Raspara

The Raspara were a political party formed in the Four Quarters Empire while it was being occupied by AlphaLEAP. They were one of several political parties calling themselves the Cold Men, and thus used the untranslated name "Raspara" to clarify the distinction.

Language

As again, the Raspara were a political party, anyone was welcome to join. But their origins were a Khulls-speaking tribe of people living near Tŏli, who were descended from the Thunderers who lived a few centuries earlier in the same area. Many Raspara also learned Pabappa, which was their ancestral language and also the primary language of the Swamp Kids upon whom the Raspara preyed.

Philosophy

The Raspara believed their destiny in life was to abuse other people. They selected the Swamp Kids, a gullible population who had just emerged from the world's most repressive authoritarian regime, as their new hosts and penetrated their nation at its weakest points.

History in Anzan

The Raspara did not have formal legal authority in the Swamp Kids' nation, called Anzan, but they stood on the toes of the Swampy leaders and often assassinated Swampies who did not obey their orders. The Raspara claimed that they were destined to rule over the Swampies because they were physically superior; Raspara men were much taller and had more masculine body types than Swampy men, who seemed little different than their women. Although Raspara were indeed taller and of a more masculine body type than the Swampies they ruled over, they kept secret the fact that it was their abusive political philosophy which was mostly responsible for keeping them in power. They knew that if the Swamp Kids learned the truth, they could be overthrown, but so long as the Swamp Kids believed that the Raspara's success was related to their physical body type, the Swamp Kids would believe the Raspara were destined to rule.

The Raspara often fought against the Zenith, another abusive minority population in Anzan who had been living there for thousands of years. The Raspara refused to ally themselves with the Zenith, considering them an eternal enemy, and some Raspara even portrayed themselves as heroes for enslaving the Swamp Kids because their slavery was not as harmful to the Swamp Kids as the prostitution and erratic violent crime that the Zeniths inflicted on them. The Zeniths were also much taller than the Swamp Kids, but lacked the organized conspiratorial power structure of the Raspara and despite living among the Swamp Kids and their ancestors for thousands of years had never achieved political power.

The Raspara's main weakness was that their power was tied to the continued existence of the Swamp Kids. Even though they abused the Swamp Kids, they had to allow the Swamp Kids to maintain an independent military so that their many other enemies would not eat them up and throw the abusive Raspara out of power. After forty years of abuse, the Swamp Kids began a quest to escape their nation and settle in Baeba Swamp, which was much smaller than Anzan but offered the Swamp Kids a safer place to hide from their abusers. When the Raspara heard this, they blocked the paths out of major population centers and massacred the Swampy army battalions that had intended to provide the citizens a safe path out of Anzan. Nevertheless, those Swamp Kids who did manage to escape through other routes indeed founded a new settlement in Baeba Swamp, and the remnant population of Swampies in Anzan no longer had a powerful military. This left the Raspara with no protectors, and they were forced to disperse into the wilderness and abandon their abusive lifestyle.

When the Raspara reemerged a few years later, they were also in Baeba Swamp, attempting to impose another abusive slave system on the Swampies that had run away from them back in Anzan. However, the Raspara were much weaker now, and were forced to dilute their power by allying with other groups that were unrelated to any political organizations that had existed in Anzan. Within a few decades, the Raspara and the Swamp Kids they had abused died by the same sword when the new leadership of Baeba Swamp was handed over to yet another outside army, Asala, which had recently immigrated from Nama.

Post-Baeban history

The Raspara who had not made it to Baeba simply lived in the wilderness, passing down their philosophy to their children, but never again regaining power. In the end the descendants of the Raspara were swallowed up by the surrounding peoples, and were not part of an organized state for more than a thousand years afterward, when they were conquered by the Crystals.