Chapter Two
Age of Tribes
Towards the beginning of what we would call the Early Holocene period, the Zoidians began to dominate the planet that they had come to call “Zi.” With fewer natural disasters to reduce their numbers their population began to expand at a phenomenal rate, allowing them to colonize the majority of the planet within the span of several thousand years.
It was during this rapid expansion that the zoidians began to organize themselves in cohesive communities known as “tribes.” Each tribe was governed by hereditary leader – a “chieftain”, and was completely self-sufficient. This self-sufficiency insulated most of the tribes from the rest of the world, causing them to have very little need for interaction with outsiders. Those few that wandered beyond their tribal lands were often viewed with suspicion, skepticism, and distrust if not outright prejudice. As expected, this self-imposed isolation provided a unique opportunity for cultural development. Separated from outside influences, each tribe was allowed to form its own unique language, and experiment with a new customs and societies. Some tribes we would immediately recognize as being Egyptian, European, South American, or Japanese; other tribes would be totally foreign to us.
Zoid Advent Calendar
At this point in time earthquakes still wracked the majority of the Central Continent, now known by the Zoidian word for “cradle” - “Delpoi.” These earthquakes behaved oddly, as they did not originate from any known fault line. Instead, they emanated from deep within the planet’s mantle, and were caused by sudden and violent shifts of swirling magma columns. It goes without saying that these earthquakes were devastating, and would bring with them extreme changes.
One such change came in the form of a unification of Delpoi’s tribes. For some time the tribes had dealt with the earthquakes the best way they knew how – on their own. They stocked supplies, reinforced their buildings, and braced for the worst. However, this simply was not enough; it quickly came to light that outside help would eventually be needed. The offer of help was slow in coming, and even slower to be accepted, but in the end the tribes united. Within ten years the fifty-plus tribes that had dotted the landscape had coalesced into eight massive tribes that dominated the Central Continent. This unification was known as the Great Reconfiguration.
The second change came five years after the final formalities of the Great Reconfiguration. During a routine surveying trip of a recently collapsed hillside in eastern Delpoi, a geologist by the name of Babahot discovered a megalithic structure half buried beneath the earth. Investigations of the structure proved it to be a shrine created by ancient zoidians to warship the Goddess of the Hunt and Harvest, Seph’pherian. Upon the temple’s alter was discovered a massive tablet measuring three meters, by one meter, by one-half meter. Formed out of a single block of steel, the tablet’s face was engraved with a scene of a great hunt and numerous prayers of thanks for the abundance of food for that year. Researchers dated the tablet back to over a thousand years; the shrine itself proved to be several centuries older than the tablet found within it. These discoveries caused a windfall of controversy. Detractors accused Babahut of fabricating the tablet. They claimed he had constructed the temple and monolith out of the selfish need for fame and scholarly recognition. Others dismissed the idea of a pre-modern zoidian culture as nothing more than the fantasies of a man gone mad. In the end, after extensive study and testing, the majority of the tribes agreed that Babahut’s claims were true, and in the process caused a craze to sweep throughout the tribes that would become the foundations of modern zoidian archeology. In reflection of this, a new calendar system – the Zoid Advent Calendar - was installed, with its starting date being the day that the tablet had been forged. The year of this agreement was calculated to be ZAC 1693.
Man Made Marvels
The decade of 1890 saw an industrial revolution sweep throughout Deploi. Voltz Brayer had just published his theory on the thermodynamics of water, causing a great interest in the use of steam power. Jajuan Rolinar, who had discovered the properties of electricity ten years prior, had just introduced his latest invention, the light bulb, to the world, and through it changed how homes and businesses were lit. However, there was one particular innovation that would ultimately define this decade – the invention of the modern domestic zoid.
For centuries zoidians had been taming proto-zoids to be used as food sources, beasts of burden, and even companionship. Likewise, it had been a long standing practice for zoidians to modify proto-zoids to suit their own purposes, either through selective breeding or extensive body modification. For a man named Frederick Vealhelm the idea of modifying the appearance and functionality of a proto-zoid to fit the needs of its owner was taken one step further. Where one would normally outfit a proto-zoid with a saddle and harness, Vealhelm envisioned a more direct means of control. The process he invented was very time consuming, taking months of hard and bloody work to produce a single zoid. Many zoidians found this type of modification appalling, and considered it too cruel to be enacted upon any living creature.
It would take the efforts of an engineer by the name Joie Boyd to make the dream of mass producing modern, “domestic” zoids a reality. To her the answer laid in the creation of an artificial body, and not the painful body modification that ended the lives of so many proto-zoids. The idea of implanting a newly budded zoidcore into a prefabricated body was a radical departure from tradition. However, the process quickly caught on when it was realized that such a method was more humane, and allowed for the production of more domestic zoids than that Vealhelm’s body modification. While primitive for their time, these first domesticated zoids – or “Joie Rides” as they were known at the time - proved to be extremely popular, as their mass production meant that they were no longer regulated to the upper class. It is estimated that by the end of the decade nearly two-thirds of the total population on Delpoi owned a domestic zoid in one form or another.
Reversal of Directions
Change would come again in the year ZAC 1909. Once stable weather patterns shifted, throwing the Central Continent into what we would equate to a prolonged El Niño/La Niña effect. While these shifts in oceanic temperatures were common, the Year without a Winter, as it would come to be called in Delpoi, would play a critical role in the centuries to come.
For some time oceanographers – specifically members of the Tribe of the Sea – had noticed a slow but steady change in the planet’s oceans. The Great Peg’sun Conveyance – Zi’s thermohaline circulatory system – had begun to change directions, specifically within the regions of the Akua Sea and Florecio Ocean. Recent volcanic activity on the Akua seafloor had altered the temperatures of the surrounding water by several degrees, and caused a massive amount of heavy minerals to be released into the oceanic conveyor belt. In turn this caused the currents to reverse upon themselves, and drive the now warmer waters of the Akua south into the Florecio along The Eastern Central Continental Shelf. Weather patterns within the region quickly changed alongside the shifting currents. The eastern part of Delpoi, as well as northern parts of the Eastern Continent Edem-Arcadia, soon found itself wracked by seasonal tropical storms, as western parts of Delpoi and southern Edem-Arcadia began to dry up. Within the span of eleven years once lush grasslands had been reduced to dusty savannahs even as sparse woodlands grew into budding jungles.
Symptoms of Change: The West
The redirection of the Great Peg’sun Conveyance spelt the doom for the western part of Delpoi, known to its inhabitance as “Darias”. Robbed of their annual wet seasons, the savannahs of the Aridian Steppes quickly wilted and became barren bushlands. The Adriud River, which fed the grain-rich Tytus Plains, slowly began to flood as the glaciers that fed it retreated under the scorching temperatures. It would only take seven brief years of rainless skies and poor farming practices to ruin both the geopolitical and economic landscape of the Western Territories.
Each passing year brought only more devastation. With fewer and fewer opportunities available to them, many turned to alternate means of supplementing their income. Crime, once virtually unheard of amongst the Tribes, began to spread throughout the Western Territories. Murder and violence became every-day occurrences as people competed against each other for what little food and water remained. Others turned to theft and banditry of the trade routes in hopes of gleaning the untold wealth and resources of the merchant caravans. More often than not, these hostilities spilled out beyond Darias and into the Central Territories of Elysius and Eastern Territories of Diorne. It would not take much to spark all-out war between the territories.
From the Earth, A Hero
The spring of ZAC 1920 would prove the spark needed for the First Central Continental Civil War. Fought initially between the expanding Earth and Wind tribes over boarder disputes, it quickly drew in all the tribes of Delpoi until the Central Continent was split down the middle. It’s after effects would be felt for centuries to come.
The First Central Continental Civil War has its origins in the lawlessness that sprang up during the death of the Western Territories. Those communities that had managed to weather the drought and flooding quickly found themselves inundated with hungry and thirsty refugees. In turn, these refugees, traveling east to the lusher lands of Dionre, became targets for bandits and highwaymen looking to profit off their hardships; those unable to give into their demands of ransom generally ended up paying with their own lives. Homesteads and communities that had managed to survive the disasters quickly found themselves inundated with hungry and thirsty refugees seeking shelter and sustenance.
One such community was a village known as ‘Beside the Depths of the Earth.’ Located in the western foothills of the Phoenix Mountains, Beside the Depths of the Earth was one of the few above-ground settlements located within Earth Tribe territory. For years it had supplied the Earth Tribe with the majority of its nuts and grains. Supplied water by an underground lakes and natural aquifers, it was one of the few communities that had managed to weather the drought that gripped Darias in a stranglehold. However, this abundance in the face of adversity would prove too much of a temptation. Refugees traveling east quickly overwhelmed the large farming community. Raiders and bandit - whom plagued the trains of refugees - were quick to follow. In a matter of months By the Depths of the Earth found itself under siege, its fields stripped bare, and on the verge of collapsing as its leaders bickered and argued over how best to deal with the situation.
As Beside the Depths of the Earth’s situation deteriorated, a group of villagers came together with an audacious plan. As the village elders warred amongst themselves, the group would travel to the Earth Tribe’s capital, Joutin, and ask the Council of Equals for help. It was a simple and straightforward idea, but one that seemed doomed to fail from the very beginning. There was an underlying fear amongst the villagers that the Council, which had exiled them to the surface in the first place, would reestablish control over the village as it had done during its establishment. Try as they might, though, the majority could not ignore the fact that they would need outside aid to deal with the problem. So, in the end, it was agreed upon that a small envoy would be sent to Joutin in hopes of soliciting aid against and guidance.
The Council’s decision on whether or not to send relief to By the Depths of the Earth had been reached even before the envoy had set foot within the capital. Born into power, and full of selfish arrogance bred from isolationist philosophy, the councilmembers saw no reason to alleviate the village’s suffering. Though they supplied the various tribe’s underground settlements with much-needed grain and solar energy, the surface was a dangerous place – a frontier – fit only for the poor, the criminally convicted, and the Casteless; its inhabitance were perceived as little more than second-class citizens, if not outright social outcasts or nonpersons. To say that there was a general lack of interest towards their surface holdings amongst the Earth Tribe’s nobility would be an understatement. Yet, it was this perception that a lone war-chief had long since struggled to resolve. For as long as he cared to remember, the headstrong Guylos From the Depths had advocated a stronger defense of the Earth Tribe’s territories, knowing that the tribe had become a target in this time of need.
It was inevitable that Guylos and his superiors would clash over how best to secure the tribe’s future. He knew if the Earth Tribe was to survive the coming drought, then the above-ground grain fields and their caretakers would also have to survive. The Council brushed his claim aside as the works of a paranoid delusion. He demanded that they take action against the bandits that had been terrorizing the Earth Tribe’s surface territories. They shouted him down with rhetoric of them being outcastes and criminals. He demanded a troop of his own to defend the field and their tenders. They derided him for not truly caring for his own people’s safety, and dismissed him as easily as brushing dust from one’s boots. The possessor of a fierce and fiery passion, Guylos could not accept the discussions of his superiors to leave the outlying settlements to fend for themselves. Unable to sit back and watch his people’s future survival be destroyed, the headstrong war-chief set out against direct orders to aid the village of By the Depths of the Earth, and, in doing so, become a living legend throughout Delpoi…
An Unwelcomed Arrival
From the start Guylos From the Depths encountered difficulty on the road to Beside the Depths of the Earth. Though an accomplished warrior and strategist, he was unaccustomed to the harsh realities of life above ground. Blinding sun, unbearably cold nights, and highwaymen would plague him for his entire journey.
The trip took roughly two weeks for Guylos to make. The first three days of the journey was relatively uneventful save for severe bouts of vertigo and partial blindness that came from a life of living underground. The fourth day found him held up by a quartet of robbers whom had made the mistake of choosing to ambush him, and in turn paid for it with their lives. Days five through twelve were as with the first three, uneventful, but perfect for plotting and planning stratagem. On the thirteenth day Guylos arrived. The welcoming he received was not as one would have expected. The once dusty, deserted streets sprung to life the moment he dismounted his realga war-steed. Armed with blades and sharpened staves the villagers of Beside the Depths of the Earth descended upon him in a mad frenzy. Taken by surprise, there was little he could do as they bound and chained him.
“In the names of the Gods, I demand to know the meaning of this!” Guylos bellowed fiercely, as he struggled to free himself. “I come to you at your request, under a banner of peace, and you bind me as if I were a layman! By what rights do you have to treat a war-chief with such dishonor?”
“By the same rights you have to besiege our town and kill its people!” A woman’s voice cried above the others just moments before the world went black and silent…
