Oyster language

Both the Subumpamese peasants and the Crystals in Subumpam were friendly to the Islanders of Wapeblo Island (Ƥāli); they considered the Islanders a brave if foolish people for threatening to take over the entire world, but agreed that if they ever somehow managed to do it, their government would be far more benevolent than Nama or any of the governments proposed by the Lobexonian groups currently being oppressed by Nama. The Islander logo of a tall female soldier standing on top of a dying, helpless male was seen as unthreatening, even cute, by the strongly male-dominated societies of the rest of the world, and they yearned for the opportunity to bring Islander culture to the mainland. The Crystals in particular had become famous for "accepting" Feminism (meaning, in this context, the rule of men by women and in most cases a biological trait in which women are taller than men), which made them dangerous in the eyes of Lobexon for two reasons: firstly, the absolute upper class in Lobexon was itself Feminist, being descended from Macro-Repilians from the cold interior of Nama who carefully set themselves apart from all other races and had maintained a tall-female, short-male society for thousands of years; and secondly, all of the other people in Lobexon did not want to live in a society in which their male power structure was so weak and helpless that their oppression would become even easier: Feminism did not seem to make women any stronger, either physically or socially; it simply removed all of the power of men, essentially in the eyes of Feminism's enemies turning them back into little boys.

However, the Islanders as a rule did not feel safe moving into Subumpam or Lobexon or any other territory where they would be a tiny, easily eliminated minority. THey instead invited others to move in with them instead to various colonies they planned to create, some in the rainforests of the far southwest, others in the cold snowy uplands of Nama. They considered Nama to be a safe place because at least in the areas they were planning to go there was no established society nearby that was strong enough even to defeat the tiny, impoverished Islander colony. They invited Subumpamese, including the Crystals in hiding in Subumpam, to move to their new nation, which they called simply FILTER (the name of their political party), and even if they themselves were not Feminists they promised that within a few generations they would be.

Early growth

The Islanders early on developed several tiny nations: one was FILTER, also the name of their political party, and it was located in the highlands of Nama in land that was mostly empty even of aboriginals. But those aboriginals that did exist were generally friendly and the Islanders felt safe living in FILTER. Another nation was Učūt, which was their mirror nation that was granted to them by the government of Nama upon their early recognition as a distinct political group that deserved representation in Nama's government. This was possible even though the nation that FILTER considered its primary home was also part of Nama.

Early culture

The Islanders believed that women were more virtuous than men, and that women should be elected to lead their nation. They saw male leaders as a sign of evil, saying that men were perverse, stupid leaders who could only fight evil wars, whereas women could fight good wars. Thus, all their political and military leaders were female, and many of the people they sent to trade with other nations were female as well. Most Islanders had a biological trait of women being strongly taller than men, and although they did not mind tall-male people moving into FILTER, they said that they would be locked out of the upper class and bred into Feminists within a few generations. Male Islanders actually loved Feminism and did not mind being "oppressed", as they felt much safer and somehow stronger in a society dominated by women than in one dominated by other men. Female Islanders considered themselves very strong people and could not understand why mainlanders often laughed when they saw angry Islander women.

The Thousand Year War

In 2175, police from Lobexon invaded Wapeblo Island, where many FILTER members were camping out, and triggered the Battle of Wapeblo Island. Most of the FILTER Islanders were killed in this battle, leaving only 11 girls and 3 boys, who were then put in jail in Lobexon. They soon were released, some illegally. They were so unaware of the outside world that they at first thought they could simply blend in to the society around them. But they were unaware that people could identify them as FILTER members on sight both because of their physical appearance and their distinctive language. They managed to flee back to Nama by claiming that they were merely Pabaps with taller than average girls (they had managed to learn some Pabappa because they were interested in finding allies in Paba). Here they informed FILTER that their campsite had been raided and FILTER responded by declaring war on the entire world but for anyone willing to submit to them.

As above, the Islanders had a problem being taken seriously by most of their neighbors. Even though people in this part of the world were aware that there existed races of people whose women were taller than their men (here called "Feminism" for succinctness), and that in fact the uppermost part of the ruling class in Lobexon was itself Feminist, few people, even other Feminists, associated Feminism with military power. FILTER's female0dominated military training camps were seen by outsiders as an amusing example of a society who thought they could wish anything they wanted into reality. Furthermore, FILTER was a tiny organization, and the Islanders were a tiny part even of that. So the government of Lobexon did nothing when FILTER announced at an international meeting that it was cutting ties with the Gold government of Lobexon and now considered Lobexon and the Gold party to be its primary political enemy.

They used explicit symbolism in their campaign, saying they literally were launching a relentless war of all female-dominated societies against all male-dominated ones, which they symbolized as a war of women against men. Men in FILTER were happy to be dominated by aggressive women because it made them feel safer and actually stronger than they were in Lobexon or any other male-dominated society. (Note that despite the upper crust of Lobexon being Feminist, they had lost control over their people and essentially ruled from fortresses on mountaintops.) They promised they would not stop their new world war until they could look down from a high tower on densely packed crowd of people in every major city and see nothing but women because all of the men were too short to be seen under the women's head and shoulders.

But FILTER hated women too. FILTER made it clear that any Feminist society that called itself an ally of FILTER but did not submit to FILTER's new government and follow its laws exactly would be considered twice as much an enemy of FILTER as the male-led societies FILTER rejected on sight. They would not stop until they had conquered the entire planet and also had eliminated all potential dissenters within their nation. They refused to use schools, preferring instead mandatory military service from the moment of birth until the day of death for both genders.

Diplomacy

Other governments questioned the sanity of the FILTER leaders. While they sympathized with their helplessness to prevent the tragic deaths of 100 FILTER members during a government raid on Wapeblo Island, they believed that responding to the attack by destroying the world was unreasonable. Nevertheless, Nama's Mirror government was an excellent place for a radical minority like FILTER to look for an ally, and the FILTER diplomats put down their swords and went peacefully to one embaassy after another looking for someone who was desperate enough to take them on as an ally.

They were refused at door after door, but of all the many leagues they approached, the Crystals had rejected them the most politely, and FILTER took this as proof of a possible future partnership between the two struggling organizations. They did not have much in common, other than that they both considered themselves transnational, and both fought only for themselves, considering it morally acceptable even to fight their own families if they stood in the path of power. Thus some FILTER members gave up their dialect of Subumpamese for the Crystal language, known as Khulls. They considered it a waste of time to learn two languages, however.

Wars begin

In 2183, FILTER decided to declare war against all of the world's oceans and lakes, since few humans lived in the ocean full time and they expected to face little resistance. They still had a few ships of their own but no seacoast other than a few ports in Nama which had decided to allow them in so they would not be trapped in their home nation of FILTER.

They built a colony in central Pupompom (then part of Nama) called Time Passes Slowly. Here, they said, no changes to laws could be made for the next 2500 years. TPS's population grew quickly. It was the size of Minnesota. The northern border of Time Passes Slowly was defined as the polar icecap, which they had renamed "Snow Mound" and claimed to also be their territory. They wanted to build a secondary capital city on the very highest point of the icecap from which they would raise armies to rule the world below. At this point, the icecap was much larger, and the Rúm Ocean was entirely covered by ice, meaning that the land to the north and south of it was seen as connected, and was entirely icecap. The icecap thus was almost 50% of Rilola.

Home in Subumpam

As above, FILTER realized that Subumpam was a very weak country, perhaps the weakest in the world, and decided to establish their homeland in the capital territory of Subumpam (named Bipabum). They did this shortly after 2200 AD only after peaceful diplomatic talks with the Crystals ensured them that they would not simply be slaughtered on sight if they landed their boats in Bipabum. The Crystals had previously occupied much of southern Bipabum and ruled out all non-Crystals from the territory, forcing the previous inhabitants to flee, and Subumpam's government had so far not yet been able to reclaim its territory.

However, the Subumpamese government soon really did begin rounding up Crystals and moving them into slave plantations in the interior. The FILTER members did not know what to do. The Crystals had been easy to pick out because despite being strongly transnational, all of the nations they had recruited from so far were populated entirely by dark-skinned people of Sukuna-like tribes such as Kuhilani and Lobexon, whereas Subumpam's majority was blonde and blue-eyed with light skin. There was no middle ground. The FILTER members survived the cullings by identifying as Subumpamese, which in fact they historically were, even though they had founded their original nation on Wapeblo Island by explicitly rejecting their Subumpamese heritage and declaring themselves also transnational. Even though the Crystals had chased out all of the Subumpamese earlier, FILTER members were able to say they had simply changed their minds and let them back in. Meanwhile, a few non-Subumpamese FILTER members had trickled in from other nations in the meantime, and FILTER was friendly to these, but these people had survived because they still did not resemble the Crystals.

FILTER realized that they could help the Crystals by officially converting to Crystalism themselves, meaning that governments could no longer simply treat the Crystals as a visible minority group and pass over anyone with light skin and blonde hair. But doing this, they knew, would mean that they also would be enslaved. At the same time, they knew that the Crystals in Subumpam were just a small minority of all Crystals, and that rescuing the Crystals from their slave plantations was necessary in order to convince the outer Crystal parties that FILTER was indeed their friend.

They still decided not to rescue the Crystals, however, and instead focus their efforts on overthrowing the Subumpamese government in the capital city of Wabula Pipem. They felt they had the opportunity of the millennium because they had just infiltrated the very core of the Empire they wished to destroy, and were passing themselves off as normal Subumpamese citizens and already had the proper language skills as they had thrown off their 400-year-old Islander dialect when they settled in the mainland. In Nama, they reached an agreement with the Crystal Party that this was the right thing to do, as the Crystals were known to be generally violent people and figured that they would break out of the slave plantations soon.

At this time the population of Subumpam was about 600,000 people, of which 10000 were Crystals and about 5000 were FILTER members. However, Subumpam was by now so full of bruises and divisions that they figured they could fight only the Bipabumese army and take power without having to worry about an attack from all of the other states. After all, only fifty years earlier a different army from Lobexon had invaded the Subumpamese state of Yuez, and the rest of Subumpam had been unable to stop them. And then after that, yet another group had also invaded Subumpam, and although that group had been captured and enslaved, they had been very small, even smaller than FILTER.

Subumpam was being handicapped by an old treaty signed with Nama which stated that Subumpam's military would be smaller than expected for an empire its size, and that it would partly be overseen by Nama. This had been done because Nama knew its largest military weakness was the tiny size of its coastline relative to its huge interior expanse, and that they would forever need to occupy another nation's coastline if they were to have any expectation of defending their own. However, later on, Nama itself had undergone a civil war, weakening the Naman layer of the military as well. Nama now stated that it would not object if Subumpam chose to rearm itself to any extent it desired, even if it became strong enough to start invading other nations. The Subumpamese people themselves, however, were weak and indecisive, and when they saw that Subumpam was being pounded by army after army of desperate, dangerous invaders, they generally blamed their own government for their problems and not Nama.

Most of these groups moving to Subumpam were people who had been kicked out of their homelands, mostly in Lobexon, and simply wanted a safe place to stay. The example of the Crystals had shown that even a 1% minority could temporarily hold off the entire Subumpamese army if they were aggressive enough, and the example of the Têt had shown that they could potentially even win permanent control of a part of Subumpamese territory. The Crystals and FILTER, however, had taken their aspirations even further than that: they wanted total control of all of Subumpam, and then planned to take over Lobexon and potentially even southern Nama after that.

Campfires and pine syrup

But FILTER in Subumpam was a lot more down to earth than the FILTER hideouts in Nama that were declaring war against lakes and mounds of ice. They realized that a force of 3000 able bodied adults, who were themselves largely female and largely pregnant in the hopeful expectation of bringing forth an even more feminine fighting force in the far future, might not quite make it if the larger Subumpamese army decided to contribute to the fight instead of merely the few thousands living in Bipabum. In fact, Subumpam still officially had a united army, not an army for each state, although the conflict in Yuez had shown that the reality didnt always match the ideal.

FILTER really did see women as stronger than men now, and did not expect extra sympathy if they fought an all-male army, nor did they expect the male soldiers would treat female FILTER members more gently than male ones. But they made a plea to the FILTER headquarters in Nama that they needed more people if they were going to mount an all-out war against Subumpam. By now, enough FILTER people were living in upland Nama to equal the entire army of Subumpam, even though these people were also mostly female and were seeking to live a life of peace and have many children that would themselves live a life of peace in preparation for a war only in the far future when they became strong enough to win.

Other FILTER commanders proposed as even braver attack on Nama itself. There were still a few areas of Naman territory which had not been colonized by immigrants, but were isolated from Nama by mountains. THe Naman nation of Nèye, in particular, seemed a possible target for a FILTER-only colony because it bordered Subumpam, which meant that FILTER could immigrate by land and thus not worry about having to pierce the Naman navy, and was isolated from most of Nama's land army because it was a coastal territory walled off by mountains. Unlike most of Nama's coastal states, Nèye was qwuite large, and geographically resembled Subumpam more than it resembled Nama's smaller states such as Kava. Its population was very mixed, essentially resemlbing the territory of Subumpam before Subumpamese people arrived. That is, it was on the borderlands of the two great aboriginal groups of Rilola: the dark skinned Sukuna and the light skinned Repilians. However, Nèye was not merely a fossil preserved from 2000 years ago as if nothing had happened: they now also had Subumpamese people and several other groups living on their land. They simply had never been interested in joining Subumpam because they were too politically divided. Meanwhile, Nama had not ever seriously considered the possibility of an invasion of Nèye from land, since Subumpam had never been much of a player in military invasions, so although their naval blockade was vcery strong, their land army was a token force more concerned with stopping fights amongst the various ethnic groups present than in defending the nation as a whole.

And so they decided that with the Crystals gone, there was no need for a FILTER presence in Bipabum for the time being. Giving thanks for their blonde hair, the FILTER army decamped immediately from Bipabum and walked 75 miles to the heavily forested border between Subumpam and Nèye.

The FILTER intrusion into Nèye went entirely unopposed by the natives of Nèye. But it angered the citizens of the Subumpamese state of Vuʒi, which had long had mixed allegiances and had been planning to take over Nèye themselves but had been held back thus far by lack of military power and the fact that they were getting rich from peaceful trade between Subumpam and Nama and most of its citizens did not want a war. Although Vuʒi had previously been able to host its own army, this had been revoked in a later treaty. Thus, all of the weaknesses of the Subumpamese military were weaknesses of Vuʒi's military too. When Vuʒi heard that an army consisting mostly of girls had just broken into Nèye unopposed and set up campsites, they figured that a team of Vuʒians, even if they had no support from Subumpam, could do the same.

FILTER did not know what the total population of Nèye was because Nèye, unlike Subumpam, did not have a census of its population. What they did know is that it was racially divided, with Repilian people in the cold mountainous north and Sukuna-like people in the warm coastal plains of the south. The Repilians wanted access to the coast, too, but were incapable of arming a force of people to take over the coast even though they were not in principle opposed to violence against the Sukuna. The FILTER army promised the Repilians (using Khulls-speaking diplomats, as at least a few Repilians spoke Khulls) that if the Repilians agreed to an alliance with FILTER, FILTER would put its people on the front lines and take most of the casualties in the war. At this time they still did not know what the population of Nèye was, but figured it must be lower than similarly-sized states in Subumpam due to the poor living conditions of its people. And similar-sized states in Subumpam held only around 60000 people.

Battle of Nèye (2246)

In 2246, FILTER launched an all-out war against the Sukuna and Vuʒian people living in Nèye. The Repilians had agreed to their new alliance, with the Repilians who wished not to fight being promised that they could simply remain in the mountains because the Sukuna-Vuʒi coalition was not interested in the mountains even if they won a resounding victory against the FILTER-Repilian coalition. Thus these Repilians joined FILTER. There were also a few Crystals living in Nèye, and once these people realized what was happening they realized the time had come for them to fight the people around them and help FILTER's army.

The Vuʒi population of Nèye was essentially unarmed, and FILTER was able to easily kill their adult male population, save for a few who had surrendered and convinced FILTER commanders that they would cooperate. They had killed 14000 Vuʒians as they cut their way down to the sea, while almost no FILTER members were killed by Vuʒians. The Sukuna people were much tougher, as they hunted for a living, and essentially always had weapons as their side. Nevertheless the weapons they had were not well suited for defeating a densely packed army of people rushing down from the mountains. The FILTER army suffered a few hundred deaths at the hands of the Sukuna's bow-and-arrow soldiers, but for the most part, killed far more than they died. However, unlike the Vuʒians, the Sukuna people were spread out, and FILTER's goal was not to seek out every last Sukuna and kill them preemptively. Thus FILTER hit the Vuʒians harder than they hit the SUkuna, and the FILTER army was not bothered knowing that Sukuna tribesmen were still out in the woods when FILTER reached the coast and took over the port city of Vallo in less than a month. Vallo surrendered immediately since it depended on the rest of Nama for everything, and Nama had seemingly done nothing to help them. Thus the FILTER army declared victory and demolished the sculptures and buildings in the city center of Vallo. Then FILTER enslaved the children of Vallo and had forcibly married the Vallo women, with five Nèye women for every FILTER man, since the native males had been killed already. They thus promised that FILTER's population would increase fivefold in a generation, and soon would be able to threaten Subumpam.

The sudden loss of the entire nation of Nèye to the FILTER army showed Nama that they had been wrong to doubt that FILTER could ever make itself into a serious military power. The brutality of FILTER's army, which had killed every man, raped every woman, and enslaved every child they captured, was unknown during even the worst of the wars Nama had fought in over the past few hundred years. Moreover, FILTER had immediately built forts using enslaved child labor in Vallo after destyroyinh most of its buildings, and had also built forts along other areas of the coast, so even though FILTER at the moment still did not have a true navy, Nama knew that using its own navy to try to take back Nèye, or even Vallo, would be difficult. Likewise, when word of the easy victory reached the Repilian tribes hiding out in the mountainous northern part of Nèye, they fully embraced FILTER and its policies and swore off any remaining allegiance they had had to the rest of Nama. They began building weapons for themselves in the event that Nama decided to use their long border as a weak spot to invade Nèye from the north.

FILTER had been saying for a hundred years that Subumpam was a weak, vastly overvalued military power, but now they realized that Nama was even weaker. They had just invaded and conquered one of Nama's most valuable states, right in the core of the empire, and Nama had not even yet attempted a counterattack. Moreover, although they immediately banned FILTER from participating in Naman politics, meaning that their Mirror nation of Ucut was closed down, the Namans did not reach a consensus to also ban the Crystals, which meant that FILTER could still communicate with its people living in northern Nama by way of Crystal diplomats.

The Crystals told them that Nama was so weak now that even the large subarctic nation of Time Passes Slowly had not been invaded by Nama's army yet, and that the Repilians who had lived there were friendly both to FILTER's people and to the Crystals who had decided to move in alongside them. The capital city of TPS was Xʷú ("bounce, carom"), spelled as Fu in Pabappa.

Battle of Vallo (2332)

In 2332, FILTER won a major battle on the coast of the Naman nation of Nèye. Nèye was just north of Subumpam, and FILTER declared this vicotyr gave them control of all shipping between Subumpam and Nama, and that FILTEr had conquered all of the territory it needed to build its empire and had in effect conquered the world. In reality, although they had expanded very quickly in just 160 years, most of what they'd accomplished so far was to build settlements on uninhabited islands and reinforce these settlements to prevent outsiders from attacking them. However, the battle in Nèye was an exception. It was indeed a conventional military battle, fought on both land and sea, which FILTER had unquestionably won. They then attached Nèye to Subumpam and declared it the capital of Subumpam.

As a minority within Subumpam, they claimed that they despised all Subumpamese people including the other minorities, and refused to cooperate with any of them or let them into their fort cities in Nèye. They promised that they would grow their population by killing off all of the males of the other tribes around them, and having FILTER men mate with the remaining women to produce new FILTER children. The idea of a Feminist party coming to power through rape was so unacceptable to Subumpam that they swore to fight FILTER all the way.

But FILTER was now building a new city for FILTER people only in what had been the richest part of Subumpam, and this city was not attacked, and so FILTER claimed that this proved they had conquered Subumpam. Likewise, although their battles in Lobexon had mostly not done well, they now had an absolute lock on power in certain regions of the tropical rainforest. They had done this by at first peacefully moving into those nations, saying they wanted to clean up the messes people had made, and indeed doing that, but then switching to violence once they had enough of the population on their side.

They had also befriended an ethnic group calling itself Muana ("large knife"), which was trying to cut its way into Lobexon to escape the sinking and desertification of their homeland. They at first were vicious enemies of FILTER and told the other nations in the world that only Muana could stop FILTER from destroying the planet, but suddenly switched sides when FILTER promised them immunity to many of thier laws.

Although FILTER still refused to send its children to anything resembling a school, Paba had manmaged to convince the FILTER leaders that global warming existed and that it would be foolish for them to attempt to build settlements on islands or low-lying areas as these would soon be flooded by rising waters. Paba itself did not have a problem settling islands and low-lying areas because they generally did not live in large stone buildings.

Ceasefire

FILTER for the time being considered its home base to be Nèye, connected by only a chain of unmanned mountain passes to its reserve army in Time Passes Slowly. Over the next 15 years, they kept relentlessly building fortresses in Nèye, and choosing their new leaders carefully from among the people they had conquered. Crystals began to move into Nèye now, considering themselves as one with the FILTER leaders now. It did not bother the Crystals that in physical appearance they were identical to the Sukuna people whom the FILTER leaders had just finished massacring half of and raping the other half, because the Crystals had been against these people all along and what happened to them did not concern the Crystals at all.

FILTER had decided to stop fighting for the time being, and focus on preventing a revenge attack on Nèye. They knew that Nama might not remain weak forever, after all, and that Nama was still several dozen times the size of Nèye in both population and geographical extent, even 100 times larger inclduing occupied territories. They had won a pretty good prize in Nèye, larger than most of the individual states of Subumpam and potentially richer even despite the ongoing Naman blockade. Nama considered invading Subumpam instead of Nèye, and then launching an attack of Nèye from within Subumpam, but knew that Subumpam would complain loudly if they were to suffer yet another foreign invasion, and this time from their supposed strongest ally. (Nama's army was already present in Subumpam, but the number of soldiers allowed to remain was set by a treaty, and Nama had promised not to exceed this.) Moreover Subumpam was terrified of FILTER but pleased that FILTER had cut through Subumpam instead of fighting their war inside it. They even considered FILTER a potential ally, so long as FILTER promised not to harm them, even though FILTER had had already a history of rejecting all alliances save for those who submitted to their complete control.

FILTER-Repilia rleations

Even though FILTER and Repilia were both Feminist nations, they had little in common. At first Repilia was supportive of FILTER, as they had the same enemies, but FILTER kept attacking Repilia and rapidly eating up its land. A new league called RMC was formed, which stands for "Restore Repilian Civilization" (they had an altername beginning with M). This was a political party for Repilians only, and thus a return to a party representing an ethnic group and not an ideology. But they said that all the other parties that had power were explicity anti-Repiliuan and they just wanted to get some of their land back. RMC had no power, but survived for a very long tiem as it was assumed that all Repilians would vote RMC.

Beginning around the year 2700, Paba unashamedly began to see Repilia as its "mother", meaning that Repilia's enemies were Paba's enemies. Paba thus rejected FILTER and destroyed the idea of a universal Feminist front united against all male-domianted nations. Paba and Repilia were both very feministic now, and yet they were united in their militance against FILTER.

Later history

FILTER supported Kava in its desperate war against the Swamp; they lost, but whereas Kava was completely destroyed, FILTER survived and even managed to take over some of Kava's old territory as the Kavans retreated. By 3332 AD FILTER was calling itself Mamma and they had decided to build their homeland in a desert instead of an icecap. FILTER also called its people "Hapoto" and the Namans "Atopa". FILTER's religion was called Neimam. FILTER soldiers continued massacring Namans in isolated areas even after they had surrendered to Nama. Even some FILTER groups were telling them to slow down now. One FILTER leader, named Mapappee-Pumapap, broadcast a plea to other nations to help Nama fight off FILTER even though she herself was part of FILTER.

Nevertheless, FILTER eventually ended up siding with Nama because even greater enemies had arisen. Many of their own people broke away over time, and it came to pass that most of hte descendants of the original FILTER army were now outside of FILTER.