Cosmopolitan Age

The Cosmopolitan Age on planet Teppala was a period of time characterized by poor living standards for human beings and a return to a subsistence based way o f life, and increased interaction with animals.

Its name derives from the fact that, although human civilization regressed severely, peace returned and Nama once again served as a diplomatic hub for all of the nations around them. Thus, Nama became cosmopolitan.

Background

In the centuries leading up to the Cosmopolitan Age, military and political power had been streamlined in Anchor Empire, which controlled more than half of the human-habitable land in the world, and nearly all of its major cities. When the Empire was torn apart by civil war around 4200 AD, there was no foreign power waiting on the sidelines to take over its role in world affairs. Instead, humans simply no longer had a major military power.

With the collapse of the Anchor Empire, human civilization and cooperation fell apart. The mountain tribes such as Gala, Ihhai, Litila, and others, reverted to tribal rule instead of cooperating with the lowland powers around them. This meant that the tropics was now cut off from the northern civilization in what had been Repilia.

The period immediately preceding the collapse had seen the center of power shift markedly northward. From the tropics to the NW corner of the continent, as the climate warmed. The climate was still warming, but it was now mostly during winter instead of summer. This meant that the climate was also becoming more habitable fo other animals, including predators of humans.

Political developments

See ppot for political parties that originated in the preceding era and overlapped into the Cosmopolitan Age.

Consider the growth of political parties based on guilds rather than traditional ethnic affiliation. These would still be considered tribes, or perhaps subgroupings of tribes, and this would include even occupations that were not hereditary. However, occupations became much more hereditary in the Cosmopolitan Age than they had been before.

Consider using cpot as a page for these, as it may grow out of control.

Political parties of Cosmopolitan Dreamland

The new Sepu Resinio party was formed in Susileme around 4150, slightly before the traditional boundary marking the beginning of the Cosmopolitan Age. Its ideology was very similar to the Baywatch party, but they made no claim to Baeba nor to the Baywatch home state of Popa, and thus could be considered a tribalistic party rather than an ideological one. The word sepu was a new coinage, and had not appeared in the names of political parties prior to this era.

The Yutibesse corporation, founded within and initially restricted to Baywatch territory, sometimes was considered a political party as well. It was closely modeled on STW.

The Dakaŋō party (DKG) represented Middlesex-speaking immigrants from the underclass of Baeba Swamp. They may or may not have considered themselves Crystals at the time of their migration into Dreamland, but they followed the developments around them in coming to see themselves as a tribal organization rather than a political one. Baeba Swamp's government declared the Crystal party defunct within two generations, as the Crystals had split into two groups: one that lost a war, and the other that surrendered to a group of Dreamers and then failed in their attempt to reestablish independence.

DKG may have connections with Moonshine's Habit party, as they shared the same word in their names (but that word is not the part that means habit).

Political parties of Cosmopolitan Moonshine

Over the course of 3,000 years, only seven new political parties formed in Moonshine. See pabappa.com/play/moon.php for details.

Guilds of Pusapom

Unlike areas to the west, the UPL held an effective monopoly on politics, and new parties were instead based on guilds.

Humans in the Cosmopolitan Age

Since human society fell apart early in this era, the resulting human societies had little in common. Nevertheless, they all shared some characteristics in common:

1. War was very uncommon, as humans had little to gain for their efforts.
2. Agriculture was mostly confined to the tropics, even though the climate of the north was warming.
3. Human population declined due to massive predation by wild animals. This was nothing new: it was just that the humans living in the areas where they were being eaten the fastest had been living in safe, walled-off cities when the food supply had been sufficient. Now almost all humans were rural and were easy prey for various animals, especially the firebird.
4. Humans began to participate in animals' wars whenever the animals' territory overlapped the humans'.
5. Technological progress was halted and in many areas went backward.

Humans were not at the top of the food chain. Indeed, they never had been, but as above, during the peaks of human civilization they had been able to hide out from predators in compact cities where even though the firebirds roaming the sky above would have no trouble finding a meal among the thousands of people in the city center, the humans were capable of fending off an attack when they were able to fight back as a team.

Humans generally avoided war, as they had little to gain from conquering a nearby territory and a lot to lose if they were unsucessful. The few wars they did participate in generally were not continuations of Anzan-era conflicts but new, ex nihilo conflicts resulting from happenstance environmental changes such as the flooding of the whole of the territory of a minor coastal tribe.

However, humans soon learned that they were not alone on their planet in their capactiy to fight wats. The dolphins of planet Teppala were unaffected by the collapse, and continued their slow but presistent war as if nothing had happened. THis war was against 2 major alliances of dolphins, oje living in coldf water and the other living in warm water. The dfolphin nations had strictly defined borders but no internal boundaries; all dolphins where werlcome anywhere n their own nation, but not in the other nation. There was no pacifistic neutral nation, but pacifists were also welcome in both nations.

The human societies that bordered water that was deep within the territory of each of the 2 folphin nations were unaffected by the war. But the boundary between the 2 was ever-shifting, and humans who were caught in between had to play very carefully as their boats could be bumped from blow by a dolphin if they were perceived to be allied with the wrong dolphins.

Interaction with firebirds

Firebirds were the chief prefdator of humans. The firebirds kept humans from settling muich of the western half of the continent, because this was where the firebirds were at their strongest and humans could not survive their attacks. Thus, many human settlements were located deep inland, in areas where it was difficult for humans to find food, because the firebirds could not tolerate the harsh climates of the interior. Firebirds nests were usually on islands.

However, some humans moved into the center of their predators' territory, and built settlements there, on the rationale that since the firebirds were prospering in those areas even without humans to prey on, they could probably work out an agreement with the firebirds which would allow humans to live there without having to wrry about being snatched up from their beds in the middle of the night and dropped into a nest to be torn apart by baby firebirds.

languages

Poswa only began to spread after 5547 A.D., meaning that non-Poswa names predominate for placenames. Khulls fractured rely on into over 100 daughters,but classical khulls was still known by many.

Developments in Baeba Swamp

Some said that Baeba Swamp had more diversity within its borders than existed in the rest of the world. This is an exaggeration, but there were armies that had marched thousands of miles to get into the war in the hopes of becoming part of the coalition that ruled the world's only surviving city.

Irons

The Iron coalition ruled Baeba Swamp and claimed to be a continuation of Nama. They spoke Leaper, which they had borrowed from Nama.

Ghosts

Also spoke Leaper, and claimed the right to rule, but had only a toehold in Baeba Swamp.

Crystal underclass

The Crystal underclass continued to speak Middlesex.

Lenian aboriginals

There was probably a Lenian underclass (PDP) concentrated in the west; these were historically pro-Dreamland, and thus enemies of Baeba Swamp's very existence, but it may be that those who remained submitted to Baeba and came to live peacefully. The PDP speakers considered themselves true pacifists who would be equally at home among enemies as among friends, and therefore many stayed when they were conquered by the Crystals.

Tinks

Descendants of the Tinks lived in the highlands, speaking Play and avoiding contact with the other groups as much as possible. Though surrounded on all sides by taller tribes, they may have slowly abandoned the mountains as knowledge spread of the survival of #Creamland far to the southeast.

Other Lenians

Some other Lenians would have been brought into the Swamp as slaves by various other armies. These may have been lumped in with the Crystals, since the Crystals were also enslaved, and since the slaveowners ignroed the old tradition of building racial divisions among slaves to keep them from uniting.

Publicly, the Baeban government considered the Dreamers impotent, and declared that the primary adversary of Baeba Swamp was the growing Ghost Empire to their east. In fact, though, Baeba kept its border with Dreamland heavily fortified while allowing Ghosts to come and go as they pleased, figuring that while the Ghosts were winning battles against even weaker enemies to their east, they had not yet dared to attack Baeba, and likely would not do so for a very long time.

Emerging powers east of Baeba Swamp

The Ghosts of Comfort

The collapse of Anzan led to the reappearance of many weak, regional powers, whose territories were often defined by natural boundaries such as rivers and mountains. The Ghosts of Comfort were one exception to this pattern. The Ghosts were descendants of the Raspara who had ruled and abused their rivals for just a short time before their defeat a war in which they and their victims had been forced onto the same side. The Raspara had retreated to the wilderness, promising themselves that they would someday rise again. Now, with a new name, they had reappeared, and developed a new party platform.

Politics

Unlike the Raspara, the Ghosts accepted one achievement that had been invented by the weak, gullible Swamp Kids: democracy. Unlike the Swamp Kids, however, the Ghosts supported only a one-party democracy, with them in control. Furthermore, the people would not be allowed to vote against any Ghosts currently in power without that person's permission. Thus, the only power the voters had in the Ghosts' democracy was to choose between one Ghost and another, running for the same office, and only when both Ghost candidates agreed to obey the voters' decision.

Under the Ghost democracy, the president had the power to remove from power any other sitting official in the government, and thus had the same powers as the kings of rival empires. However they did not call their president a king because he was considered to be an elected official. Furthermore the president was open to removal by the people, though as above, only when he himself gave permission and volunteered to run in election (called "confirmation" by the Ghosts).

The Ghosts were descended from the Raspara, who were descended from the Thunderers and various allies of the Thunderers. They revived the name Cold Men for their party, and stated that although they had enemies both to the north and to the south, their enemies to the south were eternal, whereas they planned to form an alliance with the northern peoples such as the Moonshines and various aboriginal peoples when they could be convinced to submit.

Language

The Ghosts spoke Khulls, and were largely responsible for the stability of the Khulls language in their territory, whereas in other areas of the continent it had quickly divided into dozens of tribal languages. This was the language of their historical enemies, the Crystals, but in the decades leading up to the Collapse, war had become so intense that all old blood feuds had been settled and the war ended with the Crystals and the Raspara fighting on the same side.

Territory of the Ghosts

The Ghosts took power in the lands in which the Raspara had been best preserved; these lands were far to the west of their original homeland, and in fact consisted mostly of historically Crystal territory rather than historically Thunder territory. Here, even in the high latitudes, the winters were mild because of the proximity to the west coast, and summers were also warmer because of the low relative humidity of the onshore winds.

The Ghosts also achieved power in rural areas of what had been Thunder territory, but were blocked by the "Rempe" River (note: this is far to the east of the Hamster River). These areas had little carrying capacity for human civilization because its rivers were very far from each other, and the climate was fairly dry. Nevertheless, existing cities such as Lypelpyp survived the transition to Ghost rule relatively intact.

A small number of Ghosts settled in the extreme north, in states like Tòd'řóm, which ranged from 48N to 57N and was on the west coast. Its location gave it snowy winters, though with milder temperatures than areas further east in Xema at the same latitude. But it still got cold: temperatures below —40F occurred on the west coast and —50F occurred on the east coast.

Relations with other parties

As the Ghosts consolidated their territory, they realized they were surrounded by pacifists in all directions. To the north, they bordered the Moonshines, a strongly feministic people who had historically begun its wars by sending humanitarian aid workers into the enemies' territory in order to better the living situation of the invaders and convince them to call off the war. To the east and south, they bordered the young but growing Poswob empire, famous for sending women in short skirts to the front lines of battle, armed with gifts for the invading soldiers in the hopes that they could convince them to settle down in Poswob territory and marry the local women. To the west were the Sĕyepa Crystals, less pacifistic than the other two groups but still tolerant of the Ghosts' invasion of their territory.

Thus the Ghosts planned to do what the Raspara had done during their heyday: exploit the naive hospitality of the pacifists all around them to build parasitic colonies in the pacifists' nations, which would produce little or nothing of economic value, but be heavily armed in order to extract tributes from the pacifists and, in the end, crush the pacifists in an all-out war.

Northwest Coast

The Play party conquered Tata and overwhelmed the local population. They themselves were pushed into slavery within two generations, but this time the conquering force (the Matrix) was tiny and did not replace the local population. Therefore, Cosmopolitan Play languages outlasted the Matrix occupation and slowly divided into daughter languages as their territory became less important in world affairs.

It is likely that the high birthrate of the Play population would carry over for hundreds of years, even in their new territory where child labor was less important to farming, and therefore the Players would become the majority even in areas that they had not initially intended to settle. Indeed it is possible that the descendants of the Players eventually reach Lypelpyp and continue to experience population pressure for more than 4,000 years, leading to the steady stream of immigrants from Lypelpyp to Blop as late as the 8700s. Nonetheless, the Play birthrate at its peak was unsustainable in peacetime and therefore must decline.

Note that Crystals#Other_areas proves that there were speakers of Oyster languages who were not Thunderers and thus may have outlasted the Anchor Empire.

Note that the Cupbearers are the parent party of most of the Play-speaking families in this area, and that it is possible that the Players' high birth rate did not carry over after all, as it was partly dependent on their practice of tying food aid to family size, which they would not have been able to do without a strong one-party state. Creamland was a major source of population for the Poswob Empire, and at least until 5547 AD, was the primary source. It may be that the Play speakers in the Tata region did not grow enough to trigger significant emigration until some time much after this year.

Emerging powers in the tropics

These areas are ordered from east to west.

Tadpoles (Subumpam)

This area is likely to become part of Creamland early on and exchange populations with the rest of Creamland.

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Tadpoles (Lobexon)

From 23N to 27N there was a territory of Tadpoles who considered themselves part of Paba.

It is not clear how the Tadpoles came to speak Play. It may be simply that all areas that were conquered by the Merari tribes around 2668 AD came to have Pabap majorities by 4100 AD, as the slow but steady population increase caused by Paba's farming culture would have overwhelmed any other populations present in their areas. This does not fully explain the situation, as one would expect the Tadpoles' language to have diverged from Play shortly after 2668 AD, but it may also be that population exchanges kept the various Pabap areas linguistically coherent.

There may have been minorities of #Pabahais and #Oyster speakers in this area, which by 4108 were incorporated into the Tadpole population and thus came to identify with the other Tadpoles, but since AlphaLeap's reign over this area was short, they may have survived the occupation with their linguistic heritage intact and could have broken apart from the Play speakers, causing the name Tadpole to be associated only with the Play speakers.

The isolation of the area will cause the people to think of themselves as a standalone culture and not be part of Paba, Amade, or any other area. In the far future, it becomes part of Nama, but the cultural exchanges that made this possible were not present in the early centuries of the Cosmopolitan Age.

Note that there may have been Pabahais migration to this area, even during Merari administration, but that any such migrations were perceived as being outside the reach of Paba.

There was a small holdout of Leapers, who had become pro-Tadpole and then fled into this region after AlphaLeap had lost control of it. These people may or may not have tried to move somewhere else after the war died down.

There may have also been holdouts from a Fern minority in Paba, who had moved to Paba and then later to Lobexon (rather than directly from Fernland to Lobexon). The double move would have likely caused the people to blend together and speak only one Fern language instead of many. They would be unwilling to submit to Pabahais because Pabahais drove them out of Fernland 1500 years earlier.

Former Leaper territory

This area may not exist as a state, as all that was left of the Leaper colony was deserts. Nevertheless, at least three tribes lived in the area, each with their own identity. The natives were descendants of the Leapers' Lenian slaves, and historically had called themselves Dətiās (in Gold, not Leaper). There were also descendants of the Thunderers and of the Crystals. The Dətiās people were the upper class, above the Thunderers, with the Crystals as the lowest class. The land could not have supported large populations, however, and most food would be taken from the sea, meaning that the party who controlled the coast would control the other parties. This can only have been the Dətiās people; on the other hand, the Dətiās may have gradually fled the region to live in more bountiful climates.

It is possible that Paleo-Pabappa survives here, from assorted migrations of Pabaps who had not switched to speaking Gold.

Taryte

See Taryte#Taryte_in_the_Cosmopolitan_Age.

Amade

The Firestone army drove out all of the peoples who had lived in this area, even the Crystals, whom they had originally been enslaving. Thus the territory was entirely Play-speaking. Any surviving languages would have dispersed into surrounding areas, mostly towards the east.

Area between Amade and Atlam

This territory did not survive as a distinct political entity.

Atlam

This area was probably part of Kxesh for more than 2,000 years before the dawn of the Cosmopolitan Age, but as governments broke down, its tribes may have asserted independence both from Kxesh and from each other.

Pabahais

Likely independent and little changed since 2100 AD, although more groups may have arrived.

Western Tip

Likely independent and little changed since 2600 AD.

Cosmopolitan Cream culture

The early Creamers (and possibly the founders) were racially exclusionary, allowing only Lenian people to join their movement. Thus, they were united by their tribe and not by their political ideology. This was also true of most enemy parties within their territory, and it could be said that Creamland never embraced true political debate and simply remained tribalistic as it had been for thousands of years. Even so, their relations with the outside world depended on all of the tribes working together in their common interests.

Indeed, Creamland's government was remarkably stable despite the violence raging within its borders, and Creamland was one of only three powers which could believably claim to have survived the great war that introduced the Cosmopolitan Age. The situation may have been similar in Tarwas, which had long been a centralized state led by a single tribe but with many smaller tribes living within and throughout it.

The Play party at its peak had tied food distribution to childbirth, such that all childless women and all men were entirely cut off from the food supply, and had to find their own food. The Play empire collapsed quickly, but they were merely building on a long-established cultural tradition in their area, in which children worked farm labor instead of attending school, and the most powerful women were those who had large families. As living standards declined, it became more difficult for women to have such large families as they had had during the Play era and the centuries leading up to it, but the government remained in place, and could have even continued to deny access to food to childless couples and to single men.

Politically, the Creamers were isolationists, refusing to help their ideological partner, Dreamland, against the more powerful armies in Baeba Swamp. Neither did Dreamland participate in the politics of Creamland.

Creamland remained a child-focused culture as the birthrate declined. Many cities were likely already built in the Creamer style, in which houses for families were built facing each other, and had a nursery in the center where small children could play. School was not important; children split their time between the playgrounds and the farms. Nevertheless, the people were well-fed because men were no longer required to serve in the military, and children were no longer forced into jobs they were physically incapable of.

The Andanese people did not survive as a cohesive social group anywhere inside Creamer territory. Thus, the Andanese languages died out, with Late Andanese surviving as a ceremonial language, and the Cream languages likely took in fewer Andanese loans than some other branches. Note, though, that the Andanese people living eastward of Paba fared better than those living within Paba, who had been directly in the line of attack many times over with no allies at their side. They would still have been mostly trapped inland, as the Andanese people were so small they had difficulty rowing boats, and their society suffered any time food production shifted to the sea.

Final Stages of the War (4151 — 4268 AD)

After the Tinks invaded Paba in 4151, Paba's Players formed the new nation of Creamland. By this time, the population of Creamland had grown to about 1.2 million people, and again, about 75% of these were children under the age of 13.

Memnumu (4268 — 4767 AD)

After the declaration of world peace, the Player government remained effectively a one-party state, with other parties permitted to exist and hold elections but locked out of power by the vast Player majority, and only allowed to hold votes on issues affecting their own members.

NOTE: Canonically, the Crystals invaded Creamland around 4208; see Šima, Pusapom#Slavery, and Poswob_Ethnographical_Questionnaire.

This cannot be squared with the fact that the Play party was still in control of Creamland sixty years later, and still invading Nama. Furthermore, the Crystals had disbanded by this time, although only inasmuch as their leaders surrendered control to a larger party; it is possible that within the tropics, Crystals who had lost their legal identity nonetheless continued to think of themselves as Crystals.

Political platforms

The Players maintained the laws nationalizing the ownership of property and the distribution of food, and tying food and housing distribution to family size. Therefore the birthrate remained extremely high as couples married very young in order to acquire new homes, and raised many children in order to keep both themselves and their children well fed.

New factions of the Play party arose when the newer generations began attending school and reading literature written by outside entities such as Moonshine. It is possible that the above-mentioned Crystal "invasion" was in fact mutually agreed upon, and that although the Crystal tribes were indeed given legally sanctioned superior status, the Players benefited from their protection and considered them natural leaders, resigning themselves to work in food production and perhaps returning to a submissive, pacifist lifestyle as their new Crystal leaders dissociated themselves from their ancestors in the tropics.

Pro-Moonshine faction

The Crystals who entered Player territory came uninvited, but may have won the favor of the natives without a violent struggle. Many Players had become favorable towards the arctic empire of Moonshine, and although the Crystals were not of the Moonshine faction, their lifestyles were similar.

On the assumption that the pro-Moonshine faction of the Player party enrolls most of the all-female police force, it may simply be called the Police (SGN). This name could persist even if it becomes a formal political party. A native Play name such as Šeŋumu Ŋenavu, meaning "family protection (trail)", could thus be the name of the police force. The Police may even have referred to their nation as Mem Šeŋumu, an altered form of the Players' earlier name, Memnumu.

Conservative faction

The conservative Players were pushed out of power by the Moonshine-allied faction, even if they remained a majority. The new government structure was no longer a true democracy. The losing party's name may have remained as Play, or it may have taken on a new name to indicate its new status as the weaker of the two main entities. A possible new name would be the Magic Combs (Ŋani Taumnui), based on their refusal to comb their hair. That is, they did not comb their hair because they claimed their hair was already in the state it needed to be, and thus had combed itself.

Representation

Though the Police led what they called a democracy, votes were weighted according to party membership, and parties with amplified representation were closed to new members. For example, votes from the Police counted about five times as much as votes from the Players (Combs), meaning that even though the Players were the majority, the Police could outvote them easily unless an issue arose on which the Police were split nearly evenly. (This is why they did not simply deny the weaker parties the right to vote entirely.) Many small parties were assigned even less weight than the Players, and the Players considered themselves a middle class rather than an underclass.

Population growth and fertility

The Police and Players cooperated on some issues. Both supported the right of children to attend school, and to be free from financial obligations to their parents; they also supported the right of children to run away from home and to stay in government-subsidized foster homes provided that they continue to attend school and obey the adults running the foster homes. Both asserted that children had the right to play, and could not be made to work alongside adults, though they also both agreed that children should be made to work farm labor and to help catch fish, which they no longer considered work. Thus, despite maintaining Play as the name of their party, they now endorsed some activities that the original Players had considered child labor. They did this upon learning that this had been the historical way of life in their territory and that child labor of this sort may have been responsible for the era of economic prosperity that preceded their invasion by AlphaLeap alongside other foreign powers.

On any issue where the Players and Police agreed, their combined votes totalled nearly 100% of the population, and such policies were unstoppable.

Gikani Era (4767 — 5547 AD)

In 4767, the para-Crystal overseers announced a new era of increased pain for their Player slaves. Thus began the Ŋikani era.

Territory

In theory, Creamland's territory could expand to take over the entire area that was reserved for Thaoa before Thaoa was defeated. However, it is possible that another power takes over here; remember "Gold people even settled Laba now" and that this territory would be considered as remote as Laba was.

Other areas

See history for details.