[center][b]Ialu[/b][/center]
[center][b]Level 4 Hero[/b][/center]

They trudged through the wood in a long column, two or three abreast, with Ialu alone at the head. Their leader briefly paused to look back upon his followers and examine them, for he made it a habit to do that periodically lest they collapse from exhaustion lacking his endurance or willpower. Countless men, women, and children trailed behind his every footstep now, every one of them above the age of five bearing a savage spear and a club, just like Ialu. As his nomadic group moved from place to place in search of food and shelter, staying together for mutual protection, they inevitably skirmished with the Dyun and Cimex on occasion. He had lost a fair few of his best hunters to those wretches, yet the terror of such beasts had driven even more followers onto his heels.

As he examined his band now, they looked ragged. Their shoulders drooped with exhaustion from days of marching through rain and swamp, over hill and night. A series of particularly harrowing battles had driven them to the brink over these past few weeks, for their leader had taken them straight through territories known to be infested with monsters. It had now been many days since they had so much as seen a sign of monsters; however, Ialu was not not content. He would march his people for a while longer, to be sure that they hadn't been followed and to put an even greater distance between them and the scourges of mankind.

Spinning around once more, having seen that his people still had some life in them, he resumed his step once more. Reluctantly, the weary others ended their momentary break and followed their leader once more. After perhaps an hour more of that monotony, the game path that they walked through forked into two: one path winding back around into the forest, with the other leading to a small stream that flowed off into the distance, going to where the forest gave way to flat grassland and then cutting through those distant plains. After a brief pause, Ialu unilaterally chose to walk down the river path. A few cries rang out from those behind him.

Angrily, Ialu turned his head back to declare, "We go this way!"

"Why?" called out one voice. "We're safer in the forest. More food is here, too," the one challenging Ialu's choice tried to reason.

Ialu still remembered when the speech began. For a long time, when his group was smaller, they had simply followed him without question. They still understood one another and could communicate what needed to said, through gestures, grunts, and the like. In those days, ruling had been easy because the sheep obeyed the shepherd, as was their nature. The weak followed the strong, as that was all they knew.

Yet there came a day when the gestures ended. They all suddenly started to make strange noises and form words, and somehow found that the others innately understood these words. With the words for enemy, tree, and food came also the word that Ialu hated most: 'why'. Since that fateful moment when they all had started talking, Ialu had constantly been demanded to answer 'why'. Strength was no longer enough; now the humans demanded wisdom too, and Ialu found that at times he did not have any wise words to offer. Strength was what he had to offer them, not wisdom. Realizing that some were smarter than he was both humbling and enraging to Ialu, having been used to being superior in every way. At times he found his reasoning challenged and the others in the group argued him into changing his mind, and that was something that he hated. Half the time he would stubbornly refuse to even explain himself, for fear of losing an argument.

And now was one of those times. His ire triggered, Ialu roared back, "You will tread this path because that is where I go! It is I that leads, and I say that we go this way. We will press forward on this path, not follow the other one and go back where we came from."

Usually his anger was enough to silence the sheep. While he might have lacked wisdom, adding intimidation to his strength was usually enough to compensate. It would not be so this time, however. To Ialu's chagrin, many of the disgruntled people, tired and hungry, turned back or went on the other path. They were staying in the woods where they felt at home and provided for. Ialu now regretted telling them of his idea to move to new lands away from the Dyun and Cimex, as ironically he was worse off for his plan seeming to have worked. Having not seen any of the monsters in days and believing themselves to now be safe, some of the braver humans no longer felt that they needed an invincible and mighty hero to follow. And so it was that his grand following splintered apart, not so long after it had formed.

In a fit of stubbornness, Ialu convinced himself that they were worthless to him, weak and disloyal. He did not need their kind. With those that chose to follow him and repeat what they had done for much of their time so far, the Wanderer set off. He followed the stream until it met with a much larger river. In that river they saw fish, great ones that had few natural predators. It was easy to simply stand in wait on a rock or on the riverbank, spearing the fish as they swam by. While they had been quick to learn that they could use their spears to fight animals just as they did Dyun and Cimex, and thus learned to hunt and feed themselves in new ways, it had still been a challenge to feed any large group. But these fish were abundant and easy to catch. 

Ialu's band did not go hungry after their discovery of spear-fishing. While they continued to roam about, the range that they traveled consisted only of where the river and its various tributaries went. They began to claim a swathe of land as their own territory, rarely venturing outside of it, and thinking of this region as their home.

[hider=Summary]
-Ialu's followers were taught how to make (and use) spears
-They learned to use spears to hunt and fish[/hider]
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