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.

Early Crystal Empire (Nèye)

THe Crystals had originated from the slave plantations of Lobexon. Technically, they had arisen before Lobexon was enslaved, but even most Crystals did not realize this, as they did not form a strong identity until the oppression began. They were a political party with their own religion, and for most of their history had been a tiny repressed minority in every nation they lived in. Nevertheless, they had spread out quickly and were present in a lot of nations even as early as 2175. They realized that they had enough people to form a safe, solid nation if they could only call in all of the Crystals living dispersed throughout the tropics, including the slaves, to come together as one.

Their early attempts at this were not fruitful, however. The naive Crystals living on Sulasali Island moved as one to Paba in order to take advantage of Paba's very generous welfare benefits. They had heard that Paba's government paid ethnic minorities a welfare stipend that was greater than what the Pabap lower class made in a full time job. Although even the Crystals realized that they would not simply be given money simply by beaching on the shores, they figured that Paba was a place where they would be welcome and knew that they could get at least some money from the government because they couldn't speak Pabappa and thus couldn't work in most jobs.

However, they quickly exhausted the patience of even the notoriously tolerant Pabaps. Crystals refused to send their children to school, and most refused to learn Pabappa, which meant that they were unemployable and their quickly growing population drew a quickly growing share of Paba's welfare benefits. Moreover, Crystals used their free time to harass Pabaps in city streets, and those few who did speak Pabappa still did not have jobs but instead went around trying to convert Pabaps to the Crystal religion.

To solve the problem, Paba made thbe Crystal religion illegal and cut off their welfare benefits. Paba was unwilling to use force against the Crystals, both because they honestly believed in pacifism and because the Crystals had used their free time gained by not working to build themselves dangerous weapons. In fact, the Crystals had privately made an agreement to settle only in Pabap cities in which the Crystal minority was armed well enough to kill the entire population of that city. They drew murals on stone walls in the cities depicting helpless Pabaps being boiled and eaten alive by Crystal armies, saying that each mural would be the site of an actual massacre in the near future in the Pabaps did not give them a nation of their own inside Pabap territory. But now Paba had defeated them, since the Crystals realized that they could only survive by hunting animals in the wilderness, but they had settled in areas where this was difficult. Some Crystals walked all the way to northern Paba, figuring life would be better among the poorer and weaker Pabaps of the mountains, but most decided to leave Paba for Subumpam.

Subumpam turned out to be even more explotable than Paba. Although Subumpam was not a pacifist empire, its people were poorly armed and its army was smaller than would be expected for an empire its size. This is because it was overseen by Nama and Nama didnt want a rebellion. Subumpam did not even have a navy; its coastline was patrolled jointly by Nama and Paba. Nevertheless, the Crystals were soon captured into slavery in Subumpam, with the exception of those who were FILTER members. FILTER had earlier agreed to merge with the Crystals inside Subumpam only, while maintaining separate identities in other nations. Thus only about half of the Crystals were enslaved. The FILTER Crystals had escaped because they were visually indistinguishable from the mainline Subumpamese and mostly spoke Subumpamese. Although the FILTER Crystals did not attempt to rescue the enslaved Crystals, they did communicate with the Crystal establishment in Nama that they knew what had happened and predicted that Subumpam's slave camps were mild enough that few, if any, Crystals would die. Then FILTER declared war on Nama.

FILTER marched on foot all the way across Subumpam and then conquered the Naman nation of Nèye. They killed every man, raped every woman, and enslaved every child they found. THis was a far more brutal war than any that had occurred in recent history, and it was one of the fastest victories ever achieved. Nama had no reaction to the war other than to close down FILTER's representation in Nama's government. FILTER retained total control of Nèye for itself but invited Crystals from all around the world to live in Nèye, thus providing the Crystals their first true nation in which they were welcome. However, FILTER had reasserted itself as an independent organization now, saying that although they were allies of the Crystals they had not themselves become Crystals. The merging of the two parties while inside Subumpam was a deliberate attempt to make the most of a very desperate situation as they were both very violent but very small, and did not want to waste each other away to nothing when they had a golden opportunity to make a new nation in front of them. Notably, however, most FILTER members at least inside Nèye had retained elements of the Crystal religion and incorporated them into a new branch of their own religion, Sisnasi. The Crystals moving into Nèye accepted this, as they had decided that they would no longer fight any religious wars except against atheists.

Growth

Nama saw Kava and Nèye as being like two sharp teeth biting into the soft, defenseless flesh of the Naman heartland. The southern extent of Nama's territory resembled two human legs spread out, and in this analogy, Kava and Nèye had both taken big bites out of her left thigh. From here they both wanted to grow northward, and Nama hoped that as the two armies won battle after battle they would turn on each other and burn themselves out before they got too high up in the body. Previously, the spread-legs analogy had been the subject only of indecent jokes, but now the Kavan and Nèyean military commanders took it to heart and began drawing up maps of their proposed colonization routes with each nation in the Naman empire given the name of the corresponding female body part. The anology hinting at cannibalism and rape generally did not bother the mostly female military leaders of Nèye, as they had proven very recently that they had no problem with real rape, even mass rape, so long as it was their own men doing it and their enemies' women receiving it. Moreover the sight of the many male Kavan military commanders wearing white miniskirts and white crop tops while drawing invasion plans for the world's largest empire meant FILTER women were too busy suppressing laughter to be offended by anything they said. They accepted the name "Teeth" for their armies and declared themselves The Tooth Alliance shortly after 2371. In this alliance, Kava promised FILTER could have open access to Kava's territory and FILTER promised they would use it to help the male population of Kava develop a better sense of fashion.

As above, Nama was not a pacifist empire, but it was extremely poorly defended, particularly in the north, where the various nations of Repilian aboriginals had been left to self-government for thousands of years. Many Repilian tribes really were pacifists, and were totally unprepared for the arrival of well-armed invaders from the south. At first, Nama's land army was totally impotent and could at best only chase the invaders northwards as they went, even though these invasions took years to move just a few miles north. The invasions were slow because both Tooth armies saw that their enemies were essentially defenseless, and could be coerced into building forts and weapons for the invaders instead of simply being slaughtered on sight. The Naman search teams were slow because Nama's infrsastructure was so poorly developed in the north that the only way Nama learned an attack had taken place was when a trade supply route suddenly failed. Nama was afraid to send its best soldiers against the Teeth, knowing that the Tooth soldiers were armed to the teeth and would win, man for man, even over Nama's best. Moreover, both Tooth armies had whole families of civilians just behind the front lines, as again, they figured their enemies were so pathetic that they couldnt even conceive of a sneak attack behind enemy lines. FILTER additionally tended to have both male and female soldiers in its army, with women generally in control at the highest levels of command.

Soon, Nama did develop a northern front, and stationed a large land army there, but this meant that their military power in the south had decreased even further. The soldiers in the northern army knew that they were never going to be let home, because both Kava and FILTER favored very slow warfare in which whole families would move in and take over the territory one village at a time. FILTER was particularly good at this, and they managed to do it while still maintaining a very high birthrate, which meant their population was growing very quickly. Kava's growth was slower, but still substantial.

Nama's land army was now spread across 2661 miles of territory, from Nama's west coast to its east coast. (Note that these "coasts" were both entirely icebound, and thus could not host a navy. This is why Nama speaks of itself as having only a small amount of coastline, in its extreme south.) The number of soldiers stationed on each mile of the front was so small that even Nama realized their attempt to stop the invasion would likely be useless, as either of the Tooth armies could simply burst through the paper-thin Naman army and find that the Repilians living to the north of the border were even weaker than those in the south because they had been told they were being protected.

The two original nations of the Tooth Alliance, Kava and Nèye, had been very small. Kava was smaller and was slightly west of Nèye, but soon the two nations came to share a border and Kava actually became slightly larger. However, due to their alliance with the Crystals, FILTER also began to sprout up nations to the west of Kava. Thus there were no longer only two Teeth in the Tooth alliance.

The Crystals enter the coalition

The Teeth realized a potential future problem with the entry of the Crystals into the alliance. Previously, FILTER and Kava had agreed to grow quickly but separately, forming no mixed nations and respecting new borders drawn up by the other Tooth when the other Tooth got to a new settlement first. But the Crystals were so different from both groups racially, religiously, and culturally that all three Teeth worried that the differences between Kava and FILTER would blur and fade away, or that FILTER, seeing itself as naturally belonging to the Crystals, would unite with the Crystals and suffocate Kava between them as they focused on reuniting with each other rather than attacking Nama. They signed a new treaty that further strengthened the prohibitions on competition between the Teeth, saying that even friendly competition between the Teeth was forbidden; they could only attack Nama, they could not even peacefully attempt to force a newly conquered settlement to join a different conqueror, and they could not build mixed settlements. To prevent Kava being smothered by the FILTER/Crystal coalition, they drew up a map of Nama with proposed borders for all three Teeth. They figured that Nama was so pathetically weak now that there was no chance of Nama mounting a defense strong enough to make a difference in their plans, and that they could confidently draw up borders in 2400 AD for a nation that wouldn't exist until 3400 AD, simply because they knew Nama would never be able to keep them out.

First mixed nations

FILTER and Kava, however, found that they could not keep themselves apart. Their nations mostly directly bordered each other; that is, there was no "deep Kava" nation surrounded only by other Kavan nations; they all bordered either FILTER or a weak Naman nation they saw as soon to fall. Despite forbidding intermarriage, intermarriage became quite frequent among the lower classes of both nations. They responded to this by saying that it was culture, not race, that separated FILTER from Kava, and that any mixed families would simply need to adopt the nationality of the empire they were living in. However, FILTER nonetheless decided to classify Kavans as a distinct and inferior minority in their nation, while Kava welcomed such mixed families and treated them as equals. This had the effect of keeping FILTER essentially pure while making Kava a more mixed society. Previously, Kava had been essentially 100% Hinku, which was a tribe of Pabaps, but now they became more diverse. However, the FILTER people were not greatly different from the Kavans except t hat they tended to be significantly taller. This was essentially a reflection of their own mixed Subumpamese and Repilian ancestry; both of these tribes were fairly tall, but not so tall as to make intermarriage with Kavans a taboo.

Thus, although they retained separate identities officially, the further north that Kava and FILTER grew, the more they blended together, and it soon seemed like there might soon be only two Teeth in the alliance after all. Meanwhile, since Kava was the central nation in the alliance, it also bordered the Crystal territories, though this border was much smaller than its border with FILTER. This is because whereas FILTER and Kava had both entered Nama through the "thigh" and pushed their way inwards, Crystal armies had come in from the extreme west, in the "finger" territories of Nama's outstretched right hand, and rushed through her right arm. There was little contact between the Crystals and the other two groups at first other than diplomacy; the Crystals killed Repilians in the west, and the FILTER/Kava armies killed Repilians in the east.

The War of the Perfect Societies

By 3115, as Kava and FILTER massacred more Repilians every day, an assortment of Repilian tribes responded by creating The Perfect Society. In the Perfect Society, nobody would be allowed to own weapons, except for a few people who needed them to hunt and fish. They considered FILTER and Kava to be as one with each other, and discouragedf their people from moving in, but stated because they were pacifists they wouldn't fight back if some tried to move in as long as they were unarmed. In 3125, The Perfect Society declared its independence (Kava and FILTER had claimed this land already, but not settled it), and defined their borders. The borders of the Perfect Society included the entire icecapped area of Nama, plus most of the territory behind Nama's army's front line. All in all, they claimed about 1/3 of the unglaciated part of Nama as their own.

Also in 3125, the Kavan settlers living in northern Nama created a new nation they called The Perfect Society. In The Perfect Society, all Repilians would be slaves for Kavans and would be forced to breed with the Kavan masters. The Repilian religions would be illegal and anyone caught practicing them would be placed in a special class of slaves that were specifically allowed to be tortured and abused. In 3125, The Perfect Society declared its independence and defined their borders. Nama accepted the new nation but renamed it to Nipanu-Malamuppa to prevent confusion.

Nama's government admitted that its north was hopelessly a lost cause. Kava and FILTER had destroyed much of the Mirror Project, and occupied areas of Nama that had not seen a war for more than a thousand years. Nama had always thought that its south coast was its weak spot, because it was cut off by tall mountains, but they now decided their only hope in surviving lay in moving their army to that very south coast in an attempt to starve out the home nations of Kava and Nèye.

Even though they knew that there were by now far more Kavans living in Nama than in Kava, Kava's original homeland on the south coast was still its only sea access. But Nama was frustrated by the inability of its constituent nations to even agree that Kava was evil. In 3137, yet another major war erupted in Nama, but it was between the two nations both calling themselves The Perfect Society. The long, spread-out army that Nama had held in place for centuries to keep the invaders out was thus repurposed to help fight the Perfect Society War on the side of the Repilians. Nipanu-Malamuppa won the war, and in 3138 declared that the "Era of Happiness" (Yeisu Kasu) had begun. They had defeated their rival nation, their own rebellious slaves, and Nama's land army in a single year. Most of the deaths in the war, even on Nipanu-Malamuppa's side, were Repilians.

The treaty ending the War of the Perfect Societies assigned to Kava all of the territory that had been claimed part of the Repilian victims' Peace Bubble nation. Thus Kava now had the entire icecap to itself, although they promised to respect preexisting FILTER settlements there, and they also had almost all of the territory that had previously been northern Nama. Because of the agreements the three Teeth had signed with each other more than 700 years ago, this war was considered no different than any of the other battles that had previously been fought, meaning that all of the territory won in the war was assigned to Kava and not the other Teeth, and that this voided even the Teeth's own preexisting plans drawn up 700 years earlier in which the tundra would be divided amongst the three armies. Nevertheless, the Crystals were focusing mostly on building settlements in the west anyway, and did not complain, whereas FILTER had grown so close to Kava now that they realized they could send their people into the new territory as much as they wanted to and not feel unwelcome.

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.

The Dreamers were atheists, and were very politically liberal by the standards of their time. One of their symbols was a road sign tilted at an angle, a symbol of the disorder they hoped to create all around the world. The Dreamers wanted a world in which all of the traditional sources of power failed, and people could deflect spears and arrows with bed pillows. They favored Feministic societies like FILTER in which women were fully in control of men and women could literally kick their husbands around whenever they felt like it without fear or remorse. Having come from a traditional male-led society, they were overjoyed when they discovered that some Thunderers had a genetic trait that caused their women to tower over their men and hoped to make those people the majority. However, the Dreamers conquered Altotta (calling it Repase) with an army of men, not women.

Another name for the Dreamer philosophy was Pĕp; this word is difficult to translate, but refers to their philosophy of equalizing happiness for everyone. They spent their money only on food and medicine. According to their enemies in the Thunder party, the Dreamers would ignore patients with minor illnesses and focus on the impossible task of trying to heal incurable diseases such as cancer.

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.