Proto-Moonshine culture

Early History

Relations with Nama

At hte time of the birth of the Moonshine nation, Nama was the world's oldest empire. Nama had existed without interruption in its then-current location for more than 14000 years. However, during the most recent 2000 years, it had undergone a dramatic decline.

Nama had existed for more than 12000 years as a peaceful union of small kingdoms, each of which was granted complete political autonomy, including the right to a private military. However, these militaries were meant primarily to function as bodyguards for government officials and to aid the police in preventing crime; real military power rested with the much larger Naman Imperial Army, which was loyal not to the hundreds of tiny kingdoms within Nama but to Nama as a whole. Nevertheless, internal wars between the kingdoms were extremely rare and the Naman army could easily crush any aggressor. The only real threat of war that Nama faced for most of its history were invasions from the non-Naman people (mostly Sukuna) to their south. However, the Sukuna people were divided by tribe and spent more time fighting against each other than against Nama. Thus, Nama's military safety went largely unchallenged for 12,000 years.

Things began to change around the year 2200. Beginning around the year 0, new settlers from the islands of Laba had begun settling in the Sukuna lands to the south of Nama, with a smaller number settling in Nama itself. Nama welcomed the settlers, because even though Nama knew that these settlers were also divided by tribe, they saw that for the most part the settlers were allying with Nama against the Sukuna and therefore would be unlikely to become enemies of Nama.

However, over the next 2000 years the lands that had formerly been occupied by Sukuna peoples began to fill up. The climate was also warming, and cultures of the south who had previously been uninterested in settling the interior began to plan great northward expansions. Increasingly, nations along the south coast began punching northward into Nama's territory, generally finding that Nama's weak, pacifistic Imperial Army was poorly equipped to fight back. Even though these invasions were coming from different nations, which often fought against each other, the Naman military was unable to deal with many simultaneous invasions in widely spaced areas of its territory, and often sought to form alliances with one set of invading troops against another.

This system worked for a few hundred years, but the invading tribes of parasites came to realize that Nama was so weak that any of the parasites could ignore their peace treaty with Nama and enslave and abuse the Namans at will. Thus Nama was forced to give up even pretending that there were alliances, and whenever a parasitic colony decided to expand and take over a new kingdom, the other kingdoms sent their people out to build new roads around the conquered kingdom so that, for the time being, the two kingdoms that had not been invaded could still communicate with each other.

By the year 3500, Nama no longer fought wars on its borders; enemies simply rode deep into Naman territory until they picked out the land they wanted to take over, and fought the helpless villagers in their homes. The Naman military was often tied down fighting so many other invasions that they were unable to respond until the invasion was complete.

Eventually, there were so many holes in Nama's territory that Nama was forced to cede areas of its land that had become totally encircled by enemy colonies to the enemy colonies themselves, and Nama's territory began to shrink rapidly. Some settlers, such as the Crystals and the Lantern people, had deliberately built colonies in the least desirable parts of Nama's territory, facing no resistance at all, because they knew that in the far future, the descendants of the founders of that colony would be in the prime position to absorb and enslave Namans fleeing from other invaders who had chosen to settle more desirable land. Thus, Namans had no safe place to flee to.

Moonshine settlement

By the time of the origin of the Moonshine nation, Nama had been so completely eviscerated that only scholars of history knew that Nama had once been the world's foremost military power. The Moonshines identified themselves as feministic pacifists, and took pity on the Namans who had been invaded by hundreds of enemies and been powerless even to fight back. But they knew that if they were to succeed as an empire, despite their strong commitment to pacifism, they could not allow their fate to be tied to that of Nama, and they knew that Nama would soon die. Thus the Moonshines were forced to become a parasitic colony themselves, invading Naman territory and working their way northward in the hopes of finding some land that was as yet still unoccupied by an enemy power with a potent military.

Government and politics

Moonshine coexisted with Nama in its early years. Nama considered the Moonshines to be a kingdom within Nama, and Moonshine accepted this but did not seek to cooperate with surrounding kingdoms because they realized that Nama was dead as a military power and could no longer enforce peace within its borders.

Like some other invaders, the Moonshines adopted the strategy of deliberately settling the least desirable land: the icecapped north, and the glaciated mountains of the interior. They thus strongly came to identify with cold climates, and despite their commitment to pacifism soon adopted a diet consisting almost entirely of meat.

Form of government

The Moonshines adopted a form of government that resembled that of the three great empires that had most influenced them: the Crystals, the Thunderers, and Nama. They declared themselves to be an empire, like Nama had been, and allowed the existence of toparchic kingdoms within their territory that had full legal independence but no independent military. The term in their native language was feminine, since only females could become rulers, but they did not object to speakers of other languages using gender-neutral or even masculine terminology for their rulers and their states.

However, unlike Nama, Moonshine was not a multiparty democracy. Despite their nominal independence, all rulers of the constituent states had to be members of the Moonshine political party, which was the only legal political party in the Empire. The Moonshines declared the entire population to be members of this party unless otherwise exposed, but whenever someone sought leadership, they were tested on their beliefs and actions and could be deposed if the Moonshines in other areas of the Empire thought they had failed.

The term Moonshines used for their queens was masā; this word was actually the same in Babakiam because, purely by chance, those phonemes in those environments had not undergone any sound changes in either branch of the family.

The Moonshine Empire never had a true head of state; the queens had ultimate power in their monarchies, and could not be overruled by any single person from the imperial layer of government. Instead, power at the highest geographic level was concentrated in a commission populated by hundreds of women. This was very similar to Nama's old government, but unlike Nama, the representatives in the Imperial Commission stood for different geographical subdivisions within the Moonshine Empire rather than different political parties, since the Moonshine Party was the only legal party. Thus, relatively little debate took place in the Imperial Commission.

Creation of Fīkola

Around the late 4100s, the Moonshine settlers founded the state of Fīkola near the capital of their young empire. In Fīkola, they said, the rules about who was allowed to immigrate and obtain a Moonshine identity would be ignored, meaning that they allowed unrestricted immigration. Moreover, non-Moonshine inhabitants of Fīkola would be given free medical care provided by the Moonshines living there.

When Baeba Swamp learned about Fīkola, they sent a battalion of Baeban soldiers into Fīkola, posing as refugees. The Baebans were accepted, and thus Baeba now had an armed military force inside Moonshine territory.

Early contacts with Baeba

At the height of Nama's new war against Baeba, the king of Baeba, who called himself the Sun, married a woman named Xăpa and brought her home to Baeba. He was very abusive, but Xăpa hoped that if she could survive the abuse, she might be able to get the king to cool down and stop abusing his political enemies within Baeba. Thus, by living with an abusive husband, Xăpa planned to do a good deed for the people of Baeba and the rest of the world.

After a few years, Xăpa began to lose hope. She was making no progress in changing the Sun's violent ways, as he simply did not listen to her. In Baeba, women were generally expected to be submissive and their opinions were not taken seriously. One day, while still remaining legally his wife, Xăpa decided to join the local Crystal army, which was a political rival of the Sun's own political party. Immediately, a Baeban security force (not the official military) assassinated Xăpa, along with most of the men and women in the Crystal army she had joined.

The king was so upset over the death of the woman he had abused for so many years that he finally agreed to change his ways and discourage violence against the Crystals and other rival armies stationed in Baeba. Then he assassinated the leader of the security force that had assassinated his wife.

NOTE, NEED TO REPLACE ALL Nála WITH A PROPER NAME, AND THEN REINTRODUCE Nála AFTER THE DEATH OF HIS WIFE! THEY ARE NOT THE SAME PERSON AT ALL.

Shortly after his change of heart, a Moonshine leader named Nála visited the King of Baeba and asked him to donate money so she could help rebuild Fīkola, which had become very dangerous because all of the people that the Moonshines had invited to move to Fīkola had started hurting each other. He did loan her some money, because he felt that she was doing the right thing, but he was sad when he realized that he would have preferred to follow Nála to Fīkola and live with her there than to remain in Baeba.

The Sun soon found a new wife to replace the woman who had been killed. This woman was named Tàṭagìmi. Tatagimi was an independently wealthy woman who had promised to abstain from politics so that she would not be killed by an angry man who disliked her opinions and knew that women made easy targets. The Sun abused Tatagimi even more violently than he had abused Xapa. Tatagimi realized her plan to tame the increasingly sadistic King of Baeba would be very difficult. She realized she had to fight back with violence instead of only letting him use violence against her. One day when the king had returned home from a meeting, Tatagimi hit him in the head with a mallet. (See Swamp Kids#Pinuha's_power_struggles.) The king was then rescued by his enemies the Crystals, who were working for Nála and providing medical assistance to both the allies and enemies of the Moonshines whenever they were wounded. Thus, the Crystals had saved the life of the man who had killed the most Crystals.

The Birth of the Tokîku

Now, the Moonshines sent soldiers both male and female into Baeba Swamp. But they were not intending to kill the Baebans; instead, they volunteered themselves as slaves for the Baebans to take ownership of, so that they could work helping the Baebans achieve a better quality of life. Moonshine promised not to fight back if the Baebans decided to kill the Tokîku humanitarian rescue workers.

However, Moonshine's pacifistic soldiers were also abducted by rivals of the Baeban leaders, and in the end, the net product of Moonshine's humanitarian efforts was to help a military coalition composed of STW and the Matrixes take control of Baeba in the year 4194. (See Swamp_Kids#Life_in_Baeba.) The new Matrix-STW coalition government declared war on Nama, intending to enslave any Namans they captured.

Battles in Baeba

Immediately after their victory in 4194, the Matrixes were challenged by many outside parties, chiefly the Zenith and the Swamp Kids. Of the two, the Zeniths were the leading party of the coalition and the Swamp Kids considered themselves merely to be supporters. The Matrixes freed all of their slaves, hoping that at least most of them would fight for the Matrix since the slaves had come from leagues that were historically enemies of the Zenith and the Swamp Kids. To prove they were sincere, the Matrixes even went so far as to arm their slaves to the point that they became almost as strong as the Matrix itself. When enslaved, the Matrixes had called these people "Dolls" since they were easy to play with. After they gained freedom, most of these slaves declared themselves to be Crystals, which was one of the primary sources from which the slaves had been taken. Others, however, identified themselves as Soap Bubbles or Moonshines.

The Zenith took over Baeba Swamp at one point in 4197, and to the dismay of the Matrix, the recently freed slaves did not participate in this battle, and some actually fled the city since they weren't sure that the Zenith was a reliable ally. Nevertheless, the Matrix army retook Baeba Swamp within a few months.

Shortly after the Matrixes had fended off the Zeniths, they reinstituted slavery, and declared that all Moonshines living in their territory would be enslaved. At this time, many Moonshine humanitarian workers were still living in Baeba Swamp, watching the heavily armed soldiers of the Matrix-STW coalition battle the heavily armed soldiers of the Zenith-Swampy coalition. The Moonshines themselves did not have weapons and did not want them; they hoped if that they appeared harmless, other soldiers wouldn't kill them as much. For the most part, the soldiers had respected the Moonshines' wishes to remain unarmed, although both sides had forced the Moonshines to work for their respective militaries in noncombatant roles, when they had originally come in the hopes of improving the economy.

The Matrixes also announced the enslavement of all Crystals and Soap Bubbles. However, because they had just recently freed these people and given them weapons in the hopes that they would be pro-Matrix, it was much more difficult for the Matrixes to capture and enslave the Crystals and Bubbles.

Matrix victory

The Matrixes identified themselves with male power, and they predicted that their traditional male-led army would be victorious over the female-led Moonshines by forcing its way into Moonshine territory and attacking the Moonshine capital. They pointed out that Moonshine was so easily abused that its own army was actually helping the Matrixes even while the Matrixes drew up plans for a war against them.

The new STW-Matrix coalition government started their war by enslaving all of the humanitarian Moonshines working in Matrix territory, and extending the demand for slave labor even to children. They declared that they preferred to enslave pacifistic people because they could rape the women without worrying about revenge attacks from the men. Moonshine's response to this was to send even more humanitarian workers into Baeba, hoping to rescue both the enslaved Moonshines and the enemies of those enslaved Moonshines, in the hopes that the two sides could come to love each other and begin to cooperate.

When the Matrixes realized that Moonshine's army seemed to consist entirely of unarmed humanitarian workers who were easy to abuse, they mobilized the Matrix army for an all-out assault on the Moonshine capital city of Wóm. However, in fall 4199, Moonshine for the first time attacked Baeba Swamp's Matrix government with a traditional army rather than sending unarmed humanitarians to rescue wounded soldiers even of the Matrixes. The war began to turn in Moonshine's favor, but this was mostly due to outside help rather than because of Moonshine's temporary suspension of absolute pacifism. In January 4202, the tide had reversed and the Matrixes had won their war against Moonshine, meaning that Moonshine could no longer rescue the humanitarian aid workers trapped in Baeba's territory. The Matrixes still had other enemies to fight off in Baeba, but Moonshine had been driven out and would not return for hundreds of years.

The Matrixes decided to finish off their war by invading deeper into Moonshine territory. They were particularly interested in the refugee safehouse of Fīkola, into which many escaped slaves had fled. The Matrixes won at first, but later on, the other inhabitants of Fīkola stopped stabbing each other and united as one to kick out the Matrix. Once the Matrix had been chased out, they started killing each other again. A peace treaty was signed, with both sides expecting another war would soon erupt.

Matrixes in Moonshine territory

The Matrixes wanted to establish parasitic colonies in rural Moonshine territory. They had adopted this idea from the Raspara party, which had parasitically colonized the empire of the Swamp Kids a few generations earlier. However, the Matrix plan was more difficult than the Raspara plan for several reasons:

1. The Swamp Kids had always welcomed minorities in their empire, and in much of their territory, the Swamp Kids were a minority. Thus, the Swamp Kids could not tell apart a citizen from an invader on sight. By contrast, outside of the state of Fīkola, Moonshine territory was entirely walled off to all non-Moonshines; outsiders could not even visit Moonshine territory unless accompanied by Moonshine officials. The Matrixes, despite being a political party whose members came from diverse racial types, did not physically resemble the Moonshines, and could not disguise themselves as Moonshines.
2. The Raspara party was able to exploit the fact that the Swamp Kids were physically small and frail people, even to the point of calling their adult males "boys" and forcing the Swamp Kids to address Raspara men with separate adult-male pronouns. Often, an entire room of Swamp Kids would stop talking if just a single Raspara male entered their company, as they were all afraid they were about to be kidnapped. By contrast, the Moonshine people were only slightly more frail than the Matrixes, and had no fear of the Matrixes.
3. The Matrixes were in perpetual danger of being pushed out of power in their own territory, and could not afford to waste valuable manpower on an invasion of Moonshine when they needed their military to keep them in power at home. However, the Matrix leaders promised that if they were indeed thrown out of power in Baeba Swamp, they would invade Moonshine rather than trying to win back Baeba Swamp.

Relations with Asala and Nama

Moonshine arose at a time when Nama was in great decay. Formerly the world's unchallenged primary military power, Nama had become so weak that it no longer fought wars on its borders; enemies simply marched into any area of Nama they wished and fought the civilians while the desperately underpowered military tried to figure out where the latest massacres were taking place.

Moonshine sympathized with Nama, but knew that they could not save Nama. They also knew that they could not afford to take in refugees from Nama. They said that they would allow Namans to join the Moonshines as refugees, but only if they were members of the Moonshine political party, and they imposed very difficult criteria for judging if a potential applicant was fit. Alone among all empires, the Moonshines had created a separate kingdom, Fīkola, within their territory, where everyone including the enemies of the Moonshines could live, but since Moonshine could not protect the people in Fīkola from fighting each other, even Fīkola was not safe for Namans to live in. Therefore Nama realized Moonshine was not going to rescue them.

In the year 4221, Naman diplomats traveled to the embassy of Asala, one of Nama's great abusers, pleading for Asala to invade Nama and take complete conmtrol of Nama. They realized that of all of Nama's many parasitic invaders, Asala was the one that shared the most enemies in common with Nama, meaning that Asala refused to ally with most of the other invaders. They thus hoped that Asala would have the most reason to protect Naman civilians if they were given the ability to take control of the government. Asala agreed, and banished the few Namans who objected to the takeover into the wilderness.

To the surprise of the watching world, Asala declared that it was a continuation of Nama's 14000 year old government, and that they had not taken over Nama, but submitted to Nama. Nevertheless, Nama's orientation towards the outside world changed rapidly as soon as the Asalan leaders had taken power.

Asala had always been a tiny but remarkably virulent military power. They were in fact not a nation, but a political party that had originated in the Swamp Kids' nation of Anzan. Because of their origin, they were often depicted as children (almost always male), and the takeover of Nama was depicted as though a boy had singlehandedly defeated an army of giants. The implication was that Asala's rule over Nama would be so strict that the parasitic invaders that had been cutting their way through Naman territory for over 1500 years would now somehow be stopped and peace would return to Nama. Most Naman civilians realized this overly optimistic scenario was likely impossible, but took comfort in the fact that their situation had at least improved from the earlier time when they did not know who their rulers were.

Asala again surprised the wider world by immedaitely declaring war on the entire world, including all of the invaders inside Naman territory. They hoped that the invaders who heard this message would be baited into coming south to fight Asala, expecting an easy victory, where they would fall into a trap set by Asala and be defeated. Asala knew that even enemies smart enough to evade these traps would be weakened by the journey and would still be defeated.

Relations with Baeba

Yet another surprise came when Asala's army, still claiming to be Nama, aggresively pushed westward out of Naman territory towards the distant empire of Baeba Swamp, which was thousands of miles away and separated from Nama by several unrelated and mutually hostile empires. Nama had not started a war for roughly 1900 years; they had always been the victim rather than the aggressor, and had generally fought very poorly.

The reason for the new war was that Baeba at the time was governed by an old enemy of Asala's from when they were p[art of Anzan; thus t his was a conthnuation of an old regional struggle.

Banners and emblems

Historically, the empire of Nama had been likened to a human body, traditionally female, because of its shape. The Moonshines, a feminist empire, noticed that they had come to settle in the Breast area. They accepted this label, and named their new capital city The Heart (Gʷōṁ). However, they planned to expand far to the east in the future, in particular to the icecapped land of Pʷīpʷyama (Xema).

They preferred the color white - the color of milk and snow. They unified this as ice cream, which had been invented c 1500 yrs earlier.

They liked the color pink, and pastels generally, but otherwise preferred cold colors, and avoided yellow. The leaders declared a symbolic war against the sun, which they associated with the King of Baeba who had renamed himself the Sun. At this point, scientists believed the sun to be a planet inhabited by people who preferred hot weather and would therefore be enemies of the Moonshines. The Moonshines promised that in the far future, after they had taken over the planet, they would build machines capable of launching their troops into the Sun so that they could continue their war and eventually destroy the Sun. They promised that once the Sun was gone, all of their planet would have cold weather throughout the year and the enemies of the Moonshine people would be completely eliminated.

Comparisong with FILTER

Moonshine was often compared to FILTER, a roving feminist army that had settled in nearly the same area of the world some 1600 years before the Moonshines did. But the Moonshines declared that they were superior to FILTER because they were pacifists and sought to expand slowly and passively rather than by conquering their rivals. Moonshine sent out humanitarian missions to other nations to rescue oppressed peoples, even though many Moonshine soldiers, including females, died in the process. By contrast, FILTER's army had allowed its male soldiers to rape the females of any nation they conquered, and then enslaved the children of those women, all while claiming to be a feminist organization.