Rounds 1 and 2

The very first gaming session was in some respects the least interesting, even though we covered two rounds of progress.  I say this not because the concept wasn't good, and I don't mean to suggest that the Players weren't keen to sink their teeth into such an unusual concept.  I merely mean that none of us had any idea what to expect from a campaign of this kind — its scope, its magnitude, its complexity.  We didn't know what kind of consequences we might face.  I didn't have a good notion how even to prepare such a campaign, because as far as I knew, nobody had ever tried anything like it.

Since we had to cover two rounds of the game in one night, it meant I had to prepare Round 1, Year Zero with a limited palette of consequences.  I imagined various cultural forces which might come into conflict, such as curiosity, mysticism, tradition, medicine, discipline, fear of the unknown, and pit them against each other in what I hoped were relative binary ways.  Either mysticism would win, I expected, or rationality would.  I was prepared for either contingency, with a string of if-then statements woven into my preparatory materials.  If the players chose to do X, I would follow up with Scenario B, and so on.

I hadn't anticipated the dedication to which my apparently Taoist campaigners consistently sought the Middle Path.

Players
Joe:  the host of our gaming nights, my best friend for 25 years, and the Leader of the triumvirate.
Dave:  a friend of several years, whom I met while doing a play for a local theater company.  He would play the Artisan.
Connor:  a friend and co-worker of Dave's who had been incorporated into our gaming group; his role was the Mystic.

Year Zero:  The Earth Gathering
The Dar tribe loses their leader and their medicine man as a result of an earthquake which destroys their cave.  The survivors seek answers, blaming a deformed six-fingered child of Uman, but the Great Spirits deny them justice.  In fact, the Great Spirits insist that the Dar offer up one of their women to Uman's deformed child as a bride when he comes of age.  A Dar midwife, their only remaining healer, attacks Uman in her rage and despair and is killed.

The six-fingered son of the Uman tribe is allowed to live despite his obvious mutation, and no special mystical significance is attributed to the earthquake.  The Uman boy is prophesied to become a great leader and wizard, and is promised a bride of the Dar people when he comes of age.

The curiosity of the Pagh toward the reason for the earthquake leads them on a quest into the mountains, to learn why the earth moves.  Perhaps the Earth has rising and falling cycles, as do the Sea and the River.

The Kufu are encouraged to add a medicine man to their tribe, and take on Tor the Sage of the Pagh.  They return to their ancestral lands with a renewed appreciation for the value of strong medicine.

The Brun warn that although the sign of the earthquake is meaningless, the sign of the lunar eclipse is worse.  Their fears are ignored.  The Brun return to their cold northern lands, unsatisfied.

Year 30,000:  Hominid Migration
The Drim Acquire A Telepath.  The tradition of bridal exchange is interrupted when the Drim suspect a young healer to be possessed by evil spirits.  The Great Spirits demonstrate that her telepathy is actually beneficial, for young Temu is the equal of old Ral the Raven in a contest of skills.

The Mannut Discover Mining.  The Mannut tribe discovers a copper deposit when an avalanche destroys their cave.  Nobody is harmed, but the Great Spirits warn that any further investigation into the stones of the earth would require the presence of a skilled shaman.

The Abequa Enter The Great Valley.   After wandering for millennia in the high mountain passes where food is scarce, the migrating Abequa reach a valley where flora is lush and fauna is unimaginably plentiful.  The sudden surplus almost crumbles the discipline within the tribe, and there is a crisis of leadership.  Only Jebba the Healer can bring back the mighty huaca alive.  Reluctantly, she accepts that it is her Quest to lead her people, for among all of the Eagle tribe, she is best suited for the task.

The Ayuté Have Two Toolmakers.  When Noves, toolmaker of the Ayuté, is killed by a tiger, the tribe looks to his son Novan to fill the role of craftsman, though he has not the skill of his father.  There is a challenge from Faya, even younger than he but no less adept at making weapons in her own particular style.  When the two types of weapons are put to the test, the women of the tribe are far more successful catching fish than are the men, and the balance of power in the tribe begins to shift.

The Cleansing Ritual Of Oparron.  A tribe is being pushed farther out onto a rain-lashed peninsula, where food is scarce and tempers are frayed.  Discipline can no longer be maintained, and some hungry tribesmen secretly hunt for crabs on the seashore, without bothering to share their bounty.  After three people die from shellfish allergy, a phenomenon the Oparron are not equipped to understand, the Great Spirits are there to help.  The eating of crab meat is a rite of passage all must undergo, to determine if one is strong enough to suit the needs of the tribe.  A grisly pyrophiliac cleansing ritual is invented as a purifying rite for the bodies of those slain.  Soon after this, the Oparron advance out across the lowlands and onto the island chain that spans the North Ocean.