New revision proposal, focusing on an inland tribal incursion that mostly used metal for military superiority.
In the years before the ashfall, the tribes that spread inland found themselves in a cornucopia of new places. Be it the tropical forest, the damp pines, or the freezing taiga, the tribes all had to adapt to a new way of life. Hunting, fishing, pottery, weaving and more all saw new regional styles develop.
When the earth shook and the skies fell gray, panic spread amid the time of refugees and famine; villages hid from hunting armies looking for sacrifice, and rival tribes looking for food. Not every tribe had a Ziggawatt built, or even a place of sacrifice. Some instead dug deep and rooted within the sheltered confines of the continent to survive.
Take the Choladaic rainforest; within the eternal twilight under the canopy, a sheltered tribe thrived. The ash polluted the rivers, but enough life survived for the ecosystem to remain relatively intact for the time. Our hunters, who had originally found new prey to hunt and challenge themselves against, continued to hunt down the Voltasuchus, a species of alligator with thick bony plates around its skull and a set of glands that generated and controlled releases of electricity in ambush to stun and kill prey.
This change in environment and prey had resulted in a discovery, one the tribes of the west soon relied upon to keep them safe. Hunters tattooed with Voltasuchus blood attempting to catch small, fast prey found themselves lunging faster, reacting more keenly, and most notably - channeling lightning through their whalebone spears. Taking advantage of this, the tribe became dedicated to ambush hunting, both against the wildlife and later against any unwelcome visitors.
Survival was made easier by this tradition, too. While less resistant to lightning outright, the tribe-developed control over lightning gave several new tools which were instrumental to survivng the ashfall. While hunting parties still went forth on honorable hunts, fishermen would often be tattooed and use the power of the lightning to channel energy through a controlled section of the river they were fishing in, aiming to stun and collect and fish not resistant to the charge. It also saw use in lighting for the villages that formed beneath the canopy, jars of fat from alligators and whales alike being charged with the lightning that now surged through our people’s veins like the blood of the gods. Starting fires became easier, and natural copper deposits were found and worked, the metal proving a sublime conductor of lightning to fill in for the now limited supply of whalebone, especially as wars raged along the coast.
It was this last discovery, made in parallel among several other inland tribes, that led to a breakpoint in history. The direct control and dispensation of lightning common among adaptations in land animals allowed the tribe to directly melt copper, using the heat and force generated by the lightning, later refined into channeling the lightning through sinew ropes coiled around the desired ores. With this easy supply of “fuel” to the forges, a grand trade in forged and cast metal grew within the inland tribes.
Other regions experienced this renaissance, their inhabitants taking the knowledge shared of basic metalwork and using their increasingly developed technology and abilities to both save firewood and give them the tools they needed to live and fight. Most notably, the frozen taiga of the Frosthollows was home to a large near-surface hematite deposit that a sedentary tribe formed around, repelling any armies that came with superior weaponry and the strength flowing through their veins, their hunters taking down large Polar Faradbears for furs, and glory.
And then the day of the clear skies came. While Ixam rebuilt from the devastating typhoons, along with the surviving 12 bays, the inland tribes struck an alliance. Alone, they didn’t have the numbers, but together, along with their superior weaponry, they had more than enough power to take the coast and pay the priesthood back for the Thirsting Wars. Their march was slow and disorganized, but their metal stood true, and after a series of surprisingly brief battles, they stood triumphant over Ixam.
Over the years, things came to a sort of an equilibrium. The tribes weren’t nonreligious themselves, and the priesthood survived in a form. Many of the Ziggawatts “freed up” by population loss became temples away from home for the gods of the forest, the frost, the river, while other temples merged their faiths in a display of syncretism, the inland gods of change and transformation which were common among metalworkers firmly melding (in terms of worship) with the god of lightning, the Matriarch Whale. Human sacrifices experienced a sharp decline, the old ways of the ash years violently pushed aside by the war and out of favor. The new technologies of metalworking, previously closely guarded, spread through the new confederation as the families intermarried and mingled with the coastal cities, and a new ruling class formed, albeit one still ripe with tension between their home and the new capital.
: Powder Miner, UristMcRiley, TFF, FallacyofUrist, Jerick, m1895, TcK, Doomblade