Subumpam

Temporary name. Subum is actually a Pabappa word meaning "because of (military) victory", and -pam is Pabappa for "state" (though it was borrowed into Subnumpamese). It served as the capital territory of the Gold Empire around the year 1950. This was an alliance of states situated around the coasts of the Golden Bay intending to keep Nama, the largest state, from controlling the right of way of all the other states. Nama itself was invited to join the union but did not.

Subumpam is a culture and language spoken just to the west of the ancestral Pabap homeland. They built cities such as Wabula Pipem. The culture died out in this area fairly early, crushed by Khulls and Pabap expansion, but by then they had already explored much of the interior of the continent (reaching 39N in the east) and became the substratum in the territory of Goga. They lived in the vicinity of the area of Blop, but did not settle Blop because there were at the time many other rivers and lakes nearby. The planet was still much colder then, with glaciers quickly retreating but still present in many areas which were much warmer than 32°F. Thus they found that by moving west they could easily find warmer territories, with mild summers but winters just as warm as their original homeland in the south.

The modern name of their territory is Subumpam, but the borders do not correspond very well. Today Subumpam is mostly populated by Poswobs rather than Pabaps, and in its western part there are many Khulls speakers as well.

In the northeast, they settled in what are now the Poswob states of Tuppy, Wawiabi, and Fweb.

In the northwest, they settled in Goga.

Between Goga and Wawiabi they settled all across the north coast, but here they were otunumberd by aboriginals to a much greater extemnt and therefore did not actually create "Subumpamese" settlements, but merely made the existing aboriginal settlements a bit more diverse.

To the southeast of Subumpam, along the coast, is the Pabap state of Pipapi. Its borders today include some land that was originally within Subumpam.

Phonology

Overall the language is "soft" and not intimidating, like its neighbor Kava, and to a lesser extent also like Pabappa and Poswa. It shifted all of its labialized consonants to pure labials, e.g. /kʷ/ > /p/, and then shifted its plain velars to palatals and sometimes on to coronals. Thus there are few dorsal consonants remaining in the language. However, the voiceless ejective /ḳ/ was immune to the second of these changes, and thus survived as a plain velar in the classical form of the language.

It is also unusual in that for most of its history, it had an /r/ but no /l/ sound, the opposite pattern to most og the languages around it. However, Babakiam had neither of these sounds (the 'r' in Poswa and Pabappa is a uvular approximant.)

Vowels

/a e i o u ā ē ī ō ū/ Tones have been eliminated, but the ā tone survives as vowel length. Macrons are also used to tell diphthongs like ūi (/uj/) from simple sequences like ui (/ui/, often [wi]).

Consonants

/p b m f v w/ for labials; /t d n s z r c ʒ/ for dentals/alveolars; /č ǯ š ž j/ for postalveolars/palatals; and /k ŋ/ for the velars. The vowel /i/, be it short or long, palatalizes any alveolars before it, and therefore the palatal series can be considered to instead be /cj ʒj sj zj j/, reducing the number of consonants by four. Voiced stops and fricatives are fairly rare. In syllable-final position, the allowable sounds are /m n ŋ/, /t d n s z c ʒ/, and /k/. No vowels were deleted, so any final consonant in Subumpamese was a final consonant in Gold as well.

Government

Subumpam originated as an alliance of 11 states. Codenames fore the tstates are the numbers 1 through 11 in Subumpamese: Nin, Nī, Manīa, Vuʒi, Yūez, Yūenan, Nē(?), Vuʒinī, Tacarapi, Tacī, and Nańavū. Technicakllky these wouldbntr bew used even as codenames though because they are the cardinal numbers instead of the ordinal numbers.

Nin This is the "capital" nation of the Subumpamese Union. It is an ethnically very diverse nation. Along the south coast, most people are Pabaps. Unlike most other states, Pabaps living in Nin often still speak only Pabappa. They make a living from fishing and do not rely on the government for very much. In the southwest, however, even along the coast, most people are Subumpamese and that is where the capital city of Wabula Pipem is located. It is also the home base of the Subumpamese Navy (Pisčapus).

Further inland, the population is still primarily Subumpamese, but there are is a sizable minority (about 18%) of aboriginals who call themselves Sukuna. These peopke have blended with Subumpamese and created a mixed-race subset of people. The mixed-race people have the religion and culture of the Subumpamese and therefore call themselves Subumpamese. Some of the full blood aboriginals have alos assimilated this way, but not many.

Nin is also the target of a lot of immigration into the Subumpamese Union, since Nin is the richest state. Most immigrants are from either Nama to the north and west or the Star Empire to the southwest. The Stars are not geogrphically connected to Subumpam and can only reach it by a long boat trip across the sea or by immigrating first through Nama. Nama, however, is hostile to the Star Empire and does not allow most Star people to enter. However, this is difficult to enforce, because many people living on the southern coast of Nama are very similar in appearance and culture to the Stars. The Star Empire considers southern Nama's people and Nin's Sukuna minority to be ethnically identical with the Stars, since they are all physically similar: they have dark skin and distinct facial features, unlike the Pabaps and Subumpamese who are mostly blondes, and unlike the Namans who have many racial types but none of them particularly known for being dark. The Stars claim that the only reason Subumpam and Nama are ethnically diverse is because they were originally Star nations that got smothered by immigrants from outside. The Stars have been trying to reach the Sukuna people living in Subumpam to turn them against Subumpam and essentially start a civil war, with the intention of not only getting control of the land but potentially also enslaving all of the other non-Sukuna people. However, the Sukuna people have been quickly assimilating into Subumpamese society, especially strongly in the nation of Nin.

Moreover, there are two distinct cultures of dark-skinned people who have also moved into Nin, mostly on boats with the Pabaps. which means that a lot of the dark skinned people are actually themselves implants. One of these is the Niḳ (Pabappa Nep, Subumpamese Nik). Like Nin's Pabaps, they are fish-heavy culture, and prefer to live along the immediate coast and make a living solely by fishing the ocean. They have not intermarried much with Pabaps because they are much taller than Pabaps and for that matter, all of the other people living in Nin.

1. Nī

1. Manīa

1. Vuʒi

1. Yūez

1. Yūenan

1. Nē

1. Vuʒinī

1. Tacarapi Population is a mix between Subumpamese and Pabaps, with some Andanese. Not much blending of the peoples has taken place because of problems with religion. Pabaps tend to be found furthest east. The people are very poor, and have different religions, but they are more peaceful than a lot of similar nations. Hilly and subtropical, hot in summer.

1. Tacī A mountainous nation consisting mostly of Pabaps, with some unsettled and mostly uncivilized Repilian aboriginal people in caves in the north. Not many Subumpamese live here yet, but they are slowly streaming in from the west.

1. Nańavū: Further south than Tacī, but still very mountainous. Propulation is about 85% Pabaps.

Culture

In mahy ways, Subumpamese culture resembled that of its more famous relative Kava, since Kava arose from a subset of Subumpam. But Subumpam existed for about 1500 years before Kava did, and participated in many wars. Their original state was, like its neighbors, positioned along the southern coast of Rilola in what is today considered a tropical climate but in the 1900s was merely temperate. Unlike most of the states nearby, Subumpam was not an ethnostate with a single language and religion, but rather a union of five major cultures and several more minor ones. They thus created a very large country, militarily more commanding than any of its neighbors, and set the stage for many future wars in which all of Subumpam's neighbors, despite not being geographically connected, conspired to squeeze Subumpam from all direections.

The founders of Subumpam signed a treaty establishing a strong central government in the city of Wabula Pipem, and granting themselves powers above all of the "national" governments they ruled over (they used a word fupa, translated "nation", for the ten subnational entities dominated by just one ethnicity and religion and was, here translated "country", for the supranational government they had created). Subumpam had ten fupa districts and one marginal district that was larger than all of the others in both size and popu;lation but did not have full status because it was mostly comrpised of ethnic minorities who did not speak subumpamese and were only agreeing to join because they wanted military protection.

They believed that they needed a strong central government to keep the national governments under control. They were not a democracy and never had been, but they created a parliament in which representatives from each of the 11 nations could vote on issues amongst themselves. This type of setup was common in this world, for example in the even large empire of Nama. They gave smaller, weaker nations extra power to oppose the majority, and encouraged people to form political alliances that were not merely based on ethnicity, as they figured a government based around ethnic struggles would have no actual core politics.

Soon after the formation of Subumpam, the Star Empire (located partly in modern-day Taryte) asked Subumpam to join as a single state. The Stars wanted to make an alliance with Subumpam against Nama because the Star Empire was located on the western shore of the Gold Sea, and Subumpam was located on the eastern shore. If they joined forces, the Stars figured they could control all shipping through the Gold Sea and wall up Nama. The Subumpamese government was wary of this offer, since they themselves did not have anything against Nama, and did not want to risk being dominated by a foreign power so soon after their birth since the Stars told them they would only get one vote instead of eleven (for the 11 nations of Subumpam). But the threat of military action against Subumpam by surrounding nations other than Nama led the rulers of Subumpam to agree to the alliance, thus creating the Gold Empire.

Despite being commonly associated with Pabap culture due to similarities in appearance, culture, and language, the two groups are not particularly closely related. Both tended to have blonde hair, but they had different facial features. Subumpamese people were taller but markedly thinner than Pabaps even from the earliest days of their coexistence. However, they commonly blended with each other due to the close proximity of their nations. However, both groups blended more with Andanese, who were still numerically superior at this time.