Meromo

In 3348, the nation of Meromo was born. It was a nation founded by Mammans who had settled in an area they at first called Putu Lake. But the water of their lake made them sick so they constructed a building (Sapeepa) far to the west of the Lake where they kept all the diseased people that they felt could not function in society. But the people who were in charge of the building were also diseased, and they felt more love for the prisoners they ruled over than they did for the rulers of their parent nation, Meromo. The governors of Sapêpa gave birth to children, and told these children that they were Sapêpans, not Meriras. Since Sapêpa was so far away, and because Meromo wanted to ignore Sapêpa, Sapêpa quickly achieved de facto independence from Meromo, and its people began to try to become economically self-sufficient so that they could begin to refuse the free gifts of food and labor that were coming unwillingly from Meromo. In fact, Meromo was ruled at this time by the Pĕp government, which believed in a form of utilitarianism which stated that unhealthy people should be killed in order that they might not be able to suffer or cause other people to suffer. This offended most of the sick people (who called themsselves putubuta), and the putubuta developed a secret political philosophy based on "angry" egalitarianism. Their form of egalitarianism was full of hatred and stated that people who were unintelligent were simply not trying hard enough. Thus their philosophy was often not much kinder to fellow putubuta people than that of the Pĕp.

The society around Merisa was not completely destroyed by sickness, however; they had many advantages which the people living there previously had not. For example, they had access to pure water from the caves to the south, where few other people lived. The people that did live there were very poor and could not prevent the Meriri from stealing their water. And the people of Putu Lake did not let the fact that roughly 20% of their population was severely disabled stop them from yet again attempting to create the age-old Mâta dream of a perfect society attempting to spread itself over the whole planet. They had already succeeded once, on planet Earth, and they hoped to be able to do it again. Also, the Meriri had friendly, non-Putu kin living in only slightly better conditions to their west. These people were Mâta, and therefore they saw each other as allies against the non-Mâta nations that surrounded them. People from the Mâta nations (Meromo and Kâlika, which the Kâlikans collectively called Têupí) often moved back and forth between Tixtƀm and the other areas. Soon the westerners (away from the lake) began to see the easterners (around the lake) as part of the same nation, Têupí, as the westerners. The easterners proclaimed independence, but there were seldom any violent conflicts between the two groups of Mâta people, as they both knew they had many other problems to worry about, such as the takeover of the Swamp.

Some of the liberal Meriri raised their children to embrace the severely disabled members of their society rather than shunning them. Although the Meriri people were never as prosperous as the neighboring societies of Mâta people (to whom they still saw themselves as closely related, and therefore they loved these people), their nation survived for hundreds of years, and for various reasons managed to escape attacks by all other nations.

But the new Mâta had not learned to abandon the violent ideologies of their ancestors; indeed, they hated the Swamp people even more because these people were much more prosperous than the Mâta, who still had to live in sheltered caves because they didn't have the technology available to build houses such as those the Baebans lived in. Their only hope was to form an alliance with non-Mâta people against the rich people living in the Swamp, but they did not realize this, and instead continued living in poverty, wishing the death of the non-Mâta people but being too weak to attack them. Instead they often led invasions on weaker villages outside the Swamp, and stole food and other basic supplies which were scarce in their own territory. At least they had escaped the Repilia, who could not follow the Mâta southward because, as they believed, the Swamp people were constantly casting magic spells to keep them out.

The one advantage that the Meriri had over the more wealthy peoples they were trying to destroy was that the Meriri were born into disease, and had to endure hardships and death every day. Thus, they were more willing to work building weapons than to gather and throw parties, and more willing to kill strange people than to love them. They had no machine technology, but they could create sharp spears and other weapons from rocks. Thus they could physically overpower unarmed Swamp people and steal from them, and escape persecution because the Swamp had no real crime control at this time. They soon did develop crime control, however, and began to take revenge on the Meriri, who felt that despite their disabilities, they would soon develop for themselves a prosperous society, and would be able to conquer the Swamp. The Swamp people, meanwhile, were too focused on themselves to realize the Meriri's threat.