Šima

THe Šìma are a collection of tribes of Khulls ancestry that live in the Poswob Empire. They are stereotytpically associated with bananas, despite living in temperatre climates with no easy access to the tropics.

Language

The Sima language is very conservative compared to its relatives. The phonology of Khulls was highly unstable, and unlike Moonshine, Ogili, Sarapios, etc, which all changed it rapidly into something completely different, the basic topple-prone structure of both the vowels and consonants is mostly intact in Sima. However, the inventories are noticeably smaller. There are no labialized consonants, no ejective consonants, no long vowels, no pharyngealized vowels, and no new phonemes of any kind.

It is less primeval-sounding than its ancestor Khulls, but still stereotyped nevertheless as an extremely guttural and aggressive language. "Everyone speaks Sima when they're pooping in a field" is a common example of stereotype.

Culture

Šìma people are aggressive and boastful of their status as slaveholders in the Poswob Empire, and their lack of empathy for the abuses they inflict on the Poswob slaves. The United Pacifist Treaty, signed about five thousand years ago, gives the Sima (and any other Khulls-descended tribe) unrestricted rights to rule the Poswob territories forever, and to use Poswobs as slaves. The treaty gives the slaveholders power far beyond what the original authors of the treaty had ever intended. The Šìma are the people whose abuses go even go beyond that, and largely consist of people who are unwelcome in their own home country because of their crimes, or because of political or religious exile status. Sima do not share a common ancestry beyond being Khulls (a very large category), but they do share a common language because they need to closely cooperate with each other in order to survive. By mutual agreement, anyone not learning the Sima language is not considered a Sima.

For example, a Sìma group called the Ghosts of Comfort set up a new city (using Poswob slave labor of course) along a narrow point of a river, so they could collect tolls from any Poswobs wishing to pass through.  Although the Treaty doesnt dforbid this, it had been common practice for the preceding 5000 years that slaveowners are generally not allowed to take money from slaves, either their own slaves or anyone else's, because any money a slave manages to create after fulfilling the work of his master is considered inalienable.   Some Sìma even consider the Poswobs to be their oppressors, stemming from an event in the recent past when Poswob civilians massed along the border of the state of Popypobbem to try to stop the Ghost army from .  They slaughtered the entire Poswob population of the state of Popypobbem, 

For the most part however, the Sima restrict their rule to open plains, not the mountains or any place cold or thinly settled.