Lava Handlers

The Swamp Kids were a political organization founded in Vaamū in the year 4149. The founding members of the party were men who worked manufacturing weapons and were so efficient that all other weapon manufacturing businesses went bankrupt. Thus, they had achieved a monopoly, and therefore had the power to overthrow their own bosses and face off against the Army if the bosses pled to them for help.

In some ways, the Swamp Kids strongly resembled the Zenith. Like the Zenith, the Swamp Kids believed in a male-dominated society that locked women out of power completely. Like the Zenith, the Swamp Kids were founded near Paba but envisioned their people aggressively punching westward through the continent towards their goal of conquering Baeba Swamp. The Swamp Kids realized this, and stated that they were definitely not the Zenith and never would be. Whereas the Swamp Kids were united by their monotheistic religion, the Zenith was religiously diverse but generally excluded people who believed in Swamp-like religions as they felt that such religions would lead people to be loyal to their god instead of their political allies. Likewise, the Swamp Kids were unpopular because of their anti-feminist philosophy, but the Swamp Kids believed that putting power in the hands of women, even at the level of a household, would weaken their men and that they needed their men to be strong to survive in a war. For their entire existence, the Swamp Kids were at war, sometimes with as many as six different enemies, and although the Swamp Kids were among the most violent societies ever founded, they were far more often the victims of violence than the aggressors.

Early history

Background

The Swamp Kids were founded in a very violent time. Their nation, Vaamū, was currently being occupied by a foreign army calling itself Zakap. The Zakap had taken Vaamū from a series of previous occupiers originally led by AlphaLeap. AlphaLeap had originated the empire by forcibly uniting the four empires of the Crystals, the Thunderers, the Subumpamese, and the Pabaps. (Ordered from west to east.) Three of these four empires had been the largest in the world at their peak, and thus the combined Empire of Halasala very was large indeed. Thus when the Swamp Kids seized power in the 4149, they gained the deed to more than half of the land in the world. However, they were a small army that had overthrown a similar small army, because all of the governmental power was based in the area around Paba. Thus, for the early years of the Swampy government, "resistance" covered more than 90% of their territory, although as above, these resistors had natural resources but no official army and little tangible power.

Much of Vaamū, including the capital territory where the government had changed hands so many frequently, had been the pacifist empire of Paba for three thousand years, but late in their history the miracles of diplomacy that had saved them over and over from being conquered by their much more aggressive neighbors finally stopped. Paba's reaction to this was not to raise an army, but to submit completely to simultaneous invasions from all of its neighbors. The royal family had been in charge of declaring war, and they responded to the invasions by hiding out in their fortified castles hoping that they would be spared from the invasion.

For the next two hundred years, Halasala changed hands from one abuser to the next as no outside army was willing to let any other outside army have total control. The only positive change was that racial conflict in Halasala had entirely stopped, as the many different invaders had come from many different ethnic groups and all had agreed to abuse only the natives and not turn against each other.

In 4143, the leaders of a group of Vaamūans called the Horses, who were one of the most powerful groups at the time, ordered a full reinstatement of the pre-Zakap government, but only for the Horses. All non-Horses, they said, would be killed. But the rank and file of the Horses would not agree, and instead they revolted and killed their leaders. This was the beginning of a trend in Wâmûan society, as the underclass came to realize that their leaders were not invincible, and could be overruled by large crowds of otherwise powerless people. Assassinations of leaders increased over the next few years until the leaders were forced to speak to their workers from a safe distance or use only written communication. This, however, served to decrease Wâmûans' confidence in their leaders, and the leaders of many groups responded with stricter discipline.

In 4145, a civil war erupted in Wâmû. The Horses, who now had come to believe that it was God's will for them to kill all non-Horses as soon as they could, had focused their attention on the Zakap, and a group of pro-Zakap Andanese called the Kakalakakamalila. The Horses outnumbered the Zakap, but the Zakap were viewed with much less suspicion by the other groups.

The Horses wanted to kill their enemies because they believed that they were all doomed to spend eternity in Hell, and that it was God's will to kill all those who are damned. There was nothing in the Kaa religion that would suggest this, but it had worked its way into their holy books just the same. Because this was a religious belief, the Horses would die for it, and indeed they were not afraid even when they found themselves facing an army more than ten times the size of their own.

The Horses were quickly eliminated, and the center of conflict shifted to a second civil war between the Zakap and another army called the Laaatalalatataaa, a former ally of the Horses. The Laaatalalatataaa believed as well that it was God's will to kill the unfaithful, but they believed that nobody could know who the unfaithful were, but could only make an educated guess. So they put all their followers through tests to determine as best they could whether they were faithful, and found that many of them had failed. But they were afraid to tell this to their people, so they told the people that only a few of them had failed, and that these people were not really Laaatalalatataaa. But most of the Laaatalalatataaa had already been reached by other political ideas, and they too turned against their leaders, and assassinated them, thus creating yet another victory for the Zakap.

The Zakap army saw that they seemed to have more popular support among the roughly 2 million Wâmûans than all the other armies combined, and so they declared war on all other armies, and claimed they were going to reunite the nation under Zakap principles. The war was fought in 4147, a date the Zakap promised would be relabeled as 0.

The Zakap army took over the weapons production of their territory, and killed the soldiers in opposing armies with terrifying efficiency. Just four days after the war had started, it was over, and two thirds of their enemies lay dead on the ground. The survivors were so terrified of the Zakap that the Zakap took the opportunity to abuse and overwork them. Meanwhile, they moved their weapons factories deeper into their territory, so that a rebel army would not be able to kill Xakaps the way Xakaps had just killed rebels.

Birth of the Swamp Kids

The Zakap army was now far more repressive than they had been before, and they managed to stay in power for nearly two years before a third civil war broke out. This time, the conflict was between the Xakaps and their workers; the more than 500,000 workers who were still alive claimed they were being abused and wanted to take control of the government themselves and have a direct democracy.

The Xakaps were terrified. Their workers were mostly much too young and dumb to run a government, and they knew that if they did not win this war then Wâmû would be doomed. The Xakaps were strong enough to take on their whole nation, however, and they were prepared to do just that. In mid-4149, the Zakap army attacked their workers directly.

But what they didn't realize was that their workers were not quite as dumb as they had become convinced; it was the Zakap who had made the most stupid move here. The workers had become so efficient at producing weapons that all of the other companies had gone bankrupt, and they know had a total monopoly on dangerous weapons. Thus, the Xakaps could not turn to any other supplier to defend themselves against their workers. While the Xakaps were busy discovering they had been tricked, the workers' army, called the Swamp Kids, seized power in a well-planned scheme.

First Swamp government

The Swamp Kids at first called themselves a name best translated as Tinks; the original Tink governors were some of the oldest people in their nation. They claimed that their age gave them wisdom, and that they were the only ones old enough to remember what life had been like when they had just defeated AlphaLeap. However, they realized that their children and grandchildren were much more powerful and more numerous than the original Tinks, and planned to hand over power to a newer generation as quickly as possible. They planned to restore a government they referred to as "the Empire" (milikihu). This was a term that had previously been used by organizations such as STW as an insult, but the Tinkers considered it as praise for a government that had been much stronger and yet more peaceful than any of the many governments that had followed.

The Tinks were much weaker, per capita, than the Zakap, but had the advantage of a total lock on supplies of weapons and armor. Most of the Tinkers were descended from Pabap people, and therefore had difficulty wearing the armor that they themselves were producing, but they had an easier time holding swords and spears. But even so, they immedately set forth producing smaller-sized versions of the weapons and armor that they had previously been making for the Zakap. Some Tinkers defected to the Zakap, noting that the Tink leaders were protecting themselves at all costs and not participating in the fighting. But the Tinks eventually conquered both the Zakap and the few pro-Zakap Tinks, and created a new nation they called Anzan after the Andanese people that made up much of its population.

This was the first time in all of history that the Andanese people had had their own nation. Previously, they had always lived in nations founded by other people, always as an underclass. However, Anzan was very diverse at the time of its founding, and people living there had to be encouraged to consider themselves Andanese.

Despite naming their new country The Empire, The Tinks had created the world's only true democracy. Theirs was the only nation in which common people could vote for the people who voted on the issues of the day. However, even though the Tinks allowed multiple political parties in their country, their party was the only one that supported democracy, and therefore their country was in effect a single-party democracy since all of the other parties refused to participate in elections. For example, the Raspara party, which was descended from the Thunderers and was the largest minority party in the northern parts of the Empire, didn't recognize any of the other parties and preferred to govern its people without any elections. The Tinks permitted the Raspara to exist and to run their areas of the nation as totalitarian micro-states, but insisted that the people living in those states must be given the ability to vote for the Tinks. The Raspara agreed to a compromise: they would hold elections and allow their people to vote for the Tinks, but they would ignore the results and always keep the Raspara candidate in power anyway. The Tinks realized their relationship with the Raspara people to their north was going to be a very interesting one.

The Tinks also did not allow women to vote, but as above, they were the only party that allowed common people to vote at all, and women generally did not complain about this as there were other more pressing issues at hand. Even the Zakap party, which the Tinks had overthrown, was legal, although it also did not participate in elections and had no supporters. In fact the Zakap were more of an army than a political party and it seemed to some that the Tinks could not tell the difference.

Due to the war, Anzan had lost complete control of its territories in Atlam and Tarwas. The Tinkers were curious to see what had happened there, as they saw that in these countries, conditions were even worse than in Anzan. They discovered that Tarwas was winning its war against the Andanese, and that the Crystal party in Atlam had been thrown completely out of power by a new party that had arisen in just the last few years. The Tinkers wanted to avoid a similar situation in their own country, but had no plan.

Dissent from within

Less than a year after Anzan established its power as the successor state to Vaamū, a fourth civil war erupted. This time it came from women and girls who objected to the treatment they were given by the all-male government that the Tinkers had established. The Tinkers believed that feminism made men weak, and that weak, submissive men were responsible for the many repeated opportunistic invasions of their territory over the last 400 years. Although many men in Anzan considered themselves at peace with their wives, the Tinks actually set up meetings for men where the men who had not yet forced their wives into complete submission would be punished by those who had.

The feminist Andanese rebels were helpless to attack the Tinkers, but promised that they would win in the end because all babies need soft women to survive, and the more the Tinks oppressed them the less soft they would get. In the end the Tinkers surrendered, thus violating their promise to never deviate from their original philosophy. These rebels renamed themselves the Crystals, saying that all other parties were false and that only they were the true Crystals. Thus the oppression of women stopped, and the entire government was opened up to the Crystal leaders.

Once the Crystals got into power, they ordered all Tink governors to kill themselves and turn over their weapons to the girls. Enough Tinks complied with their orders to put the power of authority firmly in their hands. The new Crystals were almost completely uneducated, and they had no plan for their government. Weeks later, they were attacked by the Tinks.

Immediately the Tinks ordered the killing of all "Crystals" and the return of absolute power to the Tinks. They did, however, allow the very few pro-Tink women to have some power in their new government, which they called Loporomo 3.

But within a few weeks, the Tinks received reports that women were beating up young boys as revenge for the men beating up women. The Tinks sent out observers to see what was happening, and there they saw that the reports were right. The Tinks realized they had been defeated once again, and swapped all their power to the Crystals.

The Creystals took power once again, but they could not understand exactly what it was they needed to do to keep the nationworking. They had thought that the governors simply gave orders and watched their workers follow the orders. This had been true when Anzan/Wâmû had been richer, but it was true no longer. The Tink governors in fact had worked even harder than the workers themselves; the Crystals had mostly never had power. So they surrendered power to the Tinks, who granted them total control of "women's needs", and partial control over some of the rest of the roughly 150,000 people still surviving in Anzan. They even allowed the girls to have some ability in Loporomo 4 to recall the Tinks themselves, because they were afraid that a new revolt was about to happen anyway.

This time the Tinks wasted no time in getting their agenda accomplished. They were running out of weapons, but they figured they still had enough to kill off all of their enemies. They had planned to kill all non-Tinks in the entire country, except for the Crystals. But they had to settle for instead going after only the Crystals, which they immediately set forth to do. The Crystals protested that most of them were females, and if the Tinks killed all the Crystals, then they wouldn't have enough women left to marry. This confused the Tinks, and some of them protested the killing of the girls, but the other Tinks reassured them that what they were doing was right. The girls were unarmed and could not defend themselves, and within a day most of them were dead, and the rest were wounded so that the Tinks would have an easier time raping them if they felt they needed to.

The Tinks realized that they had a population problem. They had killed so many women that their population was now mostly male. So they decided to start killing young boys; they wanted to completely wipe out the population of Anzan and start completely over again. So the Tinks, with virtually no opposition, attacked and killed all of the unarmed babies and young children that they could find. (They also killed the last few Xakaps that had been surviving by eating Andanese people.) One week later, only the Tink leaders, the captured female Crystals, and a small population of babies that they had decided to save remained alive in Anzan. At least the Tinks realized that they would have plenty of food for awhile, although there were virtually no workers left.

The Tinks realized they needed to increase their population madly to avoid an invasion. Soon, the Tinks established a power-sharing agreement with the Crystals, and they came to call both the girls and themselves Crystals.

Early secessions

In 4157, a nation calling itself the Needle seceded from Anzan, but they died out within months.

In 4175, after about 25 years under the Tinker government (by then known mostly as Swamp Kids), a group of Tinks in the far "east" of Anzan seceded and formed a new nation hostile to the Tinks. These people called themselves Crystals. In 4180, they achieved victory in their war. However, they were immediately invaded by the Zenith.

Raspara-Swampy relations

For thousands of years, outside nations had assumed Paba was an empire filled with childish, simple-minded people who were obedient workers but afraid to stand up for themselves. They had survived as an independent country because of alliances with more aggressive powers, but eventually succumbed to simultaneous invasions by their many hungry neighbors. Under occupation, the stereotype remained that Pabaps were obedient slaves as they never seemed to fight back against their abusers. However, the Swamp Kids had broken the stereotype by killing all of the many invaders and then going on to kill most of their own people. The Swamp Kids had defeated every enemy, and were looking towards ever greater conquests as they prepared an army to invade Baeba Swamp.

But one outside army, the Raspara, believed that the Swamp Kids still had many fatal weaknesses. The Raspara were mostly descendants of Thunderers (the Thunder Empire had been conquered by AlphaLeap, then became independent, and then was retaken by the Swamp Kids) who had survived the many wars against their empire. In the 3900s, many Thunder people had moved into Paba, enslaving entire towns, and cutting all ties to the Thunder Empire. They did not then have the name Raspara because at the time they were not united even with each other. But the new Raspara party marched under a flag depicting a red sun and had a strong united philosophy and a desire for conquest.

Since the Swamp Kids had conquered all of the Raspara's homelands, the Swamp Kids claimed that they had defeated the Raspara. But some of the more optimistic Raspara people claimed that the Raspara were different from other peoples because they could rise to the top in any society they lived in, as they had in the past. Thus they claimed that the war they had lost against the Swampies was actually the first step in their quest to put the Swamp Kids at their feet, and that they merely had to wait for the Swamp Kids to start moving into Raspara-majority areas of their new country for a chance to start abusing the Swamp Kids.

Like the Swamp Kids, the Raspara believed their home lay in the tropics. Their flag depicted a red sun, and they said that they would use the sun against the Swamp Kids by giving them severe sunburns. They promised to enslave and torture the Swamp Kids for the next 47,000 years. Every diplomatic meeting between the Swamp Kids and the Raspara seemed to consist of the Raspara representative threatening the Swamp Kids with mutilation followed by an apology and a request for more Swamp Kids to move north into the Raspara homelands.

The Raspara soon realized that they were correct about the vulnerabilities of the Swamp Kids. Even though the Swamp Kids had killed off nearly their entire population, they had such a higb birthrate that by 4177 they were already suffering overpopulation again. The Raspara, at this time hiding out in a nation called Tata, declared war on the Swamp Kids and invaded Anzan. They sent a very weak army into Anzan because they were intending to lose the war and therefore have the Swamp Kids settle much of Tata. Tata itself did not participate in the invasion, but was unable to stop the fake Raspara army because the Raspara were fighting badly on purpose.

The Raspara lost their battle, but managed to kidnap many Swamp Kids as they retreated. On top of this came the invading Swamp army, which faced off against the real Tata army and defeated it as well. They were able to do this even though they were already fighting a civil war against the Crystals in their own homeland because they had enough weapons to militarize nearly their entire adult male population. Thus many Swamp Kids now lived in Tata: some were kidnapped slaves, some were running the government. But the Raspara intended to soon make them all slaves. The non-Raspara Tataans believed that the Swamp Kids were party to the conspiracy, and had agreed to the plan because even though they knew the Raspara would put the Swamp Kids at the very bottom of their society, they didn't mind as long as there were also Swamp Kids at the top.

The Raspara were delighted when they realized that the Swamp Kids indeed were content to let the Raspara army hold on to their captured Swampy slaves as long as they obeyed the laws of the Swampies above them. The Raspara leaders declared that forever their home would be wherever the Swamp Kids had the reins of power, and that the Swamp Kids were even more eager to grant the wishes of their abusers than the Pabaps had been. But they knew that the Swamp Kids were much stronger than the Pabaps from whom they had descended, and that the Raspara would need to always have an army to ensure that they would not be eliminated along with all of the other enemies of the Kids.

The Raspara were well-educated about history, both their own and those of their enemies. They decided to build their colonies in the central heartlands of the Swampy territory, so that if an enemy invaded Anzan, the Swamp Kids would shield them in all directions from the worst of the conflict. This was easy for them to do, because for the most part, the Raspara were already living deep in the middle of Anzan because Anzan had expanded its way northward to meet them in the previous war.

The Raspara wanted the Swamp Kids to trust them. Although the Raspara leaders told their people that their destiny was to eventually betray the Swamp Kids, they wanted to remain military allies for as long as possible so that the Swamp Kids could keep dying in wars to help expand their empire. The Raspara also knew that in the event of a catastrophic war, they would be stigmatized if they did not fight just as hard as the Swamp Kids and for the same goals. Thus, the Raspara entirely abandoned their foreign policy and much of their politics, since the best interests of the Swamp Kids were the best interests of the Raspara, and most diplomats from outside nations preferred to meet with the Swamp Kids rather than the abusers of the Swamp Kids.

They hoped their empty political agenda would actually help them gain allies, as they were becoming more and more like Swamp Kids that merely had extra privileges in their society. Both groups offered to accept converts from the other side; very few Raspara people ever became Swamp Kids; quite a significant number of Swamp Kids became Raspara. However, the newly converted Raspara people did not automatically get slaves when they converted; they needed to buy slaves from the other Raspara.

Plans for war

Still, they hoped that they could make an alliance with the Swamp Kids in order to let the Swamp Kids fight most of their wars. Both groups wanted to reach and conquer Baeba Swamp. The Swamp Kids wanted to make Baeba an entirely Swampy city, with no power for any other groups. The Raspara wanted to let the Swamp Kids struggle and bleed as they marched through the tropics, fighting and defeating many enemy armies along the way, and then once the Swamp Kids had Baeba under their control the Raspara would move in and sit on top of them. They believed that they could do this because they were more intelligent than the Swamp Kids and had throughout their short history made quick work of many peoples that they had settled among.

The Raspara marched under a flag depicting a red sun. They said that this was the way they preferred to live; once they had Baeba Swamp, the Swamp Kids would work on plantations and suffer severe sunburns, while the Raspara would sit in the shade drinking cold water that had been laboriously carried to them from the mountains of Dreamland. Key to the Raspara's internal propaganda was the identification of the Swamp Kids as Pabaps; though Paba was long gone, everyone still knew of Paba as a pacifist empire that had fallen into the hands of abusers because the Pabap people simply could not bring themselves to fight back against the abusers. They saw the Swamp Kids as essentially militarized Pabaps, and claimed that they could be pushed back into pacifism again. The Swamp Kids, however, said that they had drawn in people from all nations, and that although they identified themselves as Andanese, and the Andanese were a tribe of Pabaps, membership in the Swamp Kids was open to anybody. Moreover, they said, many Pabaps did not support the Swamp Kids.

The Raspara people were skilled at propaganda, aimed both at their own people and at the Swamp Kids. In Swamp-majority cities, the Raspara proudly boasted of their success at achieving ever greater levels of abuse of their slaves, and Raspara slave owners held contests with each other to see who could abuse their slaves the most. They painted vast murals on the city walls showing Raspara people abusing helpless Swampy slaves, and then presented the pictures to the Swamp Kids as the city's greatest work of art. They actually enjoyed watching the Swamp Kids wipe away the drawings more than they enjoyed the drawings themselves.

Sometimes, Swampy slaves were brought into the city center where Raspara people could slap them and urinate on them all day long in public for no reason at all, with signs such as "Tomorrow, It's Your Turn" hung around their neck. Sometimes, obscene words were painted on their skin or clothes. All of this was intended to show how the Swamp leaders did not care at all what happened to the vast Swampy underclass. The Swamp Kids promised the Raspara that their rights would be respected, and refused to send police to arrest even the most hideous of the abusers, or to rescue the slaves they were controlling. The Raspara discovered they enjoyed the taste of human meat, and opened restaurants in Swampy cities serving the meat of Swampy slaves that had been abused a bit too harshly one day. The Raspara hoped that the more they enraged the helpless Swamp Kids, the more the Swamp Kids would try to defeat the anger by becoming abusers themselves.

The Swampy government's reaction to this was to open up slavery to their own people as well by creating a new class in their society that was below even the least of the Swamp Kids. Swamp Kids were encouraged to start eating people, and claimed that a pregnant woman would be the most sought-after dish of all. They imported a new underclass of people, mostly from defeated nations such as Thaoa, that would be slaves for everyone else. These slaves were also given to the new Raspara people, however. But the government still refused to take any action against the Raspara. In fact, the Swamp Kids tried to appease the Raspara by giving them their own state, consisting of choice land along the south coast of Paba, and allowing them to enslave any Swamp Kids who did not move out. The Raspara accepted this new land but kept most of their population in the Swamp Kids' territory, including their army.

Matrix-Swampy relations

Meanwhile, some Raspara, emboldened by the total lack of any violent reaction from the Swamp Kids, decided that the time was ripe for them to attempt to conquer the Swamp Kids and enslave even the leaders. These people were a minority within the Raspara, as the majority preferred to sit back and let the Swamp Kids' empire grow furiously to the west in its quest to conquer Baeba Swamp. In 4177, the Raspara who favored war announced the creation of a new political party, the Matrixes. Their name referred to their "complex" philosophy, which required thinking in two dimensions instead of one. THey claimed an alliance with what was left of Nama, and that Nama had submitted completely to them. They launched a sixth civil war now, planning to subjugate the Swamp Kids under a new Matrix government with no power for Rasparas. Thus, the Rasparas refused to participate in the war.

The orthodox Raspara questioned the sanity of the Matrixes, who had apparently just resolved to fight a war against the Swamp Kids using soldiers from Nama, which was an ally of the Swamp Kids. The Matrixes responded that they would do some fighting of their own, too, but preferred to have the Namans take most of the hits in their war. They claimed that their alliance with Nama was partly a means to increase their population, since they were outnumbered by the Swamp Kids, and that once they had won their war they would enslave Nama.

The Matrixes announced the creation of three slave armies under their command: the Crystals, the Swamp Kids, and the Bubbles. That is, any slaves the Matrixes managed to capture as they spread out would be forcibly adopted into one of those three categories, even if the mainline parties would not accept them. Some Matrixes would occasionally marry into the slave pools, figuring the slaves would be less likely to revolt if their own relatives were their targets.

The Matrixes traditionally hated the Swamp Kids much more than they hated the Crystals, but the Swamp Kids were stronger, so they managed to establish a strong organization with a powerful military early in the Matrix War. (By contrast, the Crystals and the Bubbles had virtually no army.) The Swamp Kids in fact agreed with only some, not all, of the Loporoman laws. Like the Matrixes, the Zeniths, and the Crystals, the Swamp Kids did not believe in judicial organizations. However, in their case, it was often assumed that they held this belief because they wished the right to commit crimes without having to answer to an authority, rather than because of the traditional "forgiveness" policy upheld by the other two groups. The Swamp was composed of many different groups of people, as its campaign appeal was much broader than the Crystals'. The Swamp detested the Crystals greatly.

There were a lot of armies in this war ... Matrixes (3EE), Rasparas (PEG), Crystals (CRY), Swamp Kids (EE3), Zeniths (XLG), Bubbles (BUB), Dreamers (DRM), plus all the people in all the other nations in the world. The whole world was involved in this war.

The Matrixes were mostly former Rasparas who wanted to ensure a bright future for their party, even at the expense of polluting their ideology with ideas nearly opposite from their own; the Crystals were people who had admired the earlier Crystals and accepted their invitation to join, and were composed mostly of disempowered, formerly Cold people and others who had allied with the Raspara during the Loporoman government but gotten little power in return; the Bubbles were also followers of the Kakaka (Pupup 4) Crystals, but of a different caliber; these people tended to be poorer and more apt to be seized by zealous fundamentalism than the Crystals.

Zenith-Swampy relations

The Zeniths were aroused by the idea of a parasitic army sitting in the middle of Anzan abusing the Swamp Kids while benefiting from the Swamp Kids' military successes. Many Zeniths living in Anzan considered converting to the Raspara party in the hopes of becoming slaveowners themselves. They developed their own weapons factories, which the Swamp Kids were afraid to attack. This led many Raspara people, in turn, to envy the Zenith and convert to Zenithism even though they realized the Zeniths did not generally offer weapons to converts. Even some Swamp Kids converted to the Zenith, and they were generally treated better than the Raspara because the Zeniths saw them as more innocent. These Swamp Kids supported slavery even though they were not allowed to participate in it themselves because Rasparism did not allow even the converts from the Swamp Kids to become slaveowners. However the Zeniths (but not the Raspara) were warming to the idea of allowing Swamp Kids to become slaveowners, figuring that it would lead to a massive wave of conversion to the Zenith party.

Soon, the Zeniths and those whom they had attracted began to feel superior to both the Rasparas and the Matrixes, and began to consider calling for the killing of all Matrixes and Rasparas. The Matrixes objected, and began to prepare for war against the Zenith. The Zenith had become a full ally of the Swamp Kids now, even though the vast majority of Swampies had refused to convert to Zenithism, which meant that everyone in the country except some of the Rasparas had turned against the Matrix. The Rasparas had been nearly destroyed by internal debates, but individual Rasparas found safety in various ways.

Further civil wars

In 4178, the Raspara army declared war on the Swamp Kids, joining the Matrix invasion but fighting for themselves and not promising to help the Matrix. This was only one year after the fake war they had fought in order to attract the Swamp Kids into their homeland, but this time they were fighting for real. Nama also now invaded, hoping to grab back some of the territory it had lost over the years. The Zenith switched sides and also declared war on the Swamp Kids. Meanwhile, the Swamp Kids were still at war with the Crystals. Thus, Anzan was fighting four simultaneous civil wars (Raspara, Crystal, Matrix, Zenith) and one foreign war against Nama. However, as the war was drawing in participants from all of Anzan's neighbors, the enemies of those neighbors also joined in, and thus the Swamp Kids at least had the help of some soldiers from Laba.

Previously, the Raspara had presented themselves as an ally, privately conceding amongst themselves that they were an enemy of the Swamp Kids whose military interests happened to coincide with those of the Swamp Kids. They had resolved to abstain from war against the Swamp, since they knew that every victory the Swamp Kids achieved against any other army also helped the Raspara, and any defeat for the Swamp Kids weakened the Raspara. Now, however, the Swampy empire was in danger of being torn apart by its many enemies, and although at first the Raspara wanted to try to help the Swamp Kids by joining the Swampy armies, they decided to hurt the Swamp Kids even more by launching yet another civil war. Unlike the other armies, the Raspara lived entirely within Swampy territory, and could do a lot more damage to the Swamp Kids' civilization because they did not need to fight an army to get in. Most of the areas where the Raspara lived had been mostly demilitarized by the Swamp Kids because the Raspara army was given control of those areas. Even though the Swamp Kids did not completely trust the Raspara, and thus maintained a small force in each Raspara district that was loyal to the Swamp Kids, these battalions were difficult to supply from outside and thus the new war was effectively fought by the Raspara military against the Swampy civilians.

Although the Raspara had made themselves famous for their ever greater extremes of cruelty, they did not simply massacre entire towns of Swampies as they moved southward. They wanted to protect the people living there, while at the same time thickly patrolling their cities, so that they could present to the Swamp Kids in their capital city a threat to kill off all of the civilians under their umbrella if they did not hand over control immediately to the Raspara.

With the technology of the time, the Swamp Kids had a difficult time communicating with their military generals who were fighting in the Crystal breakaway republic. They wanted to surrender to the Crystals and move the Swampy army out of Crystal territory so it could focus on fighting the much more dangerous Rasparas, but the Rasparas had anticipated this move, and cut off the main supply lines between the Crystal breakaway territory and the Raspara occupied territory in a great push southward. The Swamp Kids were forced to use neighboring nations to communicate with their armies, and knew that they could not manage a military retreat through these nations. Thus the Swampies realized their army in Crystal territory was entirely cut off from their army in the rest of Anzan. Meanwhile, the Raspara army built fortresses in eastern Anzan from which they intended to destroy the Swampy army if learned what had happened and chose to retreat west. They also considered a more aggressive invasion of Crystal territory itself, even knowing that the Crystals would immediately forgive the Swampies and fight on the same side, but held off for the time being because they did not want to fight both armies at once.

Luckily for the Raspara, the Swampy army in Crystal territory soon did retreat, and was massacred by the much stronger Raspara army when it reached the fortified Raspara front lines. Then the Raspara rode into Crystal territory proclaiming that the Crystals' brave secession from their parent nation would be rewarded by a lifetime of constant pain. Meanwhile, the bulk of the Raspara army was now focused on punching southward through Swamp-held territory, and it soon became clear to both the Swampies and the other armies invading Anzan that the Raspara were intending to occupy the imperial capital, Sala, and from there rule the entire Swampy Empire.

Xema-Swampy relations

Some Swamp Kids began to spread northwards onto the icecap, which they called Xema (also Xama). They soon lost contact with Xama, however, and abandoned this project as well. Meanwhile, the small population of Xama developed a society of its own. Xama was independent, not allied to Anzan, Dreamland, the Matrixes, or any other army on the planet. Their only alliance was to each other. The Zeniths established agreements with some of the people in Xama, but they were not able to make a true alliance because Xama didn't believe in alliances with foreign powers. Some Zeniths went to Xama, where they began to work planning out a war against the Swamp Kids. Some Zeniths didn't even realize this was happening, and continued to support the Swamp Kids. Some Zeniths joined the Swamp Kids in their worship of Hahaa, the spirit of anger. They practiced a religion that combined extreme asceticism with extreme hatred of all who did not meet their almost impossible ethical standards. Being ascetic made their hatred much more powerful because they were clear-minded and would not be distracted by worldly pleasures, and also because they would be less vulnerable to pain. Pain satisfied these people and made them believe that their lives were justified.

This religion was called Anzam. Anyone who believed was considered equal to the other believers. Anzam believers had a ceremony in which all of the believers in one community would get together and capture some unbelievers (usually Matrixes or Rasparas at this time) and tie them up in the middle of a circle of marching Anzamists. The Anzamists would hyperventilate and "burn off all their love" for the captured enemies and slowly beat them to death while marching around to mechanically defined dance music. They believed that love was a tool for making their enemies weak, and saw that love was so deadly that they could not have any of it if they were to be able to be the aggressors against the Rasparas and Matrixes.

In 4179, Xema provoked yet a further outside power into declaring war on the Swamp Kids. This army, called Kebanq, was previously part of Nama and now fought on the side of Nama. Kebanq surrendered, as they were unprepared for a modern war, and surrendered many of their people to live as slaves for the Swamp Kids. The Swamp Kids then forced them to fight against Nama.

When Xema saw that the two Naman nations were now at war with each other, they declared war on Kebanq, which was now run entirely by the Swamp Kids. Xeman soldiers learned the languages of Nama and convinced the Swampies that they were actually a revenge invasion from Nama rather than from Xema which had only been settled a few years before. Xema successfully drove the Swamp Kids out of Kebanq and made Kebanq a Xeman colony. By now, the Swamp Kids were simultaneously fighting off invasions from Nama and Xema, while also struggling with civil wars from the Matrixes, the Raspara, the Zeniths, and the Crystals. (Although the Crystals now realized that the Raspara were much worse than the Swampies had been, the Raspara had managed to force the Crystals to continue the fight against the Swamp Kids indirectly by building weapons.)

The Matrixes were happy to see that a great enemy of the Swampies was beating them in a war and had established a colony right on their border. The Matrixes were worried, though, that Xema would soon turn against the Matrixes and could be even more dangerous to them than the Swamp Kids were. The Matrixes declared war on Xema, hoping that this would convince the Swamp Kids to be friendly towards the Matrix and turn over some of their military secrets. The Swamp Kids agreed to the new alliance, and stopped fighting the Matrix. Meanwhile the Matrix leaders peered over the shoulders of the Swampy military planners, and then gave the Swamp Kids' secrets to Xema.

Meanwhile, the Zenith had made peace with the Swamp Kids as well, and they did not know of the secret Matrix-Xema pact, so they also accepted the Matrixes as friends, and the Matrixes also spied on the Zeniths. Meanwhile, the Matrixes and the Rasparas signed a secret treaty that laid out the plans for the next stage in their combined war against the Swamp Kids. Front line combat would be fought primarily by Rasparas, but with some secret Matrix soldiers who would dress as Rasparas. Further back, the Matrixes would work in chemical warfare. Meanwhile, Xema was still attempting a land invasion of Anzan from Kebanq, and killing many Swamp Kids in every battle.

The Rasparas soon began winning major battles. They had planned for a long war, and the Swamp Kids had not. After each humiliating battle, the Raspara general wrote to the Swampy government asking if they were ready to surrender. They pointed out that the Swampy armies were often much larger and better equipped than the Raspara, but kept losing battles. They promised that if the Swamp Kids surrendered, the Raspara generals would take over the Swampy military and, with their superior battle strategies, drive out all five of the other hostile armies, even the Matrix, from Swampy territory. They reminded the Swampies that the Raspara would have no reason to back down on this promise, as the Raspara wanted the other armies gone just as much as the Swampies did. But the Swampies refused to surrender.

In the year 4180, the Swamp Kids retreated their army from Crystal territory, agreeing to let the Crystals have their own nation even if they chose to do it without democracy. The new Crystal nation was immediately taken over a wing of the advancing Raspara army, which enslaved all of the Crystals. They, in turn, were soon invaded by the Zenith army. Thus, The Rasparas, the Zeniths, and the Crystals were all at war fighting over the Crystals' home territory.

Surrender of Sala

In early 4186, the Raspara-Matrix army seized the capital of Anzan, Sala, from the Swamp Kids, and began occupying the surrounding countryside. Years of getting pounded by outsiders in six simultaneous wars had finally worn out the Swampy soldiers. The Raspara had attacked, and found that the Andanese army was too busy fighting its five other wars to mobilize a full defense of the city. The Raspara knew that the other five invading armies were not in Anzan to help them, and realized they needed to make peace with those other armies or else they too would be fighting six simultaneous wars.

The Raspara signed a treaty between themselves, the Matrix, Xema, Kebanq, Nama, Laba, the Crystals, and the Swamp Kids. They decided that the Swamp Kids would henceforth all be slaves for the Raspara, and that the Matrixes (who had contributed very little to the war) could buy slaves from the Raspara. Kebanq was given to Xema, and the native Kebanq population was allowed to move into Anzan and not be enslaved. The Crystals were given an independent nation, ending their civil war against the Swamp Kids. Government power, however, was given entirely to the Raspara.

Earlier, the Raspara had promised that if they achieved victory, they would immediately turn against all of the other invaders and help the Swampies protect their borders. They now backed down on that promise, but claimed that it was only because the Swampy generals had refused to turn over command of the Swampy armies to the Raspara, despite their treaty calling for them to do so. The Raspara maintained that, if the command of the armies was indeed turned over to the Raspara, the Swamp Kids' military fortunes would immediately improve.

Kebanq did not like the new treaty. Many Swamp Kids had fled into Kebanq during the war, even though it was a Xeman-occupied territory, and now they had extended the civil war into Kebanq. The native Kebanq people also did not want to be ruled over by Xemans. They also drew Laba back into the war, and Laba fought on the side of the Swamp Kids. Thus the Swamp Kids now had two strong allies — Kebanq and much of Laba — to help them win their struggles. By the summer of 4186, the Andanese government was back in power, Xema was chased out of both Anzan and Kebanq, and the Rasparas were hiding out in the Andanese countryside. The Raspara reign had lasted only about four months. Still, the Raspara boasted that, just like in every other war, after their defeat they were merely moving to positions in rural Swampy territory until they could recover enough military strength to launch yet another civil war against the Swampies. They considered any surrender treaty in which the loser of the war moves deeper into enemy territory at the end to be merely a step on the road to a greater future victory. They again promised that if the Swamp Kids peacefully turned over command of the military to the Raspara, even in a power-sharing agreement, their body counts in battle would dramatically drop and they would no longer be plagued by "victories" in which the enemy they had supposedly defeated simply crawls deep inside them to rest for a few years before erupting another civil war.

The Raspara hoped the treaties that they had signed with the Swamp Kids' other enemies would soon fall apart, as they figured the Matrixes would want to hold on to their many Swampy slaves and the Crystals would want to hold on to their newly independent nation.

Dreamland-Swampy relations

The Swamp Kids had been releasing slaves to the Matrixes taken from both their own people and enemy prisoners of war, but only because they were sure that they could trust the Matrixes. They had previously been unsure of the Matrix's promise to hate Dreamland and the Dreamer party's representatives in the Tataan government. The Dreamers were now beginning to take over the Tataan government, however, and had begun to threaten to finish off Anzan once and for all. The Dreamers were able to promote into power only the anti-Matrix governors, and soon the governors became so Dreamerized that they began to discriminate against the Matrix.

The Swampy army became ever more appealing to the Matrix, who wanted to reinvent government for themselves by using the Swamp Kids as pawns to win a war against Dreamland, and then move in and run the government themselves. The Tataan Crystal party had fallen completely apart; the Matrixes were the new leaders, and many Matrixes soon began to change their minds about their idea of respect for all life. They were open-minded enough to become convinced that the only true good was "the greatest good for the greatest number", and also realized that Anzan and Tata were the two greatest military powers of the world. They wanted to have their people in both of the two major powers, and then provoke a war between the two, and then move to the winning side without having to participate in the war.

The Swampies began to teach the Matrixes military strategies, and the Matrixes turned this new information over to their own planners so that future Matrixes could have all of the Swampies' tactics available to them. The Matrixes began to teach the Swamp Kids some of their secrets, too, but only because they were sure that the Matrixes would be in control of the government of Anzan within a few years. They didn't want to make the Swampies too suspicious, though, because at the current time they knew they were still much too weak to win a war against the Swampies even if all other countries kept out. Meanwhile, the groups who were pretending to be allies of the Swampies had been forced to sign a declaration of opposition to Rasparism, and all of them agreed to help the Swampies hunt down renegade Rasparas, who were the only Anzanans left who were not at least pretending to be allies of the Swamp Kids.

Meanwhile, the Rasparas had been successful in convincing the Matrixes to include Rasparism as a subset of their philosophy. The Swampies saw this as a good thing, because they now believed that these Matrixes wanted to help Swampy soldiers become even stronger than they already were. The new Matrixes preached that the Swamp Kids should be loved and not thought of as insects, as the old Matrixes had wanted to do. The Matrixes managed to win over the support of most Swamp Kids with their new love, even though the Kids suspected that the Matrixes still secretly wanted to abuse them. Many Swampies tolerated the Matrix because they were sure that if the Matrix were to ever turn against them, they would be able to crush the Matrix instantly and use the Matrix workers as slaves, thus adding a new power to their Empire.

Those Swampies who felt that they would always be safe from the Matrix began to consider a formal alliance with the Matrix, agreeing to form a single united philosophy that would be very close to Swampy (Tinker) Empirism, but with several important changes. In return, the Matrixes promised to end their support of Rasparism and therefore release all of the slaves in their three slave armies.

Also, AlphaLeap and Lulala had reemerged, and both nations pledged support for the Swamp Kids in their efforts. The Swamp Kids were suspicious of these nations, who had not yet repented of their support for Rasparism, but they signed an alliance anyway, and in 4188 a treaty was signed between the Swamp Kids, AlphaLeap, Lulala, Kebanq, Laba, and the Matrix which combined all of their efforts in helping the Swamp Kids destroy Dreamland.

Matrix plans

In 4188, all Matrixes seceded from Tata and became Andanese. Then they lived out their dreams of revenge against Dreamland when they invaded the country with their organized mobs from the east. Although there were more than 1 million soldiers in the Andanese armies, Dreamland was well defended, so the Andanese asked Lulala for military support, and in return adopted many Lulalan ideas into their philosophy and promised Lulala some control over the government if Anzan were to win. Lulala (another name for Wax) demanded that the Andanese agree to let the Lulalans and others use them as slaves in another Rasparist operation, and although many of the Swamp Kids were very upset by this, Lulala and AlphaLeap were able to pressure them into agreeing. The Swamp Kids realized that siding with the Dreamers would probably be even worse, so they did not feel that they had lost everything. They tried to work out a compromise with AlphaLeap and Lulala that would not be so unfair to the Swampies, but these nations had secretly formed an anti-Swamp alliance and had just now announced it because they had just now acquired enough military technology to be confident that they could defeat the Swampies in a war should the Swampies decide to break out of their treaty. The Matrix also told the AlphaLEAP/Wax coalition that they were still looking to enslave Swamp Kids, and would divide up the Swamp Kids with AlphaLeap/Wax in a future Rasparist cooperative.

Although Lulala and AlphaLeap had committed their support to the Matrix, primarily because of their support of Rasparism, the Matrix ultimately wanted no allies at all, because it felt that allies would contaminate its strife for victory. If they seemed to be in danger of losing the war against the Swamp Kids, the Matrixes said, they would flee into a wooded area within Swampy territory and re-emerge later when they were strong enough to be victorious. They admitted to the Tataans that their three slave armies (which they collectively called Mampum) would be terribly mistreated in order to make the plan come true, but they did not apologize at all for their planned abuses, because they said that "the ends justify the means", and that their method of achieving power could be as cruel and unjust as they wanted, with no moral basis at all, and that the only ethics they believed in was total dedication to the ensurance that their empire would take over the world. Once they took over the world, the Matrixes promised, they would cease their abusive practices and bring in an eternity of perfect happiness, which because it was eternal would cancel out any pain that had been caused by its construction. Although they did not believe in a supernatural Heaven, their analogy was very similar to the analogy used by many contemporary religious people that their lives were so painful only because it ensured them an eternity of freedom from all pain, and was therefore an eternal reward for an infinitely small price, and the only ethical thing to do. Thus, they admitted their government would start out unjust.

The Matrixes preached a sort of self-reliance and a cult of loneliness. The safety of each Matrix would be guaranteed only by the pact that no Matrix would be allowed to attack any other Matrix, but only their own slaves, who would be so abundant that Matrixes could kill as many slaves as they wanted and not even make much of a difference because the slaves would be being forced to reproduce so quickly that the Matrixes could not kill them fast enough to create a shortage. Meanwhile, the Matrixes themselves would reproduce very slowly, using only young slave girls to impregnate, and would raise their children outside the mainstream of society.

The Matrixes also decided to ban females from becoming Matrixes altogether and have only males grow up as Matrixes. The child-bearing girls would live in reproduction centers, and would be used only for reproduction. The boys that were destined to become Matrixes would be the only ones allowed to live outside the reproduction centers. The Matrixes would kill their wives when they reached a certain age, and use younger girls to replace them. They thus had turned Matricism back into a form of Rasparism, but the true Rasparas were not happy at being locked out of power by the new, suspicious Matrixes. Most Rasparas decided to ally themselves with the Swampies, saying that the Swamp Kids' philosophy was after all the true path to power. Some Matrixes agreed, and also switched sides, but when the Matrix leaders discovered what was happening, they declared war on the Rasparas and chased them into hiding, except for those who had managed to take refuge in deep, protected areas of Swampy territory.

Some Rasparas joined STW, because they felt that STW would in the future take over the government of Anzan and Baeba Swamp, and they felt that if they could cause STW to become supportive of Rasparism, then in the future Rasparas would become enormously powerful, because they felt they would be secretly in control of much of STW if they worked hard enough to outsmart the female-dominated hierarchy of STW. STW was suspicious of these Rasparas, however, and refused to give them much power. STW was still dominated by Thunderers and Crystals, many of whom were descended from those who had founded STW in 3915.

Swampies invade Dreamland

The Swamp Kids had the advantage of total dedication to warfare: whereas the Matrixes were largely preoccupied with pursuit of their own pleasures, the Swamp Kids held themselves in firm obedience to their orders, and were almost indistractable from their duties. Also, because they believed in Heaven, they were willing to kill themselves in order to kill their enemies, and the Matrixes did not want to die because they did not know what would happen to them if they died. Thus, there had arisen the "paradox of fear" in which the Matrixes, despite being much more powerful than the Swamp Kids, were the ones who were afraid of the Swamp Kids, whereas the Swamp Kids were ideally not afraid of anyone but their God (although this was not always the case).

The Swamp Kids believed in a God that could defy logic, and thus could not be described. Their religion had elements of all the religions that all of the peoples of planet Teppala had ever believed in, because there had been no organized religion for many periods of history. Thus their religion was very confusing, and in fact it had offered more pain than comfort to its earlier practitioners. By 4188 the Swamp Kids had eliminated most of their beliefs and returned to a very simple religion which simply preached that eternal happiness could be gained by one who sided with the Swamp, although they were all very unsure of what this meant in material terms, because they were also taught that they could do whatever they wanted, because they were infallible. However, they did still retain some elements of Yiibam, the Leaper religion. Their religion glorified the Empire and preached that anyone who opposed the Empire should die, because the expansion of the Empire was the only thing that would ever matter. Thus, many elements of the Matrix religion, Zi, were reflected in the religion of their close relatives the Swamp Kids.

The goal of the Empire was to eliminate its enemy, Dreamland, and expand to take over the universe. Its leaders were well aware of the very many problems with their nation, although their general population, unlike the general population of the Matrixes, thought of themselves as ethically clean and perfect, and most had almost no feelings of guilt whatsoever, and in fact they were taught that whatever they did was the best thing to do. The Swampy leaders realized that they were guilty of many very deep sins, and that they were responsible for the suffering of a very large number of people, but they really believed that there was nothing that could be done about this, because they didn't realize that their system was so inadequate largely because of their leaders' simplemindedness and their physical and mental incompetence in almost everything they tried to do, rather than because of their sins.

Dreamland was unprepared for a war of this degree. Also, the Swamp Kids, raised for combat, were much stronger than the Dreamers and could afford to indulge in many forbidden tactics such as looting cities and abducting children. The angry Swamp Kids tortured their victims and only grew more merciless as their military stronghold became more secure.

But when the Swampy army marched westward through Tata to face off against the Dreamers, most of the Matrix army attacked the Swamp Kids from behind, and chased to abduct them while they tried to fight attacks from both sides. The Matrixes added these prisoners of war to their collective pool of slaves, which they now called Dolls, and divided them up according to a treaty that all the Matrixes had signed with each other that attempted to ensure that none of the Matrixes would ever make an enemy of any other Matrixes, but only of the commanders and slaves in the Swampy Empire to their east.

Once in slavery, the Swamp Kids were treated as an inexpensive commodity, one that could be easily replaced. The Matrixes underfed and overworked them, nearly to the point of death, and allowed them no time at all to rest themselves. They abused them even more mercilessly than before, showing no sympathy at all for their slaves. The Matrixes had thus finally gotten their hold on the real slave pool: the Swamp Kids. Swampy slaves tried to fight, but the Matrixes had been given armor by the Swampies just a few years ago, and now they were so strong that the Swamp Kids could barely stand up to them, and the Matrixes seized them hundreds at a time and put them into a life where they existed purely for the Matrix's profit.

The Swampies were shocked by the betrayal from the Matrix, and did not know how to react to it at first. They at first believed that these Matrixes were renegades, so they tried to avoid the Matrixes as best they could while still fighting the Dreamers, but the Matrixes thwarted the Swamp Kids everywhere they went, and by 4190 the Andanese Swamp Kids had lost many battles against the Matrixes, and had lost much of their original army to the kidnappers.

In 4190, more than half of the Swamp army was marching westward into Dreamland to fight the biggest battle so far in the war. But as they neared the border, they saw that the Matrixes had arrived at the border before them, and were now demanding complete surrender. The Swampies outnumbered the Matrixes almost 10 to 1, but the Matrixes were much stronger, and when the Swampies refused to surrender, the Matrixes attacked and swallowed up the entire battalion, enslaving every survivor. Now Anzan had lost almost 2 million soldiers to the Matrixes, and the Matrix army was as strong as ever. The Swamp Kids had just a year ago been very close to victory against the Dreamer army, but the Matrix had stepped in and stolen the victory away from them.

However, the Swamp Kids were not ready to give up. They noticed that the Matrixes were only attacking Swamp Kids who had entered Matrix territory; the Matrixes had not yet gone eastward to attack the Swampies. The Swamp Kids felt that this might be because the Matrixes weren't strong enough to handle an invasion. So the Swampies surrendered to Dreamland, and stopped sending soldiers westward to attack Dreamland. They focused instead on repairing their army as quickly as they could, in order to overtake the Matrix army before the Matrix army could turn east and attack them. Thus their strategy was nearly identical to the strategy which had saved the Halasalans from takeover by Dreamers after the overthrow of the Leaper government.

Soon, Dreamland surrendered their forces to the command of the loosely organized Matrixes, who were now a bigger threat to the Swamp Kids than were the Dreamers. The Matrixes did not punish Dreamland at all, but forced the Dreamers to agree to Matricize in various ways. The Matrixes merged their nation, Tata, with Dreamland. Then the Matrix, along with the weaker Dreamers it now controlled, focused instead on abducting Swamp Kids.

When the Raspara commanders, still living peacefully in the woods of central Anzan, heard what had happened, they again pled with the Swampy governors to give the Raspara a chance to control at least part of the Swamp Kids' military. Even the Raspara had not realized that the Swampy army had numbered over 2 million soldiers, and that all of them had been spent fighting a hopeless battle against an army that the Swampies had believed was their ally. With a Raspara commander in charge, they promised, the Swamp Kids would no longer lose battles in which they outnymbered the enemy by 10 to 1. Yet, the Swampies knew that Raspara people were a common sight on the streets of Sala, the imperial capital, and figured that this meant they were still planning on retaking control of Sala by force if they could not get it peacefully.

Swampies invade Tata

In 4190, an STW chief named Joja sent STW members into the Matrix nation, Tata, to help cure some of the diseases that STW had recently spread through Tata. THey promised the Matrixes superpower status, and pushed the Swamp Kids to launch a second war against the Matrixes. They demanded money for their efforts even though Tata was much poorer than Anzan now. The Swampies did actually obey Joja, and invaded Tata with a small army whose intention was to follow and protect the STW members as they worked. Tata, however, immediately captured the Swamp Kids (with the help of some firebirds) and made them prisoners of war. Anzan demanded large amounts of money from Tata as comepnsation. Anzan invaded Tata with a full army in response, and demanded an even larger compensation for that.

Most independent nations declared war on the Swamp Kids now, saying Tata had the moral high ground. Thaoa sided with the Kids, but was little help because the Swamp Kids were invading towards the west, and Thaoa was thus perpetually at the rear of Anzan's rapid invasion and could only help replenish supplies for the civilians who had remained in Anzan. The Swamp Kids almost forsook Thaoa.

Raspara now declared war on the Swamp Kids as well, even though the day before, they had been to convince the Swamp Kids to turn over power to them peacefully. The Raspara thus created a ninth civil war. They did damage far more severe than any of the outside nations because they were already living in Anzan and had direct access to the weakest memebers of its population. In recent years, many Raspara men had enrolled themselves as students in STW's elementary schools, surrounding themselves with young children eager to learn about the world. When they saw that STW was at war with Tata, they killed all of the children in their classrooms and promised to destroy the rest of STW. Many Raspara also attacked hospitals, figuring bedridden hospital patients would put up little resistance.

Raspara diplomats had been telling the Swamp Kids for years that they were gullible and easily exploited people, and the Swamp Kids had welcomed Raspara people into their nation, but they realized that the Raspara were the only army guaranteed to betray them at every possible oppoprtunity. The Raspara launched a conventional assault on the imperial capital of Sala now, hoping to take over the Swampy Empire completely. Even now, in the midst of yet another violent betrayal of the Swamp Kids, they promised that if they conquered the Swamp Kids, they would take control of the Swampy Army and fight off of all of the remaining enemies of the Swamp Kids.

STW was terrified when it realized that the Raspara people it had put much trust in hade made achieved their quest for fame by massacring STW children, and increased security at its schools mightily even though it meant STW now had fewer troops abroad. Nevertheless, STW and the Swamp Kids both signed a pact with Raspara saying that when the war was over, since Anzan seemed likely to lose, Raspara people could take all their weapons and enslave them, as they still preferred the Raspara people to the Matrixes even after the attacks on their schools and hospitals.

The Swamp Kids made a pact: they would unite and stop demanding monetary compensation for everything they did. When the Raspara people heard this, they immediately switched sides and began an invasion of Tata. Raspara's ally, Babum, also agreed to invade. Quickly the Swamp Kids advanced into Tata with their allies at their side and began winning battles. They began to close in on Xema, the world's coldest nation, which was preparing for a massive southward invasion of the entire rest of the world after the other countries were weakened by war. The Swamp Kids did not demand compensation for the damage to Anzan and its allies.

Finally Aboa (except Thaoa) surrendered, and its territory was divided up between various dictators appointed mostly by STW. STW decided to enslave the Rasparas after all, saying that because they had started the war as an enemy of STW, STW would classify them as an enemy even though they had helped STW win the war. To the surprise of all, the Raspara commanders agreed to this, partly because they believed that the Raspara would soon claw their way back to the top, and partly because they still hoped the Swamp Kids would eventually make peace with them, and hoped that an enemy that had defeated them in every way except one would be more appealing than an enemy that had defeated them at literally every turn.

They also enslaved all of the countries to the east of them except Thaoa, and all of the countries to the west of them including all of Lobexon, Subumpam, and southern Nama. For the most part each of these were governed by one STW base. The nation of Pybwanwum was given to STW Base 44.

The Swamp Kids forgave their enemies for losing the war, but some Swampies wanted all their money back: they demanded complete restitution for all the suffering that they had endured. But the Swamp Kids realized that it had to repent and realize that war is a sacrifice for both sides, with the Swamp Kids' only consolation being the complete enslavement of all of their enemies and most of their allies.

Post-war treaties

Thus, despite the betrayal and literal back-stabbing from the Matrix army, the Swampies in the end conquered the Matrix homeland of Tata, although they did not succeed in also conquering Dreamland, which was their original goal. In December 4190, the Matrixes living in Swampy territory agreed to stop fighting the Swamp Kids and stop weapons production except for weapons that were intended to be given to the Swampy army. The Swamp Kids began to militarize their border areas, particularly those near Tata, and in response, the Matrixes solidified their control over the government, meaning that they still had control of the population if not the army. The Matrixes in Anzan had completely disarmed and were now slaves for the Swampies.

On the other hand, when the Swampy army moved to the Raspara front lines in order to collect the weapons and armor from the Raspara people, showing them the treaty that had been signed by their commanders, the Raspara army threatened to assassinate the Swampy generals. Frustrated, the Swampy government asked the Raspara commanders, who had willingly become slaves and were working in the Swamp Kids imperial government, what was wrong. The Raspara apologized and stated that one difference between Raspara people and Swampies is that the Swamp Kids had always proudly obeyed their orders, and the Raspara obeyed when they felt like it. Thus the Swamp Kids, weary from 41 years of total war, now realized they would remain at war for at least 42. Raspara military power had remained strong near the capital city of Sala, and, having stood strong against the Swamp Kids' demand to disarm, now threatened to advance on the capital once again.

Raspara aggression

About 2 months earlier, the Rasparas had forced the Swamp Kids to pass a law forbidding aggression against the Rasparas and their allies. Since Rasparas had never had a nation of their own, their only homeland was Anzan, and they demanded that the Swamp Kids protect them in Anzan. In Raspara-controlled territory, the Raspara militias went further and demanded the removal of the Swamp army. The Swamp Kids responded by declaring war on the Rasparas yet again. They secured the support of the Matrixes, which had peacefully taken over the governments of much of Nama. The Matrixes gave weapons and important sea coast access to the Swampy army and promised to never again sign an alliance with the Rasparas. Even though the Matrixes had just slaughtered and enslaved more than half of the Swamp Kids' army, over 2 million soldiers, the Swamp Kids believed that this time the Matrixes were sincere and would not betray them yet again.

Nevertheless, the Swamp Kids still preferred a truce. STW, in particular, sent some of its diplomats into Raspara territory (they did not have to go far, because Rasparas still controlled the capital city of the empire), in the hopes of reaching an agreement. There thus was a three party talk between STW, the non-STW Swamp Kids, and the Rasparas. Once at the meeting, the chief Swampy represenative, named Ia-Lalala, said that the Rasparas were being unfair to the Swamp Kids, and that minorities should not be able to tell majorities what the laws of their nation were. He asked the Raspara to remove their occupation force from the capital city of Sala and submit to Swampy rule instead of the other way around. The Rasparas became angry, and began to beat up Ia-Lalala and the other Swamp Kids. Some of the Swamp Kids panicked, realizing any truce was now beyond hope.

The Raspara representative began talking now as if all was normal. He claimed that the Swamp Kids was already being unfair to the Rasparas by denying the Rasparas the right to live in and host their army in Anzan. He threatened to enslave all of the Swamp Kids if they did not allow Rasparas to join Anzan as regular citizens.

At this point, another politician, Pia-Lalala, an immigrant from Thaoa, forced his way through the crowd and attacked the Raspara representative. He insulted the Swamp Kids who were considering a truce with the Rasparas, and claimed that if they knew the truth they would unite against the Rasparas and conquer them easily. But before he could get far, he in turn was jumped on by several Raspara listeners. The Swamp Kids and STW members now all ran away while the Rasparas focused on the battle onstage, but soon most of the Rasparas began to chase down the Swamp Kids and leave Pia-Lalala to the few Rasparas who chose to remain.

The STW debate team escaped both of these crowds of people and were planning out a way to find out what the Rasparas were doing with the Lalalas when they were attacked by Rasparas. Even with their weapons, they were too weak to escape the Rasparas. The Rasparas brought the STWers back to the debate forum. Pia-Lalala screamed loudly that only insane people would not fight back against an enemy that was as close to enslaving them as was the Rasparas, but this time STW, which had not even spoken yet, forced itself onto the stage and pushed the still-fighting Rasparas off. However, before he could even open his mouth, the Rasparas were upon him too, thus ending the debate with a victory for the Raspara army.

Further Raspara-Swampy relations

Some Raspara were so confident in their strength that they began to revive their program of enslaving the Swamp Kids. Previously, the Swamp Kids had tolerated extreme abuse of their people by the Rasparas because they felt they needed the Raspara's army as a military ally, and did not object when the Rasparas began torturing Swamp Kids and even opened restaurants serving the meat of freshly killed Swampy slaves. But now, the Raspara army was a hostile intrusion within Swampy territory, and the Swamp Kids wanted them out whether they were enslaving Swampies or not. The Raspara were very strong, however, and had managed to befriend most of the other enemies of the Swamp Kids by promising to enslave and abuse only the Swamp Kids. Thus, the Swamp Kids had a difficult time fighting the Raspara because they were still fighting many other enemies as well.

Furthermore, the Raspara had the advantage of brilliant military strategies. Even though they were outnumbered greatly by the Swamp Kids, they protected themselves by deliberately restrciting their colonies to an area of land that included both the capital of the Swampy Empire (Sala) and its deepest heartlands. In other words, they lived in the parts of the empire that were least threatened by invasion from outside, because the Swamp Kids would fight very hard to protect their capital and although they might not fight as hard to protect northern upland forests, these areas were surrounded by hundreds of miles of other Swampy territory through which any invading army would need to cross in order to get to the Raspara. The Raspara boasted that although they had lost wars against the Swamp Kids several times now, in every case, after their loss they simply retreated to rural areas of the Swampy Empire and worked on expanding their army in preparation for their next war. The very fact that they were able to take up residence in an enemy nation after losing a war against that nation signaled to the Raspara that the Swampy army was dangerously overextended. They realized that if the Swamp Kids were not tied down fighting many other wars, they could simply exterminate the Raspara entirely either by cutting off their supplies or by launching a military squeeze march intending to trap them in their foodless fortresses in the forests.

The Swamp Kids' own military commanders wanted to squeeze the Raspara inwards, since they completely surrounded the Raspara in all directions, but their army was still too busy fighting their many other wars. Privately the Swampies admitted that they might not be able to defeat the Raspara army completely, but wanted to at least take back their capital city, as the embarrassment of having to deal with what they considered a hostile foreign occupier just to get in and out of their imperial capital city was weakening Swampies' confidence in their government.

For their part, the Raspara angered the Swamp Kids even further by their refusal to accept a treaty giving the Raspara a nation of their own, even one that allowed the enslavement of Swamp Kids. The Raspara considered themselves not a foreign occupier, but a minority within Anzan, and they thus didn't want to control a nation of their own, they wanted to control Anzan. They realized now that their early dream of watching the Swamp Kids struggling their way across the whole continent, capturing Baeba Swamp, and then handing it over to the Raspara was not going to happen, both because the Swamp Kids were not quite that strong and because they were not quite that naive any longer. Raspara people still aggressively petitioned Swamp Kids to convert to Rasparism, saying a Rasparist takeover of Anzan was inevitable even if it wasn't morally superior.

The Raspara people had more success in diplomacy with STW than with the core Swamp Kids. Still in Dec 4190, a team of Raspara diplomats attacked STW and took many prisoners of war. In captivity, the STW members agreed to switch sides and help the Raspara start a new war against the Matrixes. Meanwhile, a flock of firebirds attacked the Swampy capital city of Sala. In the past, the Swamp Kids had learned to control firebirds, and use them to attack other humans, but these firebirds were from a cold climate species, so the Swampies blamed Xema for the attack, and launched yet another war on Xema. Xema responded with a land invasion of Anzan, starting at the south coast and aiming to reach the capital city quickly and open negotiations for a truce with the Raspara, ignoring the Swamp Kids entirely.

The Xeman army soon took over Sala, and although the Raspara distrusted Xema as much as the Swamp Kids did, they agreed to share their power in the city. The Raspara realized that they at least had the advantage of geography; since Xema was a polar nation, and they had invaded from the far south of Anzan, there was no physical connection between the Xeman invading force and their home back in Xema except a long series of roads through mostly Raspara territory. Thus they hoped they could convert the Xemans into Rasparists. Xema had in its short history made itself famous for outsmarting their enemies and tricking stronger allies into wasting themselves on the battlefield fighting wars that helped only Xema, but the Raspara believed that they might have beat the Xemans at their own game as, in this war, Xemans had done most of the fighting in a war that they hoped would benefit only the Raspara.

In the autumn of 4191, the Raspara launched another attack on the Swamp Kids. This time, they primarily targeted STW members, even though STW was helping the Raspara in their war against the Matrixes in Tata. This time the Raspara attacked with plagues of insects, hoping to weaken the Swamp Kids and STW through disease so that they would collapse when the Raspara soldiers launched a conventional attack later. The attack failed, because the insects simply turned southward to attack people on the beaches of the south coast, but the chaos helped the Raspara tighten their control of the Swampies' capital city.

Zenith invasion

In the late autumn of 4191, the Zenith declared war on the Swamp Kids and invaded the empire from their strongholds just outside Anzan's borders as well as a few hideouts within Anzan. Thus Anzan was now once again fighting four simultaneous wars against the Zenith, the Raspara, the Matrixes, and Xema. While that situation was not as dire as it had been a few years earlier when they were fighting six wars (the above four powers plus the Crystals and Nama), at that time they had had the advantage of having allies to help them out. This time, the Swamp Kids were fighting alone.

Although early STW had strongly supported the Zenith, by 4191 they had completely separated. By spring 4192, the Zeniths had conquered all of Anzan, although they respected the rights of the Raspara to maintain majority rule in their private territory in the center of Anzan, and did not invade this area except for the district that included Sala.

However, governing such a large empire with such a small army proved to be untenable. Some Swamp Kids, particularly in the north, had completelt ignored the war and went on as though nothing had happened, since the Zenith knew that they didnt have a large enough army to physically occupy the entire empire. The Swamp Kids were forced to stop fighting against the Matrixes in Tata in order to defeat the Zeniths, but by this time, Tata had been so weakened, largely by STW rather than the mainline Swamp Kids, that they were no longer able to retaliate by invading Anzan.

Despair

The Swamp Kids were running out of strength. They had been at war without a break for more than forty years, in fact for their entire existence as a nation. At some points, they were actually fighting as many as six simultaneous wars, with four of them being severe civil uprisings. The Raspara army seemed to invent a new way to abuse the Swamp Kids and humiliate their leaders every week. Even after the Swamp Kids had defeated the Raspara in a major war, and forced the Raspara to sign a treaty disarming themselves and consigning themselves to slavery for the Swamp Kids forever, most Raspara had just gone on with business as usual, and resumed their occupation of the Swampies' capital city shortly after the war was over.

The Swamp Kids considered that they may have to surrender their home territory and find a new place to live. Anzan took up more than half of the habitable land in the world, and the Swamp Kids realized it was unrealistic for them to expect to be able to patrol such a huge territory looking for Rasparas or other enemies that were hiding out while preparing their next war. Thinking of the slow, painful defeat of Nama, the Swamp Kids considered that perhaps it was better to be small. For their whole lives they had dreamed of conquering Baeba Swamp, and figured that they would do so as the culmination of a series of ever more westward marches into sunnier and hotter territories owned by Crystals, but now they considered abandoning their entire vast empire, and leaving the six armies that had harassed them for so long to fight it out against each other while the Swamp Kids concentrated their entire military efforts on settling just the one city of Baeba.

Settlement of Baeba

The Swampies invaded Baeba Swamp and settled in the areas where escaped Lenian slaves lived. They were able to conquer and control the Lenians despite violent attempts by the Lenians to resist. They enslaved the Lenians and made them work building weapons, and this made the Swamp Kids even more powerful. The Rasparas had been nearly destroyed by ewarlier attacks, so they were unable to stop the Swamp Kids' invasion of Baeba Swamp.

The Swamp Kids successfully subdued most of Baeba and immediately began the militarization of the population with slavery, and renamed their nation "the Little Country" (Andanese Tame, also known as Lislilasila (again)) considering their massive empire still small in comparison to the many geographically small, but numerically advanced, countries on Laba. But they never moved their seat of government to Baeba, because there were too many foreigners there. The Yellow Sun and the Red Sun excluded minorities, other than fellow STW members who were supportive of the Swamp Kids, from the new government of the Little Country. Thus the Swamp Kids became very powerful. For the time being, the Swampies soon spread over the whole planet, with only a few Matrixes mostly hiding out in the ocean left to worry them.

Soon the Swamp Kids came to resent STW. They saw that they were now almost able to survive without STW helping them, and they planned to attack STW and take their slaves. Base 44 responded by selling weapons to Rasparas to use against the Swamp Kids. In May, they signed an alliance with the Rasparas that stated that as long as the Rasparas did not attack STW, they would sell weapons at low prices to them to use against the Swamp Kids. The Swamp Kids didn't know about the treaty, so most did not plan on attacking STW. But with Tata mostly destroyed, the Swamp Kids figured they no longer needed to make alliances with minority armies against Tata, and so they ordered the extermination of all Matrixes from the Little Country.

They thus declared war on the newly formed Little Country, because it was ruled largely by immigrants and STW members. The Yellow Sun and the Red Sun, the two most powerful people in the government of the Little Country, joined the Bubbles, fired all Swamp Kids from the government, and banished all Swamp Kids from the Little Country. The Bubbles had long been opposed to the Swamp Kids' government and called TLC "the Empire". They supported STW and wanted STW to overthrow the government. But the Swamp Kids were very powerful in the government, holding most of the positions not held by STW members. Because they were desperate, STW signed an alliance with the Matrixes that made both of them much more powerful, but also allowed the Matrixes to penetrate STW with propaganda. The Matrixes told STW members that they were really foreigners and that they should have no sympathy for the Swamp Kids. The Bubbles joined in on this alliance too.

The Matrix army was very well organized, and the Swampies could not defeat it. Also, the Matrixes began to outsmart the Swamp Kids by blurring the distinction between them. STW, on the other hand, relied on pure military force, and suffered heavy casualties at the hands of the Swamp Kids, although the Swamp Kids could not destroy them either.

Contact with Moonshine

The Little Country was overthrown in late 4174. It was with help from Moonshine. Moonshine had been ranting about how awful life was for the Matrix and STW, and how much the Matrix could improve the situation. With the Swamp Kids mostly out of power, and many fleeing, STW and the Matrix were free, and very clean. They had overthrown a mildly dirty empire, and replaced it with a clean one, which they called Rapala (a Xap III name, also called Ploo). Rapala included almost all of Anzan and Lobexon, and they were already trying to invade Nama. Pinuha was given no power in this new government, however.

Life in Baeba

Over the next two years, the Swampies fought back against STW and the Matrixes for control of Rapala, but kept losing. Many Swamp Kids fled to Baeba Swamp and used Dolls as soldiers to gain protection from their enemies. But the Matrixes continued to win, and their society with its new milder slave labor was very productive, competitive even with STW.

The Zeniths, who had been thrown out of power in Baeba, signed an alliance with the Swamp Kids combining all their efforts in destroying the new government of Rapala. The Zeniths seceded from Rapala. Joja and the richest of the people of Base 44 had moved to a new base, 257, in Baeba Swamp. The Zeniths owned the land that STW Base 257 relied on, so STW Base 257 was now almost completely cut off from its allies in Rapala, and they had little power there. The Zeniths were entirely against STW now, and they focused their attacks more on STW than on the Matrixes. Soon they had almost completely destroyed STW in Baeba, and only Base 257 (the strongest base) remained there. Joja realized Base 257 was in danger, so she suddenly fled with Base 257 and all of its members to the western part of Rapala. She rebuilt all the buildings in the wilderness. She also established forts in Lobexon, which was cooperating with STW. The Matrixes promised to defend STW during the war, because they knew that STW was largely responsible for their own existence. Base 257 also built a nation of its own in the rainforest, in case it might become necessary to flee Rapala altogether.

In spring 4197, the Zeniths defeated STW and the Matrixes. But, in an ironic twist of fate, they seemed to be unable to subdue their enemies. STW and the Matrixes emerged from the war even stronger than before, while the Zeniths were weakened by the war. Rapala continued to get richer each year until late 4197.

In late 4197, the Matrixes had secured power for themselves, and no longer had to fight off the Swamp Kids. The Matrixes made a truce with STW, promising that they would not attack each other. Once the Matrixes were safe, they became far more corrupt than had been the Swampies. They went back to true slave labor, saying that it was after all the superior system.

The Matrixes' only fear was slaves they could not control. They wanted to make sure that there was nothing anyone could do that the Matrixes could not. To make themselves feel safe among Rapala's population of "polluted" people, the Matrixes killed people that they felt were unclean, and they violently abused those who were clean.

The Matrixes merged their slave pools into a single group they called Mumpum. (They had planned to use the name Mampum, but they changed it to Mumpum.) The Mumpum were very easy to exploit and abuse in large numbers, and even STW captured a lot of Mumpum slaves and made them work for STW. Thus, the only people who were safe were the Matrixes and the people in STW, who had made a promise to attack only Mumpums, and never each other. (The Rasparas had almost completely disappeared by this time, although many Rasparas had joined STW or signed contracts with STW and thus stealthily caused STW to become mostly pro-Raspara.) Thus, every Matrix was guaranteed his own safety. Moonshine realized that the Swamp Kids had definitely been the lesser of the two evils. Moonshine got very angry at the Matrix for abandoning its promises and did not know what to do. They wanted to continue to send in more laborers to try to keep the Rapalan economy going, but realized that they could no longer support Rapala because of its corrupt government. Instead, they began to prepare their people for war against Rapala, hoping that with their own form of free labor they could overcome Rapala's military and restore Rapala to a less perverse system of government.

Zenith enters the war

The Zeniths decided that their only hope lay in breaking the fragile bond between the Crystals and the Matrix. The Matrix had sincerely agreed, to the surprise of all, to release all Crystals and Bubbles from its slave pools, and hand over its weapons secrets to the Crystals and Bubbles. They were afraid of the Swamp Kids, and they felt they would be better off by far in a world run by the Crystals than a world run by the Swamp Kids. Soon the Crystals became almost as strong as the Matrix. The Crystals were thus in 2nd place in terms of military strength. The Zenith was 4th, and they hoped that if they could ally themselves with the greatest power (Matrix), they would be able to secure a position like that enjoyed by the Crystals, while the Crystals, as their true enemies, would be reduced once again to the helplessness that they had just recently escaped. The Bubbles, meanwhile, would be killed altogether by the combined Matrix-Zenith. The Zenith realized its plan was unlikely to happen, but figured they would all lose anyway if they didn't act, so they put their plan into effect.

The first thing they did was to protest against the Crystals. In this grossly violent time, any sincere protest was expected to be followed up by military action, so the Zenith announced that they were going to attack the Crystals (not the Matrix), and try to kill as many of them as possible before they themselves were defeated. They stated that they knew they couldn't do it, and they pretended to collapse early on and sent out an apparently sincere peace treaty to the Matrixes, asking them to reject the Crystals and instead fight them. The Matrixes refused, and crushed the Zenith completely by December 4198. They retook Baeba, and STW Base 257 moved back into the Swamp.