Exodus In Blood: A History

 Physical descriptions have been long forgotten, as all records were destroyed, but the Eerfris people of the Great Continent once thrived in mighty numbers.  Their status with the other tribes of that region was of great renown, as their hunting techniques predated those of their contemporaries, and the magic that was humankind’s earliest science was initially mastered in the valleys of their origin.  Fierce fighters, the Eerfris gained respect through confrontation, and guarded their people and borders with a dogged rigidity.  Little is known of their views or culture, due to the tribe’s unwillingness to share or integrate with other tribes.  Outsiders were not welcomed within their villages, and all intruders were killed.  The Eerfris never allowed captured outsiders, or their offspring, within their ranks; in many respects, the Eerfris were the original racial purists.

 

                Research indicates that the major shift in the Eerfris’ standing with their contemporaries may have been otherworldly.  It is theorized that a meteorite (Bactum’s LZ-2411), crashed into the deep valley of the northern region of the continent.  An estimated five feet in diameter, the gasses emitted from this foreign ore entered the waters of the marshes of the area, and its microbes were quickly introduced into the Eerfris bloodline.  After two generations, physical alterations became noticeable, and the Eerfris people’s ethnic identity was compromised within their numbers and observed from their neighboring tribes, who perceived their radical physical differences to be unnatural, or, more apt with the era, supernatural. 

 

                The tribes of the East counseled and aligned with the tribes of the South, whom had begun a massive cultural upheaval to become a kingdom.  The Eastern tribes’ numbers had also swelled under one horde - an early type of monarchy - producing hundreds of thousands of warriors.  The nations’ armies pushed into the region, forcing the Eerfris out of the valley towards the Northern Territories.

   

The area that was once home to the Eerfris people, the Valley Of The Crater, was slashed and burned.  Its marshes were flooded with flammable oils and the livestock slaughtered.  Elders of the Eerfris were crucified and immolated while their children were condemned to death through starvation and poisonings.  All life in the valley of the region was destroyed, as the Legion of Man would no longer tolerate the mere suggestion of supernatural mutation on the Great Continent.

 

                The remaining mutants fled farther north.  The great tribes of the Northern Territories - sky-eyed barbarian hunters and blacksmiths - were sanctioned by the kingdoms of the East and the South to eradicate the last of the Eerfris nomads.  The northerners were largely successful, slaughtering caravans of fleeing mutants as they journeyed to the northernmost inhabitable mountains.  The last of the Eerfris sojourned in hopes of locating a series of tunnels that would lead to the fabled underground city of Agharta, residing at the earth’s core.  Believed by many peoples to be the home of the founding family of humanity, the Eerfris drove their dwindling numbers in a mad struggle to reach this subterranean City Of Pyramids in search of sanctuary.

 

The northerners believed they had slain the last of the mutant pilgrims just miles from the Kafkan Plates, the frigid flatlands isolated within the treacherous glaciers of black ice.  But recent evidence unearthed farther north refutes this.

 

                As the kingdoms of the North, East and South continued campaigns to erase all traces of the Eerfris and their twisted lineage from the lands of the earth, the legend of their pogrom only grew.  The scattered peoples of the great continents whispered tales of the Eerfris Wildmen for hundreds of years.  It was uttered in the East that they did, in fact, discover the underground kingdom of the founding family.  The southern children of the sun told cruel tales in reference to the great crater and its effect on the lineage while their parents regaled in the victory of their nation’s first world war, a diplomatic success gained simultaneously by militaristic and political means.  Northern warriors, soon to become emissaries for the neighboring factions growing within the nations of the world, created mythologies which amended their unified religions; crude illustrations evolved into stylized early texts summarizing the origins of the Forgotten People of the Chasm.

 

                It would be almost five thousand years before the descendants of the Eerfris mutants surfaced again.