Ten thousand years past and the age of tribes began. An age where permanent settlements and agriculture was born. However, this is also the age when mortals began to slaughter one another.
For most species, especially the terrestrial ones, this age is more commonly known as the age of strife, a long period of fighting, killing and pillaging. The age began when groups grew large enough for multiple leaders to emerge. These leaders formed the early tribes that split the population into many.
Out of all the races, the isolated man was the most divided. Living in their own continent, magic beasts surrounded them on every front. However, the indifference of these beasts allowed man to grow.
Their indifference let man claim an abundance of food, resources and even territory, for the great beasts lived in the darkest corners of the continent. Unfortunately, man was overcome with greed and lust, controlled by the obsession of power whispered into their ears by the Immaterial demons. And so, strife began when man started listening to their sweet lies and temptations.
In the strife, man was separated into thirty five tribes, warring for resources and territory. Nine tribes in the south, five tribes in the west, twelve tribes in the east and nine tribes in the north. Each tribe's war started differently, but there is an origin to all the battles.
The wars started with the rape of a woman, whose family and husband took the assault very seriously. The man who raped her came from a powerful group of polygamists who treated women like slaves. They responded with hostility and denounced the group with many accusations and curses.
Then, the conflict truly began when the man attempted to rape her once more. He was sneaking into her cave naked, his spear ready to ravage her innocent body. In the blink of an eye, he forcefully rolled her open, her naked body for him to admire.
The woman was distraught, shouting and screaming for help. Aroused by her panic, the man showcased his huge spearhead, evoking terror in her as her face paled at the sight of it. Memories of the first attack surfaced and she started crying, tears streaming down her face like waterfalls.
The man showed a wicked grin and grabbed her. Before he could do any more harm, her father and husband appeared, stoning him to death with well aimed rocks. Her mother appeared and rampaged with a pair of sharp rocks in hand.
She screamed curses as she brutalized his corpse with a pair of serrated rocks. In the morning, the man's group declared war upon her and her husband's families.
They attacked with a group of two dozen men, rushing at their village with sharp rocks and primitive spears on their hands. Prepared for this assault, the village fought back with throwing stones and setting up traps all over the village.
Blood stained the road and bodies were posed unnatrually as they died in a brutal snap. Thankfully, the village suffered only some injuries in the attack and the invaders were quite stupid. They assumed that the women were weak and they went after them.
When they captured the women, they fought back with sharp rocks and caught them off guard. Most of them died following the women into the traps.
Retaliations were planned and ever since that day, the war has encapsulated most of this human continent. Tribes sent armies to overwhelm their enemies, pillaging and raping their victims once victory is achieved. All men were slaughtered and women were taken for pleasure.
The abundance of food and resources only made this war much worse for sustainability was not an issue. Large armies could be made and wasted with reckless abandon. In most tribes, women were treated as baby making machines, mothers and slaves to the armies.
Villages were burned and destroyed for millennia, technology trapped in a sluggish advance. While the world around them advanced and gradually matured, they did not. Instead, the wars intensified and new weapons were introduced.
Some tribes learned to ride beasts, using them as mounts to crash into bloody battle. Slingshots were invented as counters after a few tribes discovered rubber sap and invented primitive rubber bands.
When a new weapon rose, the inventors flourished while their enemies declined. In response, fate seemed to guide their enemies to invent counters to these weapons. As a result, the hands of fate fed fuel into fires of war.
It was not until 20 centuries of tribal warfare that peace arrived in the continent's south.
A love and its union that ended the war of three tribes and united them into a civilization. Their names were common in legends, extremely exaggerated legends of the couple.
They were Tyr, chief of the Aegir tribe and Nerea, princess of the Vannu tribe. Their love story began during their childhood, an accidental meeting that led them to become acquaintances.
It was an hour before sundown and Tyr was returning home from hunting with his father and elder brother. They brought back a huge, car sized boar back to the tribe's main village. The boar was killed by a special berry poison unique to their tribe, it's only deadly to herbivores, whose diet allowed the poison to generate certain compounds.
To humans, this poison merely tires them and causes them to sleep, a depressant type narcotic. Aegir tribe soldiers used these to slaughter their enemies during night raids. However, these prove ineffective to settlements with populations above two hundred, where a slight mishap can awaken the whole hostile village's forces.
So, the berries were generally used to hunt animals by setting traps of coating their spears in it. Heat also decomposes the somniferous compound, so roasting it above the fireplace will suffice.
When they reached the village, they dragged the boar to the village shaman, who offered a portion of it to their gods and roasted the rest with the aid of his assistants.
Tyr excused himself out, searching for more berries for tomorrow's hunt, settling the score with his boastful brother. He brought his primitive knife, a dried coconut shell and his usual hunting spear. The forest was known to have many dangerous beasts at night.
He silently skulked the forest, carefully choosing his steps in fear of awakening an angry beast. With the start of the hot season, the beasts will become more active.
He followed a secret path, one that was mapped and marked by him since he was 15, six years ago. The path loosely avoided the dens of the most dangerous beasts of the forests but a special growth on the path warded the beasts off. He wondered if it was the Great Spirit's doing, but the shamans knew nothing about it.
Perhaps the spirit favored him more? After all, shamans would always be targeted by flying rocks when children are playing.
Soon, Tyr came upon his secret garden of herbs. It was a circular clearing spanning several meters surrounded by large groups of herbs and berry shrubs, walled off from the outside world by a sturdy wall of boulders. The second son of the chieftain took out his dried coconut shell and began plucking the indigo colored sleep berries.
Right when he plucked the last of the berries he needed, he heard rustling. It was very silent, but the vibrations coming from it were quite noticeable to an experienced hunter. To the south.
He turned back and slowly approached the source of movement. He held his sharp pebble on his right, ready to strike if it turned to be a beast. The tensions rose as the rustling got faster and he gripped his knife harder, ready to strike hard.
Soon, he tore the shrub in a flash and gazed upon its content. It was a woman, around his age with curious amber eyes and long brown hair. She also had a knife gripped on her right arm, ready to fight back a beast.
Instead of a beast, she saw an unfamiliar young man with messy blonde hair, sky blue eyes and handsome features. He lacked fur draped to cover part of his athletic upper body, a sign that he was not of her tribe. She tensed for a moment before asking in a foreign but familiar tongue, "Who are you?"
Upon hearing her talk, he immediately discerned her identity as a woman from another tribe. However, he dropped his knife and tried to appear harmless before replying in his own dialect. Then, he helped her up and asked her, "What are you doing here?"
"What am I doing here? What are you doing here? This is my secret garden." Said the woman as she cleared dirt off her light skin.
"Well, this is mine. Unless you have proof that you found it first lady." Replied the chieftain's youngest son.
Calmly, she answered, "I found it six years ago but failed to claim it when I saw a yellow demon monkey plucking and eating the berries. I fled, returning on the next moon to explore this little sanctuary."
Chuckling he said, "That is exactly how I found it. Except it's not a demon beast but a mud spirit with hair tentacles."
Silence came between the two as they realized something. In unison, they pointed at each other and shouted, "You're the demon monkey!", "And you're the mud spirit!"
"You ate the berries like a glutton!" The blonde man retorted, "At least I wasn't creepy and lurking around the shrubbery like a serpent while holding a weird staff with blood on it."
"For your information, that's not blood, I accidentally smeared red berries on it when I was hiding in the bushes." She narrowed her eyes on him, "From the demon monkey."
Then arrives a long session of debating over ownership. One that lasted a few hours after sundown, which the pair did not realise at all. In the end, they agreed to own it as equals, considering that every point they threw out only proved that none of them really owned it first.
They bid each other farewell before returning to their respective homes through their own secret tunnels.
Tyr came home safely and quietly as his family never questioned his activities. Mainly because Tyr did not have much ambitions for power but only the will to settle and live a good and peaceful life. Sadly, that peace was still a far fetched idea for anyone living in the age of strife.
Nerea on the other hand was questioned by her father and brother on where she was and why was she still out this late. Then, they reprimanded her and reminded her that she is the tribe's beloved princess and any harm to her would be a disaster. Since this is the hundredth time this speech pattern was used by her remaining family, she only pretended to listen.
The next day, Tyr managed to beat his brother and catch a bigger beast, rubbing it on his arrogant face.
He returned to the garden once more, to pluck berries for a sacrifice to the spirits in gratitude.
Nerea was also there, telling him that she's only here to hide from suitors.
It took a month of coincidentally meeting each other in the garden before they opened up to one another and introduced themselves.
Since the Vannu and Aegir tribe are not at war with one another, merely distrustful, they did not have any natural hatred of one another.
As months past, they became good friends, telling each other of their exploits and problems while laughing their problems away.
A slip on a very conveniently placed rock led to a first kiss and budding romance, where the two completely forgot that they were from different tribes. Two years later, thoughts of marriage started to germinate in their heads.
Another year past and Tyr's older brother and father died fending off a full scale invasion by the Amori tribe, whose massive army was on their way to destroy the whole Aegir tribe. By the will of fate, Nerea convinced her tribesmen to fight alongside the Aegir tribe while Tyr as the new chief convinced his people that the Vannu tribe are their allies.
With the forces of the two tribes combined, they forced back the Amori tribe and managed to conquer their main village. After victory, Tyr and Nerea announced their marriage.
At first, both sides encountered resistance as Nerea's older brother and father were bewildered that she would marry another tribe's chieftain. They called it the ultimate treason and asked her to stop this madness.
On Tyr's side, the tribe elders were against his marriage for the same reason. They called it a corruption in their pure bloodlines. It was a front against the great spirit's will.
Despite the rejection, the two still insisted and made ways to convince them.
After half a decade of hard work, they managed to gain their blessings and officially married. Following Aegir tradition, they consummated their marriage at the night of their union.
Nine months later, they were gifted twins, a son and a daughter.
The two tribes drew closer with their marriage, becoming strong allies and establishing themselves as a formidable force in the south. Their union brought newfound strength and acted as a deterrent against any invasions into their territory.
Despite their best efforts, the two tribes will not become one in their lives, so they spent their olden days together, living near the garden where they first met. On their 100th birthday, they passed away together in their sleep, their souls entering the Immaterium where all consciousness belongs in.
The angels of heaven offered them eternal peace in the seventh heaven, the closest realm to the creator's dimension. They immediately declined, an unspoken reason that the angels respected. Before the heavenly hosts departed, they said to the couple that the gates of heaven will always be open for them.
It is true, the two tribes will not be one in their life, but in their deaths instead.
Now, there are only 34 tribes and the new Tyrea tribe was born.
The Tyrea tribe evolved into a kingdom once the bronze age arrived for them, 200 years after the tribe's birth.
A castle was carved into the mountains, becoming the abode of the Tyrea kingdom's royal family. A nobility system was born three centuries after the kingdom's establishment. However, the spirits of Tyr and Nerea made sure that the nobility will not lord over the common people.
By granting priesthood to common people and the unity of church and state, the common people and the nobility achieved an equilibrium of power, granting a lasting peace.
Future historians will mark this day as the start of the Era Origine calendar, representing the origin of faith and nobility in the human continent.