River Cities
A faint memory forever lost...
No ruins or artifacts remain of the earliest dwellings of Men along the Great River. The only knowledge remaining comes from early oral traditions and scrawls found in the caves of the Northern Ring. Modern Freelanders know their ancestors lived along the shore of the Great River before being forced to flee the Weeping Death eons ago, but if asked, cannot trace the precise location. Archeology is still a very new field of study, and because the waters are quick to reclaim anything along the shore during the Flood Season, it is highly unlikely any trace could ever be found of habitation. Perhaps the best examples are cited in tales pertaining to the Celestial Brothers and the story of the Silver Tree, which mention that Men first dwelt on the Plains before coming to settle in the city. The people would not have access to fired clay bricks or hewn stone for thousands of years later and would have had to make such dwellings out of crude thatch at best. No trace could possibly remain after so many thousands of years, and early Men had to rebuild their communities many times because of the Flood Season before ultimately being forced to permanently abandon their settlements along the shore.
Government
The Celestial Brothers
The earliest oral histories state that the people were ruled over by twins Thangor and Thuruk, men of seemingly larger-than-life stature. When a quarrel broke out about how best to guide the people, Thuruk slew his weaker brother and took over leadership. Myth states that they did exist and their spirits now reside within the Twin Suns, but details such as their lineage, date of birth and death, and personal lives have been muddied through the passage of time.History
See Thangien History and the Dread Winter
Beset by so many disasters such as the Storm and Flood seasons, caevas claws, and finally the Dread Winter, it seemed Men gave up on attempting to rebuild their homes when they emerged from hiding. After meeting the gods, they chose to settle far enough away from the river to avoid floods, but close enough that they could still have access to water.Architecture
Given the primitive technological level at the time, dwellings could not have been very large, at most able to comfortably house one, maybe four occupants. Paintings in the Northern Ring indicate clusters of several dwellings along the shore, likely cobbled together using a combination of branches from plains trees and bundles of tall grasses. Whether their methods improved over time is unknown as much was lost following the Dread Winter. Some versions of stories involving the Celestial Brothers claim they ruled over sophisticated communities, but given there exists no surviving ruins or evidence, this is likely a result of creative embellishment.
Geography
Communities were thought to be situated directly on the shore of the Winding White in order to allow for easy access to fresh water and food. Stories claim the existence of extensive forests bordering the White, but in the modern day the only dense forests of note are found in Tirmutua and the Eastern Jungle. If ever there were dense forests along the White, they were likely destroyed during the Dread Winter.
Climate
Ancient Men at the time probably thought it was a good idea to build directly on the shore, but had no means of understanding or properly recording the cycles of the Storm and Flood seasons, and would have been forced to hastily evacuate their crude dwellings on a regular basis. Perhaps their simple construction meant they could easily take necessities and return once the waters subsided, but this had to have been an aggravating inconvenience.
Natural Resources
No doubt Men kept returning to the shores because the bounty of game and vegetation proved too great to fully abandon. They might have been the first to attempt reinforcing their dwellings with silt from the shore, but like so much of the earliest histories, these too were washed away.
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