Dolls

The Dolls were an amalgamation of conquered tribes under the control of the Matrix slave empire. Dolls were of mixed ancestry, but the most common ancestral tribes were the Swamp Kids and the Players. Other slaves were abducted from the Crystals, the Soap Bubbles, and the Moonshines. Still others were taken from Dreamland.

Language

Probably Bābākiam. The Dolls taught their abusers how to write, as the slavemasters were impressed by the ornate scripts the Dolls used to write their language. These scripts were originally devised for Late Andanese, however.

Early history

Ancestry and origins

The Dolls were shorter than all of the neighboring tribes, and therefore made easy victims. Yet, as the Matrixes raped them, they gave birth to babies who ever more resembled the Matrixes.

Abduction of the Swamp Kids

The primary ancestral tribe was the Swamp Kids; in the year 4190, the Matrixes invaded a troop of Swamp Kids, abducted hundreds of thousands of soldiers, and brought them back to camp to meet their new Matrix masters. These slaves were primarily males, since the Swamp Kids used an all-male army, and therefore they could not bear children. However, the Matrixes had had a previously existing pool of female Player slaves dating from a prior conquest.

The Swamp Kids had grown from the Paaapa tribe, a group of Pabaps who had unusually dark hair. This was due to a greater proportion of Andanese ancestry than was the case for most Pabaps. This Andanese ancestry made them even shorter than the other Pabaps, and as the last of the pure-blooded Andanese were wiped out in distant battles of the same war, the Swamp Kids found they had become the shortest people in the world.

The Matrixes realized that the Swamp Kids would be ideal slaves, as they were easily intimidated even by unarmed Matrixes and even the best of the Swamp Kids would lose any fight against an adult male Matrix. They married the physically small Swampy men with women of other, taller captured tribes in order to produce children who would be almost as small as the Swamp Kids.

Differences in appearance

The Swamp Kids had always disliked the tall people of Dreamland, and said that even though the Dreamers were taller and stronger than Swamp Kids, they were clumsy and fragile, and suffered from frostbite whereas the Swamp Kids seemed to be most at home in the coldest habitable climates. Furthermore, the Dreamers were vulnerable to sunburn despite being otherwise well-adapted for their warm climate, and therefore were forced to wear heavier clothes than other people to protect themselves from the sun. The Swamp Kids' original homeland, Paba, was slightly further south than Dreamland but yet also colder than Dreamland, and therefore the Swamp Kids were accustomed both to stronger sunlight and colder winters.

However strong the Swamp Kids were against the forces of nature, they could not compete with the superior strength of individual Matrix people. The Matrix soldiers simply walked right into the column of advancing Swampy soldiers and picked them up, stabbing those who resisted, and suffering very little damage for their efforts. The Swamp Kids could not retaliate against the Matrix kidnappers because their soldiers were camped in the Matrixes' own nation, Tata, in the mistaken belief that the Matrix was their ally.

Abduction of the Bubbles

The Matrixes also abducted slaves from the Soap Bubbles, a tribe of people who were genetically close to the Matrixes themselves but who received little sympathy. They typically had blonde hair and blue eyes.

The Soap Bubbles had branched off from the Thunder party in the year 3844 and fled into the empire of the dark-skinned Crystal people, based in Baeba Swamp. Because of their blonde hair, the people of Baeba came to identify the Bubbles as Nunabetari, another tribe of blonde, blue-eyed people who had come from Dreamland and had decided to live parasitically. The Bubbles, however, insisted that they had no interest in joining the Nunabetari and that they would be willing to fight for Baeba against Dreamland in a war. However, many Soap Bubbles drifted southwards into the desert, far from any possibility of war, and simply considered themselves a minority within Crystal society.

The Matrixes considered the Soap Bubbles to be highly vulnerable people because, as a minority in Baeba, they were distrusted by all other Baebans and would have difficulty convincing the Baeban mainstream to protect them in a war against an invader who sought to hurt only the Soap Bubbles. As they were traditionally nonviolent, they made poor soldiers, and the Matrixes were able to abduct many Soap Bubbles into their pool of slaves in Tata. They abducted both males and females.

Abduction of the Moonshines

The Matrixes also invaded an organization of humanitarian rescue workers calling itself the Točîku, which had originated in the nearby empire of Moonshine. Moonshine's rescue workers were suffering severe casualties in Baeba, as they were unarmed but were frequently attacked by the people they rescued in Baeba. The Matrixes offered to rescue the rescue workers so long as they would all agree to be slaves for the Matrix on encampments in Tata, but the Točĭku refused and therefore the Matrixes were forced to use violence. This brought them into Baeba's civil war, and both sides of the Baeban civil war considered the Matrix their enemy, but neither was prepared at the time for a revenge invasion northward into Tata. Thus, the Matrixes were able to abduct Moonshine people with some difficulty but nevertheless continued success.

Later history

The Dolls' only victory was as part of a coalition force invading the Matrixes who had formerly abused them.