Return to Earth Eternal Official Lore
12 | THE PRIMAL WAR
The Primals
During the 8th year of Tammam’s reign, barbarous invaders arrived by ship, raiding and pillaging the Emerald Kingdom first, then the Scotian Highlands and Anglorum, driving almost all Beasts from those shores. Indeed, the invaders completely depopulated the Emerald Kingdom, forever displacing the Bounders who once called it home, and despoiled much of Anglorum before landing their fleet on the mainland across the narrow water, near the Great Forest.
Reports from the fleeing survivors of Anglorum and the Emerald Kingdom had already begun to trickle inland, but now they came in a flood ‐ tales of powerful Beasts like none seen before, in great numbers, advancing forcefully into the Beast Empire. Tammam, who had personally led skirmishes against the Outcasts that had occasionally harried the Beasts of the Covenant, resolved to lead a small expeditionary force against the invaders directly, to take their measure and halt their advance.
What they found when they arrived near the shores of Europe shocked and disturbed them. Here were sentient Beasts, like they… but different. These Beasts were larger, savage, and exceedingly violent. Bound by no Covenant, they killed with impunity and took few prisoners. Tammam’s records of the invaders describe monstrous twisted wolf‐Beasts, larger and darker than the Fangren, reptilian Beasts with razor‐sharp teeth and wicked spines on their heads, and strange cat‐like Beasts with fangs as long as daggers.
Naming these creatures “Primals,” Tammam engaged them in a poorly planned skirmish in which he was decisively defeated and routed. Retreating back into central Europe, he made plans to raise a real army for the first time since the Beasts united against the Mystarchs, twenty‐three generations earlier. He, Tammam, Overking of the Beast Empire and heir to Solomon himself, would drive back these Primals to wherever they had come from.
After this, little is known. The lists of battles and much of the history of the Primal War has been lost to us. It was a time of great chaos, and the records from this period are incomplete at best. What is known is that the Primals savaged much of Western and Southern Europe for a period of some years before eventually withdrawing without a clear reason as to why. It is also fairly certain that Tammam was slain by a Primal arrow, not long before the end of the war.
The Primal Withdrawl
Soon after Tammam’s death, it appeared that the Primals simply decided to leave and return from whence they had come. Why? Those of that time and after did not know. Certainly, the Second Alliance of Treekin and Beasts was proving stiffer opposition than the Primals had previously faced, but history did not indicate that the Alliance was doing more than holding its own against the invaders.
What was known was that Tammam’s only heir, the seven year‐old former Prince, now Overking, Ir’asa simply vanished. Many speculated that he was somehow captured by the Primals during their withdrawl, as he was with his father’s company learning the art of strategic warfare.
The easy answer was that they were after one of the two Beasts who might know the location of the Mysterium Primordial (though none could be sure that the knowledge wasn’t lost long before Tammam’s time), but as the records did not speak of the Primals using magic at all, and as there was no mention at all of contact with the Primals previous to this, it was hard to see how they might know of the Mysterium or why they would want or need it. Perhaps they were simply raiding for the sheer sport of it, or for the sake of pillage.
Agalarna’s Return
We have come to know the truth, however, as related to us by some of the Cyclops that served the Faerie.
The first place the Primals landed was the Emerald Isle and during the Primal War the comet, upon which was Agalarna, the Spirit Mother of the Faeries, returned to the vicinity of Earth for the first time since Djall first came to this planet. Whether this went unnoticed to the Beasts of the time or not is unknown. There was enough chaos with the war against the Primals that it may have simply gone uncommented upon.
The Faerie certainly noticed and felt it coming for years in advance. From their Otherland home, at the edge of time, they watched the Earth. They saw the coming of the Primals, and they saw the kidnapping of Ir’asa, who knew of the location of the Mysterium Primordial. They witnessed the Primals taking Ir’asa to the Emerald Isle and sequestering him away there to begin the search for the Mysterium.
Even in the time of the Titans, the origins of the Mysterium were unknown. In the most ancient myths of the Faerie Folk, the Mysterium was whispered of, and was already old beyond legend. They didn’t know where it had come from but their Titan masters had coveted it and had tantalized the Faerie with the secrets held within.
When their Spirit Mother was as close to the Earth as possible and the power of the Faerie was waxing higher than it had since the Lost Ages they broke through the thin membrane that separated Otherland from the Earth. They stormed over the Primals on the Emerald Isle, killed them all, and took Ir’asa for their own, disappearing back to the Otherland.
The leadership, such as it was, of the Primals had been decimated by the Faerie attack, and, spooked by these unknown beings and dismayed at the loss of Ir’asa, who was their goal, they retreated. All this went completely unnoticed to the Beasts at the time, who were mystified by the withdrawl of the Primals.
With the loss of Solomon’s bloodline, Europe was plunged into chaos. Confused and conflicting accounts of this time period exist as the Beasts of Europe entered a Dark Age of which very little is known. The Primal War had destroyed cities, displaced entire populations, and ruined the greatest Empire the Beasts had ever known. Though the Gaia‐blessed Covenant still held strong, the Solomnic Age was over, never to return.