Soap Bubbles

The Soap Bubbles were a party founded in the year 3842 in the Thunder Empire as the Thunder Empire was being conquered by Dreamland. The Thunderers here had decided to collaborate with the Dreamers, as although they preferred independence, they felt that the Dreamers at least were rescuing the Thunderers from their previous oppressor, the Crystals. The Bubbles were the ones who refused to collaborate. Although both the Bubbles and the submissivist Thunderers agreed that they preferred independence, the Bubbles differed in that if their destiny was to be oppressed, they preferred Crystal oppressors to Dreamer oppressors.

NOTE, this article is badly out of date compared with Crystals, STW, Players, etc, but I plan to bring it in line with those others.

Early history

See history for finer details.

Naming of the party

The Soap Bubbles were not related to the Soap Bubble Societies of the 2400s despite originating in nearly the same geographic area. Since that earlier name was still in use amongst the descendants of those nations, as two of the three nations had in fact survived, they occasionally referred to themselves, at least in that part of the world, as the Snow (Khulls: Xà; Pabappa: Šap). Snow had actually been the original proposed name for their party, but it had been changed to Soap before the official founding date in 3842, as they wanted a name that would be less inviting to the Dreamers and Dreamerized Thunderers who seemed to feel that the whole of nature was their bathroom.

Background

After about eighty years of being oppressed by Crystals, the Thunder Empire was invaded by the neighboring nation of Dreamland. The native Thunderers outnumbered the Dreamers by a wide enough margin that, even though they had almost no weapons, they were able to hold off the Dreamer invasion for two years. After two years, it became clear, however, that the Thunderers were going to lose their war, and that their Empire was merely going to change hands from one oppressor to another. In 3844, the Thunderers signed a surrender treaty turning over the whole of the Empire to the Dreamers and promising to help the Dreamers eliminate the last few rural strongholds of the Crystal armies.

The Soap Bubbles were a fork of the Thunderers who refused to surrender. Many of them were immediately killed, since they were just a tiny fraction of the Thunder population, and were thus outnumbered far more severely than the wider Thunder army had been. The Dreamers classified them as Crystal sympathizers, because they still refused to recognize that the Thunderers had any rights of their own and that there were more than two sides in this war. They considered eliminating the Bubbles a lesser priority than eliminating the Crystals, however, because like the Thunderers, the Bubbles were mostly unarmed and even those who had managed to steal weapons were untrained in how to use them properly and were thus poor fighters.

Because the Dreamers were focused on tracking down Crystals, many Bubbles escaped into the territory of the Crystals. Thus, the Soap Bubbles were saying that given the choice of two oppressors, they preferred the Crystals, whereas the Thunderers preferred the Dreamers. The fleeing Soapies said that they would even agree to be slaves for the Crystals if it would somehow help the Crystals eventually throw the Dreamer government back out of power. However, they knew that the Crystals had sworn off slavery 2500 years ago and showed no sign of returning to it ever again.

The Crystals at first considered the Soap Bubbles and the Thunderers to be the same, as the only difference between the two was that one had surrendered to the Dreamers and the other had not, and therefore considered the Soap Bubbles their enemies. (The Bubbles had actually formed in 3842, before the war was over.) They did not try to stop the flow of Soap Bubbles into their nation, however, just as they had never tried to stop the Thunderers from moving in during the previous era. They merely stated that the Bubbles would be the lowest class in their society and would have to work unpleasant and low-paid jobs.

However, the Crystals soon realized that the Bubbles were now true allies, and the Crystals increased the civil rights of the Bubbles living in Crystal-held territory. This caused most of the other Thunderers that had been living in Lobexon to also convert to the Bubble party, seeing that to refuse to convert would be tantamount to endorsing the Dreamers' war against the Crystals. Meanwhile, the Soap Bubbles were being quickly washed away in the areas of the Thunder Empire that had been their original homelands. Thus, they soon became effectively a refugee minority living amongst the Crystals, despite having come to them from the Thunderers.

Thunder government returns to power

When the Thunderers overthrew the Dreamers in 3884 and established a racist government that oppressed Crystals moderately and Dreamers severely, they invited the Soap Bubbles living in Crystal territory to move back in, encouraged the few Bubbles who had hid out in Altotta to unmask themselves, and allowed mainline Thunderers to change their allegiance to the Bubbles. However, although the Thunderers legalized the Soap Bubble party in Altotta, and promised safety for those openly identifying as Bubbles, they warned the Bubbles that only mainline Thunderers could hold political office in the new nation since it was a one-party government.

Hearing this, the vast majority of the Bubbles, including the party leadership, did not reconcile. They stated that the Thunderers had drifted so far apart from their original belief system by this time that the Soap Bubbles actually preferred to live with the Crystals, and said that they would forever be allies of the Crystals. The Bubbles reminded the Thunderers that the Bubbles were the true descendants of the original Thunder party, because while the Thunderers had changed greatly under the Dreamer government, the Bubbles, having not been corrupted by the pain of abuse, had not changed at all.

Though the Soapies' difficult lifestyle attracted few converts, a small number of Soap Bubbles married Crystals, and of these, a small fraction raised their children as Soap Bubbles. This meant that the Soap Bubbles no longer had a homogeneous appearance and could not be identified on sight.

Allegations of racism

When the racist Thunderers realized that their close relatives in the Soap party were marrying dark-skinned Crystals, they declared that any Soapies who had married dark-skinned people were no longer clean and thus no longer Soap. As such, they would not be allowed to return to the Thunder Empire.

Hearing that their party's name had been perverted into a racist metaphor, the Soap Bubbles signed a nonbinding transnational agreement condemning racism and committing to the overthrow, by violence if necessary, of the racist Thunder government of Altotta. They thus signed an alliance with the Zenith, a minority in the Thunder Empire which had in turn allied itself with various other minorities. The Thunderers did not enslave Zeniths, but they saw all minorities as potential enemies and that included the Zenith.

At a conference in Crystal territory, the Thunder party (which was still legal in the Crystal Empire) argued to the Crystals that the Bubbles were trying to hide their racist past. They pointed out that the original name of their party had been the Snow, which was quickly changed to Soap. The Thunderers claimed that the name change came about because the founding Snow party members had realized that although snow and soap were both shiny white things, snow often absorbs dirt and becomes dirty itself, but soap repels dirt and remains clean. Thus, according to the Thunderers' explanation, the Soap Bubbles were proud of their white skin and had moved into the Crystal Empire believing that they were superior to the indigenous Crystal population. The Thunderers did not bring up the Soap Bubbles' strict admission criteria, as they realized that to do so would undercut their claim that the Soapies were racists; although the Soap Bubbles were very difficult for outsiders to join, it was plain that their admissions criteria had nothing to do with race or with skin color.

Taken aback, the Soapy representative admitted that there were several theories about the origin of their party's name and he did not know which, if any, was the correct one, but affirmed that the Soap Bubbles had never been racists and never would be.

Though the new Thunderers were openly racist, they had only held power in their Empire for a few months, and the Crystals were largely unaware of the Thunder worldview. Thus, the Soapies could not credibly throw allegations of racism back on the Thunderers. Instead, the Soapies claimed that the Thunderers had not been racists until 3884, and had only become such because all of the minorities in their Empire had turned against them. As such, they had abandoned the true Thunder ideology, while the Bubbles had preserved it.

The role of STW

See STW.

In 3915, an organization named Save The World was founded in the Thunder city of Lypelpyp. STW was aligned with the Zenith. The people of Lypelpyp thought this was a curious choice because almost all of the Zeniths lived on the other edge of the empire, thousands of miles away, and for a new organization to declare itself pro-Zenith in an area where no Zeniths lived seemed to be opening themselves up to attacks from the Thunderers in Lypelpyp.

But STW soon revealed their plan: they were illegal immigrants from the Crystal Empire, and their power base would be further illegal immigrants from the Crystal Empire and those who signed over their allegiance to them. Immigration into the Thunder Empire was entirely illegal, except for other Thunderers. Suddenly the previously 100% Thunder city of Lypelpyp was almost half Crystals and the city center was overpopulated and simmering with racial tension. The Thunderers could not understand why their government had allowed so many heavily armed Crystals to move into their city, after promising them year after year that their Empire would be forever a Thunder Empire and that any Crystals found within its borders would be immediately enslaved, and keeping that promise for thirty years.

The STW members were not interested in violent conquest, although they were heavily armed and very intimidating towards the Thunderers, even though the Thunderers in Lypelpyp were also heavily armed. Instead, STW was interested in dominating the economy of Lypelpyp to the point that it would be nearly irresistible for the Thunderers to sign allegiance to STW and thus destroy the power base of the non-STW Thunderers. The STWers took to the streets, blocking the path of civilians trying to get work done, harassing people at public gatherings, and in general not trying to make friends. They avoided targeting children, because they had a new weapon to use against children: children. STW was a very child-focused organization, and it enrolled children as soon as they were old enough to walk as full members. STW considered the least of its members superior to the ruling class of the non-STW people around them. Children in STW got out of school and chased after non-STW children bragging how much better they were treated at STW school than the other children were treated at the normal Thunder school.

As a technical matter, STW required its members to drop their outside party allegiances, so the Crystals who were immigrating into Lypelpyp to join STW became Zeniths when they did so. But they were dark-skinned Zeniths, and therefore by their mere presence in the Thunder Empire they were violating the Thunderers' laws and according to those laws the Thunder army was supposed to swoop in and enslave them. The people of Lypelpyp could not understand why this had not happened.

Lypelpyp adjusts to STW

The Lypels soon learned that STW's plan to seize power was extremely complicated and well-thought out. They required STW members to become Zeniths, meaning that once inside STW, the distinction between Thunder and Crystal was lost. They were allowed to keep their spiritual beliefs rather than adopting STW's official religion, Yiibam, but their political beliefs had to match STW's perfectly. In this time period, religion generally dictated politics, so to become an STW member was to effectively convert to STW's religion, even if one's mind differed on non-political ideas such as the number of gods or the location of the realm of the afterlife.

STW enraged the racist Thunder government by filling what had been an entirely Thunder city with thousands of illegal dark-skinned immigrants from the Crystal Empire, most of whom did not respect the Thunderers. Although the Thunderers had officially made peace with the Crystals, relations were tense. The Crystals were dismayed to see that they were not welcome, even though they had known all along that the Thunderers had outlawed all Crystal immigration. The people of STW were proud to admit that they simply didn't care whether the Thunder government wanted immigrants or not because they were going to get immigrants anyway. STW had decided to set itself up in Lypelpyp, and Lypelpyp was going to become the world headquarters of STW whether they wanted it or not.

As above, though, while the people of Lypelpyp referred to the dark-skinned STWers as "Crystals", simply because to them the Crystals were effectively a race of dark-skinned people rather than a religion, in order to join STW these Crystals had to become Zeniths. So, too, did the Thunderers who decided to side with STW against the increasingly angry non-STW "plain" people of Lypelpyp. Lypels soon learned that the STWers hated the non-STW Crystals even more than they hated the non-STW Thunderers, since they saw Crystals as their primary power base, and any Crystals who refused to join were doing even an greater disservice than the Thunderers, whom the STWers sympathized with since it was their country that was being invaded.

Still, they were looking to set up STW bases only in Thunder territory, never in Crystal territory, at least for the time being, as they felt the warm climate and mostly flat territory of the Crystal Empire would make it more difficult for STW to establish the monopolies that they needed to seize power. For example, Lypelpyp was in a valley surrounded by mountains, with only one road leading west and one road leading east. STW planned to soon seize control of both of them and starve out the city unless they all surrendered to STW.

Three-party setup

For hundreds of years, the dark-skinned Crystals and the light-skinned Thunderers had hated each other and each had taken turns abusing and oppressing the other, trading places every few generations as to which partner was on top. STW had come to put an end to all of that by seizing control and oppressing both of them. But the Crystals and Thunderers also had a shared hatred of Dreamland, since Dreamland had stolen land from both of them. STW had declared war on Dreamland on the very first day of its existence, and motivated its people to fight by painting murals of STW members chasing off an invading Dreamer army. In reality, in STW's first years, its membership consisted almost entirely of young children, because since they were a corporation, it was difficult for them to get adults to leave the workforce and join STW. Thus they did not actually fight, but built weapons and provided supplies to an army called the Scopes who did almost all of the fighting. STW did have a traditional army, but it was for self-defense, and this army still did not expect to be forced to fight the Dreamers since Lypelpyp was not a feasible target for a Dreamer invasion.

3919 coup

In 3919, the racist Thunder government was overthrown by dissenters from within. The coalition of STW, the Soap, the Zenith, the Crystals, and many other smaller minorities had succeeded in pushing the racists out of power and setting up their own government. However, STW's financial support had been far more decisive than all of the other parties' efforts.

Since the Soapies were the only one of the many minority parties that was descended directly from the Thunderers, they had hoped that they would be given priority in the new government and perhaps even total control. They laid out their plans for an entirely Soapy empire stretching from the deserts of Lypelpyp to the vineyards of Paba. But the rebels burst their bubble by declaring that they still considered themselves Thunderers, and still held to many of the Thunder ideals. The new Thunderers were significantly Soapier than before, but refused to allow a multiparty government either with the Bubbles or with the old racist Thunderers they had overthrown.

Thus the Bubbles still did not make peace with the Thunderers. Nevertheless, the Thunder Empire was a very large place, and some of the Bubbles did start to move back in to their old stomping grounds now that they were no longer excluded by race or any other means. They found places to live in Altotta in which they could live amongst only their own kind, protected by small but powerful Soap Bubble militias, a tactic they had learned from living for so long surrounded by enemies, something even the Thunderers had never experienced. Meanwhile, the Thunderers freed all of their Crystal slaves, but not the Dreamer slaves, since even the rebels still hated the Dreamers.

Being a minority, the Soap Bubbles had always emphasized the need to prepare themselves for a war despite being traditionally nonviolent, and thus were actually, per capita, both better armed and better educated about military strategy than the Crystals. Thus, they were better soldiers than the Crystals. Nevertheless, the newfound similarity in political ideals between the Soap and the Crystals led many Bubbles to convert to Crystalism over the years, and few the other way around, so the Bubbles remained a small minority amongst the Crystals.

Murals and propaganda

The Soap Bubbles sometimes used nonviolent imagery to appeal to their enemies; whereas all of the other armies would slice people up with swords and stab them with spears, being conquered by the Soap Bubble army would merely make people feel refreshed and a ltitle bit prettier. They painted murals of their people dressed as soldiers, with giant white soap bars in place of swords. They threatened to give any Dreamers captured in battle a hot soapy bath, turning them forever into Wet Dreamers.

However, they knew from history that such claims to innocence bought little sympathy from stronger armies, and that if they ever wanted to be anything more than the bottommost group amongst an already oppressed people they would need to behave like normal people and establish a conventional army with swords and shields.

Desert dwellings

The Bubbles nevertheless became known as the least violent of the many mutually hostile armies during the chaotic period between the last days of the Thunder Empire (4108) and the beginning of the Swampy Empire (4149). Indeed, they had remained completely nonparticipant in any violence, although because they were so small and weak, they at times entered into alliances with the Crystals in which the Crystals promised to protect them.

The Soap Bubbles lived in the deserts south of Baeba. They were known for their non-hereditary membership, meaning that prospective members had to pass a physical fitness test, even if both of their parents were Soap Bubbles.

This was the first time in the Soap Bubbles' history of over 340 years that they had become a major independent player in a war. Previously, they had been famous for their nonviolence, although they were careful to avoid officially endorsing pacifism, knowing that too much pacifism had brought down the major empire of Paba. When they had been forced to fight, it had previously been in a coalition with another, larger army, usually the Crystals. Some Soapies had moved into Crystal territory in the past and had become well-respected there even though they were closely related to the hated Thunderers who had, in turn, later spawned the Raspara and the Matrix.

The similarity in political ideals between the Soap and the Crystals led many Bubbles to convert to Crystalism over the years, and few the other way around, so the Crystals far outnumbered the Bubbles, and by 4186 both the Crystals and the Bubbles were quite weak.

Foundation of the Little Country

The Swampies invaded Baeba Swamp and settled in the areas where escaped Lenian slaves lived. The 13,630 Swampy soldiers were able to conquer and control the much more numerous Lenians (over 70,000) despite violent attempts by the Lenians to resist. They enslaved the Lenians and made them work building weapons, and this made the Swamp Kids even more powerful. The Rasparas had been nearly destroyed by earlier attacks, so they were unable to stop the Swamp Kids' invasion of Baeba Swamp. Furthermore, the Swamp Kids even managed to settle parts of Nama despite violent resistance from the Namans.

New ideology

The Swamp Kids threw off the Raspara-led ideology when they became able to control their own affairs. They promised a strict government and said that it was immoral for people to have the right to control their own behavior.

Party name

At first, they retained the name Swamp Kids, but began to promote aggressively masculine imagery and stated that their name referred to their members' typically small body size, not immaturity or helplessness. They stated that their victory over the Matrix army in Anzan proved that small soldiers could sometimes defeat larger ones. Additionally, most of the Lenian slaves they had conquered were taller than typical Swamp Kids, and yet they had fallen to the Swamp Kids even though they had had overwhelming numerical superiority. The Swamp Kids associated these Lenians with Dreamland because they did not want their members to realize that many of the slaves were in fact formerly of the Play party, and that some were even former Swamp Kids.

However, as a name identifying them with Baeba Swamp meant little in Baeba Swamp, the Swampies then attempted to restore their original party name Lava Handlers, only to hear that the Cold Men still also claimed ownership of that name, saying that cold hands could turn the hottest lava into stone. The Swamp Kids settled for an alternate reading of that original name, the Slime Handlers, which they quickly shortened in diplomatic meetings to Slime.

New form of government

The Slime army successfully subdued the northern districts of Baeba and immediately began the militarization of the population with slavery, and renamed their nation The Little Country because they considered the city of Baeba Swamp far more important than the vast tracts of wilderness they had conquered along the way. But they never moved their seat of government to Baeba, because there were too many foreigners there.

The Slimes realized that they could no longer use a democratic system of government, because they were oppressing a much larger aboriginal population that would simply vote them out of power if given the chance. They built a new city just outside Baeba, on land that had been inhabited by Lenians. They then declared this city to be the capital of the Little Country, and asked Baeba's Leaper party to consider their new city to be part of Baeba Swamp, so that the Slimes would be able to claim that they had finally achieved their long-desired goal of conquering Baeba Swamp. They promised that, having gotten this, they would make no further intrusions into Baeba Swamp and would aid in the defense of Baeba from future invasions just as any other citizens of Baeba would. The Leapers agreed to this, and the Slimes came to refer to their new city as being the Baeban district of Pavaitaapu, but among themselves they simply called it Baeba, underscoring the Slimes' idea that Pavaitaapu was the only part of Baeba that mattered.

Census of 4192

A census taken in early 4192 showed over 360,000 slaves working for the surviving Slime soldiers, of whom there were about 12,600 (the Slimes had lost almost exactly 1,000 soldiers fighting the war). However, the Slimes doubted their own census, saying that there was no way that they could be outnumbered by such a wide margin. The census takers admitted that they had been merely estimating the population of the rural areas of the Little Country based on what was known from prior eras, but stated that these rural areas were just as much a part of their country as was the city of Pavaitaapu.

Economics of TLC

The Slimes supported STW, which had opened bases in the area. Some of the Slime leaders were STW members. Because STW's economic model combined capitalism, piracy, and slavery, the Slimes did likewise, although they did not plan to raid foreign nations the way STW traditionally had. STW itself had lost so much power in recent years that they had come to rely mostly on slavery.

Coronation of the Golden Sun

To secure their new government, the Slimes then installed a boy named the Golden Sun (Play Pipunapa, Late Andanese Hipilii) on the throne of the government of Baeba. The STW corporation, which had provided the Slime army basic necessities and helped with transportation, had chosen this boy from among their membership to be the king.

The Golden Sun was only 13 years old, but was legally an adult by STW's reckoning because he had graduated from their school. He was the son of the shipbuilder Naipatepa, the richest man in TLC and one of the richest men in the world.

The Sun had already married a girl, Žaŋavaufa, in a ceremonial wedding, and had already divorced that girl and found a second wife, who called herself Right Arm. These weddings were formalities, and most outsiders considered his wives to be best described as girlfriends, but the Golden Sun had absolute power and therefore demanded a wedding ceremony for each girl, and that they be referred to as wives rather than girlfriends. Nonetheless, the constitution did not afford any political powers to the queen, or even recognize the existence of a queen, as the Slimes agreed with their forebearers and insisted all political power be held by males.

Friends and relations

Rather than appoint adult advisors to help, the king appointed his classmates and other friends his own age to positions of power within his realm. Outsiders soon called these kids the Clovers (Vatuīs); this was not a party name, but merely a term of convenience for the king and his young friends who stayed close by his side.

The Golden Sun did not trust adults, and most of the classmates he appointed to help him run the country did not trust adults either. Their only interactions with adults so far in their brief time in power had been hostile, apart from the STW leaders who had placed the king on his throne.

The Golden Sun brought his best friend and former classmate, the Red Sun, into power as well. He gave the Red Sun control over the military and an abstract promise of additional powers to come when new problems confronted them. The two boys trusted each other well enough that this abstract promise was all they needed. Both boys' names referred to their hair color, as light hair shades were rare in their original homeland and even rarer in their new homeland.

The Suns understood that their government was a one-party state. They therefore excluded minorities, other than fellow STW members who were supportive of the Slime, from the new government of the Little Country. Because STW did not officially allow dual party membership, these people were thus not legally Slimes, but the king excused this by saying that they had been evaluated by Slimes and not by other STW members, and therefore had proven themselves loyal. Thus the Slimes became very powerful, with their influence extending outside their small area of the Swamp.

Legal status of the king

The Golden Sun was also a member of STW, and therefore, despite being the head of state in the Slimes' new nation, he was still legally required to obey his superiors in STW, in particular, a woman named Lanīs. She had been his teacher when he had been younger, and as she had gathered power within STW's hierarchy, she had retained her power over him.

To answer complaints that the new Slime nation would therefore be just a toy for Lanīs and STW, STW stated that the Golden Sun was a military leader, since he had graduated from STW's training program and was legally an adult by STW's reckoning; therefore, although he still retained ties to STW, he would have a free hand to act in any way he pleased in the Little Country, as STW's traditionally female leadership always gave adult soldiers the right to disobey STW's military commands. (Essentially, STW's army was comprised of mercenaries.)

Early criticisms

The Slimes had not voted for their new king; STW had forced the Slimes to place him on the throne, threatening to withhold goods and financial assistance from the Slimes if they did not comply.

Some Slimes wondered why they had received a child ruler, when there were older adults, including the boy's own father, who they assumed would also be interested in ruling a nation and did not have other responsibilities tying them down. Noting that STW was supporting another child ruler in a distant area of Memnumu, they wondered whether the king was intended to rule only for a short time, and would be replaced with another young boy once he reached adolescence. They also noticed that the Sun had an eight-year-old sister who called herself the Moon.

On the other hand, some Slimes stated that they would have preferred to be ruled by an even younger child, knowing that such a king would be more strongly yoked to STW's adult leadership and that the nation would be thus run by someone with competence and experience, but through an intermediary who they hoped would weaken STW's control over the Little Country.

Others ignored the issue of the boy's age. They promised to treat their new leader the same as they would treat any other king, and stated that any criticism of the king's rule should be focused on his policies and not his competence, as they admitted that, without democracy, a ruler did not need great wisdom or experience to project their power. They furthermore argued that their new king would only be young for a few short years. This position soon became the most popular one, and the Golden Sun stopped worrying about opposition to his rule.

Military of TLC

The Little Country's traditional military was run by the Slime party, but not all of the low-ranking soldiers were required to be Slimes. Those without access to weapons were often enslaved laborers from non-Slime parties.

Creation of the Sunspots

Since the Slimes' new constitution had provided no positions aside from the king and the parliament, the Golden Sun created a new position for his best friend, the Red Sun. In this position, the Red Sun had control of a private military, untethered from both STW and the Little Country, but still required to obey the Red Sun. The Red Sun was himself legally required to obey the king, but because they were close friends, and trusted each other, the Golden Sun allowed the Red Sun to direct the military himself.

For the Suns, the creation of the new army increased their hold on power. The parliamentary republic from which the Slimes had come had allowed the military free reign in all their pursuits, figuring that military commanders knew better than politicians how best to fight a war. The parliament's only check on military power was that they controlled the size of the army, and could eliminate it entirely. The new constitution in the Little Country kept this system in place, meaning that the Golden Sun could shrink or even dissolve the Slimes' army, but he could not tell their commanders where to go or what to do.

Therefore, the new kingdom had two separate armies, both of which were under the control of the king, but only one of which was required to obey his military commands. This army, called the Sunspots (Pipiūmiupa), was staffed primarily with adult male soldiers from STW, but when the non-STW Slimes realized that the king could legally eliminate the traditional army, they agreed to let any soldiers who wished to transfer to the Sunspots to do so, and therefore not all Sunspot soldiers were STW members. This helped the Sunspots grow at the expense of the conventional army.

Nonetheless, most soldiers did not trust the Red Sun, who was still only 13 years old, to be a competent military leader, and therefore they remained in TLC's conventional army.

Differences between the two armies

TLC's conventional military was focused on defending its newly won territory and preventing civil war. They did not seek to invade foreign nations. Their soldiers lived in fortified military bases and carried weapons when traveling in civilian territory. (Note that although all adult males were required to serve in the military, as in past eras many duties were noncombative, so the term "civilian" here includes adult males serving in noncombative roles such as building roads.)

By contrast, the Sunspots had no military bases and no fixed location, and they did not always travel in groups. The Sunspots dressed as civilians and did not reveal their identities to outsiders. Therefore, the Sunspots made much better spies than the traditional soldiers did. Most were graduates of STW, which had no fixed age for graduation, and therefore some were quite young. Nonetheless, most of the Sunspots were adults and all of them were male.

Early actions of the king

Contacts with Memnumu

Meanwhile, through STW's trade routes, the Sun had met a girl his age, Šasuasa, a military leader ruling in the eastern Play state of Šanaampu. She had already established contact with Tata a few years earlier, when she had been younger, and had sent children who were younger still into Tata to clear out territory for future Play habitation by spreading plagues among the locals. Despite living more than 3,000 miles apart, the two young leaders were able to exchange contacts intermittently through STW's trade routes, of which they were at the extreme opposite ends.

The Slimes and Cold Men had until recently been part of the same political party and had shared a military. They had recently severed ties, and had come to live so far apart geographically that neither was involved in the other's military conflicts. But the Cold Men were at war with the Players, and some Slimes came to worry that STW's trade with the Players would pull the Slimes into a new war against their longtime allies the Cold Men.

Developments in Anzan

The titular capital city of The Little Country was Šaapausu, located in Anzan, which was now usually referred to as "Inner Anzan" or by reviving its old name of Vaamū.

Inner Anzan had remained a democracy, but the occupied territories of Tata and Baeba were allowed to disobey the central government in the event that the people of Inner Anzan democratically voted to disown the occupied territories or to extend democracy to them. Thus, Baeba needed a king to wield this right to disobey.

The Slimes were not surrendering their old territories, but they had brought most of their land army to Baeba, and this army had enrolled most of the Slimes' male population, meaning that although the soldiers' wives and other relatives had been quick to follow them in, there were many who had been captured by Raspara or other armies on the way, which meant that the Slimes' population in Baeba was disproportionately male and the Slimes' population in Inner Anzan was almost entirely women, children, and frail elderly people. Women and children could not vote, so the democracy fell into the hands of the relatively few adult males still left in Anzan, most of whom were not part of the Slime.

Relations between the king and Parliament

The Slimes set up a one-party democracy in Baeba Swamp; only enrolled Slimes could vote. The Slimes said that even this democracy was merely symbolistic, intended to produce bills that the king could choose whether to accept or not. The Slimes pondered converting their true democracy in Inner Anzan to the same system, knowing that one of their weakest points had been that minorities had been allowed to vote in the democracy, and had nearly always ganged up on the Swamp Kids in order to vote for whichever proposals would weaken them the most. By this time, most of Inner Anzan was controlled by the Cold Men, originally the same party as the Slimes, but who had now reached an ambiguous status, allowing overlapping party membership, such that it was legally unresolved whether the Cold Men and Slimes were the same party or not.

But most Slimes expected to lose control of Inner Anzan entirely within a few years, as they had been unable to control their home territory even when they had their full population in Anzan, and now they had merely a small remnant of that population consisting mostly of women and children who were trying to get out but were blocked by the aggressive armies of their political enemies.

Furthermore, those who were literate and had access to written media from the Crystals living in Baeba now knew that although for 40 years the Swamp Kids had been everyone else's easy victims, now that they had Baeba, they were pouring out all 40 years of bottled emotion upon the helpless and innocent victims they found living there. Thus, the Slimes migrating from Anzan received little sympathy even from the traditionally softer armies such as the Crystals and the Bubbles.

First Clover War

Economic conflicts

The 6,000 adult men working for STW corporation supplied most of the basic needs the Slimes and others in Pavaitaapu needed to get by, and had helped them quickly construct buildings to live in. This left the entire population deeply in debt to STW, and because STW existed outside Pavaitaapu, the Slimes knew that if they chose to simply betray by STW by refusing to pay the debt, the nations around them could send in their armies to occupy Pavaitaapu and put the Slimes into slavery to pay the debt.

But many Slimes believed that by refusing to pay their debts, they would only be giving STW what it deserved, since STW had just two years earlier forced the Slimes (then called Pioneers) into a war whose only purpose was to financially enrich STW. On this basis, the Slimes argued that the money STW had gained from this war really belonged to the Slimes.

The Slime military commanders in the imperial army planned to attack STW and take their slaves, even knowing that it would immediately lead to a wider war, and even knowing that their economy was still partially dependent on STW for basic necessities. They did not share this plan with the Sunspots, knowing that the Sunspots would likely side with STW and could give outside armies advance notice of the coming war.

Raspara-Slime battles

Word of the plan leaked out, however, and STW's Base 44, located further out in the deserts, responded by selling weapons to Rasparas to use against the Slimes.

The Raspara realized that the Golden Sun was a powerful ruler, and that he belonged to both the Slimes and to STW. But STW allowed its graduates to become mercenaries, even taking on missions that could harm STW. Thus, when the king realized his two party loyalties were at war with each other, he would need to pick a side, and the Raspara did not believe that they could prod him into siding with STW. Therefore the Raspara planned to attack the Slimes on their own. In May 4192, STW signed an alliance with the Rasparas that stated that as long as the Rasparas did not attack STW, they would sell weapons at low prices to them to use against the Slime.

Meanwhile, the Slimes didn't know about the treaty, so most did not plan on attacking STW even as they found themselves facing a surprise attack from the Raspara, whose bases were mostly outside Pavaitaapu and thus out of reach of the Slimes.

Expulsion of the king

Slimes turn against STW

However, opinions soon began to change.

The Pioneer army that had given rise to the Slimes had just fought a brutal war against Tata and its ruling Matrix party. Though the Pioneers had lost many soldiers in this war, in the end they had won, and signed a treaty consigning the Matrixes to be slaves for the Pioneers and their allies. Many Matrixes had escaped the conquering army, and other enemies of the Pioneers had become Matrixes in the aftermath in the war to support the group they saw as being unfairly victimized. Therefore, the Matrix army still existed, and many Matrixes now lived to the west of Pavaitaapu, in the core of Baeba Swamp. (Tata had been to the east.)

When the Slimes set up their new government, they decided to tolerate these new Matrixes, since they were not at war with the Slimes, and because the Slimes and Matrixes had some enemies in common. However, the Slimes insisted that they have full control over their own territory, and the Parliament decided that they no longer wanted to allow Matrixes within their territory. The Parliament passed a bill expelling all immigrants, Matrixes, and STW members from the Little Country, and authorizing the army to kill anyone who refused to leave.

Because the Golden Sun, the king of the Little Country, belonged to STW, the Parliament's new bill had just expelled the king and nearly all of the people who helped him rule. The Slime Parliament offered the king a choice: either quit STW, or accept the new law and face execution alongside the commoners.

The Slimes had never learned about the earlier secret Raspara-STW treaty because they had only ever seen Raspara soldiers attacking them. Therefore, while the Slimes were already at war with the Raspara, they believed their new attack against STW and the Matrix was preemptive.

Clover reaction

In response to this, the king and his close ally the Red Sun joined the Soap Bubbles, fired all Slimes from the government, and banished the Slime from the Little Country.

Preparations for civil war

The king and his friends, the Clovers, believed that their Sunspot army was trustworthy and would not defect to the Slimes, even though many Sunspots still claimed Slime party membership. Since the Clover leadership consisted almost entirely of young teenagers with no military training, the Sunspots were the only means of defense they had against the enemies around them, and indeed, the Sunspots were the only adults in the country who were not at war with them. While they were still allied with STW, they knew that STW would not risk its entire army fighting a war over so small a territory as Pavaitaapu, knowing that the imperial army by itself was larger than STW's.

Legal consequences

The king did not want to deal with legal loopholes and technicalities. Rather than expel the people who had expelled him, he declared that the only legal citizens in the Little Country were STW members, and to affirm one's loyalty to the Little Country, one must join STW. But he still insisted that the power to rule remained with him, and that STW as a whole would not be taking control of the Little Country. The king did not take his own declaration seriously, as he knew that most members of the Sunspots were not part of STW, and that those who were, being adults, were not bound by STW.

By these declarations, the Suns and the Slimes had expelled each other, and each claimed the right to rule the same Little Country. The vast majority of the population belonged to the Slimes, with the STW population consisting primarily of soldiers such as the Sunspots and transitory STW employees who did not bother with the question of whether they were citizens or not.

Thus the Suns had very few people willing to obey their rule. They hoped that they could pull in allies from the Soap Bubbles, the party that they had joined when they expelled the Slimes.

The Bubbles had been opposed to the Slime government and had called TLC "the Empire". They supported STW and wanted STW to overthrow the government. Outsiders said the Soap Bubbles, despite their long history, were now no more than a front for the STW corporation and its slaveholders. But the Bubbles were descended from people who had fled into the deserts even before the STW corporation was founded.

Sunspot purge

Earlier, when the nation had been united, the royal Sunspot army had enrolled soldiers who were loyal to the Slime party but believed that the Red Sun would make a better military commander, despite his youth, than the leaders of the traditional Slime army. Now, the Red Sun was worried that at least some of these men might rebel and attack him, and so he ordered a moratorium on new enlistments to the Sunspots, and expelled all known Sunspots who had maintained membership in the Slime party.

Because the Sunspots were geographically dispersed and lived as civilians, there was no feasible means for the Red Sun to track down the pro-Slime members of his army. He therefore declared that they were to be seen as enemy soldiers, and ordered that any ex-Sunspots who wished to escape the Slime party surrender their weapons first so that the remaining Sunspots could take their weapons as their own. Then, the Red Sun ordered the Sunspots to assassinate all of the ex-Sunspots who had remained in the Slime party and had not heeded his warning to surrender.

The Red Sun understood that the Sunspots would not simply assassinate all of the purged members all at once, but would likely rather pick them off bit by bit, when they were weak and vulnerable. This was the Sunspots' preferred method of attack.

The Sunspots' attacks on their ex-members did not trigger the Slimes' conventional army to attack the Sunspots in revenge, even though these targets were Slimes.

Sun-Shadow meeting

The Slimes had been a majority in the government, and therefore their government survived the expulsion largely intact, and they continued on as if nothing had happened. They appointed a new king, The Shadow (Matuanappa), to rule them the way the Golden Sun had. Matuanappa was a traditional politician who had served many years in the army and then come to rule in the government. He hoped to meet the boy king in person so that they could talk about what had happened, with the intent that he would convince the boy to submit to the Slimes' rule and abandon dual loyalties.

Debate setting

The Golden Sun agreed to meet with the Shadow. The two kings met in a heavily guarded fortress in Soap Bubble territory so that neither side would be able to easily abduct the other. The Shadow figured that if the Sun abducted him even so, the Soap Bubbles would be blamed for it, and the Slimes would then have free rein to start a war against the Soap Bubbles, which were known to be very weak and had escaped persecution in the past by attracting sympathy.

The Shadow still did not know of the earlier Raspara-STW pact, which was still in effect, and had therefore brought the Soap Bubbles into an alliance with the Raspara. The Shadow therefore went into the meeting intending to apologize for his party's preemptive attack on STW, but then to pry the Sun back to his side by showing that his ties to STW would prevent him from peacefully ruling any country dominated by non-STW members.

Preparations for debate

The Shadow had agreed to debate the Sun, and had allowed the Sun to bring other allies to the debate table with him, such that the Shadow would be standing alone and might have to answer questions from many opponents. He believed this strategy would actually weaken the Soap, figuring that they would be divided among themselves, and would give way to the Shadow as the only consistent party in the room. However, when he arrived, he was greeted by only the Golden Sun and his best friend, the Red Sun.

Growth of a wider coalition

The Matrix leadership believed that Pavaitaapu was important for the Matrixes to win, as it was a district of Baeba Swamp with a rich natural environment, and thus by winning Pavaitaapu, they would have a section of Baeba Swamp all to themselves. They could also potentially gain control of parts of Nama, since the Slimes also claimed jurisdiction over large areas of Nama, which in a deliberate irony they had contained within the nation they called the Little Country. Since the Slime army was represented nowhere outside Pavaitaapu, if the Matrixes could defeat the Slimes, they would have full control of Pavaitaapu.

Matrix propaganda

Because they were desperate, STW signed an alliance with the Matrixes that made both of them much more powerful, but also allowed the Matrixes to penetrate STW with propaganda.

The Soap Bubbles joined in on this alliance too, meaning that STW, the Sunspots, the Raspara, the Matrixes, and the Soap Bubbles had all declared war against the Slimes, though none of the five partners in the coalition had committed their full force to the war.

Appeals to STW

The Matrixes told STW members that they were really foreigners and that they should have no sympathy for the Slimes. As a transnational corporation, the Matrixes said, STW could not stand on its own, and needed to ally with a transnational party so that they could not be legally punished in various countries in which they had no means to fight back.

Appeals to Clovers and Sunspots

To the Matrixes, the only thing worth noting about the Clovers was that they had no adult members, and indeed, few members over the age of 14, and yet had managed to convince a powerful adult army, the Sunspots, to obey the orders of just one boy among the Clovers. Similar things had happened in recent decades, but each time, the young rulers either grew quickly into traditional adult rulers or were overthrown by adults. The Matrixes wanted to seize power in the Little Country by gaining the kids' trust and then betraying them, but they knew that they had at most a few years to accomplish their mission, because the Clovers would not willingly step aside for their own younger classmates.

The long-term Matrix strategy was to pretend the Clover rulers were in their natural place, and force them to attend meeting after meeting with the Matrixes and other traditional adult groups, wearing them down intellectually and even physically, hoping that they would give up and sign over their powers to the Matrixes before they realized that they were nearing the age of adulthood themselves.

In the meantime, though, the Matrixes promised the Clovers that Matrix soldiers would fight on the front lines so that the Sunspots could dedicate themselves to protecting the young Clover leadership, but also encouraged the Sunspots to continue their practice of targeted assassinations, where individual Sunspot soldiers would kill Slime political leaders and even Slime civilians, rather than facing off against the Slime army.

Appeals to Soap Bubbles

The Matrixes chose not to spend time on propaganda intended for the Soap Bubbles. Most Soap Bubbles lived in the deserts far south of Baeba, and had no reason to commit themselves to a war in a district in the northeast corner of Baeba. The Matrixes assumed that the few enrolled Soap Bubbles in Pavaitaapu were loyal to their king and that whatever helped the Matrixes control the king would help them control the Soap Bubbles.

Appeals to Slimes

The Matrix leaders planned to further outsmart the Slimes by blurring the distinction between them. They stated that despite their violent past, they had many ideological beliefs in common, chief among them being the idea that men should rule over women. The opposition to feminism was not the only belief they had in common, but the Matrixes believed it would be a strong motivator because the Slimes were locked out of feminist parties by this belief. Most of the other parties in the coalition army were neutral on this issue, so the Matrixes were able to ally with them even while reaching out to the Slimes.

Coalition army battles

Effects of the new alliance

The Matrix-STW-Soap coalition army was very well organized, and the Slime could not defeat it. The Matrixes were the clear dominant force in this coalition, and held nearly all of the leadership positions in the command structure.

STW, on the other hand, relied on pure military force, and suffered heavy casualties at the hands of the Slime soldiers, although the Slimes could not destroy them either.

Although the Slimes had originally targeted the Sunspots first and foremost, the Slimes were surprised when they realized that Matrix soldiers were willingly putting themselves in the line of fire to defend the Sunspots and the Clovers, even though the Clovers did not have anything to give back.

Summer 4193 offensives

STW supported the Sunspots. The Sunspots were responsible to the Red Sun only, and not to the wider STW military; STW explained that this was nothing new, since STW had always allowed its soldiers to act as mercenaries and thus fight private battles without the help of the wider STW military.

Most STW chiefs allowed the Sunspots and other Soap Bubble soldiers to take up positions in STW's fortified bases, which were geographically dispersed, even though many of these soldiers had not joined STW. This was an unprecedented action, as STW had always stressed that their forts were for STW's soldiers only, but the STW leadership had begun to divide internally, with some realizing that their strategy in the past had been disastrous. With STW's help, the Sunspots soon stationed soldiers to the west and south of the Slimes' district of Pavaitaapu, while other soldiers that had been stationed further south moved closer in.

Because the Slimes had earlier promised never to invade the core of Baeba Swamp, they could not stop the Sunspots from stationing soldiers there, and Baeba's ruling Leaper party refused to intervene in favor of the Slimes. Since the Slimes were mostly adult male soldiers, the Leapers clarified that the core territories of Baeba Swamp were closed to all adult male Slimes.

Attacks against the Slime

In the summer of 4193, the Sunspots attacked all Slimes simultaneously, winning their battle despite the Slimes' superior numbers. Other Soap Bubbles joined in on this war, but they mostly obeyed the Sunspots' commands because they felt the Sunspots had been better tested in war.

Nonetheless, the Soap Bubbles believed that they, too, were a rising military power. They claimed that the Slimes were too weak to run a nation, and had only won their war last year because they had been fighting the weakest of all possible enemies — escaped slaves — and the Soap Bubbles promised that the Slimes would never again have a nation of their own.

Peace treaty

In summer 4193, a peace treaty was signed ending the war. The winning side was a coalition army consisting of the Sunspots, the Soap Bubbles, STW, the Matrixes, and the Raspara, while on the opposite side there was just the Slimes.

The new treaty restored the Golden Sun to the throne of the Little Country as the undisputed king, with the Red Sun retaining his control over his private military. The new government was just as it had been before: a parliamentary monarchy in which the king had absolute power, but in which multiple parties were electable to Parliament and could gently pull the king in one direction or another since the king was free to switch parties at any time.

Nonetheless, and to the surprise of the watching world, the Matrixes pulled their army out of Pavaitaapu after the peace treaty, allowing the Sunspots to become the official army of the newly restored nation.

The Matrixes were ceding control of the very territory they had fought for, and had planned to claim as exclusively theirs, because events in the other districts of Baeba Swamp had forced them to compromise with other outside parties. The Leapers had demanded that STW's original wishes be respected: STW had assigned that territory to the Slimes, and the Slimes had accepted their new king, and the king was not a Matrix. Therefore the Matrixes retained contro

Clovers return to power

With the Slime army destroyed, the Golden Sun announced the creation of a new traditional army alongside the Sunspots, but conceded privately that this was a formality, as he trusted his friend and preferred to have an army that was bound by pledge to obey the military plans of the king rather than an independent strategist who made his own plans. The king claimed that their recent victory over the Slimes proved that the Suns were intelligent military strategists as well as good political leaders.

Attacks against the Crystals

Then, the Golden Sun declared that because their nation was run by the Soap Bubbles, only the Soap Bubbles would be allowed to carry weapons. The Crystals, though closely allied with the Soap Bubbles, would have to surrender their weapons to the Soap and allow the Soap army to become stronger. The Crystals agreed to this request, thanking the Golden Sun for asking them himself rather than delegating the decision to the Red Sun.

Battle of Ŋaišauša

Once the collection of weapons was complete, the Red Sun sent the Sunspots after the Crystals, and in just a single battle, he killed or drove out nearly all of the Crystals from the Little Country. The army captured only four Crystals, all women, and the Red Sun declared that the rest had all been killed or had fled.

Repercussions of the battle

As worries spread about a wider war, the Red Sun promised that he would never attack Crystals outside the Little Country, and that the Soap Bubbles living outside the Little Country were not bound to the new war.

The Crystals now believed that the Suns were not legitimate Soap Bubbles, because although they had claimed that party identity, they held no special positions within the Soap Bubble hierarchy and had not implemented Soap-style laws in the Little Country. The Crystals demanded that the Soap Bubbles formally release a statement ejecting the Suns from their party, but the Soap Bubbles refused to do so. In response, the global Crystal party declared war on the Soap Bubbles for the first time in their very long shared history. The tropical Crystal armies had no feasible means of getting to Baeba, however.

Birth of Pasīpas

In October 4193, a boy named Xidêri was born to a Leaper-speaking family. In Play, he was called Pasīpas. Since this name was also a valid Leaper name, he soon came to be called Pasīpas even in Leaper.

Appeals to masculine imagery

The Matrixes positioned themselves as the natural ally of the Swamp Kids and enemy of the Crystals, since they supported a male power structure whereas the Crystals were led by women. Since the nation still consisted primarily of Slimes, the Matrixes felt that they would be the best leaders for the nation. At this time, the Suns still wanted to bring the Slimes back until their control peacefully.

Comparison to the Sunspots

By comparison, the Sunspots were a traditional adult army that dutifully obeyed the Red Sun and considered the Clovers to be legitimate rulers. They drew power from this position, since the young rulers trusted no other adults, and therefore the Sunspots were always called in whenever the Clovers needed to travel or otherwise needed protection from the commoners and from outside armies. The imperial army by contrast had an independent command structure and was not given this privileged position.

Further actions by the Golden Sun

The Golden Sun became an erratic and abusive ruler.

Use of alcohol

Shortly after his 14th birthday, he began drinking palm wine (Play pūmačivaba, Leaper tăkʷa), which was illegal according to the Slime party constitution, and this law applied even to the king. Furthermore, the Soap Bubble party platform demanded that its members follow the laws of the nations they lived in, and so this law still applied to him even after he had joined the Soap Bubbles. But the king ignored this and continued to drink wine.

The Sun also shared the drink with his friends and acquaintances. The Sun and his friends soon came to refer to this wine as soap (bimamiba) because of its frothy texture. The cultural link between soap and alcohol ultimately derived from the Play party which had sixty years earlier seized power in Memnumu and outlawed the production of both substances.

By the time he turned 15 (that is, September 4193), the Sun was drinking wine every day.

Period out of power

Contact with Moonshine

This period will be filled up with much missing information.

The Little Country was overthrown in late 4194. It was with help from Moonshine. Moonshine had been ranting about how awful life was for the Matrix and STW, and how much the Matrix could improve the situation. With the Slimes mostly out of power, and many fleeing, STW and the Matrix were free, and very clean. Though Moonshine had helped, they soon realized that they would be locked out of power in the new empire, and the Matrixes even threatened to invade Moonshine if they did not cooperate.

Out of respect for their enemies, the STW-Matrix coalition stated that they had overthrown an only mildly corrupt empire, but that the revolution was necessary in order to replace it with a clean one, which they named Rapala. This name was not in a living language, but rather in a certain script used to write Tapilula, already obsolete four thousand years ago. This was in a tradition of using inaccessible names to appeal to all sides in a conflict.

As they had in the past, the winners of the war appropriated all of the cumulative land claims of their enemies, so that they claimed not just the former Little Country, but also all of the land that the Slime had attempted to control in previous years, and all of the land that any army which had allied with the Slimes had ever attempted to control. Thus Rapala claimed nearly all of the land east of Baeba, and much of what lay to the south and west as well. As in the past, the STW-Matrix coalition knew that they had no realistic chance of occupying more than a small fraction of this land, but they chose to invade Nama, which they felt was very weak, in order to shore up their military in the region west of Creamland. They also claimed Baeba itself, but made no attempts to settle there.

By this time, the king of the Little Country had resigned due to corruption, but no new king replaced him. When STW took over, they abolished TLC's monarchy but allowed the former king to wield a great deal of power within STW's internal governance.

Foundation of the Slopes

In early 4195, a Clover named Kupūm Kakavaap founded the Slope party (Masuau), shortly after the Clover kingdom had been overthrown for the second time.

Legal party identity

Previously, the Clovers had never identified thmselves as a political party, since they held various allegiances, to the Crystals, Soap Bubbles, Slimes, and a few with minor parties. But by founding the Slope party, Kakavaap forced the Clovers to declare themselves an entity that excluded the Slopes, and therefore the Clovers accepted that they, too, had become a political party. Nonetheless, the Clovers did not wish to isolate themselves from outside alliances, and therefore announced that their party would be one of the few that allowed dual party membership, and that Clovers could even join parties that were at war with other parties whose members also belonged to the Clovers.

War on All Things Beautiful

The Slope leaders were in their early and middle teen years, like the Clovers from which they had come. They forged an alliance with the ancient Zenith party, and indeed, stated that their own party's name was a pun intended to show that the Zeniths were above them and that the Slopes would carry them down.

The Slopes announced that they were declaring war on all beautiful things, and would celebrate death and destruction in and of itself.

Midnight celebration

The two parties held a celebration a few days after the signing of their treaty of military alliance.

However, at the end of the celebration, five Zenith men raped a young Slope girl named Ŋaāušau. She remained at the scene of the rape for several hours before realizing that nobody was coming to help her get home. Thus she realized the Slope party would not protect its own young members from sexual assault.

Slope leadership crisis

As the Slope population learned what had happened, most Slopes endorsed a document stating that the Slopes were a close-knit group, dependent on each other for protection, and that they would neither be allowed to rape each other nor would allow outsiders to rape them. This was important because their new allies, the Zeniths, did not believe in crime at all, and therefore acts such as rape could only be avenged by the victim, by their family and friends, or by a random passerby who chose to get involved. The Slopes had known this when they signed their treaty with the Zeniths but most had not realized that not only would the Slopes be targets of spree crimes, but that the Zeniths would see the Slopes as easy victims, as their leadership, like the Clovers, was entirely without adults and had no army to protect its young members.

Nonetheless, some Slopes believed that they would do best to carry on as planned, and endorsed a new Slope platform abolishing the concept of crime. Rape would indeed be punished, but not in a court; rather, just like the Zeniths they admired, the Slopes would allow any of their own kind to assault the rapist in revenge.

Both groups of Slopes considered themselves the only true Slopes, and the Slopes in favor of abolishing crime refused to join the Zenith, saying that the Zeniths had some other political beliefs that would destroy the Slope nation, but that the Slopes could live like Zeniths in other ways.

Meanwhile, the victim changed her name and assumed a new identity as she came to consider herself a Clover again.

Further repercussions

As the Slopes debated how best to protect themselves from the Zenith, a local man kidnapped a young girl, Kaināapu, and raped her while the two were in a confined space between two stone walls. It soon came to light that the perpetrator belonged to the Slime party, which had become a rogue force considering its members above the law, and with no intent to regain power peacefully.

The public threw fits when they heard what had happened. The reaction to this rape was different than to the previous for several reasons. Firstly, the victim was much younger than the Slope girl had been. Secondly, she was attacked in public, whereas the Slope girl had been attending a party with many adult men. Thirdly, the perpetrator belonged to the Slime party, whose members promised a strictly law-abiding society in which men would protect women and girls from harm. Thus, though the public sympathized with both victims, they realized after this incident that their society had collapsed.

Common reaction

Soon the population of Pavaitaapu realized that the Sunspots were good assassins but very poor police officers, and that their small nation had no means by which to enforce its laws. Because of the recent war, the Slime population had been largely depleted of adult males yet again, meaning that there were many orphans and most women were unmarried. The Sunspot army had also suffered, but had entered the war only towards the end, having been promised by the Matrixes that they would be allowed to do this, and thus survived the war better than the other armies. Most Sunspots had remained Sunspots, and thus the Sunspot army enrolled a large portion of the nation's adult male population. But they were not police and only obeyed the king, who was largely unaware of the situation on the ground.

Leaper intervention

New police force

Appeals for outside help

As crime tore through Pavaitaapu, many civilians of all parties pleaded with Baeba Swamp's Leaper party to invade and occupy Pavaitaapu, even if it meant putting the Matrix army, notorious for its abusive slavery operations, in charge.

The Leapers at this time were just a minority in Baeba, but held power through undemocratic means. Originally, in the middle of the century, the Leapers had defeated the Crystals and thus won full control of Baeba Swamp, and set up a parliamentary government with the Leapers as the only legal party. As the decades passed, the Leapers were forced to allow other tribes to move to Baeba Swamp, as the Leaper army was too small to keep them out, and therefore the Leapers held power by allowing a multiparty democracy in which the other parties such as the Matrixes and Zeniths would fight each other in Parliament rather than on the battlefield.

Therefore, although the Leapers were few, the citizens of Pavaitaapu hoped that they could in some way invade and subdue Pavaitaapu with a humanitarian coalition army that would not simply abuse the citizens.

Police begin operations

A teenage boy named "Silas" (Play Našaata) declared himself a police officer and stated that he would restore order to Pavaitaapu so that the Leapers would refrain from invading their territory. He was the youngest of the first crop of Clover leaders, meaning that he had passed all his classes and attained legal adulthood, and therefore the right to hold power in the Clover government, around the age of eleven. Even the king had not trusted someone so young with power at that time, and therefore the king had assigned Silas an advisory role. Nonetheless the two boys had quickly become friends and outsiders assumed that Silas would someday be a king, either of Pavaitaapu or of a new territory that the Clovers would soon subdue and conquer.

Silas had briefly joined the Sunspots, but found that the Sunspots no longer obeyed the king and had decided to start a new paramilitary force that focused on crime prevention rather than assassinations of political opponents. (Note that the name Silas here is a trade name meaning farmer, from sīl "farm" with the -as agentive suffix. It was not his native language.)

Although Silas was the leader of the new police force, whose Play name was Tapupaiša, he claimed no title and stated that while a strict hierarchy was necessary to keep the police force together, that would come in time once the military threat from Baeba had been held off.

Betrayal

When the king learned that the Leapers were planning to invade his nation, and that his best friend was attempting to hold them off, he endorsed the new police force and stated that, if necessary, the Tapupaiša police could also become an army.

When the Sunspots learned that the king had endorsed the Tapupaiša police force, a Sunspot assassin swept into the royal palace, where he assassinated both the king and his younger brother Seyop. Thus, the Sunspots announced that they had overthrown the Clover dynasty for the third time and that, this time, the Clovers would not be coming back.

The Sunspots announced their plan to kidnap all of the Clover kids. Since the Sunspots were the Clovers' bodyguards, the Clovers were defenseless, and the Sunspots announced that although they had killed the king and his brother, believing them undeserving of compassion, they would spare the lives of the other kids since the kids posed no threat to the Sunspots and would never escape. The Sunspots said that they would kidnap even those Clovers who were too young to have ever held power, and that they would be converting Pavaitaapu into a military stronghold run by the Sunspots, and that they would hold off the Leaper coalition by force instead of by appealing to the Leapers' humanitarian instincts.

Leaper reaction

The Leapers still considered the Clovers the legitimate rulers of Pavaitaapu, saying that they were the only truly neutral party since they were too young to have alliances with other powers. Therefore they crowned Silas the new king of Pavaitaapu and stated that they would be invading after all, but as a friendly power, and would keep Silas on the throne.

Shortly after the coronation, several Leaper diplomats shepherded Silas into a private room.

Annexation

In private, the Leapers told king Silas that he needed to give up his nation immediately. Though they would allow him to remain on the throne, they strongly recommended that he sign a treaty annexing Pavaitaapu into Baeba proper, and making it a district just like Baeba's existing districts.

The Leapers explained to King Silas that if the Leapers did not immediately annex Pavaitaapu, the Matrixes in Baeba would vote to invade Pavaitaapu, which, as an independent nation, would have no standing to complain to the Leapers' Parliament. Furthermore, the Leapers' laws could not control what the Matrix soldiers would do in a foreign nation. By contrast, there was no provision in Baeba's constitution that would allow a party within Parliament, no matter how strong, to initiate a civil war, and if the Matrixes were to attack the Clovers inside Baeba's territory, they would be executed for treason.

The Leapers were able to annex this territory without the approval of the Matrixes in Parliament because of longstanding non-democratic entities in Baeba's government dating from the era in which the Leapers were the only legal party. Likewise, the Matrixes were able to start a foreign war without the Leapers' approval because these same non-democratic entities had foresworn themselves the ability to overrule the Parliament in issues regarding other nations.

The Leapers promised, after annexation, to reject any Matrix-sponsored legislation that violated Clover law; that is, the Leapers reserved the right to mediate between the other parties in Baeba, even if it meant defying a parliamentary majority. The Leapers promised that the Clovers merely needed to maintain their status as a legal political party within Baeba Swamp to retain this protection, but that to maintain the Clovers as a legal party, the king would need to agree to phase out the Clover party as the members grew into adults and require each individual member to join the Leapers or lose their Baeban citizenship.

The Leapers concluded by telling the young king again that if he did not accept annexation, the Leapers would leave him the choice of whether to let the Matrixes invade him or to start a civil war in which his private police force, Tapupaiša, would be fighting the much larger Sunspot army, knowing that both forces would probably have defectors, and knowing that the Matrixes were planning to invade after the two armies had worn each other out and take ownership of the winning side.

Treaty of Kakobora

King Silas accepted this, as he had never specifically sought the title of king himself, but nonetheless he continued to identify himself as a king because there was a tradition of kings being subject to higher authorities of wider empires and still referring to themselves as kings so long as they had absolute power in their own territory.

The Leapers thus annexed Pavaitaapu into Baeba Swamp, ceremonially renaming it the district of Kakʷabʷâra, and answering the question of whether it was an autonomous district of Baeba or an independent kingdom.

The Leaper annexation of Pavaitaapu made the Sunspots' assassinations into criminal acts, and therefore made the Sunspots into criminals. Baeban law allowed for the preemptive arrest of all such people, and therefore the Leapers planned to sweep into Pavaitaapu to arrest the Sunspots. However, they knew that annexing Pavaitaapu had not changed the minds of the people within Pavaitaapu, and that many locals preferred the Sunspots to the Clovers even though the Sunspots were killing people every day and the Clovers were defenseless.

For legal reasons, the Leapers declared that the Sunspots were a political party as well, since no existing political party was willing to endorse the Sunspots at this time.

The Leapers promised to allow Silas' Tapupaiša police force to exist, but stated that they would need to accept commands from Baeba's central police force and to accept laws other than their own local laws as requiring their enforcement.

Sunspot response

The Sunspots reminded the Leapers that the Sunspots were the only armed adult force in Pavaitaapu, stating that the Tapupaiša police force was doomed because they had no way to access or manufacture weapons. Therefore the Sunspots had the ability to massacre civilians in numbers far out of proportion to any deaths which a Leaper-led police coalition could inflict on them.

The Sunspots declared themselves an army, and stated that it made no difference whether Baeba annexed Pavaitaapu or not: Pavaitaapu was Sunspot territory and would remain so because the people of Pavaitaapu lived in fear of the Sunspots and not of the Leapers, the Matrixes, or any outside army.

The Sunspots rejected alliances with outside armies such as the Slopes and Zeniths. The Sunspots were for the time a male-only army, and they believed that it was the nature of men to fight other men, not to make peace. They pitied the Slopes, who had attempted to make peace with the Zeniths and were promptly crushed and abused by the Zeniths. The Sunspots promised that they would never betray their allies because they would never seek any allies.

The Sunspots canceled their plans to abduct the surviving Clover kids, figuring that protecting them would tie down the Tapupaišu police force, and knowing that any rogue who managed to abduct any of them would both embarrass the police and be able to gain a large sum of money from them as ransom.

Clover-Slope relations

Privately, the Tapupaišu police force was pleased to learn that the Sunspots were not giving up, because even though the Sunspots were actively hunting down Clovers and their allies, the police force believed that they could competently defend themselves and their young supporters from the Sunspots, but would not be able to hold off the Matrixes or a Matrix-led coalition, since the Matrixes had defended Pavaitaapu in a recent war and therefore enjoyed a positive reputation among the common people.

By this time, many Slopes had fled back to the Clover party in terror as they had realized what living in a truly lawless society would mean for young children living independently. The pro-Zenith Slopes therefore retained the Slope party name for themselves, all while insisting that they were not Zeniths. The Clovers were not happy to see the ex-Slopes, who had just months earlier promised to rid the world of all things beautiful, but they realized that both the Clovers and the ex-Slopes were in a desperate position, with the tiny Tapupaišu police force as their only protectors. Since Tapupaišu told the Clovers to accept the ex-Slopes, the Clovers did so.

Rebellion of 4195

The Tapupaišu police force declared that they, too, were above alliances with foreign powers, and that they would rule the territory of Pavaitaapu just the same whether the Leapers considered it a sovereign nation or a district of Baeba Swamp. They thus declared war against the Sunspots, but also against the Leapers who had promised to rescue them and their two groups of young supporters from the Sunspots. They also began to refer to themselves as the Clover police force, but understood that outside parties always thought of the children and teenagers first when they thought of Clovers.

Plea for democracy

The police force also asked their young leaders to consider transitioning their kingdom into a multi-party democracy. The police believed that the common people would vote for the Clovers, the only party who had never attacked them, instead of the Matrixes, the Sunspots, the Leapers, the Slimes, or any of the many outside entities who were now at war or planning for war against the Clovers and their police force. By winning a democratic election, the Clovers could thus stave off the claims of the Matrixes and others that the common people were requesting a humanitarian intervention from Baeba.

To the dismay of the police, King Silas refused to give up his absolute power. He thanked the adults in the police force for dedicating themselves to protecting the Clovers, but stated that they would not be getting voting rights because their nation was in crisis, and in a crisis, a nation needed a strong central government with no divisions among those in power. In a democracy, he argued, there would always be one party which would have something to gain from siding with an enemy during war.

The humiliated police officers accepted Silas' argument, as it was familiar to them from their own childhoods, when it had been used to justify the suspension of elections in occupied territories such as Tata.

Leaper-Clover meeting

Arguing that they were defending children against adult assassins, the Tapupaišu police appealed to the Leapers' humanitarian sympathies. They invited the Leapers to visit them in Tapupaišu to see how ruined their society was, and how the police force was doing the best they could to protect their society's vulnerable people. They also argued that they were the only adult male armed force that had not started a war with some other armed force. Moreover, unlike the Sunspots, they continued to obey their leader, Silas. They called for a private meeting with the Leaper diplomats in Pavaitaapu.

At the meeting, the Tapupaišu diplomats again stated that they preferred Pavaitaapu to remain an independent nation, and that they could defend it on their own. And they stated that this was not selfishness, because the common people of Pavaitaapu were surely happier under Clover rule than they would be under the rule of the Matrixes, the Sunspots, or any other outside power. They argued that all of the problems in their nation had been brought to them by outside parties, and that the Clovers were the rulers best suited to govern a small nation such as Pavaitaapu.

Recently, some had come to believe that the Leapers, with the help of STW and the distant Players in Memnumu, had been propping up child rulers to help them easily control foreign nations, and that in order to keep control, the Leapers would seek to perpetually replace these children with younger children by any means possible. One strong argument for this theory was that child rulers had appeared almost at once in three different areas of the planet: Memnumu, Baeba, and Amade, and that, though distant, these areas were all waypoints on STW's trade route. However, STW did not actually have a sea connection to Amade; this area was instead controlled by Wax, an ally of AlphaLeap.

Tapupaišu stated that they did not know the truth of this rumor and did not care; they endorsed the Clovers and stated that they would obey the Clovers both while they were young and when they grew into adults. Thus, even if the rumor were true, STW and the Leapers would be denied the ability to replace the Clovers with younger children. By this time, the police had adopted the Clover party identity themselves, though the children did not allow them to vote and they did not mind this. Therefore the Clover party was a traditional party with more adult members than children, even though the children were the ones in control. There were still very few adult female Clovers, but the Clover police did not find this would be a problem either, as they expected to win the support of the wider adult population, which still consisted largely of women whose husbands had been Slime Handlers but had been killed in the Sunspot war.

Other infirmation

Use of the word "classroom"

The word "classroom" is a misnomer, as despite being young, all of the rulers in the Clover administration were graduates of their school, which typically ended around age 13. At most, calling the rulers classmates could have been used by their enemies as an insult. But they would have had a name of their own.

Pasīpas

Another young king, Bašaisekas, took the throne in early 4200, appointed as before by STW. STW considered the boy to be the heir of the position that the Golden Sun had held, but left the question open as to whether he was the king of the Soap Bubbles, of the Slime Handlers, or of a piece of territory untethered to party membership. His main qualification for the position of king was that he was nearly as rich as the Golden Sun had been.

He may have used the reshaped name Pasīpas, which consists of the same three morphemes but with stress shifted such that the result has a more typical Play sound.

Timeline details

Role of gender

Nearly all of the male rulers here exhibited corrupt behavior while the female rulers exhibited clean morals and altruistic behavior. This is also the era in which the Matrix and Scorpion armies, both using explicit male imagery, arose and promoted war for its own sake rather than as a means to preserve a nation or people in distress. Moonshine's feminist power structure meanwhile strongly embraced pacifism, going so far as to adopt refugees from the male-led nations even though they had no means of disarming the men and knowing that many were planning to fight a war in Moonshine against both the defenseless Moonshines and each other.

An even more blatant example of male misleadership came from the self-proclaimed Unholy Alliance, whose twelve male leaders agreed that they were evil. Assuming continuity of rule, these twelve men were all at least forty years old (since the group had formed in 4174) by the turn of the century, and they therefore provided a strong counterexample to the argument that the young age of the Sun and his cohorts was the real reason why their rulers were so corrupt.

Thus, during both the "Xideri years" and the preceding 14-year interregnum, almost all of the "good" characters were female and almost all of the "evil" characters were males. This latter category included both men and boys. Moonshine became ever more convinced by this developing situation that men were not fit to wield power, and this may have fooled Moonshine into joining the Matrix-STW coalition even though the Matrixes were sexually abusing their slaves.

Moonshine did not allow heads of state. They had lost control of the state of Hōmoya to such an extent, though, that a de facto head of state calling herself Right Arm had taken power, and she was in her early teens just as the Golden Sun was. Moonshine explained this away by saying she was a toparch, ruling one city only, and that her control over the rest of Hōmoya was extralegal.

The Moonshines also turned against the sun itself, saying it was a symbol of masculine power; the Blue Sun was the sun turned cold, however, so she had Moonshine's support.

Note that the Swamp Kids were primarily of Play ancestry, meaning their women were taller than their men, and men could physically attack women without being shunned by other men. However, people such as Silas came from tribes where men were both taller and more muscular than women. Because they were part of the same society, they still could assault women without facing universal condemnation, but typically such men had exhibited more gentle manners. In this era, it seems that the gentlemanly behavior of the tall-male tribes had begun to break down, at least among the youngest generation, which had had little contact with their ancestral culture.

Role of age

The sudden appearance of child rulers was due to STW. Traditionally, the Slimes, the Soap Bubbles, the Crystals, and even the Players had been ruled by adults even during times when their population structure had so many children that the adults could not take care of them all. STW, on the other hand, defined itself as a school and therefore had an artificially young population and power structure. Even STW still had adults in charge of these children and teenagers, but stated that graduates of STW's school were leaders in their own right, and could choose whether to obey their leaders or not. There was no minimum age for graduation, so some children made it through their courses at younger ages than others. (There were eight grades, and schooling usually started around the age of five. It was intended to last an average of eight years, but there were no divisions between the years and therefore some students progressed more quickly than this.)

Then, because these young rulers had difficulty getting adults to obey them, the people they promoted to share power with them were those from their own age group, and often, their former classmates. An opposing adult power structure did appear, led by the anti-STW partisans such as Matuanappa, and while they continued to hold power they were never famous and their personality traits and habits did not carry such great weight over the lives of their subjects as with the younger STW-derived rulers.

STW had never been able to project its power in this manner before. Indeed, they had just a few years earlier announced that they were closing all of their orphanages and would no longer identify themselves as a child-focused organization. The students such as the Golden Sun were those who had chosen to remain in STW, in part because they were extremely wealthy. But the promotion of young rulers also depended on influence from Laba, which had recently bailed both the Players and the forebears of the Slimes out of a war.

Party and language

The Slimes spoke Play. Traditionally, the Crystals had had their own language, Middlesex, but the upper and middle classes had been learning to speak Leaper for many generations, and a Leaper-speaking elite (not entirely Leapers) now controlled the Crystals in Baeba Swamp. The Crystals' ally, Moonshine, spoke its own language but this was similar enough to Leaper that the Crystals continued to speak Leaper, the language of their enemies, because they saw it as being also the language of their allies.

The Soap Bubbles had mostly abandoned their ancestral language early on as they came to live among the Crystals, and therefore followed the Crystals in learning to speak Leaper. However, many Soap Bubbles in the Clover stories were converts and may have spoken only Play. At least some of the Crystals were also converts. It may be that only adults of the Bubble and Crystal parties were typically fluent in Leaper, but this is not the reason why the young rulers tended to have Play names. Rather, the young rulers had Play names because they ruled over a Play-speaking population.

List of characters

It may be that while the Slimes had originally wanted a traditional adult king to wield absolute power to keep their population united, they were willing to settle for the Clover "classroom" in the idea that while their king still had absolute power, he clearly relied on his classmates for advice, and therefore the gaps of knowledge and experience would be compensated for by the large number of young people sharing power.

Many of the personalities in this list were assassinated, as they had little understanding of the need or the means by which to protect themselves. Most victims were Crystals (girls) and Soap Bubbles (boys) but their assassins came from various backgrounds, at least in one case involving the Sunspots, who were adult soldiers but were allied with and required to obey the Soap Bubbles.

The Sunspots had many advantages: they had the best weapons, they were attacking people who had recently been slaves and had few weapons, and most of their targets were very young. This turned popular opinion against the Sunspots, but the Sunspots were not a political party and therefore there was no clear enemy for the people to rise up against other than the "classroom" government that came to be called the Clovers.

The Sun was born in September 4178, and therefore his classmates are of a similar age.

Men and boys

1. The Sun: Also known as the Golden Sun, a king who took power at age 13 and was thrown out of power before he reached 16.

   Possibly the same character as Sašup. Born in September 4178.

2. The Red Sun: A classmate and close ally of the Golden Sun.

   Assassinated by the Golden Sun.

3. The Shadow: An adult who rebelled against the Sun and declared himself the new king.
4. Sašup: Likely a king who replaced the Golden Sun, perhaps ruling the Soap Bubbles instead of the Slimes.

   He was not appointed by STW, and was likely not even an STW member. He was about the same age as the Golden Sun would have been had he survived, and it is possible that this character may be identical with the Golden Sun after all. He was nonetheless assassinated. He may have used a long Play name such as Nataimfūmtasa. This was a byname, and therefore did not need to conform to Play traditions. Remember also the word tesčum.

5. Seyop: The younger brother of Sašup.

   Both of these names are in an abandoned language and will need to be replaced with new names, whether in Play, Leaper, or some other language. He may have used a Play byname such as Bemšamšaatasa. Assassinated by the same hand as his brother.

6. Xideri: Possibly known in Play as Pasīpas or Bašaisekas.

   STW ceremonially crowned him king in the year 4200, making him much younger than even the Golden Sun when he first took power, but he did not wield any significant power over non-STW members until 4205. He had not been STW's originally favored candidate, but took over when a crocodile in Baeba Swamp bit off the right arm of their preferred candidate.

7. Silas: a "farmer" known for his tall stature. His Play name may have been Našaata, but only if the morphemes were left unchecked as the name was inherited.

   Silas lived near Baeba but was historically of the western Play tribes who were among the few whose men grew taller than their women. Like the other rulers, he was probably not an adult when he took power. He was associated with Šasuasa, who by this time was in her late teen years or possibly early adulthood. He probably belonged to the Slime party but this may have meant little if he ruled during a period in which the Slimes had no nation to rule over; if so he would have been simply a military leader in his own right, similar to what the Red Sun had been.

   Silas was of the same age group as the rest, but very tall, and once kneeled down to talk to one of the other characters at eye level. He worked in law enforcement and believed that men should be the ones doing such jobs, but did not oppose feminism in and of itself.

8. C. L.: Another ruler often seen with Silas.

   If he has a Play name, it could be Kupūm Kakavaap. The Leaper cognates of these names would be such as Kogʷūn Ḳaḳarŏgʷa.

9. Soap: Rose to prominence as a reformer in the last years of the era.

   Soap was notably tall and thin, about the same height as Xideri but much more delicately built. The name "Mepa" comes from the word for soap in a trade language, and thus, if he had a Play name, it would be based on the Play word bimamiba, plus a word like taup intended to show his status.
   

   It is most likely that Soap was an adult, perhaps as much as 48 years old (see below) during the reign of the second crop of teenagers, but more likely he was born in the mid-4170s and therefore would have been a few years older than the Clover I rulers and a few decades older than the Clover II rulers. Unlike most other adults involved in the story, he had no power over the young rulers, even indirectly, and could only attempt to promote one young ruler over another. His main goal was to eliminate Xideri, but he soon turned against the entire "classroom" of rulers.

10. Larêlo: "The Hedgehog".

    This person was an adult about the same age as Lanīs, or older. His name here is given in Leaper in the assumption that he would not have grown up speaking Play. His full name, however, may have been something like Larêlokʷa, with the last morpheme meaning "smith" and cognate to the Play word appearing in the Lava Handlers' name.

11. Vānuana: "The Calculator".

    Essentially a replacement for the Red Sun, but did not command a private army. He opposed STW despite ruling from within STW. He thus belonged to the Slime party, though he derived little power from the Slimes, as they no longer had a nation of their own. He was likely a classmate of Xideri and therefore born around 4193. Note the long /ā/ in his given name, which means that his name has nothing to do with the vanua pepis disease.

Women and girls

1. The Moon: The younger sister of the Golden Sun, who claimed to rule Baeba Swamp during the time when her older brother ruled the Baeban district of Pavaitaapu.

   In fact she had no actual power, and no means to acquire it, as STW refused to give her any power until she graduated all of her classes. One reason why she failed to attract support was that she rejected feminism, knowing that feminism could delegitimize her brother's rule, and therefore embracing feminism would wall off her own path to power. She also rejected the male power structure of the Slime Handlers, however, and this proved no obstacle to her because her brother defected from the Slimes to the Soap Bubbles (who were gender-neutral) at an early age.

2. The Riddle: The Golden Sun's unnamed first wife.

   Her Play name was Žapučiča, though sometimes she went by Žapuba, which had a similar meaning. She was younger than him, even then. Also known as Žaŋavaufa, unless this name is given to someone else.

3. Right Arm: One of the Sun's early wives, she became a military leader and a head of state even though Moonshine did not allow heads of state.

   It is possible she was in a different party such as the Soap Bubbles. She was probably married to the Sun from 4191 to 4193. Assassinated, but much later than the others.

4. Nanapipu: An orphan known as Star.

   Likely one of the Sun's many wives; she was not named after him nor was her name in any way tied to the Sun/Moon dichotomy. She had blonde hair.

5. Navušiŋava: Yet another wife of the Golden Sun.

   Possibly assassinated by the Red Sun. (At least one of the Sun's wives was.) The fact that the king put his best friend in a position where he could easily assassinate the king's own wife was mostly hidden from outside observers, and they did not realize how incompetent the "ordained" government was.

6. Kxesh: A female conservative leader.

   She was named after the country but was not of Kxel ancestry. This is probably the same character as Asteyelattoche. Assassinated by the Sunspots.

7. The Blue Sun: A female liberal leader.

   She supported Moonshine and used cold weather in her symbols. Feminism was more important than other matters to these women, so the Blue Sun cooperated with Kxesh to oppose male leaders of all ideologies. She may have carried the sign celebrating the fall of the Empire. Assassinated by the Sunspots.

8. 802: Depicted as crying upon seeing that Sašup was about to fall.

   Similar in age and likely an early classmate. Possibly known in Play as Mamnātata or Mamnās Tata.

9. The Biting Bird: Yet another female leader who outlasted the Empire.
10. Hapulsa: A Crystal military leader.

    All Crystal leaders in this story were female, even military leaders. Abducted (not assassinated).

11. Lanīs: The president of STW.
12. Žametus: Yet another victim of an assassination, likely in or around the year 4194.

The non-Sunspot assassinations may have been carried out indirectly by UAO, rather than the Slimes, as the Slimes would have had difficulty accepting such attacks even against an enemy party. But the Slimes had become hated by all sides, and may have acted independently or, perhaps, in the name of the Zenith (which would not have required them to actually join the Zenith). It is not clear what became of the Sunspots when the Red Sun was assassinated, but they may have assassinated the Golden Sun and his younger brother (assuming Sašup is the Sun) in revenge for his assassination of the Red Sun.

Notes on list and timelines

Note that the REINO writeup gives the Golden Sun the more humble age of 18 for the events beginning when he was 14, and also lengthens the events associated with his rule. For example, his marriage to Star lasted "a few years", and his plan to invade Xema took almost five years. He would likely have ascended the throne in his early teen years even in the REINO timeline, though perhaps without taking any significant independent actions of power.

Note that this timeline also lengthens other time intervals. For example, although it places his birth eighteen years earlier, it also states that this was contemporaneous with the Crystal-Soap peace treaty, which in the current writeup occurs in late 4186, only five years before the king obtained absolute power. And a six-year war in REINO takes two years in this timeline. It can only be that the events are accelerated in one timeline relative to the other.

In the original paper writeup, he was almost certainly not given an age at all, as it was not perceived to be a factor in opposition to his rule.

Soap

Another example of this mismatch is that Soap is born in 4205 in the Strawberry writeup, meaning he would have been not just young, but actually a baby at the time when he came to oppose Xideri's abusive slavery operations. Note that Soap's attempt to depose Xideri is bookended by events in 4206 and 4209 and therefore cannot be pushed forward to the period near 4221. By contrast, the REINO writeup describes Mepa as 48 years old, far older than all of the other "contemporary" characters in that writeup (but one year younger than Lanīs). It is possible that one or both writeups are stitched together and that neither birthyear is reliable. He was originally intended to be a contemporary of Xideri, and possibly a classmate. Nonetheless, if Soap is an adult after all, perhaps he could have been born in the mid-4170s, making him just a few years older than the first generation of young rulers such as the two Suns. He may have been shut out of power for precisely this reason, assuming the Suns trusted people their age but not adults, even young adults. This would explain his lack of interaction with both generations of rulers. It would be difficult to take the age of 48 as literal, however, as the timelines were never meant to correspond and it would have to be explained how Soap managed to survive many wars without seeming to have any combat experience when he rose into politics in the 4200s.

Dissolution

The Soap Bubbles formally merged with the Crystals in the summer of 4205. The Crystals themselves lasted only a few more years in Baeba, although word of their surrender did not reach the Crystals living in the equatorial zone, and the Crystal party continued to exist in remote areas without participating in Baeba's new coalition government.

Later use of name

Shortly after the Soap party abolished itself, STW began to call many of its slaves Soap Bubbles. This was an involuntary use of the name, as neither the slaves nor the former Soap Bubbles approved of it. But because the original Soap Bubbles had abandoned their rights to the name, even neutral parties such as Nama would not stop STW from using that name. STW stated that the new Soap Bubbles were not a party, but a subsidiary of STW.