Editing Wilders of Aegic (section)

== History ==

As Aegic froze populations were pushed back by the ice. Most people were pushed back into ever dwindling pockets which eventually became too small to support their population and then froze entirely. The end for these enclaves was brutal. Only the toughest and fiercest survived as neighbor killed neighbor for the scarce resources. When the enclave froze entirely, the last survivors would find themselves in the frozen wastes with no food, fuel, or water. There they died, frozen atop the family and friends they had killed for the privilege of dying last.

But there was another fate. A few tribes learned to survive in the frozen wastes. The fields, fruits, fish, and roaming beasts were gone, but these resourceful people adapted. They learned to find the ice crawlers and through them the bountiful harvest frozen beneath the ice.

Just as the people had retreated from the ice, so had the giant herds of roaming animals. Herd joined herd as the ice pushed them back until thousands of animals huddling for warmth was not enough and they were frozen and buried beneath many meters of ice, but not lost. The ice crawlers possessed an uncanny ability to sniff out these frozen herds. There they would feed and spawn their young before moving on to find the next cache of meat.

The tribes on the ice learned to find the ice crawlers by their breathing holes and to follow the tunnels to the great food stores. The crawlers supplied the minimum that life required; a ready access to food, shelter in their tunnels, and warmth from the fast growing larvae, but they were brutal suppliers. Though the people would try to destroy the young before they reached a dangerous size, there was always the possibility of one lurking undiscovered in the frozen meat biding its time until it was grown enough to feed on the fresh humans. And a constant vigil had to be kept for adults arriving to lay more eggs.

To survive a tribe needs warriors. Warriors that could face any ice crawler with only the weapons saved from before the ice and passed down through the generations. The warriors learned to fight at the time of the opponents choosing with no possibility of retreat and a complete obliteration of their people if they failed even once.

Thus for many generations did the wilder tribes survive beneath the ice. But there were no new food supplies. Though a herd might last for years, when it was consumed the tribe had to move on. The herds grew scarcer and the ice crawler population began to dwindle. One by one the tribes died off except for a lucky one that followed an ice crawler tunnel into Icesus.

The promised land had been found. A land where they could live beneath the sun without freezing, where live animals were plentiful and staying alive did not require one to live in the shadow of fearsome monsters. It was worse. The limited space of the valley had long ago been divided among the races and religions and tribes until every square meter belonged to someone. Most of the mayors and princes refused to grant them land to live, a few offered them land for a village in return for slavery.

Unable to claim a home, too few to take one, and unwilling to accept servitude, and with the frozen herds depleted behind them, the wilders became nomads. They own only that which they can pack and carry. In an hour an entire village can be packed and a mile away. They live off the wilderness, beyond the sight of men, but always ready to fight or move when discovered by some wandering ranger.