Cosmopolitan Age

The Cosmopolitan Age on planet Teppala was a period of time characterized by poor living standards for human beings and a return to a subsistence based way o f life, and increased interaction with animals.

Background

In the centuries leading up to the Cosmopolitan Age, military and political power had been streamlined in the empire of Anzan, which controlled more than half of the human-habitable land in the world, and nearly all of its major cities. When Anzan was torn apart by civil war around 4200 AD, there was no foreign power waiting on the sidelines to take over its role in world affairs. Instead, humans simply no longer had a major military power.

With the collapse of Anzan, human civilization and cooperation fdewll apart. The mountain tribes such as Gala, Ihhai, Litila, and others, reverted to tribal rule instead of cooperating with the lowland powers around them. This meant that the tropics was now cut off from the northern civilization in what had been Repilia.

The period immediately preceding the collapse had seen the center of power shift markedly northward. From the tropics to the NW corner of the continent, as the climate warmed. The climate was still warming, but it was now mostly during winter instead of summer. This meant that the climate was also becoming more habitable fo other animals, including predators of humans.

Humans in the Cosmopolitan Age

Since human society fell apart early in this era, the resulting human societies had little in common. Nevertheless, they all shared some characteristics in common:

1. War was very uncommon, as humans had little to gain for their efforts.
2. Agriculture was mostly confined to the tropics, even though the climate of the north was warming.
3. Human population declined due to massive predation by wild animals. This was nothing new: it was just that the humans living in the areas where they were being eaten the fastest had been living in safe, walled-off cities when the food supply had been sufficient. Now almost all humans were rural and were easy prey for various animals, especially the firebird.
4. Humans began to participate in animals' wars whenever the animals' territory overlapped the humans'.
5. Technological progress was halted and in many areas went backward.

Humans were not at the top of the food chain. Indeed, they never had been, but as above, during the peaks of human civilization they had been able to hide out from predators in compact cities where even though the firebirds roaming the sky above would have no trouble finding a meal among the thousands of people in the city center, the humans were capable of fending off an attack when they were able to fight back as a team.

Humans generally avoided war, as they had little to gain from conquering a nearby territory and a lot to lose if they were unsucessful. The few wars they did participate in generally were not continuations of Anzan-era conflicts but new, ex nihilo conflicts resulting from happenstance environmental changes such as the flooding of the whole of the territory of a minor coastal tribe.

However, humans soon learned that they were not alone on their planet in their capactiy to fight wats. The dolphins of planet Teppala were unaffected by the collapse, and continued their slow but presistent war as if nothing had happened. THis war was against 2 major alliances of dolphins, oje living in coldf water and the other living in warm water. The dfolphin nations had strictly defined borders but no internal boundaries; all dolphins where werlcome anywhere n their own nation, but not in the other nation. There was no pacifistic neutral nation, but pacifists were also welcome in both nations.

The human societies that bordered water that was deep within the territory of each of the 2 folphin nations were unaffected by the war. But the boundary between the 2 was ever-shifting, and humans who were caught in between had to play very carefully as their boats could be bumped from blow by a dolphin if they were perceived to be allied with the wrong dolphins.

Interaction with firebirds

Firebirds were the chief prefdator of humans. The firebirds kept humans from settling muich of the western half of the continent, because this was where the firebirds were at their strongest and humans could not survive their attacks. Thus, many human settlements were located deep inland, in areas where it was difficult for humans to find food, because the firebirds could not tolerate the harsh climates of the interior. Firebirds nests were usually on islands.

However, some humans moved into the center of their predators' territory, and built settlements there, on the rationale that since the firebirds were prospering in those areas even without humans to prey on, they could probably work out an agreement with the firebirds which would allow humans to live there without having to wrry about being snatched up from their beds in the middle of the night and dropped into a nest to be torn apart by baby firebirds.

languages

Poswa only began to spread after 5547 A.D., meaning that non-Poswa names predominate for placenames. Khulls fractured rely on into over 100 daughters,but classical khulls was still known by many.

The rise of regional powers

The Ghosts of Comfort

The collapse of Anzan led to the reappearance of many weak, regional powers, whose territories were often defined by natural boundaries such as rivers and mountains. The Ghosts of Comfort were one exception to this pattern. The Ghosts were descendants of the Raspara who had ruled and abused their rivals for just a short time before their defeat a war in which they and their victims had been forced onto the same side. The Raspara had retreated to the wilderness, promising themselves that they would someday rise again. Now, with a new name, they had reappeared, and developed a new party platform.

Politics

Unlike the Raspara, the Ghosts accepted one achievement that had been invented by the weak, gullible Swamp Kids: democracy. Unlike the Swamp Kids, however, the Ghosts supported only a one-party democracy, with them in control. Furthermore, the people would not be allowed to vote against any Ghosts currently in power without that person's permission. Thus, the only power the voters had in the Ghosts' democracy was to choose between one Ghost and another, running for the same office, and only when both Ghost candidates agreed to obey the voters' decision.

Under the Ghost democracy, the president had the power to remove from power any other sitting official in the government, and thus had the same powers as the kings of rival empires. However they did not call their president a king because he was considered to be an elected official. Furthermore the president was open to removal by the people, though as above, only when he himself gave permission and volunteered to run in election (called "confirmation" by the Ghosts).

Language

The Ghosts spoke Khulls, and were largely responsible for the stability of the Khulls language in their territory, whereas in other areas of the continent it had quickly divided into dozens of tribal languages. This was the language of their historical enemies, the Crystals, but in the decades leading up to the Collapse, war had become so intense that all old blood feuds had been settled and the war ended with the Crystals and the Raspara fighting on the same side.

Territory of the Ghosts

The Ghosts took power in the lands in which the Raspara had been best preserved; these lands were far to the west of their original homeland, and in fact consisted mostly of historically Crystal territory rather than historically Thunder territory. Here, even in the high latitudes, the winters were mild because of the proximity to the west coast, and summers were also warmer because of the low relative humidity of the onshore winds.

The Crystals

Shortly after the great Collapse, a civil war occurred in Paba. Here, the Crystals invaded Paba and rescued the Pabaps from their tormentors, even though they knew that nothing of benefit to the Crystals could come from this war. Thus, their role in the war was purely humanitarian.

After the Crystals succeeded in rescuing the Pabaps, the Pabap royal family transferred the ownership of the Pabap people to the Crystals. They announced that the Pabaps, who had been enslaved for more than 3000 years, would be enslaved for at least 3000 more, but now their masters would be the Crystals instead of other Pabaps. All of this was done without the Crystals' support, and many would-be slaveowners among the Crystals resisted; see Wamu.