Thaoa

Thaoa is a language spoken in southeastern Rilola and many islands. It was spoken around the year 4100 (present day is 8700), but its primary descendant language, Sakhi, is often still called "Thaoa".

Early history

Thaoa was settled by people from the cold uplands of Laba, similar territory to that which produced Paba. But unlike Paba, they refused to allow a foreign nation (Tarpabap) to control where they lived within their new territory, and relied on their own boats to settle the mainland instead of the boats of the Tarpabaps. Thus, they said, they had created a nation with no border, rather than a nation whose borders were determined by how far an outside minority who dominated the military was willing to go.

They also enslaved Pabaps, seeing them as little masochists who cried out for ever greater degrees of abuse. Pabap governors were more than happy to consign huge numbers of Pabaps to the Thaoan slavemasters at low prices, keeping the money to enrich themselves as they had little contact with the Pabap lower class and considered slavery morally acceptable as it seemed to lead to better food production in Thaoa versus the warmer but somehow poorer Pabap farmers who did everything with only their own family's labor.

However, in some respects, the Thaoans were actually more peaceful than Pabaps: whereas Paba settled in Naman lowlands and killed the entire aboriginal population save those few who converted to the Yiibam religion, Thaoa demanded an ever-growing territory of its own but allowed aboriginals to peacefully exit this territory so long as they were willing to settle in other lands nearby, of which there were plenty. Thaoa soon took over the coastline of many aboriginal nations to their east, and forced those nations to adopt aboriginals of other tribes that had been chased out by the Thaoan settlers. However, for the most part this policy was not due to any magnanimity from Thaoa but rather due to the fact that Thaoa simply found mountainous climates unsuitable for agriculture and was lucky enough to be the easternmost "settler" nation, thus being granted lordship over all of the aboriginals to its east whereas the other nations such as Paba only ruled over their own tiny home territory.

Wars against Paba

Another way that Thaoa was more peaceful than Paba is that they never declared war against Paba because they wanted to keep the slave trade flowing. In later history, many slave empires were so aggressive that they actually declared war on the nations from which they were buying slaves, saying that the victim nations were being unfair in demanding high prices for their people's labor and needed to compromise with the slavemasters who wanted them for free. Thaoa considered Paba a strong ally, even if not an equal, and never approached this level of selfishness.

But Paba did declare war on Thaoa several times. In all cases but one, the war erupted at a time when Thaoan slavemasters were being flagrantly abusive of their agreements with Paba, and were taking in far more illegal Pabap slaves than legal ones, meaning that young children were being abducted while walking home from school, and the parents of those children were not compensated. Although Paba had a strong army and a strong police force, both were trained to react to conventional situations rather than a war of adults fighting toddlers. Nevertheless, Paba's wars were usually successful in releasing all of the child slaves because Thaoa did not want to shut off relations with the nation that its economy depended on, and therefore did not mobilize its entire army.

The one war that Paba fought against Thaoa for reasons other than slavery came as such a shock that Thaoa was unable to react and did nothing at all as Pabap soldiers overran not only Thaoa, but most of the territories that Thaoa itself had conquered in previous wars. However, within a generation, Paba disowned the occupied territories and therefore they became once again foreign nations, even though their governments were now military instead of religious.

Disruption of peace

The "chaos of Nama" (Umunises, Loop, etc) was here. Mt. Cherry may have also been here. That is, Nama previously extended further east but was swamped. Nevertheless, the nameless "Eastern Mountain Tribes" such as Hala did survive.

Early Thaoan civilization was essentially like the other Gold civilizations to its west. Thaoa was the easternmost of them all. It also had, proportionally, the largest number of Andanese people living within its borders of all the Gold nations. Thaoa was not a democracy, so even when the Andanese became a majority they did not pose a threat to the central government, but the Thaoans did not want to allow Andanese people to serve in their military given that they had shown elsewhere they were much more loyal to Andanese living in other nations than they were to other people living in their home nation. So they had a military that excluded most of their population, which meant that the Andanese had the privilege of citizenship without (for males) the duty to defend the nation. To compensate, they eventually passed laws that established a system that, while not truly slavery, kept the Andanese in a low position in society. This soon had the effect of turning the Andanese into an openly hostile majority, rather than merely a subgroup less trustworthy than other Thaoans in a war.

Soon the Thaoan population began to divide politically into two sides: one side wanted to essentially give up, and let the Andanese take over the society, and become the first Andanese-majority power, even though they knew that they risked being killed by the newly powerful Andanese majority, who were already responsible for most of the violent crime in their society despite being legally denied the ability to own even basic weapons.

The other side favored a total war against the Andanese, saying that they would offer peaceful exile, but expected nearly none of the Andanese to accept this offer. They noted that Thaoa was already a military champion, and despite a rapidly growing population, was not suffering from famine in the way many other nations were because they were able to control their sea space many miles offshore and bring in fish to eat. They knew that other nations around them would almost certainly all side with the Andanese, both because they had Andanese people living in them and because Thaoa was already an enemy of many nations to its west, particularly those aligned with Nama, due to territorial disputes relating to the ongoing settlement of the deep interior.

The weak, pessimistic third side of the debate hoped that peace was still possible between the two tribes, and generally favored equal status for the Andanese, but believed that Andanese revenge against the Thaoans could only be prevented if an outside power intervened that was so strongly against both sides that the two enemies would have to make peace in order to survive. Thus they secretly hoped that Nama would invade Thaoa on the basis of being revenge for attacks against Repilians living nearby, even though they knew this would be the most bloody solution of all since it would be a world war instead of a local war. They also knew that even if it were to happen, Nama would probably side with the Andanese anyway because it would help them win the war and because the Andanese were not generally responsible for any intrusions into Nama, as they preferred to stick to the tropics. These people had no representation in government and were afraid to even publicly express their beliefs.

Modern civlization

That is, although the Saks strove to eliominate all minorities form the ir terrritory, and got a lot of them, they didnt settle depp inland so a lot of minorities still sruvive. The Bachon people, who today consider themlseves Poswobs, have some territory here and some in Pusaponm.

The Palli language is descended from Thaoa as well, and is spoken in the southernmost state in their empire.

Thaoa is a very warlike culture, unlike most humans on planet Teppala. "We have our teeth in the arm of the Poswob Empire" is their statement that they have unopposed settlements in Pusapom and are interested in taking over the entire gigantic Poswob empire, saying that they could beat a Poswob army 40 times their own size simply because Poswob soldiers are so supple and delicate, meeting the Sakhi army's spears and swords with only their soft hands and bodies.

However, for the most part, their conquests have been directed towards areas even further east then themselves, including back-migrations to Laba to conquer the territories from which humans were born. This is because it is much easier to conquer an island, or mainland territory enclosed by mountains, whose people have no escape, than to invade even the very soft and unsuspecting Poswob Empire which is separated from the Sakhis by the planet's tallest and most rugged mountain range.

Poswobs have even begun to settle in the northern areas of the Sakhi Empire, despite warnings from the inhabitants that Poswobs literally have no rights and can simply be killed at any time without the murderer needing to worry about punishment. (They generally do not have trouble crossing the mountains because they come slowly, with supplies, and along roads through mountain passes. Moreover, Poswobs often settle high mountain areas even where the climate is extremely cold.) They are there primarily to support peaceful trade between the two empires, but some Poswobs have visions of their empire not always being locked out of the east coast by the tiny but aggressive Thaoa settlements, and would like to overcome the barrier whether through peace (trade) or war. The Treay of Rumpamna establiushed this, and the settlers helped seal the treaty by exchanging their children with those of the other side, so that Thaoans raised Poswob children and vice versa. This is not the source of the claim that Thaoans have settlerments in Pusapom, however; those are a separate entrainment.

Not all Thaoa nations are warlike; the nation of Nupsynta has no military and follows a strict policy of refusing to retaliate against any attacks made on it. Private citizens are expected to defend themselves and their families. This is unlike the pacifism of Pusapom and Pupompom, where in some areas people are forbidden even from owning weapons that could be used to defend themselvbes from animals,m so a wild rabbit can kill humans indiscriminately.

Phonology

The phonoklog similar to that of the lkanguage of North Tapakunya in the year 18343 BC. Vowels are /a e i o u y/ (y is schwa) and consos are /b p pʰ d t tʰ k kʰ q qʰ s š č x h ʔ j ž m n ŋ l/. There are many diphthongs, unusual for this continent and even this planet. There are no tones and all wqords are stressed on the first syllable. In many ways it is like Poswa with less labial consoannts, though actually this descrtiption would fit better on the Sakhi labngujage, a descendant of Thaoa, which has the same six vowels but no aspiration distinction and no uvulars, thus being much more like Poswa.

There were no uvulars in the parent language. Instead they were taken from Andanese, and from sequences that were not uvular but were still found only in loans from Andanese. E.g. /ʔh/ from a vowel accented with final /ʔ/ plus a sullable beginning in /h/. This could only happen in loans from Andanese, so all uvulars were from Andanese, whether directly or indirectly.

Hisory

The "chaos of Nama" (Umunises, Loop, etc) was here. Mt. Cherry may have also been here. That is, although the Saks strove to eliominate all minorities form the ir terrritory, and got a lot of them, they didnt settle depp inland so a lot of minorities still sruvive. The Bachon people, who today consider themlseves Poswobs, have some territory here and some in Pusaponm.

The Palli language is descended from Thaoa as well, and is spoken in the southernmost state in their empire.