Thunder Empire

The Thunder Empire was run by the Thunder party, and often called Altotta. Thunderers were a political party, not an ethnic group; however, for its entire existence the Thunder party was run and populated mostly by people of the Kava tribes, which were descended from a mix between Pabaps and Subumpamese.

Thunder Empire I: The Tendril Era

The Thunderers originated as an army from within the nation of Kava, which had been settled by a rebellious tribe of Pabaps named Hinku who rejected the pacifism of their homeland. They claimed Paba could have easily conquered the entire planet, but chose instead to do nothing as literally all of the nations bordering them, and some quite distant nations, sent their people to trespass all over Paba and abduct the Pabap people as slaves. They claimed that Paba's survival was not due to its large, obedient navy but due to the fact that none of their neighbors wanted to let the world's most submissive slaves become the exclusive property of just one nation, and formed "alliances" with Paba solely to ensure that they could forever continue to exploit and abuse Paba.

Thus the Thunderers openly hated pacifists and felt no shame when in 2371 they invaded the very core of Nama to set up their new nation. Nama was not officially pacifist, but that was only because its imperial government was so liberal that it allowed its subject nations to go their own way on nearly every issue, and Nama rarely fought wars because there were few wars that all of its subject nations, or even a majority of them, could all find common interest in. Moreover, Nama had a very small coastline for such a large empire, and this seacoast happened to be cut off from the rest of Nama by the world's tallest mountain range. Thus, although Nama's south coast was strongly defended navally, any invading army who managed to slip past that barrier would face almost no resistance from Nama's land army unless they wished to push beyond even the mountains into the rolling plains to the north.

The Hinku invaders had an advantage because they were Pabaps, and most trading ships visiting Nama at this time were Pabap ships. Thus, the Hinku army actually originated as naval pirates who took Pabap trading shapes and then headed for Nama claiming to be the traders they had killed. Even though they knew that Paba would be horrified when the news broke, and would likely be punished severely by Nama, the Hinku pirates had sworn off all allegiance to Paba, and indeed, all allegiance to anyone but each other.

They pushed their way through the Naman navy entirely unopposed, and immediately began a land invasion of Kava. Unlike many Naman nations, Kava had only one major race of people, which meant that there were no internal divisions to exploit in order to weaken them. But the Hinku nonetheless easily conquered the entire nation of Kava with just the small army they had brought over on board their fake trading ships. Although the Hinku found the native Kavan women attractive, they were forbidden to marry them, and so at first the population of Kava grew slowly. (They did not generally kill aboriginals, seeing them as even weaker than the Pabaps back home and therefore not a serious threat.) Kava was very poor, since they had brought none of the wealth of Paba with them. They were nudists even during winter except for a few who had settled in the small area of Kava that was mountainous, and even these people only wore skirts and crop-tops, often taken from native women. The Hinku renamed themselves Kavans and presented themselves as a new nation.

Nama was so weak by this time that they never even mounted a counterattack on Kava; they only offered to resettle the Repilian aboriginals in poorer areas of upland Nama. Kava was not surprised; Nama had also done nothing when the FILTER army carved out an even larger Naman state, Nèye, in 2246. Nor did Nama punish Paba, as Paba had quickly denounced the war and promised that Kava would never become an ally of Paba even if they repented and became pacifists in the future.

Although Kava and FILTER shared the same handicap of having secure borders on land but no navy, both were primarily interested in settling the interior of the continent, even if it meant eventually losing their coastline in a war similar to the "war" they had fought against the defenseless Repilian aboriginals to get in.

Early Crystal Empire (Nèye)

THe Crystals had originated from the slave plantations of Lobexon. Technically, they had arisen before Lobexon was enslaved, but even most Crystals did not realize this, as they did not form a strong identity until the oppression began. They were a political party with their own religion, and for most of their history had been a tiny repressed minority in every nation they lived in. Nevertheless, they had spread out quickly and were present in a lot of nations even as early as 2175. They realized that they had enough people to form a safe, solid nation if they could only call in all of the Crystals living dispersed throughout the tropics, including the slaves, to come together as one.

Their early attempts at this were not fruitful, however. The naive Crystals living on Sulasali Island moved as one to Paba in order to take advantage of Paba's very generous welfare benefits. They had heard that Paba's government paid ethnic minorities a welfare stipend that was greater than what the Pabap lower class made in a full time job. Although even the Crystals realized that they would not simply be given money simply by beaching on the shores, they figured that Paba was a place where they would be welcome and knew that they could get at least some money from the government because they couldn't speak Pabappa and thus couldn't work in most jobs.

However, they quickly exhausted the patience of even the notoriously tolerant Pabaps. Crystals refused to send their children to school, and most refused to learn Pabappa, which meant that they were unemployable and their quickly growing population drew a quickly growing share of Paba's welfare benefits. Moreover, Crystals used their free time to harass Pabaps in city streets, and those few who did speak Pabappa still did not have jobs but instead went around trying to convert Pabaps to the Crystal religion.

To solve the problem, Paba made thbe Crystal religion illegal and cut off their welfare benefits. Paba was unwilling to use force against the Crystals, both because they honestly believed in pacifism and because the Crystals had used their free time gained by not working to build themselves dangerous weapons. In fact, the Crystals had privately made an agreement to settle only in Pabap cities in which the Crystal minority was armed well enough to kill the entire population of that city. They drew murals on stone walls in the cities depicting helpless Pabaps being boiled and eaten alive by Crystal armies, saying that each mural would be the site of an actual massacre in the near future in the Pabaps did not give them a nation of their own inside Pabap territory. But now Paba had defeated them, since the Crystals realized that they could only survive by hunting animals in the wilderness, but they had settled in areas where this was difficult. Some Crystals walked all the way to northern Paba, figuring life would be better among the poorer and weaker Pabaps of the mountains, but most decided to leave Paba for Subumpam.

Subumpam turned out to be even more explotable than Paba. Although Subumpam was not a pacifist empire, its people were poorly armed and its army was smaller than would be expected for an empire its size. This is because it was overseen by Nama and Nama didnt want a rebellion. Subumpam did not even have a navy; its coastline was patrolled jointly by Nama and Paba. Nevertheless, the Crystals were soon captured into slavery in Subumpam, with the exception of those who were FILTER members. FILTER had earlier agreed to merge with the Crystals inside Subumpam only, while maintaining separate identities in other nations. Thus only about half of the Crystals were enslaved. The FILTER Crystals had escaped because they were visually indistinguishable from the mainline Subumpamese and mostly spoke Subumpamese. Although the FILTER Crystals did not attempt to rescue the enslaved Crystals, they did communicate with the Crystal establishment in Nama that they knew what had happened and predicted that Subumpam's slave camps were mild enough that few, if any, Crystals would die. Then FILTER declared war on Nama.

FILTER marched on foot all the way across Subumpam and then conquered the Naman nation of Nèye. They killed every man, raped every woman, and enslaved every child they found. THis was a far more brutal war than any that had occurred in recent history, and it was one of the fastest victories ever achieved. Nama had no reaction to the war other than to close down FILTER's representation in Nama's government. FILTER retained total control of Nèye for itself but invited Crystals from all around the world to live in Nèye, thus providing the Crystals their first true nation in which they were welcome. However, FILTER had reasserted itself as an independent organization now, saying that although they were allies of the Crystals they had not themselves become Crystals. The merging of the two parties while inside Subumpam was a deliberate attempt to make the most of a very desperate situation as they were both very violent but very small, and did not want to waste each other away to nothing when they had a golden opportunity to make a new nation in front of them. Notably, however, most FILTER members at least inside Nèye had retained elements of the Crystal religion and incorporated them into a new branch of their own religion, Sisnasi. The Crystals moving into Nèye accepted this, as they had decided that they would no longer fight any religious wars except against atheists.

Growth

Nama saw Kava and Nèye as being like two sharp teeth biting into the soft, defenseless flesh of the Naman heartland. The southern extent of Nama's territory resembled two human legs spread out, and in this analogy, Kava and Nèye had both taken big bites out of her left thigh. From here they both wanted to grow northward, and Nama hoped that as the two armies won battle after battle they would turn on each other and burn themselves out before they got too high up in the body. Previously, the spread-legs analogy had been the subject only of indecent jokes, but now the Kavan and Nèyean military commanders took it to heart and began drawing up maps of their proposed colonization routes with each nation in the Naman empire given the name of the corresponding female body part. The anology hinting at cannibalism and rape generally did not bother the mostly female military leaders of Nèye, as they had proven very recently that they had no problem with real rape, even mass rape, so long as it was their own men doing it and their enemies' women receiving it. Moreover the sight of the many male Kavan military commanders wearing white miniskirts and white crop tops while drawing invasion plans for the world's largest empire meant FILTER women were too busy suppressing laughter to be offended by anything they said. They accepted the name "Teeth" for their armies and declared themselves The Tooth Alliance shortly after 2371. In this alliance, Kava promised FILTER could have open access to Kava's territory and FILTER promised they would use it to help the male population of Kava develop a better sense of fashion.

As above, Nama was not a pacifist empire, but it was extremely poorly defended, particularly in the north, where the various nations of Repilian aboriginals had been left to self-government for thousands of years. Many Repilian tribes really were pacifists, and were totally unprepared for the arrival of well-armed invaders from the south. At first, Nama's land army was totally impotent and could at best only chase the invaders northwards as they went, even though these invasions took years to move just a few miles north. The invasions were slow because both Tooth armies saw that their enemies were essentially defenseless, and could be coerced into building forts and weapons for the invaders instead of simply being slaughtered on sight. The Naman search teams were slow because Nama's infrsastructure was so poorly developed in the north that the only way Nama learned an attack had taken place was when a trade supply route suddenly failed. Nama was afraid to send its best soldiers against the Teeth, knowing that the Tooth soldiers were armed to the teeth and would win, man for man, even over Nama's best. Moreover, both Tooth armies had whole families of civilians just behind the front lines, as again, they figured their enemies were so pathetic that they couldnt even conceive of a sneak attack behind enemy lines. FILTER additionally tended to have both male and female soldiers in its army, with women generally in control at the highest levels of command.

Soon, Nama did develop a northern front, and stationed a large land army there, but this meant that their military power in the south had decreased even further. The soldiers in the northern army knew that they were never going to be let home, because both Kava and FILTER favored very slow warfare in which whole families would move in and take over the territory one village at a time. FILTER was particularly good at this, and they managed to do it while still maintaining a very high birthrate, which meant their population was growing very quickly. Kava's growth was slower, but still substantial.

Nama's land army was now spread across 2661 miles of territory, from Nama's west coast to its east coast. (Note that these "coasts" were both entirely icebound, and thus could not host a navy. This is why Nama speaks of itself as having only a small amount of coastline, in its extreme south.) The number of soldiers stationed on each mile of the front was so small that even Nama realized their attempt to stop the invasion would likely be useless, as either of the Tooth armies could simply burst through the paper-thin Naman army and find that the Repilians living to the north of the border were even weaker than those in the south because they had been told they were being protected.

The two original nations of the Tooth Alliance, Kava and Nèye, had been very small. Kava was smaller and was slightly west of Nèye, but soon the two nations came to share a border and Kava actually became slightly larger. However, due to their alliance with the Crystals, FILTER also began to sprout up nations to the west of Kava. Thus there were no longer only two Teeth in the Tooth alliance.

The Crystals enter the coalition

The Teeth realized a potential future problem with the entry of the Crystals into the alliance. Previously, FILTER and Kava had agreed to grow quickly but separately, forming no mixed nations and respecting new borders drawn up by the other Tooth when the other Tooth got to a new settlement first. But the Crystals were so different from both groups racially, religiously, and culturally that all three Teeth worried that the differences between Kava and FILTER would blur and fade away, or that FILTER, seeing itself as naturally belonging to the Crystals, would unite with the Crystals and suffocate Kava between them as they focused on reuniting with each other rather than attacking Nama. They signed a new treaty that further strengthened the prohibitions on competition between the Teeth, saying that even friendly competition between the Teeth was forbidden; they could only attack Nama, they could not even peacefully attempt to force a newly conquered settlement to join a different conqueror, and they could not build mixed settlements. To prevent Kava being smothered by the FILTER/Crystal coalition, they drew up a map of Nama with proposed borders for all three Teeth. They figured that Nama was so pathetically weak now that there was no chance of Nama mounting a defense strong enough to make a difference in their plans, and that they could confidently draw up borders in 2400 AD for a nation that wouldn't exist until 3400 AD, simply because they knew Nama would never be able to keep them out.

First mixed nations

FILTER and Kava, however, found that they could not keep themselves apart. Their nations mostly directly bordered each other; that is, there was no "deep Kava" nation surrounded only by other Kavan nations; they all bordered either FILTER or a weak Naman nation they saw as soon to fall. Despite forbidding intermarriage, intermarriage became quite frequent among the lower classes of both nations. They responded to this by saying that it was culture, not race, that separated FILTER from Kava, and that any mixed families would simply need to adopt the nationality of the empire they were living in. However, FILTER nonetheless decided to classify Kavans as a distinct and inferior minority in their nation, while Kava welcomed such mixed families and treated them as equals. This had the effect of keeping FILTER essentially pure while making Kava a more mixed society. Previously, Kava had been essentially 100% Hinku, which was a tribe of Pabaps, but now they became more diverse. However, the FILTER people were not greatly different from the Kavans except t hat they tended to be significantly taller. This was essentially a reflection of their own mixed Subumpamese and Repilian ancestry; both of these tribes were fairly tall, but not so tall as to make intermarriage with Kavans a taboo.

Thus, although they retained separate identities officially, the further north that Kava and FILTER grew, the more they blended together, and it soon seemed like there might soon be only two Teeth in the alliance after all. Meanwhile, since Kava was the central nation in the alliance, it also bordered the Crystal territories, though this border was much smaller than its border with FILTER. This is because whereas FILTER and Kava had both entered Nama through the "thigh" and pushed their way inwards, Crystal armies had come in from the extreme west, in the "finger" territories of Nama's outstretched right hand, and rushed through her right arm. There was little contact between the Crystals and the other two groups at first other than diplomacy; the Crystals killed Repilians in the west, and the FILTER/Kava armies killed Repilians in the east.

The War of the Perfect Societies

By 3115, as Kava and FILTER massacred more Repilians every day, an assortment of Repilian tribes responded by creating The Perfect Society. In the Perfect Society, nobody would be allowed to own weapons, except for a few people who needed them to hunt and fish. They considered FILTER and Kava to be as one with each other, and discouragedf their people from moving in, but stated because they were pacifists they wouldn't fight back if some tried to move in as long as they were unarmed. In 3125, The Perfect Society declared its independence (Kava and FILTER had claimed this land already, but not settled it), and defined their borders. The borders of the Perfect Society included the entire icecapped area of Nama, plus most of the territory behind Nama's army's front line. All in all, they claimed about 1/3 of the unglaciated part of Nama as their own.

Also in 3125, the Kavan settlers living in northern Nama created a new nation they called The Perfect Society. In The Perfect Society, all Repilians would be slaves for Kavans and would be forced to breed with the Kavan masters. The Repilian religions would be illegal and anyone caught practicing them would be placed in a special class of slaves that were specifically allowed to be tortured and abused. In 3125, The Perfect Society declared its independence and defined their borders. Nama accepted the new nation but renamed it to Nipanu-Malamuppa to prevent confusion.

Nama's government admitted that its north was hopelessly a lost cause. Kava and FILTER had destroyed much of the Mirror Project, and occupied areas of Nama that had not seen a war for more than a thousand years. Nama had always thought that its south coast was its weak spot, because it was cut off by tall mountains, but they now decided their only hope in surviving lay in moving their army to that very south coast in an attempt to starve out the home nations of Kava and Nèye.

Even though they knew that there were by now far more Kavans living in Nama than in Kava, Kava's original homeland on the south coast was still its only sea access. But Nama was frustrated by the inability of its constituent nations to even agree that Kava was evil. In 3137, yet another major war erupted in Nama, but it was between the two nations both calling themselves The Perfect Society. The long, spread-out army that Nama had held in place for centuries to keep the invaders out was thus repurposed to help fight the Perfect Society War on the side of the Repilians. Nipanu-Malamuppa won the war, and in 3138 declared that the "Era of Happiness" (Yeisu Kasu) had begun. They had defeated their rival nation, their own rebellious slaves, and Nama's land army in a single year. Most of the deaths in the war, even on Nipanu-Malamuppa's side, were Repilians.

The treaty ending the War of the Perfect Societies assigned to Kava all of the territory that had been claimed part of the Repilian victims' Peace Bubble nation. Thus Kava now had the entire icecap to itself, although they promised to respect preexisting FILTER settlements there, and they also had almost all of the territory that had previously been northern Nama. Because of the agreements the three Teeth had signed with each other more than 700 years ago, this war was considered no different than any of the other battles that had previously been fought, meaning that all of the territory won in the war was assigned to Kava and not the other Teeth, and that this voided even the Teeth's own preexisting plans drawn up 700 years earlier in which the tundra would be divided amongst the three armies. Nevertheless, the Crystals were focusing mostly on building settlements in the west anyway, and did not complain, whereas FILTER had grown so close to Kava now that they realized they could send their people into the new territory as much as they wanted to and not feel unwelcome.

Thunder Empire II: The Lantern Empire

Contact with Dreamland

In 3373, immigrants from the islands of Laba declared war on Baeba Swamp and launched an invasion of the coastal areas to its north. They quickly overwhelmed the native Crystal population, and many Thunderers joined the invasion. The invaders called themselves the Gâm people, and in this label, they included the Thunderers and any other converts they acquired. They named their new country Dreamland.

The official capital of Dreamland was Xʷakaràna, and a coastal city near it was named Gadanas. Both of these had been major Crystal cities, but neither was the capital. Xʷakaràna was chosen because the Dreamers had been unable to conquer Baeba Swamp itself as they conquered the territories around it.

Revolt of Peepa

In 3431, the governors of the city of Peepa revolted against their nation, Meromo, and proclaimed that Peepa was the new capital of Meromo. They also declared war against Baeba Swamp, Dreamland, and all dark-skinned people in all nations.

War against Tarwas

Of the many nations of dark-skinned people on which the people of Peepa had declared war, they soon decided to focus on Tarwas. Tarwas at this time was calling itself Abilo and was led by the Abi people, a peaceful but reclusive tribe that had isolated Tarwas from all of its neighbors. The Peepans realized that Abilo had no military allies, and that even though its society was strong it would be easy to invade Abilo.

The Peepans quickly conquered the capital of Abilo, which was near the north end from which they had invaded, and pushed southward into Abilo's highlands. However, Abilo's people became stronger towards the south, and those Abis who had been able to flee into the south acquired weapons from the locals. The Abi began to push the Peepans back towards the north, and within a few years the Abi had reversed the invasion and began pursuing the Peepans into another nearby nation called Kakpoko. Abilo invaded Kakpoko, and proclaimed that the native Kakpewo people would not be allowed to join the Abi army but would be allowed to marry into Abi families and consider the children of such a marriage to be Abi. Kakpoko accepted this situation, and the leaders of Kakpoko joined Abilo in issuing a declaration of war against Peepa.

The next phase of the war began when Peepa's army once again gained ground and restarted its invasion of Abilo. This time they focused on occupying large land areas rather than attempting to subjugate the native people. Even though Abilo had been winning its war, the population density of the north had not recovered to its previous level, and the second invasion of Abilo's northern lowlands proceeded more quickly than the first.

The Peepans retook what had been the capital of Abilo and renamed it Sipalīš. Abilo declared war on both Kakpoko and Baeba Swamp now, even though these nations had been helping them fight the Peepan invasion. They stated that the Abis and the Peepans would fight each other which of them had the right to rule Baeba, but that neither of them would care at all about the lives of the native Baebans. Abilo also declared war against all of the planet's aboriginal populations, saying that even if they lost their war against Peepa they would simply turn north and attack people too weak to fight back. (Repilia had already alienated Abilo in a previous conflict, even though the two nations had not actually been at war with each other.)

Evnetually, Abilo surrendered, and Abilo came under Peepan control. Many Abi civilians were living in the wilderness of the mountains, where Peepa could not easily control them, and had become satisfied with this way of life. They announced the formation of the Thunder Empire, whose capital was Peepa but now included Tarwas as well as Meromo.

Growth towards the west

After Abilo was subdued, the Peepans began to expand westward. They moved the center of their population westward as they grew, gradually closing in on Baeba Swamp. Eventually, the capital was moved to a newly conquered city called Rasilisana. The Peepans began to call themselves Thunderers.

The Lantern Empire

See Lantern Empire.

In 3565, the Thunderers signed a military treaty with the Crystals to their west. They developed Lantern government, a cooperative empire between the Crystals, who were based in Baeba Swamp, and the Thunderers, whose capital was a hilly city named Rasilisana. with neither side having a monopoly on power. Many people moved in both directions during this period, but there were no true cooperative nations; every nation within the combined Lantern Empire was either a Crystal nation or a Thunder nation, whatever the makeup of its people. All of the Crystal nations were contiguous with each other and were mostly in the south and west. All of the Thunder nations were contiguous with each other as well and were in the north and east.

The Lantern Empire lasted from 3565 to 3785. Originally, the Thunderers had been clearly in control, and the Crystals had fought back as bravely as they had in so many earlier wars. However, early on it became clear to both sides that the Crystal Empire was still rapidly growing and getting richer whereas the Thunderers had used up all avilable land long ago. So the two groups did their best to work out a treaty that would be fair to both sides.

The Crystals and Thunderers had been allies before 3565. Both were carving out territory from Nama, and had agreed to respect each other's conquests. However, for over a thousand years, they grew independently and did not seriously consider formally unifying their territories into a single umbrella government because each side wanted to remain distinct, and was afraid of being dominated by the other. The Crystals wanted the capital to be Baeba Swamp, as it was already their own imperial capital, and the Thunderers wanted it to be Blop, even though the capital city of the Thunder Empire was Rasilisana, not Blop.

For most of their history, the Thunder Empire had been stronger and richer than the Crystal Empire, but as the centuries passed, the Crystal Empire grew richer because it was warmer and had access to the sea whereas, despite ongoing global warming, the Thunder Empire was still very cold and its only sea access was walled in by ice most of the year. Thus the Thunderers could only use the sea to reach other parts of their own empire. The Thunderers were wary of every political idea championed by the Crystals, figuring they were growing tired of being considered the weaker partner in the alliance when it was clear that they were the only partner that was still growing.

In the end, as a compromise, the capital of the combined Lantern Empire was placed in the Crystal city of Lăxʷisi, and many Thunderers moved into Lăxwisi to ensure that it would not be simply a fully controlled suburb of Baeba Swamp. But even so, the power structure of Laxwisi remained mostly Crystals.

Birth of Dreamland

Late in the Lantern Era, a people of mixed Laban and "Thunder" descent invaded the Crystal part of the Empire and carved out a new empire of their own which they called Dreamland. The Thunderers did not fight back against the invaders, and the thankful invaders agreed to take their land only from the Crystals.

Third Era

During the Third Thunder govt, they were conquered by the Crystals of Baeba Swamp. This govt lasted about 80 years.

Fourth Era

They declared independence from the Crystals in 3844, but it was because another foreign empire, Dreamland, had invaded and pushed out the Crystals. The much more numerous Thunderers actually contributed little to the war because their military had been almost destroyed during the Crystal govt.

The Dreamers were atheists, and were very politically liberal by the standards of their time. One of their symbols was a road sign tilted at an angle, a symbol of the disorder they hoped to create all around the world. The Dreamers wanted a world in which all of the traditional sources of power failed, and people could deflect spears and arrows with bed pillows. They favored Feministic societies like FILTER in which women were fully in control of men and women could literally kick their husbands around whenever they felt like it without fear or remorse. Having come from a traditional male-led society, they were overjoyed when they discovered that some Thunderers had a genetic trait that caused their women to tower over their men and hoped to make those people the majority. However, the Dreamers conquered Altotta (calling it Repase) with an army of men, not women.

In fact, while the Dreamers considered themselves feminists, to the Thunderers they were overly masculine, and Thunder politicians meeting with Dreamers often stereotypically said "There's too many men here, I can't concentrate!" This was a phrase borrowed from earlier contacts with the Zenith, whose men had been notorious for intruding into Pabap territory solely to meet Pabap women.

Another name for the Dreamer philosophy was Pĕp; this word is difficult to translate, but refers to their philosophy of equalizing happiness for everyone. They spent their money only on food and medicine. According to their enemies in the Thunder party, the Dreamers would ignore patients with minor illnesses and focus on the impossible task of trying to heal incurable diseases such as cancer.

Fifth Era

Uprising against Dreamland

The Dreamers were very unpopular occupiers. During Dreamland's occupation, the Thunderers quickly evolved from a tribe into a proper political party, opposing the Dreamers on ideological grounds rather than simply appealing to tribal loyalty. The Thunder leaders believed that they could convince the vast majority of the peasants to believe in their ideology, and that as a result, the Dreamers' promise of racial harmony would no longer tempt the Thunder peasants into defecting to Dreamland.

Revolution of 3884

The Dreamers were overthrown in 3884, after exactly 40 years. The new govt was the first to use the name Thunder since the pre-Crystal govt of t=he early 3700s. This was an ideological revolution, not a tribal one, and the insurgents held firm to their promise that the new government would be based on the Thunder party's ideology, not the Thunder tribal identity. In this, they considered themselves more advanced than the previous two occupation governments.

Having risen above racial loyalties, they stated, they had formed the world's first and only philosophical government, and their philosophers had realized that the Thunder government could best serve its people by acting in the name of loyalty to the Thunder race. The Thunderers announced the introduction of slavery for almost all Crystals, and put all Dreamers in a second type of slavery that was far more brutal than the slavery enforced on the Crystals.

Culture

Tribalism

The Thunderers explicitly promoted racial solidarity in their new constitution, saying that the beneficiaries of their Empire's government would be the blonde Lenian people who had founded the original nation of Meromo before they were twice invaded by foreign empires. The Thunderers opposed the dark-skinned Crystals simply for their identity, and said that no dark-skinned people would be allowed to convert to the Thunder party even if they otherwise agreed with the Thunder ideology. Instead, all dark-skinned people were enslaved.

But the Thunderers established an even worse life for the people of Dreamland, who were also Lenians, and were just as blonde as the Thunderers. This was because the Dreamers had occupied the Thunder Empire for forty years, and the Thunderers had said that any Lenian who abused Lenians had committed a crime worthy of a punishment even worse than the slave labor assigned to outsiders. Since the Thunderers supported hereditary punishment, the Dreamers could not buy their way out of slavery even as corporations within Dreamland itself continued to trade with the Thunder Empire.

Economy and voting

The Thunder Empire was a pure democracy, and unlike other democracies, the people themselves voted rather than seeing the government appoint representatives who did not always represent their people's opinions. Each citizen needed to pay money to vote, and the government considered voting simply to be part of their tax system. There was no limit to the number of votes a person could cast on any one issue, and therefore people who cared deeply about a certain issue could vote thousands of times on it, spending much of their personal wealth to ensure that their opinions were heard. All children above the age of five could vote, and voting power was determined only by money. Since slaves could not legally own money, however, slaves could not vote, and nearly all Thunderers supported slavery.

Trade

Despite enslaving both the Crystals and the Dreamers, the Thunderers continued to trade with the Crystal Empire and with Dreamland. Trade with Dreamland was possible because some corporations in Dreamland ignored the will of their host empire and considered themselves above politics; and trade with the Crystal Empire was possible because many Crystals in Baeba considered those Crystals who had remained in the Thunder Empire to be undeserving of compassion and therefore did not object to the Thunderers' decision to enslave them.

Legal system

There were no courts in the Empire; all crimes were punished directly by the police, and therefore the same crime could be punished in two greatly different ways depending on time and circumstance.

Childhood

The Thunder Empire stood apart from surrounding societies by treating young children as if they were adults, even awarding voting rights and bank accounts to all children at the age of five, or by tradition when they no longer needed to wear diapers. Children were allowed to withdraw their money at any time and could buy any item from any government-owned store, with or without their parents' permission.

Furthermore, although the Thunderers stressed the importance of education in maintaining a well-ordered society, children were allowed to skip school whenever they wished, and could spend time outside the home and enter dangerous areas of town without providing any explanation to their parents. A trade-off for this, however, was that the Thunder Empire had early on promised to put no limits to parents' authority to punish their children, and severe corporal punishment was very common. Some children ran away from their homes, but there was no government-run orphanage system, and most runaways ended up working for men on the streets.

Because there was no legal distinction between a child and an adult, the Thunder government saw no problem in allowing parents to abuse their children, and reminded the children that they were legally allowed to hit back. This was of little comfort to most abused children, although many abused children in fact murdered their parents once they grew big enough to wield a weapon. Because there was no central court system, these murderers were sometimes murdered themselves, but others were accepted in society with the explanation that they had done the only logical thing and would not likely commit murder again.

Critics of the Thunder party claimed that both the prevalence of corporal punishment and the revenge murders showed a weakness in the Thunder ideology: treating an adult beating a small child and the child hitting back as legally equivalent denied that children have needs that adults do not, and that this was why Thunder children were so angry. The Thunderers' answer to this was that not all children live to become adults, and therefore focusing on children's rights was the best way to ensure that everyone had happy years in their life.

Nevertheless, the Thunderers were proud of their culture's attitude towards children, and each generation of children grew up promising to raise their future children in the same libertarian manner. The Thunderers considered themselves the heirs of the nation of Kava, and therefore claimed Kava's history as their own. Thus, they minted a coin commemorating an event that occurred in Kava over a thousand years earlier, when a troop of small children walking to school found it closed, and then walked three miles through the woods to find another school so they could complete their schoolwork. The Thunderers called these children the Tačes and claimed that the Thunder law allowing children to skip school proved that those who did attend were doing so voluntarily, and that their entire population thus consisted of Tačes.

Child labor

Children in the Empire often carried large sums of money, but they were not given it by the government. Instead, children were present in many sectors of the economy where surrounding empires used only adult laborers, such as farming and the manufacture of clothing and household effects. Parents could not take money away from their children because all wages were recorded in central banks and transactions at government-owned stores, where most children preferred to shop, were also recorded. However, many parents preferred to put their children to work in family-run businesses, and the transfer of money inside a privately owned business was governed by different laws that varied from place to place and from time to time.

Military

The Thunderers' attitude toward children also extended to the military: all boys enrolled in the army at the age of 5, and remained there until they became too old to be helpful. But in combat, the Thunderers' abandoned their idealism and ensured that children would be kept safe from the adult soldiers in the traditional armies of the enemy nations around them. Indeed, boys serving in the military lived at home and had lives nearly identical to those of the girls they grew up with; it was only as they approached adulthood that their military duties came to involve dangerous missions.

Foreign relations

Despite enslaving the dark-skinned Crystals, the Thunderers considered themselves an ally of the neighboring Crystal Empire. They explained that they were enslaving the Crystals for their ancestors' criminal occupation of the Thunder Empire in earlier years, but that they would be friendly to Crystals who were first friendly towards them. Because the Crystals also supported hereditary punishments, the Crystals made no attempt to convince the Thunderers to free their slaves.

Foundation of STW

The STW corporation was founded in 3915. Its acronym stood for Save The World: STW believed that their world was in danger from Dreamland, and that STW urgently needed to kill all Dreamers in order to ensure a safe and happy future for STW and the citizens of their host empire. On STW's first day of business, they declared war on Dreamland.

War with Dreamland

STW's membership consisted mostly of children. STW sent an army of toddlers and young children into the Dreamer state of Popa, where they swung at the knees of the locals with wooden beams. In response, Dreamland declared war on STW. STW's children realized they were no match for the traditional adult armies that they had invaded, and therefore fled back into the Empire. When the Dreamers reached the border, they could not find the children, so they attacked the imperial army instead. Thus the host empire was drawn into a war they had not started.

Power structure

STW was a business, but it had its own military and school system. STW's leadership consisted of women, and the children in its schools were considered employees, and were paid to study and taught to remain loyal to STW after graduation. Only the military had a traditional adult male power structure, and it was the military that had the least to gain and the most to lose. Nevertheless, most of STW's soldiers had links to power in STW through their wives and children, and because STW gave them the freedom to leave at any time, their loyalty was assured.

Most of STW's early members were illegal immigrants from the Crystal Empire. The Thunder Empire, having been founded about thirty years earlier, had declared that its territory was for members of the Thunder race only and that all outsiders would be killed or enslaved. The Thunderers were typically blonde, blue-eyed people, visibly distinct from the very dark-skinned Crystals.

In this era, the concept of tribe and race allowed for conversion by marriage. Further, mixed-race people did not exist; the children of a mixed marriage would need to choose one tribe or the other, with most choosing to align with whichever tribe was locally dominant. Thus, the presence of medium- and dark-skinned people in the Thunder Empire, the children of Crystals who had invaded many generations ago, did not bother the Thunderers, and they did not seek to relabel these people as Crystals and enslave them. But most of these people lived near the historical Thunder capital city of Blop, where STW had founded its first base in the Thunder city of Lypelpyp, which had no such people. Therefore disguise was impossible, and the STWers chose to violate the Thunder race laws openly.

Lypelpyp was in the extreme west of the Thunder Empire, near the Crystal border, and thus easily accessible from the Crystal Empire. It was very poor, and had not previously been attractive to the Crystals. But a road to Baeba had recently been built, and STW realized that if they could control Lypelpyp, they could control the majority of trade between the Thunder and Crystal Empires, and become very rich.

Illegal immigration and hostility against Dreamland

On its first day in business, STW declared war against the neighboring empire of Dreamland. At this point, STW's army consisted entirely of illegal immigrants from the Crystal Empire. The Crystals had hated Dreamland for more than 500 years because Dreamland had been founded on land won from the Crystals in a brutal war, and even though the war had long since stalled, the Crystals knew that the Dreamers were still interested in total conquest, since their original goal at the beginning of the war had been to conquer the tropical paradise of Baeba, the Crystal capital city, and that despite impressive conquests along the nearby warm and sunny north coast, Baeba and everything to its south had escaped their grasp.

But the Thunder Empire had also lost a war against Dreamland; indeed, the Thunderers considered the Dreamers to be beneath even the Crystals, and although they enslaved all racial minorities they ensured that the slavery assigned to the Dreamers was of the most abusive sort. Thus the founders of STW hoped that, by signaling aggression against their shared enemy, they could convince the Thunderers to overlook the invasion and accept the dark-skinned STW members as allies, and perhaps even citizens.

The Thunder government refused to act on this crisis; they reaffirmed that the proper position for all racial minorities in the Thunder Empire was lifelong slavery, but they did not send the army to Lypelpyp to stop the flow of immigrants from the Crystal Empire.

For unrelated reasons, STW had chosen to declare itself a nation shortly after its founding. By doing so, they gained several advantages: they were represented in Nama's Mirror Project, and given diplomatic independence from the foreign policies of both the Thunder and Crystal empires; they were able to raise an army of their own; and they reserved the right to formally secede in the future and become a traditional nation with territory of its own. They called this hypothetical future nation Lindasia, but held off on claiming land.

STW copied the Thunderers' strict immigration policy with a policy of its own: any members of STW, even children, had to forswear their ancestral nationality and become citizens of STW. Thereby, the illegal Crystal immigrants became illegal STW immigrants (or Lindasians). Though this did not resolve the Thunder Empire's problem, the Thunderers justified their inaction by claiming that the immigrants were actually living in a separate nation, Lindasia, not the Thunder Empire. This meant that the Thunderers were effectively ceding Lypelpyp to STW, making it a city-state; however, the Thunderers secretly worked out a pact with STW and the Crystals in which STW would pay taxes to the Thunder Empire in exchange for the Thunderers' promise not to attack STW.

Criticism of STW

Criticism from outside parties

STW's membership consisted mostly of children, who were at once members, employees, and students. Children in STW worked hard and earned high wages, often higher than those of typical adults outside STW. Because the children were contract laborers, the high wages were awarded upon enrollment, even if the child was only five years old. Additionally, children in STW could travel anywhere they wanted, and could flee their parents for any arbitrary period of time and live entirely within STW's buildings. Children in STW ran stores, restaurants, and manufactured furniture for the society around them. STW even had its own newspaper. Children worked difficult jobs, and were often hurt at work, but they reliably showed up to work each day even when walking to their workplace was painful.

Long-time critics of the Thunder party reacted with horror at STW's child labor projects, saying that STW was a parody of the Thunderers' already disastrous attempt to radically re-define parenting. They pointed out that many of the children injured while working at STW could have been protected if STW had taken basic safety precautions, but that STW seemed never to run out of child laborers and therefore treated them as disposables, worth less than slaves.

STW's leaders answered this by saying that while the life of a child laborer in STW was indeed difficult, STW's adults shouldered even greater burdens because they relied on robbery and illegal slave operations to achieve their high financial status within STW. Meanwhile, STW's children had no interest in the non-STW adults claiming to want to rescue them. Furthermore, they pointed out that children from the mainline Thunder Empire often fled abusive parents to live at STW, and that STW did not employ corporal punishment of children.

Criticism from Thunderers

Many people in the Thunder party disliked STW for entirely different reasons. They supported STW's child-focused business operations but worried that STW was parasitizing the Thunder economy and that Thunderers were simply letting it happen, with power for ordinary citizens slipping away more and more each year. Furthermore, just Crystals considered STW a parody of the Thunder ideology, many Thunderers considered STW to be a gross distortion of Crystal ideology.

Firebreath-Treehouse split

STW's rapidly growing influence led to a split in the Thunder party. The conservative Firebreath faction (Hadilàmi) demanded action against STW and considered its members to be Crystals and thus worthy of enslavement. The liberal Treehouse faction (Haspàni) welcomed STW and wanted to free the Crystals. Crystals could not vote, but STW members could. STW endorsed the Treehouses and began sending money to prominent Treehouses who pledged loyalty to STW but remained outside STW so that they could still vote in the government.

The Firebreath's name broke with their ancestors' habit of associating themselves with cold weather; the Firebreaths stated that they were interested in forming an alliance with the tropical nations of western Dreamland, but not with Dreamland's Baywatch party, because the Baywatchers had invaded the Thunder Empire in 3844 but the western Dreamers had not participated in that war.

Revolution of 3919

In 3919, the Treehouse faction gained financial supremacy, and voted themselves into power. They repudiated racism and freed all of the dark-skinned Crystals. They promised that their government would never again enslave a rival nation based on racial animosity. The Soap Bubbles, a party closely related to the Thunderers, were invited back home and promised safety, but by this time the Bubbles had mostly chosen to make their home in the tropics, even though they would have no nation of their own. Thus few Soap Bubbles returned to the north.

By freeing the Crystal slaves, the Treehouses increased the workload of the enslaved Dreamers, who they retained as slaves because the Dreamers were not a race but an ideology. Because this ideology was inherited strictly along familial lines, its practitioners could not convert to another ideology, and thus the future supply of Dreamer slaves was ensured.

The Firebreaths noticed that the Treehouses had freed all of the dark-skinned slaves, but kept the Dreamers, who were fellow Lenians, in slavery and had in fact made their position even worse than before. This frustrated the Firebreaths, who soon came to think of themselves as Lenians first and politicians second. But, in an internal conference, the Firebreaths nonetheless voted to endorse the continued slavery of the Dreamers because the Dreamers living in their Empire were descended from the earlier conquerors, who the Firebreaths considered to be criminals. Thus, continued slavery was their way of paying the hereditary penalty for their ancestors' crimes.

Dispute over party names

The Thunder government used a party registration system similar to the ancient Gold Empire. When the Treehouse faction achieved its financial majority, they voted to claim exclusive rights over the name "Thunder", and stated that the losing faction, which called itself the Firebreath, would need to rebrand itself as the Firebreath party, and could no longer claim to be a faction of the Thunder party.

For legal reasons, both parties were forced to immediately rename themselves in order to continue to interact with Nama. Nama's Gold party's rules for diplomacy had for thousands of years stated that whenever a party split in two, the conservative side would retain priority over the original party name. Thus, the Treehouses could not refer to themselves as Thunderers when they interacted with Nama. However, Nama's diplomats had also promised to respect the internal party politics of the nations they interacted with, and so, even though Nama was sympathetic to the Firebreath faction, they were forced to recognize the Treehouses as the legitimate heirs of the Thunder party's seat in their Parliament, and stated that the Firebreath faction had no rights to the name Thunder either.

Contacts with Moonshine

In 3948, the Moonshine people left the plantations of far southern Lobexon and entered Paba. The climate of Paba was tropical, similar to their earlier homeland but with a much weaker rainy season.

Moonshines look north

However, the Moonshines soon pushed northwards into Treehouse country, as they were seeking to escape the curses of life in the tropics, not overcome them. The Treehouse Empire was also easy to invade, despite its powerful military, because the land area claimed by the Treehouses was so vast in comparison to its population, particularly in the mountainous western areas, that the Moonshines could enter and pass through it completely undetected.

The Moonshines did not consider their migration to be an invasion, and the Moonshine leaders promised their followers that if they were attacked, they would quickly surrender and look for a way to make peace rather than risking their lives in a war. They believed that a life of oppression in the Arctic was superior to a life of oppression in the tropics, and that any potential oppressors would soon make peace as they came to face their shared enemies in nature. Therefore, even though the Moonshines acknowledged that the Treehouse Empire had a powerful military, they believed the Treehouse army would pose no threat to them as they pushed further north.

Furthermore, the Moonshines had deliberately chosen to migrate into the Treehouse Empire because their parent organization, the Crystals, had just a few generations earlier been occupying the Treehouse Empire, and still claimed that most of the Treehouse Empire properly belonged to the Crystals. Thus the Moonshines hoped that should a conflict arise between the Treehouses and the Moonshines, the Crystals would make amends with the Moonshines in order to revive their fight against the Treehouses.

The Thunderers considered the Moonshines to still be members of the rival Crystal tribe, and therefore potential enemies, but they did not seek to expel the Moonshines.

The Feminine War Council

In 3952, a coalition of female diplomats convened to discuss how best to handle the ongoing war against Laba. Even though the Treehouse Empire was winning the war, the women approached the representatives of other nations to seek their approval before the war progressed any further.

Soon the women voted to suspend their war effort, but Laba continued to invade, and Laba soon won the war.

The Revolution of 3958

In 3958, there was a revolution.