Gold Empire

The new Star Empire was sharply divided into two groups of people: native Stars and everyone else. The conquering Namans introduced the Stars to the imapa (also imepo, imapala, i mappa, imupu, imaqpag, etc.) system of government, a political philosophy that had been created by the World Utopians, who had shaped their philosophy to make it appealing to the frightened Stars so that they would let the Namans abuse and control them. The World Utopians had found success with imapa in other nations, too, and had come to dominate the Gold Union well before the induction of Lobexon. Once Loexon was opened up, imapa became a reality, as it was to the Stars a welcome alternative from the many violent factions that had fought for control of Lobexon for all of their lives. Besides imapa, the conquering Namans also forced the Stars to register themselves in the universal census, in order that the government know exactly how many Stars there still were. The Stars were allowed to have some representation in the government, though slavery continued.

Even though the Stars were no longer in power, Lobexon was still relatively wealthy because much of the Stars' technology had survived the war so far. This was imapa's version of utopia: instant gratification and avoidance of pain, even at greater future loss of pleasure. Imapa often upset Star-stytle gov'ts, which were now protected by the Star army and thus prevalent even in Lobexon.

Some Laban nations came looking for a truce with Nama, hoping the two ruthless military powers could learn to make amends. But the problem of Lobexon was so great that no solution could be reached. In 2057, the coast was opened, and Nama sent legions of Lenians down to Lobexon to take over the government. The Lenians introduced the Stars to a form of government known as Lapiwa, which was a special version of imapa that applied only to Lobexon.

However, life in Lobexon after its induction into the Gold Union was nothing like what had existed before2057 because of the exclusive dominance of Lapiwa. Lapiwa had through Lobexon's advanced technology become a symbol of affluence, satisfaction, and hedonism. Lobexon's laws grew more liberal every year.

Slavery in Lobexon

Slavery had been largely introduced by the conquering Macro-Repilians from Nama, who had imported it from their homeland. Some of the conquerors were slaves themselves in their homelands, and wanted a way out. THe slavery was of a type that only operated in a particular geographical area. Everyone had to sign a census form, and each town had a list of slaves and whom the slaves belonged to. It was even possible, though uncommon, for two people to both own the same slave.

Note however that some areas of Lobexon, such as Katō, had been enslaving Pabaps for several hundred years. These Pabaps were called Pōsa and generally lived in areas where the powerful Pabaps with trading ships did not go. The Treaty of 2057 had essentially flipped the tables in that it enslaved all of the Stars and freed the people that the Stars had been enslaving, but Nama's rule was very weak in the tropics, and most Naman warlords enslaved both groups unashamedly. Still, they did not want Pabap trading ships finding out that they were so grossly violating the terms of the treaty.

Political parties

Lobexon was now a very diverse area. As in Subumpam and Nama, political parties and religions were one and the same, so to change ones politics meant to change one's religion. Many religions were essentially confined to specific ethnicities, so these parties were monoethnic as well. And yet, one ethnic group could have several religious divisions, some of which would combine with the divisions of other religions in an alliance without actually merging.

Major groups in Lobexon in the 2100s were:

Gold

The Gold party was the ruling party and the only legal party after the Treaty of 2057 ending the war. The Gold party made it clear that it considered itself to be already multicultureal and openminded and that all other parties represented just a single point of view and were thus inferior. Some non-Gold parties were tolerated, and even welcomed openly, but they were still denied any government power. Other non-Gold parties were not even tolerated; anyone admitting belonging to them could be enslaved or killed. The Gold party was multiethnic and even multireligious in the sense that it did not ask its members to abandon any traditional religious beliefs they had had previously. Nomimally, Gold was itself a religion, but this was just a product of the government system in which people associated with others of the same religion and worshipped in the same buildings. The Gold religion did not ask its members to abandon their old traditional religions, be they Yiibam, Emon, Sisnasi, Kâ, Calacila, Macro-Repilian traditionalism, or anything else; they just demanded that their members pledge allegiance to the Gold government and not the minority parties being set up by those other religious groups.

Note that any minority group confined to Nama, such as the soon to be infamous Litila, associated with the Gold party rather than forming their own. These included some groups that were very hostile to slavery and went on missions to rescue slaves from Lobexon, something no one else could do because only the Gold people had full access to the coastline and the right of way throughout all of Lobexon's roads. However, they could not simply steal the slaves from their masters. So they had to either buy them in the fair market, which was expensive, or focus on freeing escaped slaves who had already been abandoned, which was difficult because they tended to be found in the most remote parts of the Empire. Nevertheless, the Gold government tolerated this because it was their own governmental philosophy that allowed it, and for the Lobexonian slavemasters to revoke the right of Gold people to disrupt slavery would mean that they themselves were no longer Gold.

Crystals

The Crystals were the strongest-fighting group in the Star War, and considered their defeat to be due to the other groups' betrayinbg them. However, they had always been a small minority, even before the end of the war, so if they had been fighting Nama alone the war would have collaped even quicker. The Crystals were almost all slaves, but they had a few allies in the upper class. THey were explicitly transnational, meaning that they were sending diplomats to other nations in the hopes of finding allies there. They also admitted that their situation in Lobexon was so dire that they might well find their first success in another nation such as Subumpam or Kuhilani rather than in Lobexon. They also said that although they wanted to free all the slaves in Lobexon, they would fight only for themselves, and would not feel guilty about letting the Gold slaves remain enslaved, since by staying Gold those people had explicitly rejected teh Crystals' help.

The Treaty of 2057 had made it illegal for any Crystals or Gilgosi to leave Lobexon. However, the Gold gov't only enforced this on the coastline, figuring the rugged interior was impossible to blockade without occupying more Gold soldiers than there were people in all of Lobexon. Unlike the Gilgosi, the Crystals considered themselves transnational, which meant that they often used this open border to move to other nations, hoping to raise armies among the foreigners that would help them get back in and dominate Lobexon. They also swore that their only allegiance was to other Crystals, and would not bother trying to rescue Gold slaves, or even Gilgosi slaves, though they would expect at least some of these people to convert to Crystalism if the Crystals began winning military battles near their homelands.

A few Crystals hid out in the highlands, in land that was within Lobexon's territory but had not been claimed by any slaveowners, and essentially became free. They invited people from Kuhilani to move in with them, though they were careful to avoid overpopulation, as the highlands were not good farming land even though their climate was fairly rainy. They ensured that they were able to use weapons so that they could not easily be abducted and dragged down the mountains into slave plantations. And they were even worried about being attacked by slaves, as they had already alienated themselves from most of the other slaves by promising not to rescue them if they did not first convert to Crystalism.

Gilgosi

The Gilgosi (a code name) were a fork of the Crystals who rejected transnationalism and wanted to fight purely for supremacy of Lobexon over all other nations. They wanted to free all the slaves, not just the ones who voted like them. And although they looked for help in other nations, they expected that any help from other nations would lead to yet another exploitative treaty with the people of Lobexon at the bottom. Like the Crystals, the Gilgosi were mostly slaves, and even the ones who were free were legally barred from exiting the country, while also being barred from any positions of power, which meant that they were in an uncomfortable state of having to work much harder than most other people, even harder than slaves, just to get by. (Slaves were provided food, water, shelter, clothing, and even medicine for free; their only fear was that if they did not work hard enough, they could be rejected by their owner and even killed. Free people had to find all of these things on their own, and although most were far better off than slaves, unlucky freemen often had to work very long hours merely to buy themselves the things a slave could get for free.) They considered themselves a majoity party in Lobexon, saying that if the slaveowners were thrown out, essentially none of the former slaves would vote to have them come back in and start up slavery again, which is what the Gold party and thus the many pro-Gold slaves seemed to support. Neither would these people vote Crystal, as the Crystals had specifically promised not to rescue any non-Crystal slaves if they were to achieve power, and seemed to many to be liable to become just yet another slaveowning minority that enslaved all of its enemies with no regrets. Furthermore, Gold slavemasters typically required all their slaves to be Gold, or else face punishment including death. Meanwhile, any non-Gold slavemasters were persecuted by the Lobexonian government itself, so they were afraid to publicly convert. Thus the Gilgosi figured any slavemaster who did not force all his slaves to be Gold was a likely Crystal or Gilgosi sympathizer, and of these two groups, most slaves would likely favor the Gilgosi because the Crystals were not promising them freedom whereas the Gilgosi were. The Crystals did not make a similar argument, however, to claim that they too were a majority; they actually agreed with the Gilgosi that the Gilgosi were a majority, and were the true descendants of the original Star party, even though the GIlgosi had originated as a fork of the Crystals. This was because before 1989, there had been no need for a Star "party" for people to belong to; it was all-encompassing. The Crystals had merely created their political organization earlier than others, and the Gilgosi consisted of people who preferred the old Star way of life but had joined the Crystals instead because the Crystals had the only functional anti-Gold organization at the time.

The Gilgosi party was seen by the Gold party as the most dangerous of the major parties, and was thus banned, although for the time being the individual Gilgosi people were not punished by slavery (if currently free) or death, which meant that most Gilgosi were open about it in public and they could thus be easily spotted and discriminated against.

Pōsa

The Pōsa were slaves of Pabap and Subumpamese origin mostly living in the equatorial regions of the empire. They had been freed by the Treaty of 2057, which also made their former owners into slaves. But Nama's rule was very weak here, and the new incoming Macro-Repilian slavemasters often chose to simply enslave both groups indiscriminately. The Pōsa were of mixed religious beliefs, as their native Yiibam religion believed in gods that were physically present in the Pabap homeland, and these slave families had been forcibly abducted from that homeland over 400 years ago, so they had lost most of their religious concepts. Many of them had converted to the native religions around them. However, they never subdivided further; they remained a single group with a single religion calling themselves the Pōsa.

Mixed marriages were banned, as the slavemasters wanted the Pōsa slaves and the Star slaves (who had been renamed Kampa) to hate each other, not love each other.

The Kampa were told that they should hate the Pōsa because the Pōsa people were clearly related to the Pabap people who were dominating the economies of the Lobexonian nations lucky enough to be further north, and that although the Pōsa may seem like kind people at present, they were only a few hundred years away from an all-out genocide against the dark-skinned Kampa-like people who had settled Paba before them, and that slavery was what the Pōsa really deserved.

The Pōsa were told that they should hate the Kampa because the Kampa people had been abusing them for 400 years, even launching ships into Paba to abduct more slaves, and had never even considered repentance even when it was clear that they were about to be defeated by Nama. They said that only Nama had been both kind enough and strong enough to take the Kampa's tentacles out of the Pōsa homelands, and that slavery was what the Kampa really deserved.

The tropical rainforests were very poor now, even poorer than the desrts of Taryte, because it was difficult to farm the land and there were few other national resouirces. Arguably the slaveowners in the tropical rainforests were worse off than some of the slaves in the far north, which had been enriched by commerce, and where slavemasters prevented slave revolts by making their slaves' lives more comfortable even if they still refused to free them. Occasionally a slaveowner would simply abandon his slaves and move with his family to the north, knowing they would not get control of another pocket of slaves there, but neither would they be enslaved themselves. Thus these slaves would be freed. At other times, slaves simply escaped, since even though the rainforest was very poor, it was one area that was easy to survive off the land in, and the life of an escaped slave was not much different than the life of a slaveowner in terms of meeting basic needs.

The Pōsa party was not banned, although as its people by definition lived only in areas where the imperial government was too weak to reach them and thus rescue them out of slavery, they had no political meaning and any Pōsa people who escaped into the safer parts of the empire usually chose one of the other parties to belong to.

Kampa

As above, this is a term for the Star aboriginal slaves living in the equatorial zone, who were mostly kept apart and worked in non-agricultural slavery, and thus led lives different from the other Star slaves further north. Kampa slaves who escaped often joined nearby nations since they could blend in with the aboriginals whereas the Pōsa could not (though Pabap people, the cousins of the Pōsa, were setting up nations nearby, they were small and not easy to find. Moreover these nations often had dark-skinned majorities anyway, so the Kampa could still also move here.)

The Kampa party was not banned, although its situation was different than Pōsa. Pōsa people were by definition descended from Pabaps and occasionally Subumpamese, both of which were free peoples according to the Treay of 2057. THe Kampa, being aboriginals, were enslaved throughout the entire empire, and had no reason to want to escape into the north where conditions could even get worse for them since the slaveowners had much tighter control over their slaves there. Thus escaping Kampa slaves usually preferred to hide out in the highlands or move into Kuhilani. Those who stayed in Lobexon considered "Kampa" to be an artificial creation with no political meaning, as it was essentially a racial group rather than a religion or even a political philosophy, and instead chose to identify as one of the other groups, often the Crystals. (Though as they were in hiding, this still had no political meaning in the eyes of the imperial government; they would not answer a census from a 7000 ft mountain pass.)

Emon

Emon (also known as Kaxʷūxʷa) was a religion that worshipped the sun. Most of its members were aboriginals enslaved by the Treaty of 2057 and made to convert to the Gold religion, but a few stayed out. Emon was not a very political religion, so its people tended to be entirely ignored by the Gold government, as they were considered not even dangerous enough to oppress. Emon happened to be most popular in the state of Katō, however, and Katō killed all of its slaves in the year 2140, which meant the near-total destruction of Emon.

Pasulup

The Pasulup (a code name) were Pabaps who had previously been trading between Paba and the Star Empire, but were trapped on land by the Trety of 2057 as their ships were taken over by the Naman navy. The Tretay was friendly to them, and allowed them the choice of moving back to Paba if they wanted. The Pasulup are the descendants of those who had chosen to stay and make a life as normal people not working in the shipping industry. They were of the Yiibam religion, but considered their interests distinct from the other Yīa-worshipping Pabaps and did not want to unite with them. They did not call themselves Pasulup; that is merely a codename created so that all of the Pabap groups would begin with the letter P.

Some Pasulups tried to marry into the Macro-Repilian slaveholder families, thus becoming slaveholders themselves. Lobexon's government had no reaction to this unexpected phenomenon; they let individual families handle it. Thus the marriages were generally allowed, and Pabaps for the first time became a slaveholding people, albeit only through their half-Repilian descendants.

Note that marrying slaves was illegal, although on occasion a free person would buy out a slave's freedom and then marry them.

Pastip

The Pastip were a new group of Pabaps who had been created shortly after the 2057 Treaty. They were neither the Pōsa who were enslaved in the tropics nor the Pasulup who were trapped in Lobexon by the sudden naval blockade. Instead they were people whom the Gold government had chosen to invite into Lobexon to help improve the economy and perhaps even the government. The Gold people saw Paba as a miracle nation that had been violently assaulted from literally every one of its neighbors for over a thousand years, but which had never fought back and yet somehow survived to become the strongest and richest nation in the world for most of its history. They saw that Pabaps had established themselves as a minority in many other nations throughout history and never made threats to overthrow the governments of those states, and therefore the Gold people did not fear that the Pabaps they were inviting it would overthrow the Gold government.

The Pabaps were humiliated by the Gold governments' praise of them, as they did not consider being badly abused and asking for more abuse to be a trait to be proud of, but nevertheless many agreed to move in, since Paba was perpetually overcrowded and the Pabaps had always stereotypically preferred tropical climates anyway. The Gold government made a small exception to their full naval control of Lobexon's ports to allow Pabap ships in and out, as these Pabaps were mostly working in trade and other naval occupations for the time being, and Paba still refused to allow any non-Pabap ships to enter its own ports. However, there were only a very few places in Lobexon where these Pabap ships were allowed in, and they were overseen very strictly to make sure Pabaps were not smuggling people in or out of Lobexon along with their much-needed cargo. Further, the Gold government made it clear that they wanted to get the Pabaps off of the ports and onto the mainland to work in more traditional occupations as Lobexon had plenty of international trade already.

The Pastip felt bad for the aboriginal groups, and offered to rescue them and settle them in Paba or in any of the many colonies Pabaps were building in the equatorial zone. Although they wanted to rescue slaves, for the most part this was impossible and would get the Pastip killed so they focused their efforts on rescuing the free Gilgosi people and inviting them aboard their boats. The Gilgosi actually were strongly anti-Paba, claiming the Pabaps were owed revenge for the Pabaps' massacre of dark skinned Sukuna people several hundred years ago, and the GIlgosi considered themselves to be one with the Sukuna. Many had become openly racist against Pabaps, and anyone with blonde hair or fair skin, but the Gilgosi who accepted the offer to move to Paba were those who were friendly. However it should be noted that they were not anti-Pabap because of the ancien t massacres, but because Pabaps always seemed to become the upper class wherever they moved, and refused to share their fruits with other groups; the arguemnts about the Sukuna aboriginals were merely inherited from the Star government's politics of the previous two centuries. Paba's own military questioned the perverse decision of the Pabaps to only rescue the one people living in Lobexon that had become famous for its support of violent massacres of the Pabaps, and hoped that this would be another Pabap "miracle" that seemed at first to be a dangerously masochistic idea but would in the end somehow benefit both Paba and the Gilgosis. (Note that although these rescue missions were illegal, for the most part, the Gold navy did not capture or harass the Pastip people because they were only rescuing freemen, which actually helped the Gold party as these were the people most likely to be violent in the future. The Gold gov't had been wanting to simply enslave them all but could not get its people to vote to do that because they were not quite that openly malicious. Indeed, Lobexon had been worried about letting any more Pabaps into Lobexon for fear that they would immediately start doing good deeds such as rescuing Lobexonians, but they were pleased when they realized they had found a way to satisfy Paba's endless desire to make the world a better place which also enabled Lobexon to get rid of their most unwanted people at the same time.)

As it turned out, most Gilgosi moving to Paba simply converted and blended in with Pabaps, forgetting altogether that they were originally foreigners. Those who did not assimilate were still welcomed, but were confined to the lower class because they could not fit in even with other minorities and therefore ended up mostly being sold as slaves to Thaoa. Thus ironically Paba had rescued freemen and delivered them to slavery. Still other Gilgosi were not taken to Paba but to new colonies in the rainforests of the far southwest, where Paba hoped to establish fully independent nations that would give Pabaps the power to dominate the tropics. For the most part these societies did not work out well, as the numbers of people they were sending were too low, even with enormous birthrates, to survive wars against the aboriginals here, and Repilian slave lords were also exploring this area, which meant that often these people also ended up becoming enslaved. This was also the only area where the Gilgosi often attacked Pabaps, because they had been expecting to be allowed to move to Paba, but were unaware that the government of Paba often required its people to settle new lands and the incoming Gilgosi were disproportionately affected as they were the lowest class. But even here, many Gilgosi decided to stay, realizing they would end up as slaves if they tried to get back to Lobexon. In their new habitats they married Pabaps and started new families and forgot all about Lobexon and its problems.

These new countries called themselves Fambwem, and became very prosperous, although it was a short lived prosperity. The Empire of Kuhilani in 2131 declared all of the new Pabap-Gilgosi nations to be Kuhilani territory, as they saw the new civilizations were very young and yet already doing very well, and Kuhilani wanted more wealth and power for itself. The Fambwemiams surrendered immediately, as they were trading colonies with no militaries of their own living in a very military part of the world. However, Kuhilani soon realized that its dream was not to be, as when Kuhilani annexed Fambwem, Lobexon immediately shut off the trade routes with Fambwem, and Fambwem became even poorer than Kuhilani had been. Paba did not give up on its plans to settle the equatorial zone, but they soon lost touch with what had been their colonies and all that remained when the next Pabap ship arrived in the area were a few curious-looking aborigines with blonde hair and stone tablets written in a language they could no longer understand.

Conflicts among the slaves

Before 2057, the Gilgosi had been so few in number in Lobexon that they were completely forgotten by many. But after 2057, the power of the Gilgosi surged wildly as disappointed Stars who had fought in the war for the purpose of improving the quality of life in Lobexon listened to the angry words of the Gilgosi. The Gilgosi were Lobexonians who had not been quite so suicidally submissive as most people there and had also managed to escape "abduction" by the Pabaps and Namans. (These abductions were actually rescue missions, but had the effect of siphoning off most of the free natives in Lobexon, leaving a nation consisting almost entirely of slaveowners and powerless slaves.) As the Gilgosi regained power, their enemies in Sulasali felt increasingly threatened. Most Crystals now moved away from Sulasali, and those who remained were physically abused by visiting groups of non-Crystals, who were not punished by the imapa government.

Over the next few decades, the scenario changed somewhat. First, a secret army commanded by the Comet (an ex-Crystal turned Gilgosi) focused on attacking Crystals at every opportunity. This army was frequently attacked by the Gold government or, occasionally, by the Crystals themselves, but it survived these frequent attacks and when it declined, it was due largely to a shift in military power towards another secret army, commanded by Old Faithful, another anti-Crystal.

Another major change was the fact that the Gilgosi, too, had become the target of an army. Here, however, it was the regular Gold army that did the lion's share of battling the Gilgosi. The Gilgosi were denied government power by the other groups, who through the Gold system were given extra power to oppose the Gilgosi (that was one of the main tenets of the Gold philosophy).

A third change was the fact that Crystals from FILTER (a feminist group) now openly helped the Crystals on Sulasali, despite increasing violence from other groups. As FILTER helped the Crystals, Lobexonians' sentiment shifted even more against the Crystals. At the same time, the Gilgosi had their secret army which attacked the Crystals whenever the Gold army couldn't stop them. Thus, a "triangle war" had emerged -- the Crystals, the Gilgosi, and the majority of the Lobexonians were all against each other.

Some Crystals asked the Gilgosi for an alliance, but the Gilgosi refused, despite the fact that they were now being as badly abused by the imepists as were the Crystals. The Gilgosi refused to humiliate themselves by giving in to the much more submissive Crystals. Thus, although some Gilgosi were now secretly defecting to the Crystals, the two groups remained separate, and both groups remained victims of the oppressive Kwipipupûan government which they all had earlier fought to put in place! This was one reason the Gilgosi didn't trust the Crystals. Another was the fact that the Crystals were openly corrupt; for example, they stole money and offered it to anyone who would vote Crystal. They justified this by saying that it is still better than gaining power by force, and therefore was more ethical than what the Gilgosi supported. Finally, the Gilgosi didn't trust the Crystals simply because Crystalism was a very "worldly" movement, which meant it would not be valid in the future. Since Crystalism would not work in the future, they said, any Crystal who would try to stay in power would really be obstructing progress, which is what the Crystals were accusing pro-sko people of.

On the other hand, the Crystals didn't trust the Gilgosi for other reasons. They said that the Gilgosi were nationalists, whose allegiance was to an authority no greater than the Star subset of the Gold Union. The Crystals, on the other hand, belonged to no particular country; they were everywhere. Also, the Crystals accused the Gilgosi of ethnocentrism and other "-centrisms" which the Crystals hated (such as their complaints about the problems of Pabaps and Subumpamese). Also, the Crystals accused the Gilgosi of being ruthless and overly violent. Coming from a group who for years had unsuccessfully tried to gain political power through violence, this signaled a surprising shift in policy -- it seemed the Crystals had given up trying to be violent and had adopted a more covert method of gaining power.

However, this was a time of terrible vexation for the Crystals. The Crystals blamed themselves for their failure to take over the SS Union, saying they should have foreseen the war and built up a military before the other groups did. But it really was not their fault; there simply weren't enough Crystals in the world to have made much difference in the outcome of the war.

In Sulasali the Crystals taught that their task was to peacefully spread Crystalism to the rest of the world, and at the same time ensure its noncorruption (although this stance was taken only because they were so weak militarily that it was their only hope). The Sulasalians by now had split away from the outworld Crystal parties completely as part of their anti-corruption effort. They wanted to attract people to their party who were looking for God's army, so they worked hard to clean up their image.

In fact this cleansing rebirth did attract the attention of the outworld, but it was in a fashion the Crystals had hoped to prevent - their new image now shone in the universe as a stark contrast to imapa, and Nama, the leader of the imepist council, vowed to destroy the Crystals. As a result, the Crystals were forced to shield their islands from the outworld as virtually all countries, even Lobexon, began to boycott their philosophy.

The Crystals' worst enemy was perhaps Loporomo Leap, which was also deeply involved with the Lobexonians' unique imapa doctrine, called Lapiwa. Lapiwa allowed the Stars to cling to the freedom won by imapa without renouncing national sovereignty, as mainstream imapa demanded. Loporomo Leap had no ethical reason for their habitual abuse of the Crystals; they did it because it was fun. Yet some could not help observing that it seemed the Crystals had stumbled upon the path to real world peace that the rest of the world had blindly been trying to find for all of history.

Repercussions in Nama

Loporomo Leap in fact was an atheist state, and their real quarrel with Sulasali was the obvious fundamentalism of the Crystals. What troubled the Loporomans most was the fact that the Crystals now had a "clean" fundamentalism; that is, it was somehow aligned with all religions at once, excluding none. This was because the Crystals had carefully purged their religion of all tenets that alienated them from the outside world; they believed only in God. They thus had a very simple religion, explaining little, but their only enemies now were atheists. Unfortunately, atheists ruled the universe.

Although the Crystals taught that anyone who was faithful to their "heart religion" - meaning what they honestly believed, rather than what they preached - would be saved, they encouraged people to join their group and convert to their religion as they felt in their hearts that it was the only right thing to do. Meanwhile, they began to transform their own people into an army.

The Crystals soon began to teach that the Crystal party had suffered assault after assault in their history not only because they were fundamentalist, but even more because they were virtuous, and now they predicted even tougher times ahead as they now would have to turn against the atheist, unethical universe. Thus they encouraged their people now to think nothing of risking their lives for the sake of their country. Still, as they were to others essentially harmless, they encouraged peace whenever possible, but began rapid development of a secret military.

The Crystals thus presented to the world a peaceful face, intended to win over the outworld by compassion, but in reality were preparing for what they felt was a necessary evil - a cataclysmic war against the atheist monsters that filled up the rest of the world and were to blame for the Stars' defection from the Crystals during the Six-Boat War.

The population of Lobexon in 2095 was approximately 50 schools (plus 50x). In 2095, a group of about 6000 (5949) Stars attempted to establish a settlement of Baeba Swamp. The sailors hoped that the swampland creatures would provide them a source of food and shelter so that they could live there, and hopefully eventually spread out.

The Pabap ship that they used had immediately crashed. The sailors had landed near their destination, which they now called Baeba Swamp, but they soon discovered that the animals living in this swamp were very dangerous to humans, as the first person to step out onto the land was attacked and killed by a snakelike animal within the first minute.

As huge as Lobexon's population was, Nama's population of about 5 schools was much stronger, and their powers made them too strong for the Stars to ignore. Even the small percentage of MacroRepilians that traveled to Lobexon was enough to hold down the now-united Stars' desperate attempts at rebellion. The Stars never surrendered but they were soon subdued by the much more powerful Macro-Repilians. Although this action caused almost all of the Repilians' allies to declare war on them, for the meantime these other Naman countries, whose populations totalled around 320 schools, were to weak to save the Stars from their coming doom.

However, the protective shield around Lobexon was not nearly as strong as it had used to be. Humanitarian missions took people from Nama, people who were hoping to absorb the Stars into their own societies, to Lobexon to adopt the otherwise doomed Stars and bring them back to their own countries. The Namans could not attack these ships because they couldn't see them.

Although many of these missions failed, enough succeeded that Nama had adopted a sizable minority of Stars (including the Polotta) within a few months.

Life in Subumpam

Northern ("Uphill") Subumpam at this time was dominated by fundamentalists of the religion called Sisnasi. Nobody in the Susubmpamese government took seriously nyone who did not back up all their political opinions with Sisnasi scripture and philosophy. In southern SUbumpam (Bipabum), a scandal involving the Sisnasi priesthood, combined with the liberality that came with its greater affluence, had caused the population to question Sisnasi and move toward a very secular government, with atheists competing for power at the highest level. They also practiced Emon, a sun-worshipping religion that had been imported from Lobexon.

New states in the Star Empire

Around 2127 the Macro-Repilian slave lords created yet another new political party, which they called Xàsa. This was a return to the old type of political party that represented only an ethnic group and a religion, rather than a political philosophy. They said that they did believe in a philosophy, and that it was the rejection of the belief that Labans are racially superior to other humans. They defined Labans as all non-aboriginals. Thus Xàsa told Stars living in Lobexon that the Pabaps, Subumpamese, Andanese, and other peoples living in their territory were unwelcome guests and should be expelled or killed. The Macro-Repilian slavemasters promoted this new party in the hopes that it would direct the anger of the slaves towards outsider groups such as these, rather than towards the Macro-Repiiian slavemasters, since Repilians were also aboriginals.

Repilians and Stars had fought many wars in the past, and the Xàsa believers hoped that they could put an end to the wars and make a new alliance of all the aboriginal tribes of the continent against all of the "new" races that had been moving in over the last 2000 years.

In 2140, all slaves living in Katō were killed. Thus slavery was abolished. Those who escaped (î) fled northwards into the desert, mostly Taryte. Katō claimed it was morally superior to the other nations because it had eliminated its slaves and relinquished the yoke the slaves had imposed on their economy. However, they were much poorer now, and needed to rely on help from other nations in order to produce enough food to feed themselves. Meanwhile, slaves living in other nations were horrified and became much more loyal to their masters than they had been before.

The increase in wealth in Lobexon seemed to bring an increase in political liberality with it. Lobexon's laws grew more liberal every year. This was especially true in Amade, the wealthiest state in Lobexon and also the wealthiest state on all of Teppala. The two poorest states, a rainforest state and Taryte, were also the two most politically conservative. Some of the other poorer parts of the union, such as Maheal and Vasabadas, were also fairly conservative, but they were conservative in a way that served to advance the agenda of the liberals in Amade because their conservatism was opposed to the old conservatism that Amade had previously embraced. In 2141, a liberal party calling itself the Sejape Party took control in Amade for the first time and launched a very ambitious program designed to make their dream empire a reality. Sejape (Sĕyepa) was a version of imepo that allowed its believers to refuse to integrate themselves politically into Nama and also allowed them to refuse to allow slaves and certain other minorities to be represented in the government.

The Sejapeans declared that all of the conquered territories that Amade had won in the last war were part of their empire, and could be best served by cooperating with Amade's government. Amade finalized the name Lobexonfor its new empire, which now included 19 states stretching from Bipabum to Maheal.

The Sejapeans planned to build the largest nation in history, and said that they would be able to do it only because it would be a diversitarian empire, doing its best to please everyone. The type of government that Amade was spreading over its empire was largely derived from the Subumpamese system of government, and the Sejapeans told the Subumpamese that it was as true that Subumpam had conquered Amade as vice versa. The Sejapeans believed that Nama/Subumpam's dissenter system was superior to Amade's old democracy, but they didn't actually abolish the democracy because they felt that if they did so, Amadeans and others would complain and revolt because they would feel that their power had been taken from them and given to an unaccountable elite. In Subumpam, a fake democracy was installed to mollify these same people, but all the real decisions were still made by unappointed officials whom the Subumpamese believed to be better able to govern than the people themselves.

In 2148, Amade outlawed tribal alliances and passed a law giving most minorities (but not Andanese or certain groups of Namans) nearly equal rights with Amadeans. In 2155, all Subumpamese and "tropical" slaves were freed and the forced importation of people from Subumpam or any other region was also outlawed. Close relatives of captured Subumpamese slaves were allowed to settle in Amade.

In 2161, Lobexon abolished the promotion of the Emon religion and officially became agnostic. Although most governing officials remained Emon believers, they were no longer allowed to publicly promote their religion or to discriminate against non-Emonians. (Few people outside Lobexon practiced Emon.)

To stop ethnic conflicts, Lobexon in 2161 also introduced a massive resettlement program designed to smooth out the distribution of minorities across the Star Empire. Many states, such as Taryte and certain Subumpamese states, nullified the proposal, but those that didn't nullify it were rewarded by Amade with large amounts of money and the importation of some of Amade's wealthiest citizens into their territories.

In 2162, Lobexon revoked the sole official language status of Amadean and allowed minorities to speak their own native languages, although they had to also be fluent in Amadean. Lellapians were not allowed to speak their own dialects of Lellapian, though. (Amadean was just one dialect of a larger language called Lellapian.) Upset at being neglected by the Amadean government in favor of minorities, Tarises threatened to secede. The government of Tarise offered money for prominent conservative Lellapian/Gold politicians who wished to settle in Taryte , but the Gold government threatened to disenfranchise Taryte if they did not agree to cooperate with the more liberal states. The next month, a secessionist party became the majority party in Taryte, and these Tarises encouraged secessionist movements in Subumpam to seize power away from the Subumpamese liberals that were helping Amade. The Subumpamese, who overwhelmingly adored the Amadean government, refused to cooperate, but the tropics elected a secessionist government in the next month even without Taryte's support.

Both of these new governments were afraid to act against Lobexon, because both were geographically isolated and extremely poor compared to much of the rest of the empire, and they were also militarily helpless, so they knew that they couldn't really secede. Also, the tropical government changed hands again the next month, putting a very pro-Sejape government in power. (Sejape was Amade's liberal party.) When in the following month the Tarise government also turned liberal, a group of Tarise conservatives declared that they would form a paragovernmental organization within Taryte and try to live on their own without actually seceding.

This allowed money from Amade to flow into the Tarise, which was now by far the poorest state in Lobexon, and it allowed the conservatives to feel that they had succeeded at least in part. Thus, nearly all conservatism in SE2 had now been destroyed by the Sejapean liberals.

But they still had the problem that they couldn't completely get along even amongst themselves. Sejape appealed to minorities of all types, and these minorities had been drawn from a diverse stock, and their interests conflicted with each other. Some of the Sejapeans were really poor, underprivileged minorities who were far more conservative even than the Saharans, but whose conservatism was allowed to pass for liberalism because it was opposed to the Saharan conservatism. For example, "Wipep" had passed a law stating that only the Wipepians could serve in its local governments, and that Wipepese was the only language allowed to be spoken in public in Wipep. They also allowed discrimination against non-Wipepians and discouraged non-Eipeians to settle in Wipep. This was far more radical a policy than what the Tarise conservatives were asking for, but the Amadean liberals embraced it because it served their best interests. Similarly, they refused to do anything to stop the "oppression" of married women in Babbam, Subumpam, and the teropics, or the oppression of non-treopical people (including even Amadeans) in the tropics. Much of the tropicswas in fact controlled by local tribal governments, with the official tropical government being too afraid to enforce its laws. Some of these tribes fought against each other, and others teamed up to fight against Amade.

Lobexon had a strongly capitalist economy, and the government of Lobexon refused to improve its global welfare system to provide its poorest citizens a standard of living comparable to that which Kxesh's poorest citizens enjoyed, but some states introduced their own welfare systems, taking the money needed to run them from taxes. Often, recent immigrants from Amade paid a disproportionate amount of these taxes. This was partly because the states blamed Amade for lack of support, and partly because local sentiment was anti-Amade anyway, and the people were glad for anything that helped their own states gain at the expense of Amade. Amade's government, the most liberal in the empire, assumed that these acts of hostility were being caused by the imbalance of wealth between Amade and all the other states, and they did not try to retaliate. Many liberals began to believe that a less capitalist economy was necessary to equalize the wealth imbalance, but the liberals that were in power in Amade held to their inherited belief that capitalism was always the best path to future prosperity. They poured money into local economies to help alleviate their problems, but they never aided the poor directly, as this was contrary to their philosophy.

Meanwhile (April 2166), the southern end of Lobexon (called Shuppa) was beginning to deteriorate. Although in the northern part of the tropics, businesses were developing and people were getting richer, Amade's economic aid was not able to reach the southern tropics or Babbam. The conservative population distrusted the Lobexon government and didn't believe it could solve their problems. Thus, even though it looked as though formal secession would never happen, the southern part of the Star Empire was becoming more and more effectively not even a separate country, but a loosely organized group of tribal communes reminiscent of the ancient tropics that had not yet been conquered by Amade. Even Tarises began to move to the tropics now, hoping to get out from under the thumb of their new Sejapist state government. Others remained in Taryte and set up a pseudo-tribal government that was much better organized than all of the ones in the tropicsand was also even more fiercely opposed to the government.

To the alarm of Amade, these people renamed themselves Dabondians and set up the nation of Dabondi (Taryte) within Sahara's borders, without the consent of any government. Amade voted to let Dabondi secede, since they had chosen land with very few non-Dabondians on it, and they had chosen to cooperate with Lobexon and not plan a war. But Taryte would not agree, and they threatened to enslave the Dabondian leaders if they continued to cause trouble. Babbam, which had a very libertarian government, invited the Dabondians to settle in Babbam, and promised to let them have almost as much freedom as they would have if they were an independent nation. The Dabondians felt uncomfortable amongst the Babbas, and few agreed to their offer. Those that did move mostly did so because they were members of a group of Dabondians that believed that their lives were worthless unless they were dedicated to overthrowing the entire Star empire. A few Dabondians moved to the rebellious states in southwestern Subumpam (Vasabadian strongholds, not Moonshine ones), hoping to damage mainstream Subum society as much as they could before they were discovered. They were in fact planning to kill all the Subumpamese and claim their land for Dabondi, but they knew that there were too few Dabondians at this time to be able to do that.

When the Star government discovered what the Dabondians had been planning to do, they arrested them and put them in slavery in northern Subumpam. They then forced all 19 states to sign an agreement endorsing Sejape and forbidding the construction of any internal empire within SE2. Even the most conservative of the anti-Sejape parties agreed to this, because they wanted to be sure to be seen as friendly to Amade so that Amade would send them more money.

Amade had spared themselves from being attacked by Dabondi, but they knew that they still had the chaos of the far south to deal with. Babbam's government had officially signed a petition condemning the takeover of Subumpam by Amade in the 2140's, and Babbam began to trade directly with Subumpam, ignoring the many states in between them. They had also become openly hostile to the nearby Empire of Kxesh, even though they had until recently been a part of Kxesh. Kxesh blamed Amade for the problems, and Amade considered destroying all of Babbam.

The Islanders

In 2175, the Battle of Wapeblo Pisuba was fought, in which the FILTER army was reduced from 151 soldiers to only 14. FILTER was an organization of feminists who had seceded from their homelands and settled a small tropical island later called Wapeblo Pisuba, or Wapeblo Island. (Khulls speakers called it Ƥāli.) Most people on Wapeblo Island were of the races that had women taller than men, but a few tall-maled people had moved in to be with them. Their language was a conservative dialect related to Subumpamese that had already gone extinct on the mainland. They had also set up a colony in the cooler upland forests of Nama, but wanted their main nation to be in the tropics.

FILTER wanted to create a society without any violence by putting women in control of men in all aspects of life and stopping any attempt by the males to pursue equality. They felt that violence was so severe of a problem that preventing it even overruled other virtues such as treating all people equal. The people on Wapeblo were not Repilians but rather a collection of Subumpamese immigrants who by genetic drift had acquired some of the Repilians' tall-female genes. These people called themselves Feminists and said that Feminism was nothing more than the state of having women be taller than men and therefore physically capable of controlling men. They said that if necessary they could create parallel Feminist forks of all of the other major parties, e.g. Feminist Gold, Feminist Crystal, Feminist Bubble, etc, but for the mean time they were a very small population and just called themselves Feminists. They realized that if they did split up, they could potentially convince Nama to give them a new nation for each of the many forks of their philosophies, but did not want to rely on this, as those other nations could simply forgo Feminism and join with their outworld parties.

Although FILTER was friendly to the Repilians, they were for now living on a tropical island and had no direct connection to any Repilian nation, nor did they expect to have room to allow immigration from Repilia.

They also figured that Repilians would not want to move there anyway, as to them all of Repilia was a fantasy land with no problems whatsoever simply becxause in Repilia women made the rules and men obeyed them, and to them, that was all that mattered. Indeed Repilia really was remarkably peaceful for a land so poor, but they had many other provblems to dewal with. Unloike Repilia, though, FILTER still had some "masculist" traits in their society. Even though men were supposed to be deliberately put down, there was always an "alpha male" who had thirteen women all to himself and ruled over the other males and was in most respects better off in society than all of the females. The other males were of low status compared to everyone else. In Repilia, generally speaking, there was no such thing as an alpha male because women had the power in their society to keep their men at home away from other females.

The problem occurred when they were btought on the mainland. They refused to integrate themselves back into the society of Lobexon, and swore that even with an army of 14 people they could defeat all of the millions of people in all of the other nations on the planet. Lobexon brought the Islanders into court and tried them as criminals. One of the four male survivors was accused of wifebeating, because they had seen him hit his girlfriend, even though she was much taller and stronger than him. In fact, she broke through the jail her boyfriend was put in and got him free.

In 2176, a man named Tepe Bemalamja was elected president of Amade.