Tepat occupies most of the southern part of the northern half of
Tiptum. Its southern border is the Yewek sea, its eastern border
is at the mountains, and its northern frontier fades somewhat into
the plains where nomadic horsemen live. It has acquired colonies
to the south, including the desert territory of Wasak, and the
tropical savannaland of Nusam. In the east dry land in the
mountains gives way to more humid, subtropical land downhill. This
area receives ample rain in the summer. The western half of Tepat
is more Mediterranean, with rainy winters and dry summers, and a
patch of desert on the southwest coast. In the center of the
country is a transitional area that receives two yearly peaks of
precipitation. Since this also largely encompasses the area where
the Yot and Phitim rivers join, it is the most fertile, populous,
and active part of the country by far.
In legend, the earliest people were ruled by a succession of
exploitative strong men who managed to trick or physically
overpower those around them. They were driven off and replaced by
benevolent sages called Phlat. At first they led
quasi-informally by virtue of their admiration by the public. The
last of the Phlat formalized his leadership and passed it
on to his children, creating the Nyow Dynasty. The Nyow expanded
their rule through the submission of local rulers. This feudal
system was fragile and eventually collapsed when the final Nyow
ruler was killed, and the local lords struggled to establish their
own dynasties as supreme. In the more than 200 years of civil war
that followed, more than half of the noble families were wiped out
- absorbed by their neighbors, displaced by usurpers, or even
overthrown by their serfs. The members of the nobility known as tliw,
who monopolized the performance of rituals, found their authority
and teachings challenged.
The stage was set for the ascent of new kinds of authorities. The
lyup began as a kind of attendant to the noble rulers. As
the nation decayed, the fate of rulers came to depend crucially on
the quality of advice coming from their lyup, who received
the greatest portion of their lords' confidence, and the lyup
enhanced themselves not only by increasing their learning, but by
daring to voice new ideas. As the political cannibalism of the
aristocracy increased, more and more lyup found themselves
masterless and homeless, and took to road to find someone who
would find use for their talents. New conditions created demand
for new ideas. Wandering lyup distinguished themselves by
creating distinctive styles of thought, and transforming
themselves into the first philosophers, scientists, psychologists,
economists, educators, military strategists, and historians. The
most famous and influential of these established or hinted at
almost all of the intellectual trends of Tepat's future, and left
their names on the tip of people's tongues over a thousand years
after their deaths.
The Civil War finally ended with the military victory of the Lord
of Kwan, who championed Moq and Cyam's doctrines. Peace came, but
not freedom. Kwan's first goal was to eradicate everything that
remained of the aristocracy and might challenge him, so he banned
noble titles, created new provinces with new names and new borders
cross-cutting old feudal domains, redistributed all farmland, and
implemented sword-control. He then turned to ensuring the complete
submission of the whole population with strict control of all
activity, and his expensive forced-labor projects - building a new
capital and canal, for example - made people wonder if order was
as much a curse as a blessing. He died trying to achieve
immortality. His attitude, but not his effectiveness, continued
over three successors. After 76 years, people got tired of it. The
4th Kwan king picked up on this and didn't like it, so he decided
to **** it and just burn a bunch of books and kill everyone who
could think for himself. But he was toooo laaaate. With open
revolt on the way, his scholarly advisors took the unprecedented
step of ousting their very own leader. Fleeing the palace, the
king was bucked by his own horse, and while running, he tripped
over his robe, which allowed some peasants to run him over in an
ox-cart. The Lyup then invited scholars from all over the
country to convene to decide the fate of Tepat. The newly powerful
Lyup quickly set about
remaking society through reforms such as banning polygamy, estate
inheritance, and slavery, reducing taxes and the application of
capital punishment, and protecting free intellectual inquiry.
They created the lwik
system as a kind of interface with the non-scholarly population,
to relay and enforce policy, and to represent popular interests
and opinions back to the Lyup. A segment of the population,
defined by a natural interest group such as residency and
occupation, chose from among itself individuals who would made up
its corresponding lwik. The members of that lwik
chose one of themselves as chairman, who also represented the
whole lwik to the national lwik. The Lwik
were also overlapping, such that a farmer in Hanam would belong to
both a farmer's lwik and a Hanam regional lwik.
Within the framework defined by the Lyup, particular lwik
were given great latitude to regulate themselves. For example, the
lwik of food growers and preparers collectively defined
standards of food quality, set prices, and instituted a sales tax
on produce which they collected for themselves and used to support
their own activities. Whenever the activities or regulations of
different lwik conflicted, the national lwik,
composed of scholars and the chairmen of other lwik,
arbitrated the disputes. New kinds of lwiks also emerged
representing ideological movements, or religious sects, or groups
of people such as mothers, making the associations ever more
complex. The lwik system incorporated functions associated
in the U.S. with such distinct organizations as political parties,
labor unions, trade associations, legislatures, and departments of
the executive branch.
Over time the lwik increased in size and number, and
gaining a life of their own, drained power away from the Lyup
and into themselves. The result was a truly popular government, as
we would recognize it, with the Lyup now finding
themselves in an advisory position. A variety of stops, breaks,
interruptions, and other reforms occurred along the way, including
restricting emergency dictatorships, limiting the size and
privileges of the military, standardizing electoral procedures,
and restricting the power of individual representatives. The
importance of the lwik
system is such that as the state extended beyond the area of Tepat
itself and ethnically Tepat people that its official named became
the League of Councils.
Please visit the Yuktepat page.
| -864 |
Age of Tyrants and Heroes |
| -720 |
|
| -576 |
Nyow Dynasty |
| -432 |
|
| -288 |
Period of the Cloven Country |
| -144 |
|
| 0 |
Kwan Dynasty |
| +144 |
Age of Scholars |
| +288 |
|
| +432 |
Age of Councils |
| +576 |
|
| +720 |
Invasion by the Swíra and flight to Wasak |