Dolls

The Dolls were an amalgamation of conquered tribes such as the Nunabetari who came to identify as a tribe of their own during the war of Anzan.

Dolls were of mixed ancestry, but the most common ancestral tribe was the Swamp Kids, both because they were the most numerous in the place of origin and because the first slave lords were Matrixes, who had centered their nation on a colony of rebellious Swamp Kids called Tata.

Language

Probably Bābākiam. The Dolls taught their abusers how to write, as the slavemasters were impressed by the ornate scripts the Dolls used to write their language. These scripts were originally devised for Late Andanese, however.

Early history

Ancestry and origins

The Dolls were shorter than all of the neighboring tribes, and therefore made easy victims. Yet, as the Matrixes raped them, they gave birth to babies who ever more resembled the Matrixes.

Abduction of the Swamp Kids

The primary ancestral tribe was the Swamp Kids; in the year 4190, the Matrixes invaded a troop of Swamp Kids, abducted hundreds of thousands of soldiers, and brought them back to camp to meet their new Matrix masters. These slaves were primarily males, since the Swamp Kids used an all-male army, and therefore they could not bear children. However, the Matrixes had had a previously existing pool of female slaves dating from a prior conquest.

The Swamp Kids had grown from the Paaapa tribe, a group of Pabaps who had unusually dark hair. This was due to a greater proportion of Andanese ancestry than was the case for most Pabaps. This Andanese ancestry made them even shorter than the other Pabaps, and as the last of the pure-blooded Andanese were wiped out in distant battles of the same war, the Swamp Kids found they had become the shortest people in the world.

The Matrixes realized that the Swamp Kids would be ideal slaves, as they were easily intimidated even by unarmed Matrixes and even the best of the Swamp Kids would lose any fight against an adult male Matrix. The Swamp Kids had always disliked the tall people of Dreamland, and said that even though the Dreamers were taller and stronger than Swamp Kids, they were clumsy and fragile, and suffered from frostbite whereas the Swamp Kids seemed to be most at home in the coldest habitable climates. Furthermore, the Dreamers were vulnerable to sunburn despite being otherwise well-adapted for their warm climate, and therefore were forced to wear heavier clothes than other people to protect themselves from the sun. The Swamp Kids' original homeland, Paba, was slightly further south than Dreamland but yet also colder than Dreamland, and therefore the Swamp Kids were accustomed both to stronger sunlight and colder winters.

However strong the Swamp Kids were against the forces of nature, they could not compete with the superior strength of individual Matrix people. The Matrix soldiers simply walked right into the column of advancing Swampy soldiers and picked them up, stabbing those who resisted, and suffering very little damage for their efforts. The Swamp Kids could not retaliate against the Matrix kidnappers because their soldiers were camped in the Matrixes' own nation, Tata, in the mistaken belief that the Matrix was their ally.

Later history

The Dolls' only victory was as part of a coalition force invading the Matrixes who had formerly abused them.