Thaoa

Thaoa is a language spoken in southeastern Rilola and many islands. It was spoken around the year 4100 (present day is 8700), but its primary descendant language, Sakhi, is often still called "Thaoa".

Early history

Thaoa was settled by people from the cold uplands of Laba, similar territory to that which produced Paba. But unlike Paba, they refused to allow a foreign nation (Tarpabap) to control where they lived within their new territory, and relied on their own boats to settle the mainland instead of the boats of the Tarpabaps. Thus, they said, they had created a nation with no border, rather than a nation whose borders were determined by how far an outside minority who dominated the military was willing to go.

They also enslaved Pabaps, seeing them as little masochists who cried out for ever greater degrees of abuse. Pabap governors were more than happy to consign huge numbers of Pabaps to the Thaoan slavemasters at low prices, keeping the money to enrich themselves as they had little contact with the Pabap lower class and considered slavery morally acceptable as it seemed to lead to better food production in Thaoa versus the warmer but somehow poorer Pabap farmers who did everything with only their own family's labor.

However, in some respects, the Thaoans were actually more peaceful than Pabaps: whereas Paba settled in Naman lowlands and killed the entire aboriginal population save those few who converted to the Yiibam religion, Thaoa demanded an ever-growing territory of its own but allowed aboriginals to peacefully exit this territory so long as they were willing to settle in other lands nearby, of which there were plenty. Thaoa soon took over the coastline of many aboriginal nations to their east, and forced those nations to adopt aboriginals of other tribes that had been chased out by the Thaoan settlers. However, for the most part this policy was not due to any magnanimity from Thaoa but rather due to the fact that Thaoa simply found mountainous climates unsuitable for agriculture and was lucky enough to be the easternmost "settler" nation, thus being granted lordship over all of the aboriginals to its east whereas the other nations such as Paba only ruled over their own tiny home territory.

Ethnic groups

Unlike Paba, Thaoa did not welcome ethnic minorities. They said that Paba was stupid for inviting potentially hostile outsiders into their nation, paying them just to live there, and even going so far as to put them in the army while the native Pabaps went around their lives unprotected. They admitted that Paba's strategy was more successful than that of Subumpam, because it seemed to keep Paba out of foreign wars, but THaoa believed it could hold all the advantages of Paba's military setup with none of the drawbacks.

However, there were some minorities in thaoa, because they did not kill all the aboriginals.

Repilians The aboriginals of most of Thaoa's territory. Some were killed, but since Thaoa had almost unlimited land, most were more gently pushed out to make room for Thaoa's platnations. The Thaoans found the Repilians difficult to enslave and mostly let them go.

Suxaŋ An ethnic group in the mountainous northern fringes of Thaoa that is disliked by all, even the oppressed Repilian peoples.

Pabaps Mostly slaves.

Andanese Few Andanese lived in Thaoa during its early stages. They entered when the governmenty collapsed in The Vegetable War.

Wars against Paba

Thaoa criticized Paba's 2000 year old obsession with the height gap between the native Pabap people and all of the much taller immigrants that the Pabap people were bringing in to live in Paba. THey said that Pabaps would not feel afraid of getting beat up in their own capital city if Paba's government wasn;'t continually bringing in potentially hostile foreigners. Thaoans were only slightyl taller than Pabaps , they said, and did not have a problem with being small because it was not a liability when they were the only ones around. Thaoa admitted that this meant that Paba's land army's soldiers were stronger than Thaoa's, even if both sides were well-armed, but said that Thaoa would still beat Paba in any serious war because they could feed more THaoans on the same amount of food than Paba could feed of its minority groups such as the very tall Tarpabaps.

Thaoa said that Paba had been the luckiest nation in the world, and it was on the best land in the world, and had the best possible location from which to grow a world superpower, but that they had failed because their people were so suicidally submissive that they found every possible way to hand their victories over to their enemies. Essentially all of the problems, they said, in Pabap society were due to its radical commitment to pacifism and refusal to protect their people against any of the dangers around them. Even Thaoa itself admitted guilt, as Thaoa had consumed the most Pabap slaves of any nation in the world. In later generations, an anti-slavery group of Thaoans came to regret the slave trade, but still blamed Paba for swinging the doors wide open and doing nothing to stop the pro-slavery Thaoans from filling their carts with crate after crate of screaming Pabap slaves.

When Paba launched a nationwide celebration in honor of Paba's having reached 1000 years without a major war, Thaoa reminded them that Thaoa had also gone 1000 years without a major war, and that the only minor wars either nation had fought were those where Thaoa had invaded Paba. In essence, they said, while both empires disliked war, Thaoa was superior because Thaoa had still fought a few wars when it felt like it, and Paba had only fought wars when their enemies felt like it.

All in all, though, Thaoa rearely declared war against Paba because they wanted to keep the slave trade flowing. In later history, many slave empires were so aggressive that they actually declared war on the nations from which they were buying slaves, saying that the victim nations were being unfair in demanding high prices for their people's labor and needed to compromise with the slavemasters who wanted them for free. Thaoa considered Paba a strong ally, even if not an equal, and never approached this level of selfishness.

But Paba did declare war on Thaoa several times. In all cases but one, the war erupted at a time when Thaoan slavemasters were being flagrantly abusive of their agreements with Paba, and were taking in far more illegal Pabap slaves than legal ones, meaning that young children were being abducted while walking home from school. Although Paba had a strong army and a strong police force, both were trained to react to conventional situations rather than a war of adults fighting toddlers. Nevertheless, Paba's wars were usually successful in releasing all of the child slaves because Thaoa did not want to shut off relations with the nation that its economy depended on, and therefore did not mobilize its entire army, and in fact often spent more time fighting Thaoans who did not want to give up their slaves than the Pabaps they were officially at war with.

The one war that Paba fought against Thaoa for reasons other than slavery came as such a shock that Thaoa was unable to react and did nothing at all as Pabap soldiers overran not only Thaoa, but most of the territories that Thaoa had conquered in previous wars. However, within a generation, Paba disowned the occupied territories and therefore they became once again foreign nations, even though their governments were now military instead of religious.

The Famine of 1823

In the year 1823, a severe famine struck Thaoa, Paba, Subumpam, and other nations to the west and east. Some Thaoan farmers, finding their plantations useless, took their Pabap slaves and either ate them or sold them in meat markets so they could afford to move to southern Paba in search of a more stable food supply. Thaoans who did not own slaves generally took a more peaceful route and moved into the still largely aboriginal nations of the Qoqendoq Peninsula, where the famine was just as severe but there were more fish available because the aboriginals did not have boats capable of making long sea journeys into the deeper offshore waters.

Settlements in the interior

The Thaoan peasantry had gone into panic when its farms were shut down, and replaced their traditionally vegetable-rich diet with a diet rich in the flesh of ethnic Pabaps. After the famine was over, Thaoa apologized to the Pabaps for eating them and asked Paba to send them more slaves so their plantations could return to normal productivity levels. Paba was happy to hear that they were still in business, as they had been worried over the last century that their favorite customer was breeding slaves so successfully in their home territory that they might soon no longer need to buy them.

Paba now charged very high prices for its people, and while Thaoa had often in the past simply paid their bills with food, it was not presently possible to do that. This meant that they mostly had to sell manufactured goods, including armor and weapons, which meant that Thaoa's traditionally strong army was now under-clothed and under-endowed. Thaoa promised to start exporting vegetables again soon, knowing that metal was not a renewable resource and that they did not have access in their own territory to mines where more metals could be found. They thus proposed expanding Thaoa northward into the mountains.

Disruption of peace

The "chaos of Nama" (Umunises, Loop, etc) was here. Mt. Cherry may have also been here. That is, Nama previously extended further east but was swamped. Nevertheless, the nameless "Eastern Mountain Tribes" such as Hala did survive.

Later history

Early Thaoan civilization was essentially like the other Gold civilizations to its west. Thaoa was the easternmost of them all. It also had, proportionally, the largest number of Andanese people living within its borders of all the Gold nations. Thaoa was not a democracy, so even when the Andanese became a majority they did not pose a threat to the central government, but the Thaoans did not want to allow Andanese people to serve in their military given that they had shown elsewhere they were much more loyal to Andanese living in other nations than they were to other people living in their home nation. So they had a military that excluded most of their population, which meant that the Andanese had the privilege of citizenship without (for males) the duty to defend the nation. To compensate, they eventually passed laws that established a system that, while not truly slavery, kept the Andanese in a low position in society. This soon had the effect of turning the Andanese into an openly hostile majority, rather than merely a subgroup less trustworthy than other Thaoans in a war.

Soon the Thaoan population began to divide politically into two sides: one side wanted to essentially give up, and let the Andanese take over the society, and become the first Andanese-majority power, even though they knew that they risked being killed by the newly powerful Andanese majority, who were already responsible for most of the violent crime in their society despite being legally denied the ability to own even basic weapons.

The other side favored a total war against the Andanese, saying that they would offer peaceful exile, but expected nearly none of the Andanese to accept this offer. They noted that Thaoa was already a military champion, and despite a rapidly growing population, was not suffering from famine in the way many other nations were because they were able to control their sea space many miles offshore and bring in fish to eat. They knew that other nations around them would almost certainly all side with the Andanese, both because they had Andanese people living in them and because Thaoa was already an enemy of many nations to its west, particularly those aligned with Nama, due to territorial disputes relating to the ongoing settlement of the deep interior.

The weak, pessimistic third side of the debate hoped that peace was still possible between the two tribes, and generally favored equal status for the Andanese, but believed that Andanese revenge against the Thaoans could only be prevented if an outside power intervened that was so strongly against both sides that the two enemies would have to make peace in order to survive. Thus they secretly hoped that Nama would invade Thaoa on the basis of being revenge for attacks against Repilians living nearby, even though they knew this would be the most bloody solution of all since it would be a world war instead of a local war. They also knew that even if it were to happen, Nama would probably side with the Andanese anyway because it would help them win the war and because the Andanese were not generally responsible for any intrusions into Nama, as they preferred to stick to the tropics. These people had no representation in government and were afraid to even publicly express their beliefs.

Modern civlization

That is, although the Saks strove to eliominate all minorities form the ir terrritory, and got a lot of them, they didnt settle depp inland so a lot of minorities still sruvive. The Bachon people, who today consider themlseves Poswobs, have some territory here and some in Pusaponm.

The Palli language is descended from Thaoa as well, and is spoken in the southernmost state in their empire.

Thaoa is a very warlike culture, unlike most humans on planet Teppala. "We have our teeth in the arm of the Poswob Empire" is their statement that they have unopposed settlements in Pusapom and are interested in taking over the entire gigantic Poswob empire, saying that they could beat a Poswob army 40 times their own size simply because Poswob soldiers are so supple and delicate, meeting the Sakhi army's spears and swords with only their soft hands and bodies.

However, for the most part, their conquests have been directed towards areas even further east then themselves, including back-migrations to Laba to conquer the territories from which humans were born. This is because it is much easier to conquer an island, or mainland territory enclosed by mountains, whose people have no escape, than to invade even the very soft and unsuspecting Poswob Empire which is separated from the Sakhis by the planet's tallest and most rugged mountain range.

Poswobs have even begun to settle in the northern areas of the Sakhi Empire, despite warnings from the inhabitants that Poswobs literally have no rights and can simply be killed at any time without the murderer needing to worry about punishment. (They generally do not have trouble crossing the mountains because they come slowly, with supplies, and along roads through mountain passes. Moreover, Poswobs often settle high mountain areas even where the climate is extremely cold.) They are there primarily to support peaceful trade between the two empires, but some Poswobs have visions of their empire not always being locked out of the east coast by the tiny but aggressive Thaoa settlements, and would like to overcome the barrier whether through peace (trade) or war. The Treay of Rumpamna establiushed this, and the settlers helped seal the treaty by exchanging their children with those of the other side, so that Thaoans raised Poswob children and vice versa. This is not the source of the claim that Thaoans have settlerments in Pusapom, however; those are a separate entrainment.

Not all Thaoa nations are warlike; essentially all of Thaoan territory was cut out from Nama, and many Naman cltural traits remain. The nation of Nupsynta has no military and follows a strict policy of refusing to retaliate against any attacks made on it. Private citizens are expected to defend themselves and their families. This is unlike the pacifism of Pusapom and Paba, which goes even further, and where in some areas people are forbidden even from owning weapons that could be used to defend themselvbes from animals,m so a wild animal will leave a path of blood behind it as it slashes its way through throngs of fleeing, helpless humans trying to escape.

Language

Phonology

The phonoklog similar to that of the lkanguage of North Tapakunya in the year 18343 BC. Vowels are /a e i o u y/ (y is schwa) and consos are /b p pʰ d t tʰ k kʰ q qʰ s š č x h ʔ j ž m n ŋ l/. There are many diphthongs, unusual for this continent and even this planet. There are no tones and all wqords are stressed on the first syllable. In many ways it is like Poswa with less labial consoannts, though actually this descrtiption would fit better on the Sakhi labngujage, a descendant of Thaoa, which has the same six vowels but no aspiration distinction and no uvulars, thus being much more like Poswa.

There were no uvulars in the parent language. Instead they were taken from Andanese, and from sequences that were not uvular but were still found only in loans from Andanese. E.g. /ʔh/ from a vowel accented with final /ʔ/ plus a sullable beginning in /h/. This could only happen in loans from Andanese, so all uvulars were from Andanese, whether directly or indirectly.

Hisory

The "chaos of Nama" (Umunises, Loop, etc) was here. Mt. Cherry may have also been here. That is, although the Saks strove to eliominate all minorities form the ir terrritory, and got a lot of them, they didnt settle depp inland so a lot of minorities still sruvive. The Bachon people, who today consider themlseves Poswobs, have some territory here and some in Pusaponm.

The Palli language is descended from Thaoa as well, and is spoken in the southernmost state in their empire.