Talk:STW

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Joja had concentrated power in her hands by offering money and other services to non-STW members who pledged allegiance to her authority. What she did was not illegal, as she could technically do anything that was not forbidden by her superiors, but it was draining away the power of the local government to the point where it pleaded to the national government for laws banning such enterprise.

The local representatives in the national government agreed to pass certain lenient laws forbidding STW to take any actions that might "weaken the ability of the local bureaus to carry out their duties", but when the leaders of STW heard of this, they were outraged. One person in particular, "Spicy Lips", balked at what she saw as the corrupt local government trying to weed out competition by blaming STW for disorder that was really no fault but their own. Joja became an instant hero as she kept quiet while other chiefs fumed about how the government was trying to siphon money and power away from the hard-working members of STW 44 Sala. And Piplap's "father" Behabe screamed that the government was hurting his company by forcing cutbacks on the level of industry in the base (a separate action).

And so, STW's local council refused to follow the new law, and the government asked for a meeting with one of Base 44's representatives to try to talk things out. In the end, the government representatives caved in, saying that as STW was entirely legal under the Rapalan constitution, any actions taken by it are thus legal, and it is the government's responsibility to adapt to STW, not the other way around. Other parts of the government were appalled by this decision, and many governors either ordered government takeovers of any STW bases that existed or might spring up in their local areas or passed legislation banning it entirely.

The people's response, however, was not what the governors had come to expect from their citizenry. All over the country, people protested that they were being denied the right to join STW, something they were supposed to enjoy. Most departments still held to their governors' decisions, but a few caved in and allowed an independent STW base to open in their territory. Those departments that did not allow STW or allowed it only under government supervision were discriminated against by STW's rapidly growing economic sectors. With this encouragement, people left the departments in large numbers, and STW's membership swelled. Joja was promoted twice during this turmoil, and was no longer associated with just one base, but she still kept a watchful eye on Piplap and others at Base 44 Sala.

i wrote this over 20 yrs ago and it is of little relevance now.

also

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.