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).

The Ghosts were descended from the Raspara, who were descended from the Thunderers and various allies of the Thunderers. They revived the name Cold Men for their party, and stated that although they had enemies both to the north and to the south, their enemies to the south were eternal, whereas they planned to form an alliance with the northern peoples such as the Moonshines and various aboriginal peoples when they could be convinced to submit.

The Ghosts were not racists, and they drew much of their support from ethnic minorities; however, they avoided criticizing the racism of the early Thunderers; they said that the early Thunder policies had been correct because they were discriminating only against those who had abused them in the past. The Ghosts said that they would also attack their abusers, but that in this era they were lucky enough to have no such enemies living within their territory; their only enemies were in foreign nations, chiefly Dreamland.

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 Ghosts also achieved power in rural areas of what had been Thunder territory, but were blocked by the "Rempe" River (note: this is far to the east of the Hamster River). These areas had little carrying capacity for human civilization because its rivers were very far from each other, and the climate was fairly dry. Nevertheless, existing cities such as Lypelpyp survived the transition to Ghost rule relatively intact.

A small number of Ghosts settled in the extreme north, in states like Tòd'řóm, which ranged from 48N to 57N and was on the west coast. Its location gave it snowy winters, though with milder temperatures than areas further east in Xema at the same latitude. But it still got cold: temperatures below —40F occurred on the west coast and —50F occurred on the east coast.

Relations with other parties

As the Ghosts consolidated their territory, they realized they were surrounded by pacifists in all directions. To the north, they bordered the Moonshines, a strongly feministic people who had historically begun its wars by sending humanitarian aid workers into the enemies' territory in order to better the living situation of the invaders and convince them to call off the war. To the east and south, they bordered the young but growing Poswob empire, famous for sending women in short skirts to the front lines of battle, armed with gifts for the invading soldiers in the hopes that they could convince them to settle down in Poswob territory and marry the local women. To the west were the Sĕyepa Crystals, less pacifistic than the other two groups but still tolerant of the Ghosts' invasion of their territory.

Thus the Ghosts planned to do what the Raspara had done during their heyday: exploit the naive hospitality of the pacifists all around them to build parasitic colonies in the pacifists' nations, which would produce little or nothing of economic value, but be heavily armed in order to extract tributes from the pacifists and, in the end, crush the pacifists in an all-out war.

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 Pusapom#Slavery and Lamuan languages.

Soon, however, civil war engulfed the Crystal homeland of Lobexon as well, because the Gems of Tebbala, a treasure central to the Crystal religion, had been stolen and the Crystal religion stated that without them no humans could achieve salvation. Many Crystals became hulihipuha, people who believed they were damned to eternal torment no matter how virtuous they were. These people often became very abusive slaveowners, since the practice of slavery had been opened up by the Pabaps themselves and the Pabaps were too weak to resist. This, in turn, led to the extension of Lobexon's civil war into Paba, and the Crystals found themselves simultaneously fighting off other Crystals and non-Crystal intruders who had come to rescue the Pabaps from the people who had rescued the Pabaps from their previous abusers.

The Sĕyepa religion

A new religion called Sĕyepa took hold in the Crystal Empire, as few Crystals were willing to continue belief in a religion that doomed all of its followers to Hell, and the prospect of recovering the Gems of Tebbala seemed more out of reach with each passing generation. This religion quickly became popular, and orthodox Crystals living in the Crystal Empire soon became afraid to profess their religion. The Sĕyepa believers considered themselves morally superior for various reasons, chief among them the fact that the orthodox Crystals enslaved innocent Pabaps and the Sĕyepa were self-sufficient.

Since the orthodox Crystals believed that they needed to recover the Gems, they could no longer tolerate living in the Crystal Empire, which had refused to dedicate any effort to that task. Thus the orthodox Crystals fled into Pabap territory, seeking to rebuild the Crystal Empire in Paba using Pabap slave labor. Mwanwhile, the Seyepa religion achieved nearly 100% support among the people of the original Crystal Empire (which had retained its name). Since the Ghosts of Comfort also lived in historically Crystal territory, the Ghosts and the Seyapists came into conflict with each other, but they stopped short of launching yet another civil war.

The Poswobs

Shortly after the announcement of eternal slavery, some Pabap families fled up the mountains, into the territory of aboriginal peoples such as the Galà, Ihhai, and Litila; of these, some continued further north into the temperate forests that lay on the other side of the great mountain range. This land, which was still called Repilia, had once been the primary center of Raspara power, but when the bulk of the Raspara population had forfeited their land to fight for control of Baeba, far to the west, no new power had taken their place.

As Pabaps began spilling into Repilia, they realized that the large-bodied, military-oriented Raspara, who had sadistically abused the ancestors of the Poswobs for their entire reign, posed little threat in the post-Collapse world. The Raspara were poorly organized now, and lived mostly in the wilderness rather than in cities. There was no longer a reliable way to identify a Raspara on sight; they no longer had distinctive clothes, nor a distinctive language; they were not even the largest minority in their territory. Most importantly, though, the Raspara here had given up their dreams of achieving an empire, and submitted to a lifestyle of subsistence hunting, focusing on maintaining their food supply and protecting their children from danger.

The Pabaps moving north into Repilia came to adopt a new identity: the Poswobs, named after a type of skirt their women wore when the weather was warm. Like the Pabaps, the Poswobs supported pacifism and went to great lengths to protect themselves from more warlike rival tribes. Unlike the Pabaps, however, the Poswobs were not willing to submit to slavery, and preferred a life of extreme poverty in freedom to a safe and well-fed life of slavery. They thus had much in common with their historical enemies the Raspara, and many Raspara leaders married Poswob women as they moved closer together.

Another minority was the Moonshine people, who were also pacifistic. Most Moonshines here were nomadic, and therefore claimed no land of their own, and did not consider the various other peoples spilling into majority-Moonshine areas of Repilia to be invaders. The result of this was that the Moonshine people came to be associated with the cold climates of high mountains and the far north; Moonshine families persisted in the warmer climates of the lowlands and the southern extremes of their territory, but they became a minority early on and often married out.

A fourth minority soon appeared in Repilia: the Crystals. These were not the Crystals of Lobexon, who had now mostly converted to the Sĕyepa religion, but the orthodox Crystals who had invaded Paba and made a new life for themselves based on enslaving the Pabaps. But for some Crystals, even the slavery they enjoyed in Paba was not enough: the Crystals in power had enacted reforms limiting the abuses of the slave owners, and a faction of the Crystals who wanted unlimited power had rebelled against their rulers, proclaiming that the Pabap people were their property since the Pabap royal family had promised them that, and that Pabaps had no rights.

The rebels had lost their fight against the reigning Crystals, and chosen instead to move north to chase down the Poswobs who were fleeing Paba. They considered the Poswobs to be among the aboriginals of this territory, and declared that this meant that the enslavement of the other aboriginal peoples was also legal. Thus the Crystals chased not only Poswobs, but also the Moonshines (who were a branch of the Crystals) and in some cases even the Raspara.

The entrance of the Crystals ended any lingering resentment between the Raspara, the Moonshines, and the Poswobs; all were now fighting against the Crystals, and since the Crystals considered the tribes they were invading to be as one with each other, increasingly so did they. The name "Poswob" came to be used as a cover term for all of the non-Crystal inhabitants of Repilia, even though most people in Repilia were not of majority-Pabap ancestry. Since the Raspara and Moonshines had historically been much taller than the Pabaps, the rapidly blending population that called itself the Poswobs tended to have a taller average adult height than had the Pabaps. Since a large portion of the population was nomadic, local differences in people's physical appearance were less noticeable than they historically had been in similarly large land areas.

Poswob back-migration

Despite the fact that the Poswobs outnumbered the invading Crystals by an enormous factor, the Crystals were much better soldiers; the Poswobs and Moonshines had been pacifists for hundreds of years, and the Raspara who had remained in Repilia were generally not of the military class. In response, some Poswobs fled back into Paba, preferring slavery under the more moderate Pabap government to the vicious and bloody slavery being imported into Repilia. Other Poswobs pushed even further north, into territory at very margin of human habitability. Here they mingled with Moonshines and the remnants of the Andanese people, both of whom had fled to the arctic in the past for similar reasons. However, the Poswobs moving into the far north had cut themselves off from the other Poswobs, and did not claim political unity with them; instead they became nomadic and joined the Moonshines in a culture in which people identified with the nearest permanent human settlement, generally a coastal city where fish were abundant, rather than with a tribal identity, a language, or even a religion.

Poswob-Pabap relations

Communication between Paba and the Poswobs in Repilia, which was now called Pusapom, was difficult because of the presence of hostile aboriginal tribes in the mountains that separated the two empires. These aboriginals had taken no part in any of the wars of the post-Collapse world, seeing that they had nothing to gain even from a victory in such a war, and much to lose if they joined the war and found themselves on the wrong side. Tiny mountainous nations such as Gala had achieved living standards higher than the lowlands despite all of their disadvantages, and were proud of this. Slave drivers such as the Crystals were generally not interested in practicing slavery on the mountains, since agriculture was nearly impossible and the people were entirely hunter-gatherers. Instead the Crystals were content to hold the lowlands and prevent the mountain people from ever leaving their homelands without paying a tribute to the Crystals.

However the Crystals in Pusapom soon became dependent on trade originating from the tropical ports of Paba and points south; and for this, they needed the cooperation of the mountain tribes. Thus it was the aboriginals in the mountains who were collecting tributes from the Crystals rather than the reverse.

Soon, the aboriginals living in the highest, coldest lands of all declared themselves to be Moonshines, thus reducing the number of aboriginal nations by almost half. These people considered themselves allies of the Poswobs, since the mainline Moonshines had been allied with the Poswobs for hundreds of years. In response, other political alliances formed among the aboriginals, and although they did not all pledge allegiance to the Poswobs, they all promised to remain enemies of the orthodox Crystals. Aboriginals living south of the continental divide generally interacted mostly with Paba; aboriginals on the north side interacted mostly with the Poswobs and some came to consider themselves to be Poswobs themselves, as the Poswob ideal of a society with no ethnic boundaries appealed to them even though at home they were generally loyal to their own tribe above all others.

Treaty of 5547

In 5547, Pusapom formally declared independence from Paba, and established its own boundaries both with Paba and with other empires such as that of the #Ghosts in the west. Their declaration of independence did not trigger a war; neither the Poswobs nor the Pabaps had military control of their own territory, since the Crystals were dominant in the areas most important to them, and the Crystals considered the Poswobs as private property, lacking even the rights to a nation, let alone an empire with a standing army.

However, the weaker aboriginal nations in the mountains unanimously endorsed the Treaty of 5547, and congratulated the Poswobs on building the only empire to originate after the great Collapse that had occurred more than a thousand years prior. (The Ghost Empire was generally considered to be a revival of the Raspara empire.) The aboriginal military leaders signed the Treaty of 5547 themselves to put in writing their commitment to their alliance with the Poswobs and the promise that, should the Poswobs ever agree to it, they could cooperate with the aboriginals in a squeeze march to push the parasitic Crystals out of their territory.

However, the Poswob leaders reaffirmed their commitment to pacifism, and promised to never fight back no matter how far into their territory the Crystal invaders intruded. The Poswobs said that they could tolerate the Crystals' parasitic colonies because they were going to grow to the north and west, where there were no aggressive enemies to fight, and offered the aboriginals safe passage to anywhere in Pusapom should they wish to abandon their ancient homelands to live in the new empire growing on the northern plains.

There were some potential sources of conflict even in the north. For example, the nation of Sàkʷalo was officially part of the Moonshine Empire, but was now inhabited by Moonshines, Sĕyepa Crystals, and Poswobs. The Poswobs here were partly Moonshines who identified politically with Pusapom rather than the Moonshine Empire. However, all three of these great powers were supremely pacifistic, and the military leaders of all three sides agreed that their dispute was about taxes and fishing rights and could be easily resolved without war, and without bothering the wider imperial governments of their respective empires.

sakwalo

The seyepa birthrate was higher, so the popu6began to shift to majority seyepa instead of majority Moonshines.

DreAMLand

Dreamland persisted as an independent empire and was not invaded by any outside power, nor did they laun h an invasion of their own. They were seen as allies of the seyepa relig, but there was no conn9.