Thunder Empire

The Thunder Empire was run by the Thunder party, and often called Altotta. Thunderers were a political party, not an ethnic group; however, for its entire existence the Thunder party was run and populated mostly by people of the Kava tribes, which were descended from a mix between Pabaps and Subumpamese.

Thunder Empire I: The Tendril Era

The Thunderers originated as an army from within the nation of Kava, which had been settled by a rebellious tribe of Pabaps named Hinku who rejected the pacifism of their homeland. They claimed Paba could have easily conquered the entire planet, but chose instead to do nothing as literally all of the nations bordering them, and some quite distant nations, sent their people to trespass all over Paba and abduct the Pabap people as slaves. They claimed that Paba's survival was not due to its large, obedient navy but due to the fact that none of their neighbors wanted to let the world's most submissive slaves become the exclusive property of just one nation, and formed "alliances" with Paba solely to ensure that they could forever continue to exploit and abuse Paba.

Thus the Thunderers openly hated pacifists and felt no shame when in 2371 they invaded the very core of Nama to set up their new nation. Nama was not officially pacifist, but that was only because its imperial government was so liberal that it allowed its subject nations to go their own way on nearly every issue, and Nama rarely fought wars because there were few wars that all of its subject nations, or even a majority of them, could all find common interest in. Moreover, Nama had a very small coastline for such a large empire, and this seacoast happened to be cut off from the rest of Nama by the world's tallest mountain range. Thus, although Nama's south coast was strongly defended navally, any invading army who managed to slip past that barrier would face almost no resistance from Nama's land army unless they wished to push beyond even the mountains into the rolling plains to the north.

The Hinku invaders had an advantage because they were Pabaps, and most trading ships visiting Nama at this time were Pabap ships. Thus, the Hinku army actually originated as naval pirates who took Pabap trading shapes and then headed for Nama claiming to be the traders they had killed. Even though they knew that Paba would be horrified when the news broke, and would likely be punished severely by Nama, the Hinku pirates had sworn off all allegiance to Paba, and indeed, all allegiance to anyone but each other.

They pushed their way through the Naman navy entirely unopposed, and immediately began a land invasion of Kava. Unlike many Naman nations, Kava had only one major race of people, which meant that there were no internal divisions to exploit in order to weaken them. But the Hinku nonetheless easily conquered the entire nation of Kava with just the small army they had brought over on board their fake trading ships. Although the Hinku found the native Kavan women attractive, they were forbidden to marry them, and so at first the population of Kava grew slowly. (They did not generally kill aboriginals, seeing them as even weaker than the Pabaps back home and therefore not a serious threat.) Kava was very poor, since they had brought none of the wealth of Paba with them. They were nudists even during winter except for a few who had settled in the small area of Kava that was mountainous, and even these people only wore skirts and crop-tops, often taken from native women. The Hinku renamed themselves Kavans and presented themselves as a new nation.

Nama was so weak by this time that they never even mounted a counterattack on Kava; they only offered to resettle the Repilian aboriginals in poorer areas of upland Nama. Kava was not surprised; Nama had also done nothing when the FILTER army carved out an even larger Naman state, Nèye, in 2246. Nor did Nama punish Paba, as Paba had quickly denounced the war and promised that Kava would never become an ally of Paba even if they repented and became pacifists in the future.

Although Kava and FILTER shared the same handicap of having secure borders on land but no navy, both were primarily interested in settling the interior of the continent, even if it meant eventually losing their coastline in a war similar to the "war" they had fought against the defenseless Repilian aboriginals to get in.

Thunder Empire II: The Lantern Empire

See Lantern Empire

The 2nd Era was the Lantern government, a cooperative empire between the Crystals, who were based in Baeba Swamp, and the Thunderers with neither side having a monopoly on power. Many people moved in both directions during this period, but there were no true cooperative nations; every nation within the combined Lantern Empire was either a Crystal nation or a Thunder nation, whatever the makeup of its people. All of the Crystal nations were contiguous with each other and were mostly in the south and west. All of the Thunder nations were contiguous with each other as well and were in the north and east.

The Lantern Empire lasted from 3565 to 3785. The Crystals and Thunderers had been allies for a long time before that. Both were carving out territory from Nama, and had agreed to respect each other's conquests. However, for over a thousand years, they grew independently and did not seriously consider formally unifying their territories into a single umbrella government because each side wanted to remain distinct, and was afraid of being dominated by the other. The Crystals wanted the capital to be Baeba Swamp, as it was already their own imperial capital, and the Thunderers wanted it to be Blop, even though Blop was not their imperial capital.

For most of their history, the Thunder Empire had been stronger and richer than the Crystal Empire, but as the centuries passed, the Crystal Empire grew richer because it was warmer and had access to the sea whereas, despite ongoing global warming, the Thunder Empire was still very cold and its only sea access was walled in by ice most of the year. Thus the Thunderers could only use the sea to reach other parts of their own empire. The Thunderers were wary of every political idea championed by the Crystals, figuring they were growing tired of being considered the weaker partner in the alliance when it was clear that they were the only partner that was still growing.

In the end, as a compromise, the capital of the combined Lantern Empire was placed in the Crystal city of Lăxʷisi, and many Thunderers moved into Lăxwisi to ensure that it would not be simply a fully controlled suburb of Baeba Swamp. But even so, the power structure of Laxwisi remained mostly Crystals.

Late in the Lantern Era, a people of mixed Laban and "Thunder" descent invaded the Crystal part of the Empire and carved out a new empire of their own which they called Dreamland. The Thunderers did not fight back against the invaders, and the thankful invaders agreed to take their land only from the Crystals.

Third Era

During the THird Thunder govt, they were conquered by the Crystals of Baeba Swamp. This govt lasted about 80 years.

Fourth Era

They declared independence from the Crystals in 3844, but it was because another foreign empire, Dreamland, had invaded and pushed out the Crystals. The much more numerous Thunderers actually contributed little to the war because their military had been almost destroyed during the Crystal govt.

Fifth Era

The Dreamers were overthrown in 3884, after exactly 40 years. The new govt was the first to use the name Thunder since the pre-Crystal govt of t=he early 3700s. The THunderes were very racist and nationalist, saying they had been dominated by outsiders for 120 yrs and had been the bottommost class in their own nation during that whole time. Tehy enslaved almost all Crystals, and put all Dreamers in a type of slavery that was far more brutal than the slavery enforced on the Crystals. STW arose during this era.

However, in 3919, the govt was overthrown yet again, and replaced with a milder version of THunderism. They repudiated racism, freed all of the Crystals, but kept the Dreamer slavery going because they considered the Dreamers a threat and the Crystals to merely be rivals.