STW

Save the World (STW) was an organization founded in Altotta by a man named The Cold Sword in the winter of 3916. They were famous for being very wealthy, seemingly perpetually turning poverty into riches wherever they were found. They owned restaurants and other stores, and openly charged customers far higher prices than the label price for the items they sold, but customers kept coming back. This was partly because STW had achieved monopolies on many of the items they sold, and partly because some customers hoped to reach the inner circle of STW's power structure at which the prices were actually lower than advertised. They took their power from the native Thunder people (Altottan citizens are called Thunderers, although this is the name of the primary political party, not an ethnic name.)

Business model

See Kava for background information.

STW used slavery both directly and indirectly to achieve its otherwise unbelievable gains. They invited slaves living in Subumpam and Lobexon, which had not long ago been the economic powerhouses of the planet, to move to Altotta and work for STW.

They sold the items the slaves produced at high prices, and charged customers even higher prices than what they advertised. A pineapple sitting on a shelf might be labeled as costing 500 dét, but when the customer picked it out the cashier would tell her that it actually cost 1500 dét. Another customer behind her might get the same pineapple for 550 dét, depending on the cashier's whims; all of the power was in the hands of the cashiers. Some customers placed their orders and paid, then waited patiently only to be told that STW had decided to move on to the next customer and not fulfill their first customer's order. THen they would be forced to walk out empty handed or pay a second time and hope to get their food sometime before sunset.

Other things STW was notable for included raising the price in the middle of a transaction "It just went on sale for five times as much!" etc And having cashiers argue with each other over what the price of an item should be. One cashier was allowed to file a dispute with another for not overcharging a customer enough, in the middle of a transaction, and force that cashier to raise her prices.

As above, though, an inner circle of loyal customers were granted the coveted privilege of getting their products for prices that were actually lower than the shelf label prices. None of the customers knew what they needed to do to get this privilege, nor were they told what the secret was once they had been granted it. These people became very powerful in their society, since they could buy things for their friends at low prices, and STW allowed them to resell their merchandiese. In towns where STW approached monopoly status, the resellers with the discount privilege became very rich, and most chose to make power-shopping their career, collecting the royalties from their secondhand customers. STW allowed this because even the reduced prices were still usually profitable for STW, and the large purchases of the resellers guaranteed them high profits. STW reserved the right to revoke the discount privilege if a reseller attempted to open an actual physical store with preowned STW merchandise in it, or was seen buying goods at low prices for a Wamian immigrant or one of STW's individual enemies.

STW called its rival businesses "the Empire" and stated that Altottans should shop at STW because it was a political organization opposed to the monopoly on power held by the government of Altotta. STW claimed that governments should have rivals within their own nation in order to keep them from becoming too corrupt. STW claimed to be interested in expanding worldwide, but had bases only in Altotta. Often, STW placed their stores near rival stores with lower prices but poor selection, and then claimed to be superior.

STW store managers often robbed rival stores, but generally restricted these actions to stores run by immigrants, particulaly Wamians, because they knew that the public opinion of STW would turn sharply negative if they were seen attacking their real enemy, the ruling class of the native Thunderers. Also, Crystals were generally welcome in STW, and their businesses were not targeted. STW was using the same plrralistic strategy that Kava had been born from almost 1500 years earlier. The original Kavans, called the Hinku, were openly racist against all of their enemies, but they themselves were diverse internally because they allowed all of the tribes of the Subumpamese Union, plus all of the Pabaps and all of the Andanese, to call themselves Hinku, and therefore claimed that "Hinku" people were being oppressed in nations where any of those people had become established. THis strategy had worked well, because even though the Subumpamese, the Pabaps, and the Andanese did not have a lot of things in common, there were never any major wars between any of those three groups, and even though they had not previously considered themselves allies, it was easy to do so since there were no old feuds to settle.

STW was not anti-immigrant in general, and in fact was inviting Thaoans to move into Altotta and join STW, even though Thaoa had generally been seen as a hostile and at best untrustworthy nation. The least among the Thaoans was considered superior in STW to the greatest among the non-STW Thunderers. But below even the Thunderers STW placed the already hated Wamians, and celebrated each successful robbery, as if to demonstrate that STW was fighting for the interests of the many people in Altotta who hated all Wamians, while the normally aggressive Thunder government did not seem to care that Wamians were living in Altotta and making money off of its people at all.

Currency

STW had a second currency that only STW members could own: the asala. This was awarded for good deeds, and had no limit. The asala was constantly getting weaker against the dét because STW kept minting new asala coins and new dét coins were printed only very slowly. Graduating to a new grade also conferred an award in asala, with the amount almost doubling for each grade.

Schools

STW also owned its own school system, and those schools specifically competed with the government-run schools of the empire of Altotta. The schools ran from first grade through eighth grade, but these were not strictly delineated by age. Everyone joined as a first-grader, regardless of their age. Some students (particularly those who had had some education in a government school) rose through the ranks quickly, graduating in less than a year. Other students never made it out of the eighth grade at all. Like Kava, STW encouraged its students to "outparent their parents" and come home from school each day having learned a new skill they could teach their parents and increase their parents' dependency on their children's rapidly growing power.

Recruitment and growth

New members joined STW by invitation, and each new member had to be approved by the chief. A newly founded Base generally started with a small membership consisting of leaders who had moved in from another Base, bringing their children with them. These children would meet the other Thunder children in day to day life, and make friends with them even though they did not go to school together. Then they would invite their friends to join STW. Adults were recruited less often, despite their much greater economic value, because the economy of Altotta at this time was such that adults could not easily bring their jobs with them to STW. However, a non-STWer who had children in STW would be treated better by STW than Thunderers who refused to let their children join STW.

Hierarchy

Each establishment of STW was a "Base", which was governed by a chief. Like a corporation, each chief had absolute irreproachable power over their members, but no power over any of the other bases. The chief had the only vote in accepting or denying membership in STW, although in bases that were very large, they delegated their authority to trusted members. Below the chiefs and co-chiefs were captains, who were ordinary members, and thus had no power, but were being given jobs in which they exercise authority over other members in preparation for a future promotion. These were generally very few, as each STW base had only one chief.

All new STW members were required to attend the local STW school, even if they were adults. Adults however tended to graduate very quickly. STW's membership tended to consist entirely of children when a new Base first arrived in a city, except for the authority figures. Even in cities where STW had been around for hundreds of years, however, the membership still consisted mostly of children, as adults could be expelled for minor misdeeds, and were generally not let back in. Even the worst of these expelled people were treated as superior to people who had never been members of STW at all, in the hopes that they might decide to put down their weapons and allow STW to rescue them from their evil ways.

Most people kicked out of STW were males, which meant that STW's leadership was primarily women, and the husbands of these leaders worked under the close management of their wives. Often, a hisband was given a second-in-command role, but other chiefs preferred to give their husband a job with only "soft power" where he did not see his wife very often and was treated as an extension of her authority. Note that STW had many jobs for adults, but most of them carried no official power because the hierarchy of power in STW was very flat. However, STW did reward its hardest working members with large paychecks, and money was necessary to advance in power anyway.

While STW's leaders were mostly women, their worst enemies were almost all adult males. STW did not consider itself feministic, but their teachers taught that the primary difference between women and men is that women enjoy helping people, and men enjoy hurting people. Sometimes the motto was strengthed to "Women create life, men create death". Although the rest of Altotta respected STW, they had little sympathy for STW chiefs who were murdered by people they had kicked out of STW.

There were many internal conflicts between the different STW bases that were as important and dangerous as their conflicts with the expelled leaders they had kicked out. Only the president of STW could demote a chief; there was no intermediate level of power even when STW grew to several hundred Bases. The most powerful Bases historically were Base 7, Base 34, Base 44, and Base 91.

STW kept its secrets very well, and non-members were not allowed to even enter the schools.

Below the normal members were the slaves. Slaves were not considered members of STW, but STW distinguished between ordinary Thunderers and their slaves. Because STW consisted largely of women and children, they preferred slaves to work in areas that were physically separated from the STW schools and other central buildings, but some slaves worked directly for STW and therefore interacted with STW members other than their masters every day. These tended to be the ones involved in heavy manual labor that most STW members were physically incapable of. These slaves tended to be males. Note that many STWers did not have the tall-female gene, and thus men were much stronger than women, but they still tended to be small in comparison to many foreigners. Small children were given control of some of the slave laborers, typically those consisting of slaves that did menial jobs for the children such as preparing their meals and cleaning their bathrooms. Young children returning from their first day at STW would walk home and tell their parents they had been waited on hand and foot and felt for the first time in their life what it truly meant to be powerful.

Early history and politics

STW supported the Zenith. From the very date of its founding, it was at war with Wamia, although this was because it had allied with the Scope party, which had declared war on Wamia. STW even then consisted mostly of children, but they did not literally send toddlers out to the battlefield to take on the Wamians, although they did paint expansive murals on the city walls which portrayed the war as if they had. In reality, STW's contribution to the war was mainly derived from providing food and supplies to the far more robust Scope army.

Beliefs

Mottos:

• Technology and intelligence give work power.
• From women springs forth life, from men springs forth death.

Some of the commandments for STW members were:

• Accept that you may have to forfeit things you love to help.
• Neither cling to your life nor be afraid to take others.
• Keep power in competent, honest hands.
• Treat others as kindly as possible but do not love or hate them.
• Be totally and eternally hostile to the outside world.
• Do not help other workers unless a medical emergency arises.
• Be prepared to back up your threats.
• Never buy anything expensive unless it is absolutely necessary.