Crystals
The Crystals were a religion and political organization founded in Lobexon around the year 1500 AD.
Language
The early Crystals had adopted the Gold language which had come to them about a thousand years earlier as Lobexon was being settled by light-skinned colonists from the other side of what came to be known as the Gold Sea. In this time period, the known world was ruled by Nama, and Nama granted military protection to any tribe that had its own language. This incentivized tribes to adopt a new language, even if it hindered communication with friendly neighboring tribes. In the case of the Crystals, they adopted the Gold language because they identified themselves as a transnational religion and did not want to be thought of as simply another tribe among many in Lobexon.
Over thousands of years, the Crystals developed their dialect of the Gold language into Khulls.
Culture and sociolinguistics
The Crystals considered themselves to be feministic pacifists. They believed that they could overcome the masculine powers around them by practicing "feminine diplomacy" and avoiding war.
However, the Crystals' insistence on fighting only for themselves quickly made them enemies of other feministic tribes such as the Repilians who made up much of the population of Nama, the same Nama that ruled their homeland of Lobexon. Thus, though they remained feminists, the Crystals refused to make alliances with other powers on the basis of feminism.
The Crystals' homeland, Lobexon, consisted of a long stretch of tropical and subtropical lands, oriented southwest to northeast along the southern coast of the continent of Rilola, ranging from 13°N at the border with Kxesh to 27°N at the border with Nama. There were no major mountain ranges in this area, and the entirety of the land was humanly habitable. Thus, Lobexon was a very large area, many times the size of Paba, and could support a large and strong military. However, the Crystals were, for much of their history, just a minority in Lobexon, one group among many, and were geographically dispersed, with no land set aside for Crystals only within the borders of Lobexon. Thus, the Crystals sought to expand outward and claim land for themselves outside of Lobexon.
Settlement of Dahàgʷu
The Crystals mostly moved westward, into land that was also tropical but much drier than Lobexon. For this reason, few humans lived there, and they were able to move into the land without facing violent resistance. The Crystals called this largely uninhabited land Dahàgʷu (in Gold; the later Khulls form of the name was Laxàġʷu). Dahàgʷu was very large; in fact, it was larger than Paba. However, being centered around 20°N, its climate was very dry, and major rivers from which a reliable supply of food could come were absent. Thus, the Crystals in Dahàgʷu remained mostly rural nomads, but a sizable number of Crystals also moved into the aboriginal city of Baeba Swamp.
Settlement of Baeba Swamp
The Crystals' growth was very slow. Nevertheless, none of their political enemies were willing to invade the desert of Laxàʕʷu to defeat the Crystals, and their military power increased gradually throughout the centuries. Finally, in the late 3300s, after almost 2000 years of slow growth, the Crystals managed to capture Baeba Swamp, and they then declared it the new capital of the Crystal Empire. They also changed the name of the state Baeba was in to Ƥē, and made Khulls the official language of Ƥē and Baeba Swamp.
Birth of the Moonshines
In August 3948, a group of Crystals announced the formation of a new political party, the Moonshine party. Like the mainline Crystals had done thousands of years before, the Moonshines considered themselves feministic pacifists, and stated that they would ensure the survival of their people by practicing feminine diplomacy and refusing to engage in warfare, even in self-defense. The Moonshines were far more strict than the mainline Crystals in their definitions of feminism in pacifism, and claimed that the Crystals were scarcely different from their enemies in this regard.
