The Lilliquio planted their tree in the great valley watered by the river’s flowing down from the mountains clustered around Poi Drodidi.  These waters flowed from the same lake that used to nurture the great tree on top of the one mountain.

            As their purpose in life was to care for the tree, in hopes that it would someday stretch to the sky again, the Lilliquio were created natural farmers.  They soon turned the valley into a paradise, building great stone towers and pyramids in worship to God.

            But the Isreen had divided and continued to divide, spreading all over the West Wheel, tribe after tribe wandering apart and starting their own ways.

            And as they divided, they began to quarrel over land and women and religion.  The quarrels became fights and the fights became war.  And with each war, the Isreen became more savage and merciless, until they were little more than animals.

            One such tribe, the most perverse of all, was the Klietch.  They, too build stone towers to the sky, and they warred against tribes on all sides of their cities, nestled in the hard, obsidian cliffs in the Wyrdelands.  They would capture many prisoners to sacrifice in their bizarre rituals. 

            The warlords of the Klietch became so powerful that they scaled the hills dividing them from the Plainlands and swarmed into the valley of the Lilliquio, killing, raping and burning until the Lilliquio were all but destroyed.

            But like the great tree itself, they survived and began to grow again.  Realizing that they could not defend themselves, the Lilliquio formed an alliance with the Buffalo hunters of the Great Plains, a powerful nation of nomadic warriors, brave and honorable, known as the Benaquinn. 

            Even with the Benaquinn’s protection, the Klietch kept coming, more forceful and ambitious with each attempt.  The Benaquinn wanted to invade the Klietch land and destroy their stone city once and for all, but they could not pass through the mountains for the Klietch would use the caves and crevices to lay ambush to all foolish enough to try.

            Then one night, a great Benaquinn Medicine Man on a Spirit Journey found himself at the great Eastern Ocean at the edge of the valley where Gabrillu’s spear fell from the sky.  As he stared out at the ocean, he had a vision.  A strange beast, unlike anything he had ever laid eyes on, strode across the waves of the ocean, shaking its silky main from its powerful neck and long, beautiful head.  It told the shaman that strangers were approaching the shores of the land.  It told the shaman that these strangers would bring with them four evils: war, famine, disease, and death.  As the medicine man shook in fear, the creature leaned its head down from the sky and licked him gently on the face.  It told him not to fear, for the strangers with faces pale as corpses would also bring with them a great blessing.  When he asked what this blessing would be, the beast pulled back its head and trumpeted out “ME!”

            The meaning of this vision did not immediately make itself apparent.  But while the Benaquinn and the Lilliquio struggled each year after with the encroachment of the Klietch, the savage, naked tribes of the eastern coast witnessed something wholly new: great, white, billowing cloths rising over the horizon of the ocean.