During the 8 th 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 appears that the Primals simply decided to leave and return from whence they had come. Why? We do not know. Certainly, the Second Alliance of Treekin and Beasts was proving stiffer opposition than the Primals had previously faced but history does not indicate that the Alliance was doing more than holding its own against the invaders.

What we do know is that Tammam’s only heir, the seven year-old former Prince, now Overking, Ir’asa simply vanished. Many have 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, and this does seem likely. It’s certainly not beyond the bounds of consideration to credit the ‘retreat’ of the Primals with the theoretical capture of Ir’asa, but if this were the case, it doesn’t explain why.

The easy answer is that they were after one of the two Beasts who might know the location of the Mysterium Primordial (though we cannot be sure that the knowledge wasn’t lost long before Tammam’s time), but as the records do not speak of the Primals using magic at all, and as there’s no mention at all of contact with the Primals previous to this, it is 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.

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.