Lantern Empire

The empire of ʕʷōra (herwafter Vōra) was created from land the Thundererrs had conqeuered from Nama. Vōra soon became the Thunderers' stronghold, and took over Altotta.

Geography and politics

Prehistory

The Vora Empire originated as an alliance between the Crystal Empire in the tropics of the west with the Thunder Empire in the subpolar climates of the far north and mountainous areas of the temperate zone. The land area was thus enormous, far larger than any previous empire other than Nama. And Nama was not a true empire in the sense that it did not control its people; it simply left most of its territory to complete self-government because they bordered the icecap and thus had no fear of invasion. And now the Thunderers had carved out much of Nama's territory for themselves.

Thunder Empire

The Thunderers originated as an army from within the nation of Kava, which had been settled by a rebellious tribe of Pabaps named Hinku who rejected the pacifism of their homeland. They claimed Paba could have easily conquered the entire planet, but chose instead to do nothing as literally all of the nations bordering them, and some quite distant nations, sent their people to trespass all over Paba and abduct the Pabap people as slaves. They claimed that Paba's survival was not due to its powerful, obedient navy but due to the fact that none of their neighbors wanted to let the world's most submissive slaves become the exclusive property of just one nation, and formed "alliances" with Paba solely to ensure that they could forever continue to exploit and abuse Paba.

Thus the Thunderers openly hated pacifists and felt no shame when in 2371 they invaded the very core of Nama to set up their new nation. Nama was not officially pacifist, but that was only because its imperial government was so liberal that it allowed its subject nations to go their own way on nearly every issue, and Nama rarely fought wars because there were few wars that all of its subject nations, or even a majority of them, could all find common interest in. Moreover, Nama had a very small coastline for such a large empire, and this seacoast happened to be cut off from the rest of Nama by the world's tallest mountain range. Thus, although Nama's south coast was strongly defended navally, any invading army who managed to slip past that barrier would face almost no resistance from Nama's land army unless they wished to push beyond even the mountains into the rolling plains to the north.

The Hinku invaders had an advantage because they were Pabaps, and most trading ships visiting Nama at this time were Pabap ships. Thus, the Hinku army actually originated as naval pirates who took Pabap trading shapes and then headed for Nama claiming to be the traders they had killed. Even though they knew that Paba would be horrified when the news broke, and would likely be punished severely by Nama, the Hinku pirates had sworn off all allegiance to Paba, and indeed, all allegiance to anyone but each other.

They pushed their way through the Naman navy entirely unopposed, and immediately began a land invasion of Kava. Unlike many Naman nations, Kava had only one major race of people, which meant that there were no internal divisions to exploit in order to weaken them. But the Hinku nonetheless easily conquered the entire nation of Kava with just the small army they had brought over on board their fake trading ships. Although the Hinku found the native Kavan women attractive, they were forbidden to marry them, and so at first the population of Kava grew slowly. (They did not generally kill aboriginals, seeing them as even weaker than the Pabaps back home and therefore not a serious threat.) Kava was very poor, since they had brought none of the wealth of Paba with them. They were nudists even during winter except for a few who had settled in the small area of Kava that was mountainous, and even these people only wore skirts and crop-tops, often taken from native women. The Hinku renamed themselves Kavans and presented themselves as a new nation.

Nama was so weak by this time that they never even mounted a counterattack on Kava; they only offered to resettle the Repilian aboriginals in poorer areas of upland Nama. Kava was not surprised; Nama had also done nothing when the FILTER army carved out an even larger Naman state, Nèye, in 2246. Nor did Nama punish Paba, as Paba had quickly denounced the war and promised that Kava would never become an ally of Paba even if they repented and became pacifists in the future.

Although Kava and FILTER shared the same handicap of having secure borders on land but no navy, both were primarily interested in settling the interior of the continent, even if it meant eventually losing their coastline in a war similar to the "war" they had fought against the defensless Repilian aboriginals to get in.

Crystal Empire

THe Crystals had originated from the slave plantations of Lobexon. Technically, they were older than slavery itself, but even most Crystals did not realize this, as they did not form a strong identity until they became oppressed. They were a political party with their own religion, and for most of their history had been a tiny repressed minority in every nation they lived in. Nevertheless, they had spread out quickly and were present in a lot of nations even as early as 2175. They realized that they had enough people to form a safe, solid nation if they could only call in all of the Crystals living dispersed throughout the tropics, including the slaves, to come together as one.

Their early attempts at this were not fruitful, however. The naive Crystals living on Sulasali Island moved as one to Paba in order to take advantage of Paba's very generous welfare benefits. They had heard that Paba's government paid ethnic minorities a welfare stipend that was greater than what the Pabap lower class made in a full time job. Although even the Crystals realized that they would not simply be given money simply by beaching on the shores, they figured that Paba was a place where they would be welcome and knew that they could get at least some money from the government because they couldn't speak Pabappa and thus couldn't work in most jobs.

However, they quickly exhausted the patience of even the notoriously tolerant Pabaps. Crystals refused to send their children to school, and most refused to learn Pabappa, which meant that they were unemployable and their quickly growing population drew a quickly growing share of Paba's welfare benefits. Moreover, Crystals used their free time to harass Pabaps in city streets, and those few who did speak Pabappa still did not have jobs but instead went around trying to convert Pabaps to the Crystal religion.

To solve the problem, Paba made thbe Crystal religion illegal and cut off their welfare benefits. Paba was unwilling to use force against the Crystals, both because they honestly believed in pacifism and because the Crystals had used their free time gained by not working to build themselves dangerous weapons. In fact, the Crystals had privately made an agreement to settle only in Pabap cities in which the Crystal minority was armed well enough to kill the entire population of that city. They drew murals on stone walls in the cities depicting helpless Pabaps being boiled and eaten alive by Crystal armies, saying that each mural would be the site of an actual massacre in the near future in the Pabaps did not give them a nation of their own inside Pabap territory. But now Paba had defeated them, since the Crystals realized that they could only survive by hunting animals in the wilderness, but they had settled in areas where this was difficult. Some Crystals walked all the way to northern Paba, figuring life would be better among the poorer and weaker Pabaps of the mountains, but most decided to leave Paba for Subumpam.

Climax of power

In the late 3560s, a female military warlord named P created the nation of Ḳotagʷurî (hereafter Kotagwuri) with its largest settlement on the polar icecap at around 42N. P was the Khulls word for schoolteacher, and she had been trained as an elementary school teacher in early life but decided she preferred politics and war. The name is pronounced as just a single consonant with no vowel. She used her unusual name to modify words by adding a /p/ in front of them. e.g. the name of the planet, Lîġʷă in Khull,s would be Plîġʷă if she took over the planet. Although these newly coined words simply meant "teacher planet", "teacher empire", etc., the choices of words made the context clear.

Crystals were welcome in Kotagwuri, which was unusual in Vora. P had attacked Nama just as Nama was winning a major war against Kava in the south. Her philosophy, Pism, was very welcoming to outsiders, and proved popular from its very begiunning, and Kotagwuri soon became the largest nation in Vōra, whereas before it had been second to Sāto.

An Aze (Gaze believer) named P had founded Kotagwuri in the late 3560’s, just as the greatest chaos of Nama’s sealing Kava off was occurring. She established the nation to be a haven for Vorans to live in, but she also welcomed in Crystals and others who wanted to join the political alliance. (Vora means "cymbidium flower" in Khulls.) Thus, there was no law of unanimity in Kotagquiri, unlike in Sāto, where only Vorans were allowed to live. (Meanwhile, Cila had absorbed a wave of Crystal immigrants. (Although there was not much difference between the two groups anyway.)) Another difference between Sāto and Kotagquri was the spirit of free enterprise that P taught her children to follow: people were allowed to live for themselves, rather than for the good of the state, as was the case in both Cila and Sāto. Thus, she insured that there would be a steady stream of people seeking refuge from the difficult lifestyle of Sāto by sneaking into Kotagquri. And she welcomed them, because she wanted the population to grow as fast as possible, regardless of the fact that everyone who lived there would be allowed to have as many children as they wanted, so long as they could support their own children. Thus the population of Kotagquir grew very fast from the late 3500’s until by 3720 it was almost twice the population of Sāto.

Meanwhile, they had also managed to bargain away with Sāto for the use of large quantites of old Sāto land, and they had gained unseeable amounts of land in the northern part of the continent as well. By 3720, Kotagquri had coastline on the “north”, south, and west coasts of the continent, and more than twice the total land area of its nearest competitor. Sāto had shrunk so much that it was even smaller than Cila now, and conflict within Sāto had resulted in the formation of two breakaway republics that also took away land from it and often provided economic support to AS. The Vorans refused to change, however, although they began in the late 3600’s to realize that Kotagquri was the new lord of the continent and that they should submit to Kotagquir if they wanted to continue to exist at all. Thus they adopted a policy of total cooperation with Kotagwuri and began to freely allow their citizens to move to Kotgwuri. With the loss of their refuge-seeking people, the Vrans, led by 2 women named Cyclops and Wolfspider, figured that those who had remained must be very orderly, disciplined people, and they began to make their own laws stricter and stricter. Cyclops was a powerful warlord who had managed to set aside some Sāto land for herself to raise a second community of Vorans, and the citizens of Sāto were upset by her large purchase of land (she had taken almost 1/3 of what had then been Sāto), but they could not object and had to obey her. Wolfspider, meanwhile, was ill and could not be an effective leader. She was tormented by Sāto's lack of leadership and the resulting flow of people into Kotagwuri and even into CVila, but could do nothing about it. In fact, the Pists promised that newcomers into Kotagwuri would be treated even better than regular citizens, and many of them actually became governors of regions within Kotagquri, and some of these regions were geographically larger than the entire nation of Sāto.

Government

The three female leaders were seen as a pack even though it was really an alliance of two against one. Outsiders said the Vora Empire was ruled by "a tall woman, a short woman, a fat woman, and a man". Cyclops was very tall, much taller than the tallest males known to her, and had blonde hair and wore an eyepatch, hence her byname. Wolfspider was fairly tall as well, but very obese, and actually weighed more than Cyclops. P was considered "short" but was in fact of fairly tall stature as well. Cyclops and Wolfspider were both married but spent little time with their husbands and a lot of time with each other. Yet, in this culture, no one accused them of lesbianism; they were seen for what they were: hard working politicians doing double duty as military leaders who simply had no time for their families. Moreover, Wolfspider was much older than Cyclops, at about 65 years old during the peak of the action to Cyclops' 32. For her own measure, P had more than 400 children, but only 7 of these were biological children; the others were adopted. She treated the adopted children as equals of her biological children. Her husband was disabled and did not spend much time with any of the children. P herself did not spend thatm uch time with her children either, leaving most of the care to be done by the older children. Cyclops and Wolfspider had no children.

Male leaders did exist in Sāto, and were officially suprerior to Cyclops and Wolfspider, but had signed away most of their powers to the women and did not generally exercise even those powers which they had chosen to retain. When they did exercise that power, it was mostly against low-level people and other male officials. Thus Cyclops and Wolfspider, as a team, had near total power in Sāto and P had absolute power in Kotagwuri. The male leaders of Sāto did not ocnsider themselbes poor rulers; netiehr were they feminists. They just felt their duties were best confined to other lines of work and that Cyclops and Wolfspider were doing quiet well despite their losses to P. Meanwhile, the president of Cila, the third most powerful nation, was also female; her name (in Andanese) was Wakala. But her nation was not really a major regional power; indeed Cyclops and Wolfspider were considering an invasion.

Settlement of the coast

In the early 3700's, immigrants of mixed Laban and Thunder descent settled a coastal area in an organized, preplanned effort. They stole all their territory from the Crystals. The Crystals called these people Wamians. Both the Crystals and the Thunderers hated the Wamians, even though the Wamians had not attacked the Thunder Empire and stated that they did not ever plan to.

Two nations from within Kotagwuri broke away in the early 3700s. THey formed an alliance with each other, and both were led by power hungry dictators. The eastern nation, Ḳíkòlarisò, was led by a dictator named Boé who was hated by all other nations. He was both mentally and physically ill. Kikolariso invited refugees such as the Crystals and even the Xʷugâ to move to Kikolariso, because he wanted to grow his population immensely even if it was made up of people who would have a hard time getting along. However, very few people moved to Kikolariso.

The western nation was called ʕʷēga (hereafter Vēga), and its dictator was even more power-mad than Boé. His name was Pompomim (he was Pabap) and he believed in a cult religion that told him to break away and set up his own nation. Unlike Boé, he was at first well liked in other nations, but in 3719 he launched a military assault on Kotagwuri, and managed to kill more than 5% of their population. Not only that, but he had mainly attacked children and women, the most defenseless people of all, and had attempted to kidnap many of them back into Vēga to force them to work for him. Eventually the P army, led by JDS, drove Pompomim out of Kotagwuri (JDS province) and he returned to Vēga to find his own people armed and in revolt against him, and he was killed immediately and Vēga was annexed back to Kotagquri. Kikolariso remained an independent nation but never gained any significance, but Pompomim's cult died down as the Kotagqurians invaded the land and forced the citizens to convert to the Gaze religion.

Smaller states

Mé was a nation that started where Mikagu and its neighbors ended and then extended northward into the icecap. It was an arctic workshop for people just like the others, but its people were militaristic and demanded total submission to the leaders of the nation. Unlike the other workshops, its citizens were not allowed to retain citizenship in other nations while they were in Mé. Mé broke away, and became mostly separate from other nations, although they never drifted far from their alliance with their northern neighbor, Ḳotagʷurî.

Mé had no coastline becuase the entire eastern "coast" of Belopal was now occupied by a nation named Nōnala-lixʷ (hereafter Nonalalix), part of the Wamian Fede3ration. It was an economically advanced nation, in some ways more so than all others, but it had very poor mechanical technology and its society was in chaos. They were part of a small minority of Labans in Belopal, and many non-Laban people wanted them out. Thus, even though the Thunderers were all descended from Laban immigrants, they had been living in RIlola for a few thousand years now, and considered themslves aboriginals. Any further immigration from their ancient homelands was condifered a bad thing.

Aside from Nonalalaix, there were a few other nations made up of Laban immigrants, and although they were all part of the Wamian Federation, Wamia gave them all essentially complete political autonomy so long as they pledged allegiance to Wamia and did not try to make any alliances with non-Laban people. The other nations were Nōnala, Kilga, and Pyū-lixʷ, although an organization in Pyūlix had developed a strong sense of patriotism for the workshop nations of the north, particularly Mé, and wished to free those nations from the plague of Nonalalix that covered the entire "coast" of the continent. Thus there was a war in Nonalalix, and the rebel group was kicked out and sought refuge in Ƥē. In Ƥē they were mostly executed, but a few fled all the way across Ƥē into Kotagquri and Asup, where they found refuge.

A few people in Kotagwuri and Sāto had set up alliances to form their own nations, but these two nations were both very small and politically and militarily unimportant other than the fact that they cut into Sāto's land. The main reason for breaking away was to experiment with a different lifestyle that even Kotagwuri would not allow.

A nation called Altotta North had been set up by rebels from Sāto who had attacked Cila, but it was little more than a series of forts, with no real population. Alotta North's motto was “do it or die”, and their symbol was a thunderbolt, because they liked to attack with sudden bursts of power and greatly endanger themselves in the process. So many Altists died in battle that their population had to keep being refreshed with volunteer fighters from Sāto and Kotagquri just to keep it level. Altotaa North was a very small nation, but it was militarily powerful.

Meanwhile, during all this time, the Crystals had been reproducing so quickly that they were unstoppable when they began to flood the mostly barren, harsh eastern half of the continent. They had in fact extended their nations all the way up to the “northern” border of Belopal, and overall they had about the same amount of land on Belopal as did the Vōra. Their first and most powerful nation, which had bet set up in the late 3600’s, was called Miniyiupi. In just 40 years Miniyiupi had by far the largest population on the continent. They were also the strongest nation militarily. However, these Crystals were a liberal sort who were friendly to Kotagwuri and the other Vora nations, even though the reverse was often not true. Miniyiupi had sent soldiers into Pompomim's nation of Vega to help topple the corrupt dictator Pompomim in the year 3719. Miniyiupi had most of Belopal’s southern coast, and it extended as far north as Baeba Swamp, which it shared with other Crystal nations that were inferior in status to Miniyiupi but were mostly sympathetic to it.

In fact, the Crystals were a much less warlike people than the Vora in general. Though they had many nations, they rarely fought against each other, and they also had very liberal immigration policies as well. Vora people were invited to enter the Crystal nations and reproduce there so that the populations of the nations could rise even faster and overcome that of Kotagwuri and the other Cymbidium nations. As the Vora began moving eastward into Crystal territory, a few Crystals moved westward into Vora territory, particularly into Kotagwuri, but they were never welcomed as regular people. With the exception of one nation called Lahalala, a breakaway from Miniyiupi, Vora people were welcomed in all of the Crystal nations, and in fact Cila was now more or less a Crystal nation, and Alt was essentially useless as a weapon against Cila because the only soldiers willing to fight against Cila were mostly people who were not welcome even in Kotagwuri anyway.

Bordering Miniyiupi in Baeba Swamp and also further west was a nation called Malapala, a nation of people who cooperated with Miniyiupi but were not comfortable living in it. Malapala had essentially no military and was politically submissive to Miniyiupi, and its citizens envied Miniyiupiand disagreed with many of Miniyiupi's political moves, but they were not angry enough to seek to form an alliance against Miniyiupi. Malapala also had a large population of Vora people and they disliked non-Vora outsiders more than did most Crystal nations, and Malapala didn’t allow any non-Vora people to have children. On the other hand, they had a great deal of religious tolerance, allowing Vora to continue in the beliefs of their respective religions, something Miniyiupididn’t do. Malapala also included the ancient site of Pego Lake, which was now much colder than any lake could be, but warm enough for Crystals and Vorans to live in.

Momma was a nation set up around 27°N that contained the geographical center of the continent. It was mainly a trading place and a welcome home for people of all races and religions to live in. It had been created from land donated chiefly by Kotagwuir but also by many other nearby nations. The downside of living in Momma was that its citizens had essentially no military or political power because Momma was designed to be politically neutral. On the other hand, it had one of the most well-developed economies of any nation because of all the trade that went on within its borders.

Sucumihha was a nation set up by people from Kotagwquri , but it soon developed a well-mixed population of Vora, Crystals, and people from outside Belopal. It was not a nation composed of ordinary people, who lived there by birth, but rather a large industrialized area whose citizens were born in other countries and came to Sucumihha to work. They were paid well to live there, and the governors of Sucumihha took only very small profits for themselves. Similar to Sucumihha was the nation directly to its north, Vunubū (in Pabappa). Vunubū was slightly smaller, but was richer and more important. It also happened to border on Boé's private dictatorship, Kikolariso . Relations between Kikolariso and Vunubū were very good.

Hamalakaka was a nation set up between Kotagwuri, Miniyiupi , Malapala, Momma, and Sucumihha. It was a religious retreat for peoples of all races, but to live there one had to convert to Gaze, the religion of the mostly-Vora population there. Hamalakaka was very weak militarily until the early 3710’s, when Pompomim began building an army in Vega and threatened the citizens of Hamalakaka with military aggression. Hamalakaka , with its much larger population and its citizens’ mindless dedication to defending their nation, quickly developed an army far more powerful than Pompomim's and they met him in KG and helped drive him back into Vega, where he was killed by his own citizens. Hamalakaka was a long, thin nation, stretching from about 14°N all the way to 28°N, and in the southern part of its territory there were hills.

Xoxʷammaʕʷista was a nation that bordered ten other nations and acted as a pass-through for many citizens attempting to travel in this part of the country. Its population was uneducated and poor, however, and few people ever saw it as anything other than a pass-through. Its population consisted mainly of people that had settled there for special reasons, such as to use its natural resources or to make money through trade. Thus there were people of many different races there. It was also a long and thin nation, extending from about 22°N to about 41°N just inland from the east coast of Belopal. The climate there was very warm, and in some areas near the south it was too hot to live outdoors.

CC1, CC2 and CD were nations to the east of Xoxʷammaʕʷista, although they did not touch the coast because Nonalalaix was in the way. They were mostly like Xoxʷammaʕʷista but without the monetary wealth. CC2 was so small it wasn’t represented in political conferences in Kotagwuri.

Saaawilalalaihawi , also known as Mikagu, was a nation that was located between Xoxʷammaʕʷista , Sucumihha , and Vunubū . It was like Sucumihha and Vunubū ; that is, a workshop for foreigners, but its citizens did work that would have been outlawed in the other nations, and this is the only way the nation survived, because its citizens often were not as industrious as those in the other two nations and spent less of their time working. It was also true, however, that the citizens of Saaawilalalaihawi were working in unfavorable land, and they had been forced to resort to illegal manufacturing in order to keep the land productive. Most other nations understood this, and only the uneducated people in some nations opposed Saaawilalalaihawi . Also, those people who were the most opposed to Saaawilalalaihawi tended to be people living very far away from it, and therefore were unable to do anything to shut them down.

Ethnic divisions

Note that, despite more than a thousand years of aggressive international expansion of both Crystals and Thunderers, the basic racial differences between the two groups had remained. Crystals were generally dark skinned people, Thunderers generally light skinned people, often with blonde hair, and often with their women taller than their men. However, the Crystals were quite diverse, it just happened that because they had grown mostly over the hot rainforest and desert climates of Rilola, they had absorbed mostly other dark skinned tribes who to the Thunderers all looked the same. This is why, even though the Crystals and Thunderers were allies at this point in time, some Thunder nations preferred to exclude all Crystals and some Crystal nations preferred to exclude all non-Crystals. The bans were religious, not ethnic, but conversion from one side to the other was rare. A small percentage of Thunderers converted to the Crystal religion, but these were mostly people living in the Thunder strongholds of the north who had married Crystal immigrants. Few Thunderers were interested in moving to the Crystal nations of the south as they were both militarily weak and very poor. Crystal conversion to Thunderism was even more rare, and these people tended to also be Crystals who had moved into Thunder territory.

Note also that both groups despised the Wamian immigrants, who had taken over most of the north coast of Rilola. Even though these people were descendants of recent marriages between Laban immigrants and Thunderers, they took their land from the Crystals, not the Thunderers. The Thunderers did not want to make an alliance with the Wamians because they disagreed about politics. Thus, the Crystal-Thunder alliance marked the first time in recent history that a major empire had been formed on an alliance based araound politics rather than ethnic interests. Their national symbol, the cymbidium flower, seemed an odd choice even to its citizens for an empire that praised military conquest and subjugation of aboriginal peoples. The rulers stated that they wanted their people to grow like flowers and bring happiness to other people.

Cyrstal setttlements

The capital of the Crystal Empire had been Baeba Swamp for a long time. The Crystals had originated in the desert areas over 1000 miles south of the Swamp, but when they took over the Swamp they realized they needed to make it the focus of their power even though it was, at the time, the very northernmost extreme of their empire. They solidifed their power over Baeba Swamp by invading the mountains to its north and built fortresses there, even though the mountains themselves were not ideal places to live.

In the region of Atlam, the Crystals had also split the southern part of Lanitta into many separate states. Hatuhakali, the largest nation, covered a huge amount of land around the "South Pole", and also contained the largest population. It was composed mostly of children, watched over by a small number of adults. As boys grew older, all but a few moved northward into the northern states, where only adult men (by which they meant people willing to serve in the milityar) were allowed to live.

Of the nations where adult males lived, two stood out: Lulalaha (not to be confused with Lulala) and Malana-Palaladom. These, like most of the other northern nations, were military training camps for men planning to invade Belopal and bring the entire continent under control of people who were either Crystal or Crystal-friendly. Because the Vora had mostly become friendly to the Crystals now, they instead focused their attention on the non-Vora people of east "coast", particularly Nonanalalaix, which was hated by almost the whole of the “western” population of both continents. The problem with Lulalaha and Malana-Palaladom was that they were constantly under purges to prevent their missions from being disrupted; their army was being destroyed by its own commanders almost as fast as the women in the south could raise more boys to join it. A few people escaped the purges and fled northward into the more liberal parts of Lanitta, such as Malapala, but they had to get there by passing through KG, because Cali and Miniyiupi kept watch for such refugees, and Noinanalaix and FED would simply kill them on sight because they were Vora. One group of people, called the Yinasusasamahaaihimakahikialalakila, escaped from Malana-Palaladom and eventually settled in Pyūlix , where they founded the revolutionary group that later was forced out of Pyūlix and spread to other parts of the continent. When Pompomim was at the height of his power struggle in Vega, he tried to encourage Yinasusasamahaaihimakahikialalakila suppoorters to settle in Vega and join his army, but they refused because he was against KG.

The land of Tarwas, east of Belopal, was now populated mostly by non-Vora settlers who had entered the cionetinent during the centuries after about 3100, when the Voira had been too weak to keep them out. But a few Vora people now lived in Tarwas as well. They had fled after being chased out of Belopal by Cymbiduiums who were angry at their political aspirations. They set up the nations of Haiikaucamasayika and Hahaaalailalakatu in Tarwas, and Haiikaucamasayika and Hahaaalailalakatu quickly became some of the most powerful nations in Tarwas, although Tarwas had a lot more nations than Belopal. Another place that Vora refugees settled on was Mevumep; here they were mostly alone. Since Nama’s shield was still over Lobexon & Subumpam, travel outside the areas was difficult.

Lobexon & Sbumpam was still a tiny, very poor area, and at this time was still unheard of by many people oinm MNa,ma, but there was one nation that had recently taken a strong interest in their politics: Wax. In 3650, the elected, but totalitarian, Council of Wax had banned females from Was except with permission of their immediate relatives, and abolished family altogether. This radical restructuring of the society was intended to turn Wax into a nation even more focused on war than before. AlphaLEAP took in all of the females from Wax and dedicated itself to friendly competition with Wax, intending to increase the strength of both planets without damaging their already old and sturdy alliance.

One chaotic day when Vora was in the deep in the pit of despair, a group of forty Crystal women, who made up one village in the far southwest of Belopal, near the Equator, banded together and proclaimed that they should be given control of all available land, and that they would bring safety to all of the 200,000 or so people living in Vora, not just to themselves. These Crystals called themselves Hilites because they had originated from an army that had obeyed a commander named Hīli.

The Hilites were distinct from the Vora because they believed in the religion of Gaze, which the Vora had been given long ago by the people of tarwas, who felt that the religions of Vora were the main reason for its society's collapse. There were other religs, but the religions had been infused with a native religion called popró, which taught that people could become gods only by killing their enemies. Gaze was pure, and it stood in opposition to popró.

The Hilites believed that the best soldiers were people who were trained as soldiers from early childhood. They compared themselves to the lazy, pathetic people of Wamia, which was a country much richer than any other, yet had no military and was overwhelmed with crime. Children in the Hilites’ nation of Lanitta (Asup for “land given up to God”) were so strictly supervised that there was virtually no crime at all.

The Hilites were ethnically Baeban, but they taught their children three different languages: Xap (descended from native Baeba), Asup (an ancient language from pre-Vora Tarwas, spoken in a few areas that the Tars had fled to in 2998), and Moonshine (from Moonshine). Asup and Moonshine were very complex languages, and were completely pure, with no loanwords; Xap was much simpler and was impure, with many loanwords. They spoke Xap only for convenience, saying that the other two were inspired by God and were more fit for anyone, even children, than Xap. They also said that anyone who learned to speak either Moonshine or Asup would be purified by it, and thus discarded the idea held by some other nations that their languages could only be spoken by pure people. Lanitta was called Luk in Moonshine, which was famous for being very compact when it came to naming things.

The Hilites believed that they were a superior race, but that they still had a long way to go to become really suitable to run a government. So they allowed only a few males to reproduce. Thus most of their females were preoccupied with giving birth to babies, and could not participate in any other productive activity. The Hilites had abolished marriage and family so that they could have more children; they needed their nation to grow very fast to avoid being taken over by the Messepo (vora; since the Hilites were vora too, they refused to call their enemies vora).

Lanitta had few cities, but the one big city that did exist was mostly underground. Underground here was a very large manmade cave where all the women in the nation who were destined to be mothers lived. Here also were the few men that had been allowed by the Hilite authorities to not be sterilized, and to mate with these women so that they could give birth. These men and the women did nothing else in their lives; they were good only for producing more babies. But their program turned out to be surprisingly efficient; the babies were well taken care of by nurses, and the women were kept healthy enough to live long lives and give birth to many babies. Thus the population of Lanitta grew very quickly, much faster than those of any of the nations hostile to Lanitta, which mostly relied on traditional sex to produce babies. The Hilites disapproved of sex and said that it was inefficient, and wanted to create a kind of sex that could be used as a weapon against their enemies. They were already doing the best they could.

In 3665, the Hilites banded together and took control of Bhavbus, a small piece of land near the geographical center of the southern part of Vora. They then chased out all the non-Crystals and proclaimed themselves an independent republic, and invited in anyone who wanted to escape the chaos of the surrounding Messepo government to come live in peace under the Hilites. But they were surprised at what happened next; people poured in by the hundreds, but they came heavily armed and they ruthlessly attacked the Hilites. The resulting Battle of Bhavbus was the longest and hardest the Hilites had yet fought, and their troop barely survived long enough to retreat back southward. Afterward, the Hilites became very weak. It was because of their religion, which appealed to many Vora, that the surviving Hilites were not followed southward into Lanitta and killed.