Gold Empire

The new Star Empire was sharply divided into two groups of people: native Stars and everyone else. The conquering Namans introduced the Stars to the imapa (also imepo, imapala, i mappa, imupu, imaqpag, etc.) system of government, a political philosophy that had been created by the World Utopians, who had shaped their philosophy to make it appealing to the frightened Stars so that they would let the Namans abuse and control them. The World Utopians had found success with imapa in other nations, too, and had come to dominate the Gold Union well before the induction of Lobexon. Once Loexon was opened up, imapa became a reality, as it was to the Stars a welcome alternative from the many violent factions that had fought for control of Lobexon for all of their lives. Besides imapa, the conquering Namans also forced the Stars to register themselves in the universal census, in order that the government know exactly how many Stars there still were. The Stars were allowed to have some representation in the government, though slavery continued.

Even though the Stars were no longer in power, Lobexon was still relatively wealthy because much of the Stars' technology had survived the war so far. This was imapa's version of utopia: instant gratification and avoidance of pain, even at greater future loss of pleasure. Imapa often upset Star-stytle gov'ts, which were now protected by the Star army and thus prevalent even in Lobexon.

Some Laban nations came looking for a truce with Nama, hoping the two ruthless military powers could learn to make amends. But the problem of Lobexon was so great that no solution could be reached. In 2057, the coast was opened, and Nama sent legions of Lenians down to Lobexon to take over the government. The Lenians introduced the Stars to a form of government known as Lapiwa, which was a special version of imapa that applied only to Lobexon.

However, life in Lobexon after its induction into the Gold Union was nothing like what had existed before2057 because of the exclusive dominance of Lapiwa. Lapiwa had through Lobexon's advanced technology become a symbol of affluence, satisfaction, and hedonism. Lobexon's laws grew more liberal every year.

Conflicts among the slaves

Before 2057, the Popopilapis had been so few in number in Lobexon that they were completely forgotten by many. But after 2057, the power of the Popopilapis surged wildly as disappointed Stars who had fought in the war for the purpose of improving the quality of life in Lobexon listened to the angry words of the Popopilapis. The Popopilapis were Lobexon who had not been quite so suicidally submissive as most people there and had also managed to escape abduction by the Lenians. As the Popopilapis regained power, their enemies in Sulasali felt increasingly threatened. Most Crystals now moved away from Sulasali, and those who remained were physically abused by visiting groups of non-Crystals, who were not punished by the imapa government.

Over the next few decades, the scenario changed somewhat. First, a secret army commanded by the Comet (an ex-Crystal turned Popopilapi) focused on attacking Crystals at every opportunity. This army was frequently attacked by the Gold government or, occasionally, by the Crystals themselves, but it survived these frequent attacks and when it declined, it was due largely to a shift in military power towards another secret army, commanded by Old Faithful, another anti-Crystal.

Another major change was the fact that the Popopilapi, too, had become the target of an army. Here, however, it was the regular Gold army that did the lion's share of battling the Popopilapi. The Popopilapi were denied government power by the other groups, who through the Gold system were given extra power to oppose the Popopilapi (that was one of the main tenets of the Gold philosophy).

A third change was the fact that Crystals from FILTER (a feminist group) now openly helped the Crystals on Sulasali, despite increasing violence from other groups. As FILTER helped the Crystals, Lobexonians' sentiment shifted even more against the Crystals. At the same time, the Popopilapi had their secret army which attacked the Crystals whenever the Gold army couldn't stop them. Thus, a "triangle war" had emerged -- the Crystals, the Popopilapi, and the majority of the Lobexonians were all against each other.

Some Crystals asked the Popopilapi for an alliance, but the Popopilapi refused, despite the fact that they were now being as badly abused by the imepists as were the Crystals. The Popopilapi refused to humiliate themselves by giving in to the much more peaceful Crystals. Thus, although some Popopilapi were now secretly defecting to the Crystals, the two groups remained separate, and both groups remained victims of the oppressive Kwipipupûan government which they all had earlier fought to put in place! This was one reason the Popopilapi didn't trust the Crystals. Another was the fact that the Crystals were openly corrupt; for example, they stole money and offered it to anyone who would vote Crystal. They justified this by saying that it is still better than gaining power by force, and therefore was more ethical than what the Popopilapi supported. Finally, the Popopilapi didn't trust the Crystals simply because Crystalism was a very "worldly" movement, which meant it would not be valid in the future. Since Crystalism would not work in the future, they said, any Crystal who would try to stay in power would really be obstructing progress, which is what the Crystals were accusing pro-sko people of.

On the other hand, the Crystals didn't trust the Popopilapi for other reasons. They said that the Popopilapi were nationalists, whose allegiance was to an authority no greater than the Star subset of the Gold Union. The Crystals, on the other hand, belonged to no particular country; they were everywhere. Also, the Crystals accused the Popopilapi of ethnocentrism and other "-centrisms" which the Crystals hated (such as their complaints about the problems of blonde people). Also, the Crystals accused the Popopilapi of being ruthless and overly violent. Coming from a group who for years had unsuccessfully tried to gain political power through violence, this signaled a surprising shift in policy -- it seemed the Crystals had given up trying to be violent and had adopted a more covert method of gaining power.

However, this was a time of terrible vexation for the Crystals. The Crystals blamed themselves for their failure to take over the SS Union, saying they should have foreseen the war and built up a military before the other groups did. But it really was not their fault; there simply weren't enough Crystals in the world to have made much difference in the outcome of the war.

In Sulasali the Crystals taught that their task was to peacefully spread Crystalism to the rest of the world, and at the same time ensure its noncorruption (although this stance was taken only because they were so weak militarily that it was their only hope). The Sulasalians by now had split away from the outworld Crystal parties completely as part of their anti-corruption effort. They wanted to attract people to their party who were looking for God's army, so they worked hard to clean up their image.

In fact this cleansing rebirth did attract the attention of the outworld, but it was in a fashion the Crystals had hoped to prevent - their new image now shone in the universe as a stark contrast to imapa, and Nama, the leader of the imepist council, vowed to destroy the Crystals. As a result, the Crystals were forced to shield their islands from the outworld as virtually all countries, even Lobexon, began to boycott their philosophy.

The Crystals' worst enemy was perhaps Loporomo Leap, which was also deeply involved with the Lobexonians' unique imapa doctrine, called Lapiwa. Lapiwa allowed the Stars to cling to the freedom won by imapa without renouncing national sovereignty, as mainstream imapa demanded. Loporomo Leap had no ethical reason for their habitual abuse of the Crystals; they did it because it was fun. Yet some could not help observing that it seemed the Crystals had stumbled upon the path to real world peace that the rest of the world had blindly been trying to find for all of history.

Repercussions in Nama

Loporomo Leap in fact was an atheist state, and their real quarrel with Sulasali was the obvious fundamentalism of the Crystals. What troubled the Loporomans most was the fact that the Crystals now had a "clean" fundamentalism; that is, it was somehow aligned with all religions at once, excluding none. This was because the Crystals had carefully purged their religion of all tenets that alienated them from the outside world; they believed only in God. They thus had a very simple religion, explaining little, but their only enemies now were atheists. Unfortunately, atheists ruled the universe.

Although the Crystals taught that anyone who was faithful to their "heart religion" - meaning what they honestly believed, rather than what they preached - would be saved, they encouraged people to join their group and convert to their religion as they felt in their hearts that it was the only right thing to do. Meanwhile, they began to transform their own people into an army.

The Crystals soon began to teach that the Crystal party had suffered assault after assault in their history not only because they were fundamentalist, but even more because they were virtuous, and now they predicted even tougher times ahead as they now would have to turn against the atheist, unethical universe. Thus they encouraged their people now to think nothing of risking their lives for the sake of their country. Still, as they were to others essentially harmless, they encouraged peace whenever possible, but began rapid development of a secret military.

The Crystals thus presented to the world a peaceful face, intended to win over the outworld by compassion, but in reality were preparing for what they felt was a necessary evil - a cataclysmic war against the atheist monsters that filled up the rest of the world and were to blame for the Stars' defection from the Crystals during the Six-Boat War.

The population of Lobexon in 2095 was approximately 50 schools (plus 50x). In 2095, a group of about 6000 (5949) Stars attempted to establish a settlement of Baeba Swamp. The sailors hoped that the swampland creatures would provide them a source of food and shelter so that they could live there, and hopefully eventually spread out.

The Pabap ship that they used had immediately crashed. The sailors had landed near their destination, which they now called Baeba Swamp, but they soon discovered that the animals living in this swamp were very dangerous to humans, as the first person to step out onto the land was attacked and killed by a snakelike animal within the first minute.

As huge as Lobexon's population was, Nama's population of about 5 schools was much stronger, and their powers made them too strong for the Stars to ignore. Even the small percentage of MacroRepilians that traveled to Lobexon was enough to hold down the now-united Stars' desperate attempts at rebellion. The Stars never surrendered but they were soon subdued by the much more powerful Macro-Repilians. Although this action caused almost all of the Repilians' allies to declare war on them, for the meantime these other Naman countries, whose populations totalled around 320 schools, were to weak to save the Stars from their coming doom.

However, the protective shield around Lobexon was not nearly as strong as it had used to be. Humanitarian missions took people from Nama, people who were hoping to absorb the Stars into their own societies, to Lobexon to adopt the otherwise doomed Stars and bring them back to their own countries. The Namans could not attack these ships because they couldn't see them.

Although many of these missions failed, enough succeeded that Nama had adopted a sizable minority of Stars (including the Polotta) within a few months.

Life in Subumpam

Northern ("Uphill") SUbumpam at this time was dominated by fundamentalists of the religion called Sisnasi. Nobody in the Susubmpamese government took seriously nyone who did not back up all their political opinions with Sisnasi scripture and philosophy. In southern SUbumpam (Bipabum), a scandal involving the Sisnasi priesthood, combined with the liberality that came with its greater affluence, had caused the population to question Sisnasi and move toward a very secular government, with atheists competing for power at the highest level. They also practiced Emon, a sun-worshipping religion that had been imported from Lobexon.

New states in the Star Empire

The increase in wealth in Lobexon seemed to bring an increase in political liberality with it. Lobexon's laws grew more liberal every year. This was especially true in Amade, the wealthiest state in Lobexon and also the wealthiest state on all of Teppala. The two poorest states, a rainforest state and Taryte, were also the two most politically conservative. Some of the other poorer parts of the union, such as Maheal and Vasabadas, were also fairly conservative, but they were conservative in a way that served to advance the agenda of the liberals in Amade because their conservatism was opposed to the old conservatism that Amade had previously embraced. In 2141, a liberal party calling itself the Sejape Party took control in Amade for the first time and launched a very ambitious program designed to make their dream empire a reality.

The Sejapeans declared that all of the conquered territories that Amade had won in the last war were part of their empire, and could be best served by cooperating with Amade's government. Amade finalized the name Lobexonfor its new empire, which now included 19 states stretching from Bipabum to Maheal.

The Sejapeans planned to build the largest nation in history, and said that they would be able to do it only because it would be a diversitarian empire, doing its best to please everyone. The type of government that Amade was spreading over its empire was largely derived from the Subumpamese system of government, and the Sejapeans told the Subumpamese that it was as true that Subumpam had conquered Amade as vice versa. The Sejapeans believed that Nama/Subumpam's dissenter system was superior to Amade's old democracy, but they didn't actually abolish the democracy because they felt that if they did so, Amadeans and others would complain and revolt because they would feel that their power had been taken from them and given to an unaccountable elite. In Subumpam, a fake democracy was installed to mollify these same people, but all the real decisions were still made by unappointed officials whom the Subumpamese believed to be better able to govern than the people themselves.

In 2140, all slaves living in Amade were killed. Thus slavery was abolished. Hoses who survived fled toe the desert.

In 2148, Amade outlawed tribal alliances and passed a law giving most minorities (but not Andanese or certain groups of Namans) nearly equal rights with Amadeans. In 2155, all Subumpamese and "tropical" slaves were freed and the forced importation of people from Subumpam or any other region was also outlawed. Close relatives of captured Subumpamese slaves were allowed to settle in Amade.

In 2161, Lobexon abolished the promotion of the Emon religion and officially became agnostic. Although most governing officials remained Emon believers, they were no longer allowed to publicly promote their religion or to discriminate against non-Emonians. (Few people outside Lobexon practiced Emon.)

To stop ethnic conflicts, Lobexon in 2161 also introduced a massive resettlement program designed to smooth out the distribution of minorities across the Star Empire. Many states, such as Taryte and certain Subumpamese states, nullified the proposal, but those that didn't nullify it were rewarded by Amade with large amounts of money and the importation of some of Amade's wealthiest citizens into their territories.

In 2162, Lobexon revoked the sole official language status of Amadean and allowed minorities to speak their own native languages, although they had to also be fluent in Amadean. Lellapians were not allowed to speak their own dialects of Lellapian, though. (Amadean was just one dialect of a larger language called Lellapian.) Upset at being neglected by the Amadean government in favor of minorities, Tarises threatened to secede. The government of Tarise offered money for prominent conservative Lellapian/Gold politicians who wished to settle in Taryte , but the Gold government threatened to disenfranchise Taryte if they did not agree to cooperate with the more liberal states. The next month, a secessionist party became the majority party in Taryte, and these Tarises encouraged secessionist movements in Subumpam to seize power away from the Subumpamese liberals that were helping Amade. The Subumpamese, who overwhelmingly adored the Amadean government, refused to cooperate, but the tropics elected a secessionist government in the next month even without Taryte's support.

Both of these new governments were afraid to act against Lobexon, because both were geographically isolated and extremely poor compared to much of the rest of the empire, and they were also militarily helpless, so they knew that they couldn't really secede. Also, the tropical government changed hands again the next month, putting a very pro-Sejape government in power. (Sejape was Amade's liberal party.) When in the following month the Tarise government also turned liberal, a group of Tarise conservatives declared that they would form a paragovernmental organization within Taryte and try to live on their own without actually seceding.

This allowed money from Amade to flow into the Tarise, which was now by far the poorest state in Lobexon, and it allowed the conservatives to feel that they had succeeded at least in part. Thus, nearly all conservatism in SE2 had now been destroyed by the Sejapean liberals.

But they still had the problem that they couldn't completely get along even amongst themselves. Sejape appealed to minorities of all types, and these minorities had been drawn from a diverse stock, and their interests conflicted with each other. Some of the Sejapeans were really poor, underprivileged minorities who were far more conservative even than the Saharans, but whose conservatism was allowed to pass for liberalism because it was opposed to the Saharan conservatism. For example, "Wipep" had passed a law stating that only the Wipepians could serve in its local governments, and that Wipepese was the only language allowed to be spoken in public in Wipep. They also allowed discrimination against non-Wipepians and discouraged non-Eipeians to settle in Wipep. This was far more radical a policy than what the Tarise conservatives were asking for, but the Amadean liberals embraced it because it served their best interests. Similarly, they refused to do anything to stop the "oppression" of married women in Babbam, Subumpam, and the teropics, or the oppression of non-treopical people (including even Amadeans) in the tropics. Much of the tropicswas in fact controlled by local tribal governments, with the official tropical government being too afraid to enforce its laws. Some of these tribes fought against each other, and others teamed up to fight against Amade.

Lobexon had a strongly capitalist economy, and the government of Lobexon refused to improve its global welfare system to provide its poorest citizens a standard of living comparable to that which Kxesh's poorest citizens enjoyed, but some states introduced their own welfare systems, taking the money needed to run them from taxes. Often, recent immigrants from Amade paid a disproportionate amount of these taxes. This was partly because the states blamed Amade for lack of support, and partly because local sentiment was anti-Amade anyway, and the people were glad for anything that helped their own states gain at the expense of Amade. Amade's government, the most liberal in the empire, assumed that these acts of hostility were being caused by the imbalance of wealth between Amade and all the other states, and they did not try to retaliate. Many liberals began to believe that a less capitalist economy was necessary to equalize the wealth imbalance, but the liberals that were in power in Amade held to their inherited belief that capitalism was always the best path to future prosperity. They poured money into local economies to help alleviate their problems, but they never aided the poor directly, as this was contrary to their philosophy.

Meanwhile (April 2166), the southern end of Lobexon (called Shuppa) was beginning to deteriorate. Although in the northern part of the tropics, businesses were developing and people were getting richer, Amade's economic aid was not able to reach the southern tropics or Babbam. The conservative population distrusted the Lobexon government and didn't believe it could solve their problems. Thus, even though it looked as though formal secession would never happen, the southern part of the Star Empire was becoming more and more effectively not even a separate country, but a loosely organized group of tribal communes reminiscent of the ancient tropics that had not yet been conquered by Amade. Even Tarises began to move to the tropics now, hoping to get out from under the thumb of their new Sejapist state government. Others remained in Taryte and set up a pseudo-tribal government that was much better organized than all of the ones in the tropicsand was also even more fiercely opposed to the government.

To the alarm of Amade, these people renamed themselves Dabondians and set up the nation of Dabondi (Taryte) within Sahara's borders, without the consent of any government. Amade voted to let Dabondi secede, since they had chosen land with very few non-Dabondians on it, and they had chosen to cooperate with Lobexon and not plan a war. But Taryte would not agree, and they threatened to enslave the Dabondian leaders if they continued to cause trouble. Babbam, which had a very libertarian government, invited the Dabondians to settle in Babbam, and promised to let them have almost as much freedom as they would have if they were an independent nation. The Dabondians felt uncomfortable amongst the Babbas, and few agreed to their offer. Those that did move mostly did so because they were members of a group of Dabondians that believed that their lives were worthless unless they were dedicated to overthrowing the entire Star empire. A few Dabondians moved to the rebellious states in southwestern Subumpam (Vasabadian strongholds, not Moonshine ones), hoping to damage mainstream Subum society as much as they could before they were discovered. They were in fact planning to kill all the Subumpamese and claim their land for Dabondi, but they knew that there were too few Dabondians at this time to be able to do that.

When the Star government discovered what the Dabondians had been planning to do, they arrested them and put them in slavery in northern Subumpam. They then forced all 19 states to sign an agreement endorsing Sejape and forbidding the construction of any internal empire within SE2. Even the most conservative of the anti-Sejape parties agreed to this, because they wanted to be sure to be seen as friendly to Amade so that Amade would send them more money.

Amade had spared themselves from being attacked by Dabondi, but they knew that they still had the chaos of the far south to deal with. Babbam's government had officially signed a petition condemning the takeover of Subumpam by Amade in the 2140's, and Babbam began to trade directly with Subumpam, ignoring the many states in between them. They had also become openly hostile to the nearby Empire of Kxesh, even though they had until recently been a part of Kxesh. Kxesh blamed Amade for the problems, and Amade considered destroying all of Babbam.

In 2175, the Battle of Wapeblo Pisuba was fought, in which the FILTER army was reduced from 151 soldiers to only 14.

In 2176, a man named Tepe Bemalamja was elected president of Amade.