Languages of Tarwas

Tarwas is a nation founded in the year 2144 by Tarpabaps who had immigrated through Paba. For more than 5000 years, it had resisted being swallowed up by the empires around it, until finally voluntarily joining The Poswob Empire around the year 7700. For the next thousand years after that, it used its strategic location (just east of Blop, the imperial capital) to present itself as an alternate way of life for Poswobs wishing to escape the poor living conditions in Blop and other Poswob cities. The Poswob Empire refers to its divisions as states, not nations, but most people in Tarwas still consider Tarwas to be an independent nation that merely has signed a mutual assistance pact with the Poswobs.

Background

The founders of Tarwas had come entirely from the nation of Paba. Paba was founded by the Pabap people, who had originated from an upland area of Laba's largest island called Haswaraba. The Pabaps were among the world's smallest people, and were the only people in the world that had blonde hair and blue eyes, so they were easy to spot when they traveled to other nations on Laba. The Pabaps had a majestic civilization in the upland forests of Laba, but relatively little coastline and no navy. Rising sea levels were shrinking the habitats of the nations around them in all directions, and the Pabaps were ill-equipped to defend themselves from invasions even given the advantage of a mountainous habitat. Thus, while the sea ate away at the territories of the peoples around them, through repeated small-scale invasions the peoples around them ate away at Paba.

Roughly 500 miles to the south of the southernmost Pabap settlements on Laba, the Tarpabap people lived in the hot rainforests of Laba's equatorial region. The land here was flat and had many coastal indentations, and fish was abundant in the ocean. The Tarpabaps were among the world's tallest people, and, like most people in southern Laba, had dark skin and dark hair. The Tarpabaps had a luxurious lifestyle in their tropical homeland, but rapid sea level rise was swallowing their most cherished islands and they had no mountains in their territory to flee to. The Tarpabaps were not actually a single people, but a collection of tribes that saw each other as cultural allies in many ways, despite their differences of language and religion.

In a bar in a major city on the east coast of Laba named Sàhʷaluŭǯa, some Pabap traders met up with a team of Tarpabap fishermen and got to talking about the problems of their peoples. They were able to do this because Sàhʷaluŭǯa was so powerful that its language, Tapilula, had become a second language for the educated class of even the most isolated nations around Sàhʷaluŭǯa in all directions. They talked about the many people escaping the rising seas by moving to the continent of Rilòla. Many Tarpabaps wanted to move to Rilola, but despite their historical skill with building and driving boats, their habitats were entirely on the wrong end of Laba for such a journey because they would need to pass through the sea claims of many other hostile nations on their long journey to the north end of Laba, and none of those nations would let them in.

Many Pabaps also wanted to move to Rilola, because despite the warming climate, the Pabaps still had very poor natural resources, and even what little they had was being wrestled out of their hands by the peoples around them. But in order to build a navy, they would need to build boats, and their only sea access was in a desert fed by a river which was too rough to be navigable by any kind of boats the Pabaps could build. Moreover, few Pabaps had any knowledge of how to build a boat.

Although the two peoples had had friendly contacts in the distant past, relations had gone downhill when the Tarpabaps responded to the rising seas by invading northwards towards Pabap territory. The people who suffered most in this invasion were not the Pabaps, but a third people known as the Tima who lived in between them. The Tima responded by invading Pabap territory, but the Pabaps were aware of the situation and laid the blame for the invasion on the Tarpabaps. Furthermore, the invading Tarpabaps did eventually reach Pabap territory, and set up invasive settlements there.

But the men talking to each other in Sàhʷaluŭǯa figured that if the Pabaps and the Tarpabaps could get along, they could solve each other's problems: the Pabaps would mostly abandon their upland homes, move into Tarpabap territory, and then ride the Tarpabap boats all the way around the coast of Laba in order to reach the small strip of land on Laba's north coast that was under Pabap control. From here, they could sail to Rilòla. The Pabaps needed the Tarpabaps for this plan because the Pabaps themselves had almost no boats. The Tarpabaps needed the Pabaps for this plan because no other nation in the north would let a Tarpabap boat so much as beach on their shores, and a trip from Tarpabap land all the way to Rilola without stopping was impossible. Moreover, the Pabaps had the advantage of numbers, as they were a rare example of a large united population amidst many smaller, disorganized tribes. Like sharp teeth in a lion's mouth, these tiny nations were ripping and tearing off pieces of Pabap territory, but none was strong enough to go after the Pabap homeland on their own. Thus, no nation contested the Pabap claim to the land in the north, and no one contested their plans to allow Tarpabap boats to station themselves there.

Thus the Tarpabaps and the Pabaps reached their new homeland using boats owned by the Tarpabap Navy, housed in a port protected by the Pabap army.

Foundation of Paba

The Pabap government never formally acknowledged the agreement with the Tarpabaps because they were still fighting off Tarpabaps in their southern hills. Few Pabaps in this region believed that it was possible that they could be at war with a people who was offering to settle them in a new home on a faraway continent, and considered the agreement a hoax. The Tarpabaps were not a united people, however, and they sent diplomats into Pabap territory to explain that this was not a paradox because the Tarpabaps killing Pabaps and the Tarpabaps rescuing Pabaps were two different people. This, they said, is why they could not simply call off the invasion to prove that they truly were friendly.

Nevertheless, many thousands of Pabaps believed in the informal treaty, and thus moved into Tarpabap territory after the agreement, believing that they were about to start a thousand mile journey from Tarpabap territory back into Pabap territory, specifically the northern port of Pubam, Paba's only seaport, from which they would then set sail to the promised land of Rilola. A smaller number of Pabaps moved directly into Pubam, figuring they could skip both the journey into Tarpabap territory and the likely far more dangerous sea journey back into Pabap territory.