Ghost Empire

Ghost Era

Note: the Ghost party was actually formed during the Period when the slopes were converting to gold. They had an independent state during this period, and even underwent an internal revolution. So, both Ghost philosophies were fully formed BEFORE the Cosmopolitan Age. Nevertheless, their range was tiny and their grip on power was weak, and so the Ghosts were primarily known for their role as a minor player in the Cosmopolitan Age.

Cosmopolitan Age

The Raspara renamed themselves the Ghosts of Comfort and promised to restore their right to rule in what had been Anzan. They declared the foundation of the Eighth Empire, the 6th and 7th having transpired during the existence of Anzan. This time, they appealed to ethnic minorities, since they were based in an area that was heavily cosmopolitan. They still promised, however, to spare the lives of the old Raspara who did not accept the new ideology.

The Ghosts signed alliances with many old enemies, and stated that they would never attack those armies again, but also that they would remain neutral in any wars that did not involve the Ghosts or the remaining non-Ghost Raspara. They then declared war on Asala, an alliance of pro-Nama armies that had already declared a preemptive war against them.

Language

The Raspara took the Khulls language and radically reduced the phonology. Vowels were down to 3, and all six tones merged into one (although vowel lengh was preserved_. Yet, not much collision of word forms because there were many marginal phonmeewsssss in Standadrd Khulls.

Settlement of Yīspwilinâ

The Ghosts then settled in the Anzanan state of Yīspʷilinâ , an ethnically diverse area with a traditionally feminine leadership. Yīspwilinâ contained the headwaters of two major rivers. Its people had resisted the male Swamp Kids' leaders and had helped them in some of their wars, but the Swamp Kids he never asked for total control. Now the Ghosts wanted to make Yīspwilinâ the homebase of their new empire.

Yīspwilinâ also provided the Ghosts a path between Tata and Lypelpyp, which they needed in order to invade Lypelpyp and overthrow the emerging democracy based on cooperation with Nama's new Asala government. The Ghosts supported democracy, but insisted that to remain healthy, a democracy needed to be controlled from above to prevent dissent from arising among the voters. The Ghosts thus abolished freedom of speech and taught their children that those who questioned authority should be punished.

Demographics of Yispʷilina

There were 5 armies in Yispʷilina already before the Raspara took control:

• Crystals, who formed the majority.
• Swamp Kids, who mostly had lost contact with both Baeba and Anzan and focused on day-to-day survival instead of dreams of military conquest. Yet, they were not vulnerable to attack as they often had been in the past because the Swamp Kids' historical weakness had been largely due to their tendency to challenge enemies far larger than themselves, while ignoring uprisings in their own homeland. The Swamp Kids in Yispʷilina had fixed both of these problems, and thus ensured their survival, though they lost the ability to influence politics outside their immediate territory.
• Matrixes who had fled in from Tata after being thrown out of power.
• Asala, which had come in from Lypelpyp in the hopes of expanding even further west and destroying their enemies.
• Dreamland, a weak force.

Foundation of the Ghost Empire

The Ghosts reaffirmed that they were the Cold Men, and that they found strength in building settlements in cold climates. However their population grew quickly in the state of Tʷădu, on the border of the tropics and near Baeba.

One reason for retaining the name Cold Men despite centering their power in a warm climate was that the Ghosts believed that all of the peoples to their north were peaceful and submissive, whereas their true enemies lived in the tropics.

economy

The Ghosts promised economic supremacy would take over for military superior personnel supremacy super supremacy. They promised a nat'l income 10x that of Moonshine, 3x that of Dreamland, and higher than that of any geographically contiguous state. They asked 'all neighboring empires for statistics on income, to verify this, but did not collect from distant empires or subentities way sway sway st I'll such as as states or cities.

immigration

Promised unrestricted immigration of all, but had to be Ghosts, thus becoming like Moonshine. Promised go avoid the error of Dreamland, who had 900 yrs earlier promised the same and then launched a racial war against Baeba. The dark-skinned people of the extreme south of the southernmost state (Tʷădu) became wealthy because they were the ones nearest Baeba, and the light-skinned Ghosts did not try to supplant them. However, any of these aboriginals who showed loyalty to parties other than the Ghost Party was stripped of their power and in some cases killed.

Ghost-Poswob relations

The Ghosts considered themselves allies of the Poswob tribes. They claimed that the Poswobs were the most submissive and easily abused people in the world, and that they needed another tribe to protect them. The Ghosts merged the concepts of tribe and territory here; to them, the Poswobs were any people who lived in the young but growing empire of Pusapom, whether they were new migrants, aboriginals, or a mix of both. Therefore, as the Ghosts anticipated they would one day conquer Pusapom, they considered all non-Ghost people living within Pusapom to be Poswobs.

The Ghosts recognized that the Poswobs had many tribes among them, but observed that the most feminine tribes were the ones with the greatest power, and therefore that the Poswobs as a whole were a feministic people. They figured that a male-led tribe could easily invade the Poswobs and force themselves on top of the Poswobs, but that the Ghosts could here serve as the protector of the Poswobs by maintaining geographical separation while building economic cooperation: profiting from the Poswobs without harming them.