it also did not participate in elections and had no supporters. In fact the Raspara were more of an army than a political party and it seemed to some that the Tinks could not tell the difference.

First Tink envoys to foreign nations

Due to the war, Anzan had lost complete control of its territories in Amade and Tarwas. The Tinkers were curious to see what had happened there, as they saw that in these countries, conditions were even worse than in Anzan. They discovered that Tarwas had declared war on the few Vaamūans still living in Tarwas, and that the Crystal party in Amade, which was now a formal ally of the Tinks because of the "marriage" between the Tinks and their feminist dissenters, had been thrown completely out of power by a new party that had arisen in just the last few years. The Tinkers wanted to avoid a similar situation in their own country, but had no plan.

Rapala

Life in Baeba

Over the next two years, the Swampies fought back against STW and the Matrixes for control of Rapala, but kept losing. Many Swamp Kids fled to Baeba Swamp and used Dolls as soldiers to gain protection from their enemies. But the Matrixes continued to win, and their society with its new milder slave labor was very productive, competitive even with STW.

The Zeniths, who had been thrown out of power in Baeba, signed an alliance with the Swamp Kids combining all their efforts in destroying the new STW-Matrix coalition government of Rapala. The Zeniths seceded from Rapala. Joja and the richest of the people of Base 44 had moved to a new base, 257, in Baeba Swamp. The Zeniths owned the land that STW Base 257 relied on, so STW Base 257 was now almost completely cut off from its allies in Rapala, and they had little power there. The Zeniths were entirely against STW now, and they focused their attacks more on STW than on the Matrixes. Soon they had almost completely destroyed STW in Baeba, and only Base 257 (the strongest base) remained there. Joja realized Base 257 was in danger, so she suddenly fled with Base 257 and all of its members to the western part of Rapala. She rebuilt all the buildings in the wilderness. She also established forts in Lobexon, which was cooperating with STW. The Matrixes promised to defend STW during the war, because they knew that STW was largely responsible for their own existence. Base 257 also built a nation of its own in the rainforest, in case it might become necessary to flee Rapala altogether.

In spring 4197, the Zeniths defeated STW and the Matrixes. But, in an ironic twist of fate, they seemed to be unable to subdue their enemies. STW and the Matrixes emerged from the war even stronger than before, while the Zeniths were weakened by the war. Rapala continued to get richer each year until late 4197.

In late 4197, the Matrixes had secured power for themselves, and no longer had to fight off the Swamp Kids. The Matrixes made a truce with STW, promising that they would not attack each other. Once the Matrixes were safe, they became far more corrupt than had been the Swampies. They went back to true slave labor, saying that it was after all the superior system.

The Matrixes' only fear was slaves they could not control. They wanted to make sure that there was nothing anyone could do that the Matrixes could not. To make themselves feel safe among Rapala's population of "polluted" people, the Matrixes killed people that they felt were unclean, and they violently abused those who were clean.

The Matrixes merged their slave pools into a single group they called Mumpum. (They had planned to use the name Mampum, but they changed it to Mumpum.) The Mumpum were very easy to exploit and abuse in large numbers, and even STW captured a lot of Mumpum slaves and made them work for STW. Thus, the only people who were safe were the Matrixes and the people in STW, who had made a promise to attack only Mumpums, and never each other. (The Rasparas had almost completely disappeared by this time, although many Rasparas had joined STW or signed contracts with STW and thus stealthily caused STW to become mostly pro-Raspara.) Thus, every Matrix was guaranteed his own safety. Moonshine realized that the Swamp Kids had definitely been the lesser of the two evils. Moonshine got very angry at the Matrix for abandoning its promises and did not know what to do. They wanted to continue to send in more laborers to try to keep the Rapalan economy going, but realized that they could no longer support Rapala because of its corrupt government. Instead, they began to prepare their people for war against Rapala, hoping that with their own form of free labor they could overcome Rapala's military and restore Rapala to a less perverse system of government.

Zenith enters the war

The Zeniths decided that their only hope lay in breaking the fragile bond between the Crystals and the Matrix. The Matrix had sincerely agreed, to the surprise of all, to release all Crystals and Bubbles from its slave pools, and hand over its weapons secrets to the Crystals and Bubbles. They were afraid of the Swamp Kids, and they felt they would be better off by far in a world run by the Crystals than a world run by the Swamp Kids. Soon the Crystals became almost as strong as the Matrix. The Crystals were thus in 2nd place in terms of military strength. The Zenith was 4th, and they hoped that if they could ally themselves with the greatest power (Matrix), they would be able to secure a position like that enjoyed by the Crystals, while the Crystals, as their true enemies, would be reduced once again to the helplessness that they had just recently escaped. The Bubbles, meanwhile, would be killed altogether by the combined Matrix-Zenith. The Zenith realized its plan was unlikely to happen, but figured they would all lose anyway if they didn't act, so they put their plan into effect.

The first thing they did was to protest against the Crystals. In this grossly violent time, any sincere protest was expected to be followed up by military action, so the Zenith announced that they were going to attack the Crystals (not the Matrix), and try to kill as many of them as possible before they themselves were defeated. They stated that they knew they couldn't do it, and they pretended to collapse early on and sent out an apparently sincere peace treaty to the Matrixes, asking them to reject the Crystals and instead fight them. The Matrixes refused, and crushed the Zenith completely by December 4198. They retook Baeba, and STW Base 257 moved back into the Swamp.

Matrixes grow

Still, the situation improved gradually over the next two years. The Matrixes apologized for their misdeeds (their party was fragmented; kinder people got into power) and began to try to help the Crystals and Bubbles become stronger so that they would not have to always fear a takeover by the Matrix. But in late 4198, the Matrixes decided to abandon Moonshine and break their promises once again. This time, they passed a law stating that all people, no matter what race or league they belonged to, were to be seen simply as slaves for the Matrixes, who had declared themselves to be above all others. The Matrixes' new law also stated that they could do absolutely anything they wanted to with the slaves, so long as the Matrixes did not attack each other. They abused the slaves so badly that Moonshine began sending its people on very dangerous rescue missions to bring Dolls to safety in Moonshine. The Matrixes thus revived their war against the Crystals and Bubbles, but because they had just recently been helping the Crystals and Bubbles become stronger, their opponents were significantly tougher than they had been just a few years earlier, and the Matrixes were afraid that they might all be killed by the Dolls they were attempting to enslave. Many Matrixes began to switch parties in order to escape their coming doom. Most of these became Crystals. The Crystals exalted these people and protected them better than they protected their original members, but even so the Matrix army was eager to kill any defectors, and they often focused their energies especially on Matrix traitors.

In fall 4199, Moonshine declared war on the Matrix, and began sending their surprisingly powerful armies down to Rapala to attack the Matrix. Their armies were so powerful because they had the help of many other nations, who were eager to destroy the Matrix's slave empire. However, the war actually created some allies for the Matrix, because these allies knew that if Moonshine won the war, then Anzan or Milikihu could re-emerge as a powerful threat to their nations.

The Matrixes revived many of the Swamp Kids' policies, policies that the slaves of Rapala all hated and that Rasparas and STW members now hid from in fear. Life for Dolls got worse and worse until it improved slightly around Jan 4200 due to a truce that STW, which had begun winning battles, had forced the Matrix to sign. But in Jan 4200, the situation got much worse when the Matrixes took even another step downward and committed themselves to an alliance with the Rasparas. They legalized Rasparism in Baeba Swamp, and welcomed Rasparas who wanted to ally themselves with a winning power and still be able to practice Rasparism. But most Rasparas wanted nothing to do with the Matrix government; everyone was against them now.

Many Dolls tried to flee to Røråmeko to escape what had become everyday life in Rapala. Atheism had taken over, and it was a very hedonistic atheism. The Matrixes (who had been taken over by a group of Matrixes called Inca or Nenenhane) even admitted now that they didn't care at all how painful the lives of the Dolls they abused were; they cared only about each other, and securing a powerful future for their nation. They planned to have Rapala take over the world and extinguish all other nations. Then, they said, the world would be perfect, because by this time they would have perfected themselves and eliminated all pain. They saw that everyone else in the world, including Rapala's traditional allies, was against them, but they told each other that they were confident that they would overcome their enemies if only they forced their Dolls to work even harder building weapons.

The Matrixes now lived in buildings that had been built by the Dolls in recent decades, buildings that were not designed for Nainainahanai people to live in. Still, the Matrixes recognized the signs of their cultural affiliation with the Dolls in the spacious design of their buildings. Their new home, Enasisira, was the largest building complex in the world. But they had invaded the buildings, and were not at home there. They survived only because they forced their Mumpum slaves to work as hard as possible at all times to keep them comfortable. The Matrixes had destroyed a lot of very valuable technical knowledge, so the Dolls were forced to do heavy manual labor that often injured them. This caused a lot of accidental deaths among the slaves, but the Matrixes had them reproducing so fast that they could not die fast enough to cause the Matrixes any alarm. The Dolls were taught that they were perfect, and that their job was to do their best to improve the lives of the Matrixes who controlled them, because the Matrixes claimed that they were morally perverse and in need of a lot of help from innocent, perfect people like the Mumpum. They also taught the Dolls that the worst thing they could do would be to kill a Matrix, and that they should never be violent in any way. They did this so that the Mumpum would not desire to eliminate the Matrixes completely so as to create what they thought would be a world of perfect people. (Enasisi = tu in Xap)

The Matrixes had pushed to an incredible extreme that cruel imbalance of justice that had long been the rule on planet Teppala: the Matrixes themselves lived a very luxurious, indulgent life because they each had hundreds of slaves to work hard for them to keep them alive. These slaves, called the Dolls (or Mumpum), were forced to work as hard as they could for the Matrixes, and any who refused were killed. But even the hardest-working Dolls had to deal with sexual and physical abuse from the Matrixes, who used their helpless slaves to satisfy their own sadistic desires. The Dolls were worked so hard that the leading cause of death, after diseases, was injury while working. The fact that most Mumpum people died young didn't upset the Matrixes, because they were forced to reproduce at such a rate that the Matrixes couldn't kill them fast enough to keep the population down.

In fact, the Matrixes knew that they could afford to kill one slave about every day because that was about the rate at which they were being delivered to each Matrix. There was an incentive, however, for the Matrixes to not kill too many slaves: no matter how many they killed, slaves were delivered to the Matrixes at the same rate. Thus, a Matrix who took good care of his slaves would amass an ever larger army of slaves, whereas one who was careless and let them die could find himself virtually without slaves. Even without slaves, however, a Matrix was guaranteed support from other Matrixes, and did not have to worry about being attacked. Very rich Matrixes (those who had many thousands of slaves) often let some of the slaves work for the good of the Matrixes as a whole by developing technology, rather than by caring only for the immediate needs of their owner.

In Jan 4202, the Matrix defeated Moonshine in the Battle of Papilalapapi (named like the 49ers (jaral)), ending the war with a victory for the Matrix. Opposing armies were then driven out of Rapala, and the Matrixes attacked Røråmeko in order to kill all the people living there. They invaded Røråmeko, and killed many Røråmekoans, but the remaining Røråmekoan refugees eventually killed them. Then, Røråmeko found a safe spot in the wilderness and became a powerful enemy of the Matrix government.

Matrixes attack the Soap

The new Matrix government was based on a system of technology far more primitive than that used by the Swamp Kids. The only reason they still held power in their dying world was that they had signed a treaty with STW, and STW supported them enough to not object to what the Matrixes wanted to do with them. The Matrixes sought to prevent the assembly of another Swamp-style army by ruling over their slaves with extreme oppression, and forcing the entire population except themselves to work very hard for the Matrixes in order to keep their government stable. All of the world supported the Matrixes now, because they were not nearly as powerful as the Swampies had been just a few years earlier.

The government lived up to the earlier Matrixes' promise of an era whose cruel injustices would make those of all preceding eras pale in comparison. They still had a massive slave army of people they called Dolls. When the Dolls were born, they were immediately subjected to extreme abuse. The Dolls were forced to work extremely hard, doing all of the labor needed to keep the Matrixes alive and safe, and the rest of the time building weapons to make Rapala's technology surpass those of all rival nations in the world (currently Tata was the champion of weapons technology).

Beginning in summer 4202, the Matrix focused on conquering the Soap Bubbles (there were still many Dolls that had not yet been captured). This turned out to be no easy task, as the Crystals immediately began to object. The Crystals demanded that the Bubbles be allowed to participate in a new coalition government to include the Matrix, the Crystals, and the Bubbles. They half-sincerely stated that the true evil had been the Zenith, that the only reason there was any war in Rapala was because of the Zenith. The Matrix responded by trying to compromise with the Crystals, saying they would agree to a coalition government if it was to be run without the Bubbles, in which case they would let the Bubbles live, but without substantial power. The Crystals, after a long period of debate, agreed to the plan, saying that the Bubbles were an insignificant minority group and that they would not matter much in the long run, anyway, because they likely would be outvoted by the Crystal-Matrix to such a point where they would be reduced to powerlessness even more absolute than what they faced here. Still, the Crystals secretly knew this was an excuse, and they wanted the Bubbles to have some power.

Crystal party split

By this time, the Crystals had changed their name to the Shields, hoping to escape the bad associations that went with their old name.

In the tropics, a pro-Raspara wing of the Crystals called the Phoenixes had recently arisen. The Phoenixes claimed to have improved and reshaped their movement to eliminate its errors. They abandoned the simplicity of the earlier Crystal movement and replaced it with "complex Crystalism", meaning applied Crystalism rather than Crystalism based solely on principles. It was meant for the real world rather than a utopia.

The Phoenixes also admitted publicly that they supported a form of slavery not greatly different from that which already existed. They said that the only way to stop the violence and problems in Rapala from getting even worse would be to kill all of the people who were causing the problems and replace them with a group called the BS, who would be disarmed and incapable even of protest. Since the Phoenix army was weak, they early on decided to devote their energies to kidnapping soldiers from the other armies, and drafting them into their own, generally as slave labor rather than in units intended for combat. Even though the Phoenixes tried not to abuse the slaves they kidnapped, most of the other armies believed what they were doing was evil, and would not retaliate in kind. The Matrix was an exception, however — they recited a clause in their original constitution, written in 4177, which they now claimed transferred all of the rights the Raspara claimed to the Matrixes. Therefore, they now said that slaves that the Matrix captured had no rights at all.

Views on racial discrimination

The new Phoenixes called for the abolition of the system of racial discrimination called anata. They claimed that Raspara philosophy had disproven anata, and that the Swamp Kids had resurrected it in the areas they controlled solely to preserve their image as being improved from the Raspara, who were again beginning to accumulate power. That is, even though the Raspara were parasites who abused every host they lived among, they had always opposed racial discrimination, and therefore the Swamp Kids had begun to claim that restoring racial discrimination would help rid the nation of the legacy of the abusive Raspara. The Swamp Kids' system of discrimination put themselves on top. The Matrixes were mostly anti-discrimination too, however, so people began to see the Phoenixes as Matrix sympathizers. Phoenixes responded by affirming their faith to the Rasparas.

By contrast, the Shields supported racial discrimination even though they knew that they would generally be towards the bottom of the preference scale. They called for a system of "oligarchy" — government by the few. These few would be filtered out from the population by a series of tests, which would determine their ability to govern well. Many Shield members had in the recent past made comments supportive of Dreamland.

Meanwhile, the Phoenixes struggled to convince the people that they opposed the Matrixes, as well as a new non-ideological alliance calling itself Gatotōl. But in order to do this, they had to admit that they supported the unpopular Raspara party, which seemed unlikely to give anything back to the Phoenixes in return for their support.

However, the new generation of Raspara leaders had reformed their philosophy and founded a new party named the Cold Kids. They chose this name to honor the Swamp Kids, and hoped that the Swamp Kids would soon form an alliance with them. The Cold Kids supported most tenets of Raspara ideology but promised to end slavery and, if necessary, declare war on the any Raspara members who refused to release their slaves. The Cold Kids considered the Matrix to be their foremost enemy.

So the Cold Kids and Phoenixes began to search for a way to make their two plans compatible, and to consider launching a war against the Shield party, which had many times submitted so easily to hostile powers that the Cold Kids considered them a greater military problem than most of their enemies. The Cold Kids had not yet released their slaves, and many of these slaves were in fact Shield party members taken from STW who seemed to have no interest in fleeing their abusers.

Crystal-Swampy relations

STW declared war on 21 nations of escaped slaves. They started out facing just a few of the nations but were soon at war with all 21. Within five years they had conquered all the nations, and added this land to its own territory, Lindasia. But many escaped slaves spread out to even more nations in the wilderness, and soon there were hundreds of nations of escaped STW slaves, with a combined population even larger than STW's slavepool. These and many other Mampum slaves escaped control of STW and built up their own nation and army in an area that was inaccessible to STW and its military leader Piplap. Soon, the slaves turned around and attacked STW.

Religious imagery

In this war, even many STW leaders admitted they had long since lost the moral high ground. Piplap and other leaders declared that the escaped slaves were in Heaven, and that they had come to conquer Hell and free its remaining subjects. Piplap said that everything the slaves did was morally justified, and that they were incapable of evil, because a war against evil could not itself be evil. Yet Piplap reaffirmed his commitment to STW and promised he would defend STW against the armies of Heaven.

There were many small battles. For the most part, Piplap himself did not attack the soldiers here. Instead, he sent out enslaved Matrixes and others from Rapala to help him, or he sent animals. Piplap realized that to confront the slaves directly would be too dangerous, because he didn't know at all how strong the slaves were.

Phoenix-Cold relations

Meanwhile, the Phoenixes had finalized their link with the Cold Kids. The Cold Kids were a weak voice in Anzan, and most Anzanans preferred the Swamp Kids to the Cold Kids. Thus, aligning themselves with the Cold Kids did not help the Phoenixes become popular, but the Cold Kids offered them protection from the Swamp Kids.

The Cold Kids rejected the new Shield party, which had resurrected the name "Crystals" for itself. Since the Cold Kids had absorbed some Crystals, they claimed the right to the name, and prepared for war against the Shields. Meanwhile, the Swamp Kids refused the Cold Kids' offer of an alliance, and prepared for war against both the Cold Kids and the Shields.

But then, the Cold Kids, the Phoenixes, and the Shields suddenly merged into the Universal Crystal League, which renamed itself the Crystal party. Many subjects of the merging parties disliked the alliance, but most saw little hope in winning any war on their own.

However, some Cold Kids had been Rasparas a few years earlier, and having never fought a battle under the Crystal banner, the ex-Rasparas threatened to secede once again and apply to become Swamp Kids if the Crystals didn't bring the party ideology closer to Raspara ideals. But this was an idle threat because the ex-Rasparas had already been rejected by the Swamp Kids and knew that nothing had changed. Frustrated, the ex-Rasparas reaffirmed their commitment to the Crystal party.

This time the alliance dissolved when the Crystals ordered the ex-Rasparas to become Crystals themselves — the Rasparas refused to modify their philosophy, especially since the Shield platform had won out in most regards.

Further contacts

Despite this issue, a period of relative peace followed, with only the occasional Zenith uprising spoiling the calm. However, Crystals and Matrixes agreed that there should be no relaxing during this time of serenity; for they realized that the Zenith or the Bubbles were liable to rebel, or that a divorce between the Crystals and the Matrix themselves was liable to occur. So the Crystals and the Matrix continued building weapons in mutual symbiosis, each deliberately made dependent on the other so they could not attack without each other's support. (#4310-#4320)

In secret, however, both groups were building whole arrays of weapons by themselves, and simultaneously preparing to attack each other. The reasons for this new conflict came from outside: Taboo the king of Dreamland, and the Freemen from the greater world hated each other, and as they were each much more powerful than their Rapalan counterparts, the Matrixes and the Crystals separately agreed to attack each other. However, the Crystal party experienced a lot of dissent while preparing to attack their newfound allies, who had brought them from such a lowly position as they had held for over a thousand years to being an equal ally of the most powerful group in Rapala. At the time, there still existed a major rift in the Crystal party — it was divided between the Freemen, who included the Crystals and all their alien counterparts, and the Phoenixes, a strictly local (to Lobexon) sect that rejected the treaties that brought the outside world into a peaceful era around 3950 after Adabawa's victory over Altotta. The Crystals threatened to further divide the once-united Crystal party by creating a third, pro-Matrix wing, and the Freemen were determined to meet this threat. So they ordered the Crystals to attack the Matrixes. Meanwhile, Taboo threatened to forsake the Matrixes when Rapala again became open if they did not attack the Crystals. The Matrix did not dare disobey Taboo, but they arranged meetings with top Crystal leaders to try to reach a compromise that would be satisfactory to both world parties. The Matrixes did not suspect that the Crystals were preparing to attack them, but the Crystals knew that Matrix leaders were ready to explode. The two parties reached a simple compromise: the two would simply merge into one party, called the Mirror, and try to force their outworld parent parties to merge as well.

This agreement was concluded without much dissent from the Rapalan party leaders, both of whom were desperate for peace, but the reaction of the outworld leaders was extremely hostile. Taboo threatened the Mirror with invasion, and the Phoenixes and Freemen threatened them with death. The Mirror sent ambassadors to their parent parties to explain their plans, but they seemed to be getting no sympathy from the people living in the safer parts of the world.

Then Taboo suddenly announced he would declare war on the two Crystal groups if they did not assimilate into the Tabooites, who were not inherently anti-Crystal but rather bent on sole world domination (Taboo was now forced to suppress a pro-Mirror movement sweeping through his party). The Matrix side of the Mirror coalition voiced support for this war, but the Crystals loudly condemned it. It was at this point that the rank and file of the Crystal army began to explode with rage. They condemned the Matrixes for Tabooist tactics and suppression of their party in earlier centuries. (The Matrixes were in fact an outgrowth of the viciously repressive Raspara party, and their near-absolute obedience to Taboo had worried the Crystals for some time, a fear that was scarcely allayed by the Matrixes' refusal to attack.) The Crystal leaders purged their army, despite the fact that they realized they would become much weaker after the purge. They expected the Matrix to do the same, but they were wrong. Although the Matrixes were in fact trying to be friendly to the Crystals, they were averse to the idea of attacking themselves, as they would rather have a country run entirely by themselves than a coalition including the Crystals anyway.

Bubbles dissipate

As the Bubbles began to drift closer to the Crystal side, the Crystals wondered if they might have a chance of overcoming the Matrix after all. They rapidly built up their army and the Bubble army, simultaneously forcing the Bubbles to assimilate completely. Meanwhile, the Zenith had risen again, and it was drafting in people who had escaped from the other parties (chiefly the Matrix). Now the Crystal leadership was unsure what to do. They still wanted to be at peace with the Matrix, but were unsure of the Matrix's own commitment to peace. They demanded that they be given a sealed-off portion of the planet, so that both sides would be safe from attacks. The Matrixes refused, and immediately attacked the Crystals.

The Crystals responded to the attack by proclaiming peace to the Matrix once again, asking them to withdraw their troops, claiming they would allow the Matrixes to take their weapons and run the country if they would let the Crystals live peacefully. They believed they could not win against the Matrixes and hoped to cut their losses and survive. But the Matrixes would have none of this, and as they continued to attack the Crystals, the Crystals decided their best hope lay in trying to reduce the power of the Matrixes to the point where they could be overcome by the Zenith.

After the splitting of the Matrix-STW coalition government in September 4205, Rapala's new government employed its entire population.

Creamland-Nama relations

in 4206, Creamland surrendered, but kept invading Nama anyway. The Swamp Kids signed a pact with Nama making them allies. The Swamp Kids promised to never invade Nama.

Amade reappears

Between 4206 and 4209, the territory of Amade reemerged as a major power. For about 2000 years, it had been the home of the Crystals. But in 4162, the Crystals invited a population of Swamp Kids to move in with them. These Swamp Kids were unwelcome in Anzan because they favored an invasion of Anzan by Anzan's enemy, Dreamland, and were unwelcome even in Dreamland because Dreamland knew that if they invaded Anzan, most of Anzan's mutually hostile minority groups would unite and crush Dreamland. These Swamp Kids thus declared that they were no longer Swamp Kids, nor even Dreamers, but a new party calling itself Deppans.

After two years, the Deppan refugees became a majority in Amade, and decided it was time to conquer the Crystals who had invited them in. They built slave plantations and put the Crystals to work, offering them only one kindness: any Crystals who wanted to get out could move to Anzan and try to live amongst the Swamp Kids. Most Crystals refused, as they knew life was much worse in Anzan than in the country they were now told to call "Deppam". But the Swamp Kids took pity on the Crystals, as the Swamp Kids had themselves recently been attacked by a refugee population they had at first invited in. The Crystals responded by renaming themselves Swamp Kids as well. Thus, Amade was now, in the eyes of the ex-Crystals, a territory in which Swamp Kids were being oppressed by a pro-Dreamland outside minority, rather like much of Anzan itself. The Swampies in Anzan took this to mean that Amade itself, if they ever managed to conquer it, would welcome annexation to Anzan.

However, the Swamp Kids were tied down fighting off many hostile invasions of their own territory, and when an outside nation, Wax, adopted Amade as a colony of its own, the Swamp Kids were forced to admit that they could no longer do anything at all to help the ex-Crystals in Amade. Thus, the Deppans continued to occupy Amade for the next 45 years.

The Deppans allowed their people to rebel from the government and live at peace in the interior, meaning that the government would no longer provide for them, but would not try to collect taxes from them either. The government considered such people to simply no longer be Deppans.

Firestone outreach

Amade's ruling Firestone party sent its people into Anzan now, trying to form a coalition of all of the anti-Swamp parties. They won converts from the traditionally anti-Swamp parties such as the Cold Kids and the Matrixes. They also sent diplomats towards the Swamp Kids themselves, reminding them that the Firestones were the children of people who had converted away from the Swamp Kids, and that the "Swamp Kids" in Amade were an originally foreign population who had only claimed allegiance to the Swamp Kids because the Swamp Kids had tried to rescue them.

Few Swamp Kids were interested in signing an alliance with yet another of their many abusers, and the Swampy leaders warned their military generals that an invasion of Anzan from Amade might be in the works. They figured the invasion would start with a naval blockade of the southern ocean, followed by a direct invasion of the land from those same ships. Those few Swampies who did switch sides were often STW members who considered their allegiance to STW to come before their allegiance to either the Swamp Kids or the Firestones.

Matrix splits

Around 4208, almost 70% of the Matrix leaders decided to renounce Matricism and dedicate themselves to destroying the Matrix. They thus aligned themselves with the Cold Kids, and said that they would be willing to kill Crystals in order to kill Matrixes too. In fact, some of these new Cold theorists said that the only way they could ever kill all of the Matrixes would be to kill all the Crystals. The Crystals were only capable of doing what they were told to do, and their Matrix masters told them to fight the Cold Kids, so they did. Meanwhile, the Swamp Kids were considering joining up with the Cold Kids to form an even greater enemy for the Matrix. But for the meantime, they chose to agree to disagree, and work together to fight the Matrix but without merging into one single party.

The battles geared up again, with the Crystals doing surprisingly well. In fact, before long, the Matrix leaders were again looking for peace, despite loud objections from the rank and file. It then became clear to the Crystals that the Matrix was not nearly as well organized as they pretended to be. It was not world domination that the Matrix leaders wanted; they just wanted security in a strong, united army. The Crystals desired this too; but their party had already purged its dissenters. Now the Matrixes were in danger of splitting yet again into two mutually hostile armies: one was a pro-Taboo wing, who believed that only they were correct, and that the other wing, like the Crystals, should be destroyed as they were wrong. Like Taboo, they let nothing stand in the way of their world domination. This branch of the Matrixes called themselves the Matrix Minor.

The other branch (Matrix Major) wanted to make peace with the Crystals, and recognized that this could only happen if they once again declared war, this time on the Matrix Minor. So the Matrix Major merged into the Crystals, and began the first "formal" attacks against the Matrix Minor, with experienced Crystals leading the charge.

These battles were vicious, as the two sides involved were more advanced in weapons technology than in the earlier battles due to the period of peace that had intervened. In fact, nearly 25% of the total population of Rapala was killed in the first few years of the war. Most casualties came from the Crystal side, although because of its much greater population, it was actually winning. Still, there were a lot of deaths on the Crystal side, particularly among the original Crystals. The Matrix was indeed proving to be a formidable enemy.

Soon the Matrix Minor joined with the dormant Zenith to form the Slopes. Some Zeniths objected, and were quickly killed by the new Slope leaders. The exponential growth of the Slopes' power troubled the Crystals, and the new converts from parties such as the Cold Kids definitively broke off relations with the outside parent organizations. The Slopes, meanwhile, hoped to establish outside connections of their own. Despite their increasing power, they realized they could not hold out for long against the Crystals, and hoped that the outside world would support them against the Crystals.

Slopes take action

By this point, the Slopes and the Crystals dominated the battlefields, as they had absorbed most of the smaller armies. The Slopes realized that full control was within their reach, but that they would need to withdraw some soldiers from their army to build walls, roads, and ships.

To fully control Rapala's trade routes, the Slopes needed to conquer the remaining Crystal resistance. Realizing this, the Crystal party at last became more hopeful about the future. Also at this time the conflict in Rapala was sending shock waves through the badly split Crystal Party in the outworld. The Freemen mended their ties with the Crystals, despite the fact that they still objected to their new platform. Then, the Crystals signed a treaty with Dreamland's King Taboo transforming the Crystals into the seventh incarnation of the Gold party. However, Taboo still refused to support the other Crystal branches, and they did not join the new Gold party.

The Gold party had won Taboo's protection by agreeing to work on plantations, expecting that Dreamers would be their owners. But Dreamland was unwilling to invest itself in the conflict, and soon, the Slopes swarmed in and abducted the Gold supporters as fast as they could. Soon they had torn away so many slaves that there were not enough left to stand up to the Slopes. Thus, the Gold party' early victory quickly turned into defeat. A third party calling itself the Ghosts of Comfort formed in this period; most of its early members were former Cold Kids.

In early March 4206, the Slopes had agreed to launch a war against the Matrixes in Tata and eliminate them once and for all. But the Elasisians sent ambassadors back to Rapala explaining their theory that the Matrixes were no threat at all and that they wanted to be able to make a profit off of the Matrixes. The Rapalans strongly disapproved of what the Elasisians were doing, because Crystal slaves could work harder than Matrixes and produce more revenue, but the Elasisians were such brilliant masters of persuasion that they managed to get the Rapalans to cancel their war and return control of the helpless nation to the Elasisians.

Though the Ghosts of Comfort considered the Slopes their primary enemy, many Ghosts chose to join the Slopes rather than fight the Slopes as part of the small, vulnerable Ghost army. Thus, the Ghosts grew slowly even though a large fraction of the enslaved Gold party was sympathetic. In mid-June 4206, the Gold party demoted some politically suspect members, allowing them to work only on making weapons.

NOTE, IT IS POSSIBLE THAT THE CRYSTALS SIMPLY DISAPPEARED INTO THE GOLD PARTY AND THAT ALL MENTIONS OF CRYSTALS IN THE COSMOPOLITAN AGE SHOULD BE CHANGED TO GOLD.

STW-Swamp Kids relations

Unholy Alliance invasion

At this point, the Unholy Alliance (UAO) declared war on Baeba Swamp, attempting to destroy the invading Zenith army and reclaim control of the Dolls. In the 32 years since their formation, they had protected their members dutifully, and all twelve of the original members were still alive and healthy. They had originally been planning to have children and then enroll the children as new members, but even in their relatively old age they were still wary of handing off power to even one new person. Since they were all males, they had the power of rape, and they had been busy building themselves an army of slave children. They had also captured many adults as slaves. Unusually, many of these adults had slaves of their own, so they formed a middle class that enabled the 12 UAO members to more indirectly control many thousands of slaves, something they admitted they could never have done directly.

UAO spent much of their time outside schools and other places where there were many children, figuring that fighting against toddlers would lead to fewer casualties for their own soldiers and higher body counts for their enemies. Other leagues began to try to establish themselves in Pipatia, believing that it would be the site of the next battle in the Triangle War.

Invasion of Pipatia

The mainstream Swamp Kids invaded Pipatia now, hoping that they would be able to overwhelm all of the other armies, who they felt were unlikely to unite against the Swamp Kids. The Swampies forced the Dolls to flee their homes, but they were not able to conquer any of the other armies. The Zeniths united with a new strain of Rasparas now, because they both had chosen to make the frightened Dolls their new slaves. The Dolls accepted this because they were supportive of both Rasparism and the Zeniths, seeing them as enemies of the Swamp Kids. A few plagues coursed through the Doll population, now, however, which had come to them from the Zeniths. Nevertheless, the Dolls were replenishing their quickly dying population by having lots of babies. Occasionally, Doll women died from puerperal diseases. This bothered the Swamp Kids, as they had never introduced any plagues to their enemies.

A ceasefire was signed between the Dolls and the Zeniths now, as they agreed to unite against their common enemy, the Swamp Kids. RMC was granted control over all of the land in Pipatia in this treaty. The Dolls began to split apart into many leagues now, of which POM (Issia) was the most dominant.

The Swamp Kids (EE3) began to chase the POM people out of their homes now, however. POM signed a treaty with EE3 that gave EE3 total control over all their land. Thus POM was expelled from Pipatia. RMC was the only major league left that still had Dolls in it. BAX (a group secretly controlled by Joja and Pinuha, who both lived outside Pipatia) was still in control of much of the economy of the Swamp, though, including Pipatia. In fact, STW was so far removed from danger that the members of STW took bets on the outcome of battles, and played games with their slaves emulating the battles occurring in the real world. These people were called Fans. They had the power to do many things to influence the war, but STW did not allow them to do this.

The fleeing RMC Dolls built a bridge to a drier climate in order to flee the plagues and parasites that were making them weak. This bridge took them into Matrix territory, and thus the people of RMC and the Matrixes were reunited once again. The Matrixes attacked the Dolls, however, seeing them as toys to be played with. They took back nearly 80% of the land that the Zeniths had just claimed, and thus they found themselves at war with XLG. The Matrixes killed 40% of the Dolls living in Pipatia and served them in choice restaurants.

Treaty of Baeba Swamp

Now came the Treaty of Baeba Swamp, which established joint control of Pipatia for XLG (the Zeniths) and the Matrixes. But the Zeniths continued to dream of total cntrol, and they had senseless anger against the Dolls in RMC. RMC was enveloped in a civil war now, and the non-Doll people joined up with XLG to form a new, anti-Doll alliance. They slaughtered the Dolls while the Dolls celebrated their holiday by praying for peace. When this war was over, Pipatia was reunited with Baeba Swamp, and the two governments were merged. Pipatia had so much wealth and power that it became the capital of Baeba Swamp. This only increased the desire of many outside groups to get a foothold in Pipatia so that they could get a foothold in the power of Baeba Swamp.

As XLG slaughtered the Dolls, the Dolls began to immigrate into XLG's territory, Gatohana, where the surprised XLG members began to enslave and rape them. A law was passed enslaving most Dolls in order to prevent them from rebelling against the government of Baeba Swamp. The Zeniths now began to join in on the government of Baeba Swamp, where previously they had been separately governed even though their land was owned by Baeba. The government of Baeba allowed a small number of people from every league in the world (except Swamp Kids and allies, and some other groups deemed too troublesome to be given a chance to compete) to settle in Baeba Swamp in order that Baeba might be a mirror of the rest of the universe. They thus had revived Nama's Mirror Project. On another holiday, known as Love Day, many Dolls were massacred by the Swamp Kids and several other groups. The Swamp Kids announced that they were going to burn all of Baeba Swamp, and would spare no lives. The Dolls responded by preaching peace to the Swamp Kids, saying that they would be slaves for the Swamp Kids, and would do anything else that might encourage the Swamp Kids to not destroy Baeba Swamp.

Matrixes revolt

The Matrixes (3EE) staged Rainbow Revolts now, even though this was weakening the government and army of Baeba Swamp. Baeba's government, BAX, began to consider destroying the Matrixes because they seemed to be helping the Swamp Kids. Burlia II, home to Dolls and Matrixes, developed here. It was largely anti-EE3 because it was accepted by Baeba's government as an independent province.

Political debates were seen by many as a way to stop the War, but the Swamp Kids were not intelligent enough to understand debate, so they refused to participate, believing anyway that the debates were unfair because they were sponsored by Baeba Swamp.

Pappis was born now ... it was a group of Dolls who were mostly pro-EE3 and wanted to escape their coming doom by allying themselves with the Swamp Kids. It was founded by a traitor from the United Pacifist League (UPL). The Swamp Kids were suspicious of even extremely weak protestors like these, but because they were seen as harmless they were mostly accepted by the Swamp Kids. The BAX government of Baeba Swamp was extremely upset by the presence of any pro-Swampy slaves, so they assassinated Mappâmênsam, the head of Pappis, blaming it on the Matrix. The Pappisians couldn't avenge the assassination of Mappâ because STW had made it very difficult to make a crime out of murder of a Doll. They captured the assassin, but Baeba's courts wouldn't try him. Pappis went into hiding and became a very weak guerrilla army. They were extremely weak because peple kept sniping them with arrows, and they could not defend themselves because they had very few weapons and almost no armor.

STW supports the Raspara

STW used its power to pass a law legalizing Rasparism in all parts of Baeba Swamp. There was little the Dolls could do to protest this because they were so completely controlled by outsiders. They were just toys in the eyes of the Slopes. All non-Dolls were divided into neutral people (e.g. some Swamp Kids) or slave aggressors (Slopes). The Slopes in Pipatia interpreted the new pro-Rasparism law as making their slave system the corner stone of their nation, so they began constructing barriers around Pipatia to keep slaves from running away from the grand champion abusers they predicted would soon emerge from the Slopes. They began to teach the Pipatian children that they could prevent an explosion of abuse by being obedient to the Slopes. Thus, the most abusive slaveowners were smothered with extra slaves, to try to calm them down, but the Slopes seemed to grow even more abusive when faced with slaves attempting to love them than with slaves attempting to fight them. Thus the government decided to solve the problem by passing a law making it a crime to be an abused slave, hoping the slaves would fight back better, lest they be tortured at the hands of the Slopes for the rest of their lives. However, the law was soon extended to mean that even free people, if they were to lose a fight, would automatically be enslaved by their abusers. The government was forced to abandon its attempts to rein in the Slopes.

But the Slopes were again able to fool the governors and use their new freedoms to make themselves more powerful. They began building weapons and in late June they overthrew the government of Pipatia and killed most of the adult Doll population, leaving children unprotected and unable to defend themselves. They established a new government based on Rasparism, enslaved the entire child population and began sending missions into other provinces seeking more slaves to bring home to abuse.

The conversion of the Pipatian Slopes to Rasparism enheartened STW, which had begun to doubt that their slavery system was truly the best way to run the nation. The Pipatian Slopes signed a treaty with STW and began to preach to the other Slopes, hoping to gain more converts. The mainstream Slopes were not hostile to the Rasparas, but they did rule that Rasparas could no longer call themselves Slopes. Thus the Pipatian Slopes renamed themselves Rasparas (LTU). The acronym was distinct from the earlier Raspara acronym (PEG) because the original PEG Rasparas had disbanded and these new Rasparas were actually a different party that chose to reuse the name.

STW and the Rasparas began an experiment with the many slave armies they had captured to see which of the many possible setups was the most economical. They captured many thousands of slaves and concluded that large numbers of young Matrixes working together was the best form of slavery and the least likely to fight back. Thus they planned to attack mosrly Matrixes in the future.

STW declares war

In July 4206, STW seceded from Altotta (which had renamed itself Rapala) and declared itself a Raspara organization. They declared war on all non-Rasparas, but promised the non-STW Rasparas that they were not bound by this declaration of war and could ignore the battles if they preferred. STW 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 considered Pipatia the most important of all other republics, and focused their initial attacks on Pipatia. Most Raspara people were STW members now, which meant that their attempt to penetrate STW's female leadership 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 (Pipatia consisted mostly of a mix between Slopes and Dolls). They also had their own armies of slaves, which they donated to STW for free. Baeba outnumbered STW by about 20 to 1, but STW hoped they could pull in allies from outside the conflict.

STW felt that they were strong enough to conquer the planet if they would just not make too many mistakes. 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 Pipatia would be to cause the Dolls, who were a severely abused minority group, to come 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 Pipatia that would after about fifteen years come to outnumber the adults and overthrow them. Then they would adopt Pipatia into Pipatali, and then STW's army would kill off all of the teenage Dolls who had fought so hard to let STW in.

Doll people and others in STW went on missions preaching pro-STW politics to the Dolls, and Baeba Swamp promised to defend STW in a war. Rapala's governors realized their only hope lay in allying themselves with the Swamp Kids. The Swamp Kids demanded that Rapala release all their slaves and abstain from abusing the Swamp Kids, or they would not stop attacking Rapala. But the Swamp Kids themselves were desperately seeking strength, so they agreed to the alliance even though they suspected that the Rapalans were lying about agreeing to the Swamp Kids' demands. The new anti-STW coalition government that replaced Rapala called itself Panu, which is a translation of "Rapala" into Xap (done to honor the Swamp Kids).

STW-Swamp War in Pipatia

Now that the Swamp Kids had occupied Pipatia, they were able to plan an attack on STW. STW, however, had already planned for this situation, and they immediately began attacking Pipatia using STW civilians as soldiers. Now, Pipatians and Swamp Kids couldn't tell the difference between Lindasian soldiers and Swamp Kids because they looked identical. Thus they could not attack any of the soldiers they saw without fearing that they might be attacking their allies. There were really no differences at all between the two groups that could be used to identify them in a war. Thus an extremely violent war resulted, and the entire population of Pipatia was killed in this war, along with all of the invading Swamp Kids and some of the (far larger) army that STW had used to invade.

The Swamp Kids had not given up, but for the time being they could not re-invade Pipatia because all of their access routes had been destroyed by the STW guerrillas. Also, Pipatia was now a worthless land because all the Dolls and Slopes that had lived there had been killed. 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.

Xema's further struggles

By 4268, Creamland had finally agreed to stop invading Nama. All of the nations were once again lined up against Xema, but Dada and its allies quit the war.