Baeba Swamp

Baeba Swamp is thge largest city on the continent of Rilola and among the largest on the planet Teppala. It is the capital of Amade, and thus legally part of the Ogili empire, but most inhabitants are aboriginal Baebans who are paid by Ogili to be friendly to Ogili instead of siding with the rest of the aboriginal nations (tempom) to thge south. It is a major trading post in both directions: bringing pineapples and palm oil northward into Ogili, and bringing wood and metals south into Tempom.

Its economic importance derives from its being both wet and near the ocean. The surrounding territory is mostly deserts, but Baeba is at the mouth of a major river, and this river flattens out into a delta near Baeba, allowing plants and even trees to survive. The climate is very hot: despite being at 27N, the temperatures in winter are almost as warm as those at the Equator. This is because Baeba's climate is heated by the shallow sea to its west. The sea absorbs more heat from the sun than deeper water does, and therefore heats and moistnes the air very well.

The geographical environment of Baeba is much like northerh Egypt on Earth, particularly the Nile Delta, except that the Baeba River originates from the north, and temperatures therefore drop very quickly from the mouth of the river to its source. Although cold temperatures are not a problem for humans on planet Teppala generally, and Teppala has many major cities in climates far colder than the upland Baeba watershed, the inhabitants of Baeba are not interested in hunting animals for a living and consider this territory useful only as a military defense. THus few people live in the upper reaches of the Baeba watershed. This trait helfd true even as Baeba's government changed from one empire to the next many times.

The name Baeba is from Poswa; Baebabwa is "Baeba Swamp". The Khulls people called it Kàkʷado, and the river Lagis.

Language

One way in which Baeba resembles Africa is that its main language (variously called Baeban, Peepa, or Pwamp) has cvlicks. But clicks are rare, and arose transparently from the clusters /pk/ and /tk/ in much the same way that these clusters created ejectives in Khulls. (Khulls ejective /k_>/ has a sepoarate story.) There are only 4 clicks, but there are only 10 non-click consonants, so this is not unusual.

Proto-Baeban language

The Proto-Baeban language was typical for the area in having a vowel system of /a i u ə/, a minor contrast of high vs low tone on open stressed syllables only, and a consonant inventory of

Labials:               ph  p   m       w                  
Alveolars:             th  t   n   s   l   r                         
Palataloids:           č       ň   š   y     
Velars:                kh  k   ŋ   x                  
Labiovelars:           kʷh kʷ  ŋʷ  xʷ
Glottals:                          h   ʕ

The plain voiceless stops were allophonically ejective before a stressed vowel, but this was weak and noncontrastive, so aspiration as shown as the marked feature.

Pre-Baeban sound shifts

The language had recently lost all its voiced obstruents, and therefore nasals were more common by comparison than in languages of the Gold family. The remaining plain voiceless stops and fricatives had voiced allophones when occurring after a nasal, but were otherwise voiceless; the aspirated stops were voiceless even after nasals.

Even earlier, there had been a lenition shift that changed /ph p/ > /f b/, /th t/ > /s r/, and /č/ > /š/ in some positions, but left /kh k/ and the labialized versions untouched. Later, /f/ > /h/ and /b/ > /ʕ/ almost unconditionally. Thus Proto-Baeban has relatively little of /ph p th t/, but lots of /kh k/.

Classical Baeban language

This language has clicks. It is the language spoken around 4200 AD.

Vowels

A purely phonetic orthography inlcudes allophones and shows twelve vowels: a, e, i, o, u, ø, ə, ɨ, œ, y, æ, ɒ. But there are only four underlying vowels, the same /a i u ə/ found in nearby languages, with the others being diphthongs and/or vowels colored by neighboring consonants. The diphthongs are /ai au əi əu/, and therefore the pure vowels /i u/ can be analyzed as "diphthongs" of Ø plus these same /i u/ codas.

The true vowels /i/ and /u/ get two script vowels apiece: /i y/ and /ɨ u/.

The mid vowel /ə/ gets four script vowels: /e ø ə o/.

The low vowel /a/ gets four script vowels: /æ œ a ɒ/.

Therefore, each of the four vowels can be either spread or rounded, and each of the two lower vowels can also be either front or back. However, if the rounded front vowel is simply an allophone of /i/, there cannot have ever been a glide with which to color adjacent vowels, and therefore the two vowels [ø œ] (underlyingly */əwʲ awʲ/) cannot exist even phonetically. Therefore there are only ten script vowels.

PHONOTACTICS OLD INFO

Baeban has a very complicated system of phonotactics to ensure that its phonemes all fit together well. Instead of treating phonemes singly, Baeban groups them into 8 overlapping categories of varying composition, and these are the smallest meaningful phonological units that words can use. The following abbreviations are used below for these categories:

• S = (a, i, u, pa, pi, pu, ma, mi, mu, ta, ti, tu, na, ni, nu, sa, si, su, la, li, lu, ra, ri, ru)
• G = (_, i, u, pa, pi, pu, ma, mi, mu, ta, ti, tu, na, ni, nu, sa, si, su, la, li, lu, ṗa, ṗi, ṗu, ṁa, ṁi, ṁu, ṭa, ṭi, ṭu, ṇa, ṇi, ṇu)
• T = (0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8)
• Z = (pa, pi, pu, ma, mi, mu, ta, ti, tu, na, ni, nu, sa, si, su, la, li, lu, ra, ri, ru, ṗa, ṗi, ṗu, ṁa, ṁi, ṁu, ṭa, ṭi, ṭu, ṇa, ṇi, ṇu, k, x, ŋ) + ASP
• P = (_, p, m, t, n, s, l, u, i)
• K = (_, k, ŋ)
• V = (a, e, i, o, u, ø, ə, ɨ, œ, y, æ, ɒ)
• U = same as V, but with choice of 4 tones

The /œ/ may be a mistake for capital oe. The entire setup looks like a square .... 3 vowel heights, front/mid/back, plus a column of front round vowels.

An underscore stands for silence; the clicks are spelled ṗ ṃ ṭ ṇ (sometimes dot on top); all vowels are IPA (see history for SAMPA).

Thus the consonants are:

• /p m s l k r t n ŋ x ṗ ṃ ṭ ṇ/, where th dotted letters are clicks. /j/ and /w/ are common but are not considered consonants.

The tones are:

0 ă

A low tone, the commonest one, essentially "neutral" and level.

1 à

High, but considered as "mid" in some contexts.

2 á

Even higher tone.

3 ā

"Rising then falling", sometimes spelled with cirumflex.

Tones 4 through 7 are repeats of these, but weith phragynealization. (spelled ʕ/. Tone 8 is a whispered tone, i.e. a voiceless vowel.

Very unusual is that all word stems are either GVTVK or PVZUK. There are no single-vowel words at all oither than a few particvles. Thus the odd traits of the languaga are:

Characteristics

• All word roots must end in a vowel, /k/ or /ŋ/. Affixes are made of "S" syllables, which are all (C)V and have only 3 possible vowels, of which the /a/ is often elided. THus all words ending in a consonant other than /k ŋ/ actually end in an elided /a/.
• All word roots must have 2 vowels, even if those two vowels are the same and have no interveneing consonant.
• Since pharyngealizedf vcowels can only occur in "GVTVK" stems, they can only occur in stems with no consonants in the middle. This is partly because pharyn gealization originally came from a central consonant that was bled out.
• No word can begin with a velar consonant (/k ŋ x/). Words with central consonants cannot begin with a click or an /r/.
• Singlw vowel words are particles that cannot occur alone, and they can only have the vowel;s /a i u/.

Earlier, the Proto-Baeban language had had a phonology more like its neighbors. Proto-Baeban allowed only bisyllabic roots, with the accent always on the second syllable. Word-initial velars were allowed and there were no pharyngealized vowels. The split in the two types of words occurred when all voiced stops and fricatives were deleted from the language, and intervocalic ones bled out into pharyngealized vowels. This is why pharyngealized vowels only occur in words which have vowel hiatus (even if it is two of the same vowel). Later, all word initial velars were deleted. Clusters like /kj/ and /kw/ changed to /tj/ and /pw/ (note that these are not considered palatalized and labialized, but rather true clusters). Thus, Baeban could be said to be a "P" language, like Ogili, because it shifted its palatals forward and also shifted its labial-velar clusters forward into labialized bilabials. There are very few velar consonants remaining in modern Baeban, excluding clicks.

Note that the click consonants existed even in proto-Baeban, although they had arisen not long before from the collapse of clusters like /pk/ and /tk/. This was a defining feature of the Baeban settlement area, as these clusters had also existed in languages spoken to their north and south, but both of these other language groups instead created ejectives from the stop+stop clusters and homorganic clusters from the nasal+stop clusters.

Geography and climate

Government

Despite being nominally part of the Ogili empire and having a huge chunk of the population, Baeba Swamp gets no votes because Ogili is not a democracy. Ogili just needs them to be friendly and not side with any of the other nations that could be even more tempting to them, such as Nokʷ or Pusapom. So Ogili treats Baeba like 1800s Europe treated Africa (Baebans are very dark skinned, and thus could not assimilate or "pretend" to be Ogilians); i.e. they are friendly, but only because they want to use Baeba as a foothold to control even greater areas of territory. Unlike Africa, Baeba and points southward (known as Tempom) is mostly desert that is barely livable for humans both because of the weather and because of dangerous predtaory birds. However,. Baeba is at the conjunctuion of many rivers and thus is more profitable than otyher areas. But even so, most of the food is imported or fished from the

Climate

Baeba is located at 28°N latitude, at the northeast corner of a tropical shallow sea. This sea increases the average temperature in Baeba, even in summer, to a level considerably higher than areas further east at the same latitude and elevation.

Demographics

Baeba is the oldest continually inhabited city in the world. Its people have a strong tribal identity.

Physical attributes

Baebans are dark-skinned people of moderate stature, broadly similar in appearance to the various peoples of the tropics. Baeba Swamp has traditionally been the northernmost locality in which this body type is predominant; further north there are Baeban traits in areas which Baeban peoples have settled, but they are blended with foreign traits.

Baebans are well-adapted for a hot climate, with slow metabolisms and smooth, mostly hairless skin. The traits of surrounding tribes appear at low frequencies in the Baeban population due to thousands of years of contact both hostile and pacifistic, but Baeba's compact structure has spread these features evenly through the Baeban gene pool, and thus the Baebans do not think of themselves as a blended people.

History

During the Gold Era (roughly 1600 - 3300), Baeba Swamp supported slavery. What was unusual about slavery in Baeba Swamp was that there were different classes of slaves, and some of the slaves could even own slaves. The lowest class was typically prisoners of war and their descendants. Next lowest was criminals (whose descendants were forgiven), and above that a system resmelbing medieval Europe on Earth with "serfs" and then classes og landowners. Yet people could sell themselves into slavery for money, without having to give up their own slaves. Many adult males left Baeba Swamp to work as slaves in Lobexon, knwoing that the money would go to their families. This was ironic because Lobexon saw Baeba as a paradise where everyone was wealthy, when in fact only the extreme upper class was wealthier than the peasants in Lobexon.

After the Crystals chased Gold government out of Baeba, they made it their new capital. Much of the surrounding territory was added to Baeba, and the name of the nation was changed from Baeba to Ƥē. (Atlhough Miniyiupi was chosen as an altername, as the people were multilingual now.) The Crystals were far more violent and repressive than the Gold government had been, but nevertheless abolished slavery very soon after taking power. They thus won the favor of the entire former slave population and many of these people were willing to fight battles for the Crystals as they attempted to expand their empire even further. The Gold government had been the most liberal and diverse government the world had ever known, but they were so liberal that they had allowed empires within their borders to become extremely repressive. Almost all dark-skinned people in the Gold government had been enslaved, such that people who lived in cold climates in such poor living conditions that they did not even have roads in their town, still nevertheless considered "slave" to be a synonym for dark-skinned people living in tropical climates. However, the Gold government did also allow slavery of light-skinned people such as the Macro-Repilians, but here the slaveowners were generally members of the same tribe rather than a thin upper crust of foreign invaders.

The Crystals thus had created a new nation of liberated dark skinned people that was also a strong military power. All other "free" nations of dark people (called Kampa as a cover term) were very poor nations in the tropical rainforest that were just shy of the reach of the slave lords to their east, who were even brave enough to send ships into their territory to abduct more slaves (they had stopped kidnapping lighter peoples such as Pabaps because their navy was no longer able to reliably reach Paba). Even though the Crystal government was repressive, denying power to anyone who did not convert to their religion, the standard of living they prvoided even those who refused to convert was far better than slavery, and there were no attempts at revolt.

However, the Crystals did not let the conquest of Baeba distract them from their thousand-year mission. They signed a treaty with the Thunder Empire to their north and east, which had been growing even more aggressively than the Crystal Empire. Both empires had started out as tiny colonies repressed by Nama, with the original Thunder state being called Kava. Kava only came to call itself the Thunder Empire (native name Altotta) later on, as Thunder was the name of a political party that arose from within Kava rather than a term for Kavans as a whole, but Thunderism soon enrolled 100% of the population of Kava. Kava had been violent even when it was tiny, because they had invaded a very soft, weak part of Nama, whereas the Crystals had been forced into the desert and gone through a period of losing every battle they fought and only after more than a thousand years finally getting a taste of victory.

The new Crystal-Thunder alliance was called the Vora Empire, after a native cymbidium flower. Even the natives of the Vora Empire questioned the decision to use a beautiful but very delicate flower as the symbol of what all of its members thought of as the world's greatest military power. The Thunder people, despite their name and history of violent conquest, were very feministic, often promising that one day men would be equally represented in their government but seeming to confine all male leaders to accessory roles. The love of flowers, they felt, was a sign of this feminine power. The leaders explained their symbol by saying they wanted their people to grow like flowers, and spread out all over of the land, making people happy. Moreover, they claimed that peace would soon come, and that they would not necessarily need to conquer their enemies to achieve peace. They merely needed to conquer the enemies that posed a serious threat to their empire, such as the Repilians and the suddenly renewed immigrants from the rainforests of Laba.

Politics

A few Baebans have left Amade, mostly for Lypelpyp, and from there, a smaller amount move on to other areas within the Poswob Empire. Histortically, relations were not always good: the very first time when people from Lypelpyp built a road over the mountains into Baeba, the Baebans that they had expected to be friendly followed them back up the road and massacred them. But for the most part, contact has been friendly and traffic flows in both directions.