THE AMAZON TRIBES
By Rick Martin - mailto:rick@martincs.globalnet.co.uk

The dense jungles of Lustria are teeming with small tribes of Savage Orcs, Pygmies and Men. These tribes in the main have failed to develop into sprawling civilazations like the men of the Old World. However, there is one unique tribe which has developed into a civilization deep in the jungle. They are the Amazons, a tribe of made almost entirely of women. While the are collectively called the Amazon's, their empire consists of small villages spread throughout the land of Lustria. Each village is led by a chefitan, each of which has pledged their alligence to the Amazon Queen, who rules the Amazon Empire from her throne room in the secret fortress of Ithralia, hidden on the small island known as Amazon Island. Only a select few tribal cheiftans, and those in the court of the Amazon Queen, know the location of the fortress. To the casual observer, and in fact to even the mighty Slann Mage Priests, it appears that the Amazons are little more than a few isolated, savage tribes.

THE BIRTH OF THE AMAZON TRIBES

But this teeming secret empire hidden deep in the jungles didn't appear over night, nor did the strange all women nature of it. The Birth of the Amazons can be traced down to before the Coming Of Chaos, whilst the mighty Old Ones still inhabited the Warhammer World. The Amazon tribe was one of the largest of the tribes which inhabited the jungles of Lustria. At this point it was unremarkable to the other tribes, and their society was male dominated. The Males were the warriors, while the women tended to the crops of Manioc beans and yams, grown by their system of shifting agriculture. The tribe developed unhindered by their neighbours. Until the one fateful day when a massive army of Lizardmen marched towards the Amazon village. The proud and arrogant warriors marched out to meet the scaly invaders. None returned. The women folk of the the tribe scattered across the width and bredth of Lustria.

The women of the Amazon tribes felt very cheated by the males. Having trusted them to protect them, they had all failed them. The smaller tribes of Women had to endure the hardships of the life in the Jungle on their own, without their menfolk to protect them. They became very reclusive tribes, only rarely having any contact with the other tribes of Lustria. When they did, it was mainly to trade goods and themselves to the men of the other tribes in order to procreate their race. A culture of seeing males as weak developed, as the small tribes of warrior women learned how to fight, and learned how to fight well.

Why the Old Ones had deemed it necessary to attack the Amazon tribe remains a mystery. Perhaps it was simply that the tribe threatened to interfere with the Old Ones great plans. But considering that the Amazon Empire now is much greater than it ever was when the old Ones attacked them suggests that the answer to this question may not be so obvious after all. The Old Ones were a very enigmatic race, and perhaps the Amazons will at one point serve a purpose in their great plan, although how is not yet known. No one truly understands the thinking of the Old Ones, not even the wise High Elf mages in the Tower Of Hoeth. Unfortunately, maybe the Slann who have inherrited the legacy of the Old Ones, and the Amazons themselves, don't know that their destinies could be intertwined. There has been constant fighting between Lizardmen and Amazons as the Amazons seek to get their revenge. Maybe the Old Ones forsaw this. Maybe they even wanted it. By creating conflict, it has been theorised, that the Old Ones were infact encouraging the development of both the Amazons and the Lizardmen for the tasks they had in mind for them, way into the future. It is not a topic which is widely discussed. The Amazons are masters at hiding within the jungles, and it is a subject of some debates between the scholars of Elves and Men whether the Amazons do exist, or whether they are simply a myth.

THE COMING OF VALARIA

The Amazon tribes, while having developed pretty much in the same way as tribes of warrior women, were scattered all over Lustria. Shortly before the Coming of Chaos there came one Amazon warrior, known only has Valaria. Her prowess as a warrior was unmatched by anyone within the Amazon Realms, and she always went to battle with a strangely shaped sword in each hand, made of an unknown blue crystal. Where she came from, no one knows. But she wandered the jungle, righting wrongs and slowly united all of the scattered Amazon tribes together. Valaria was the first Amazon Queen, and was she who found the complex network of natural caves and caverns hidden behind the massive waterfall of Swallow Falls. She was the one which started the constuction of the fortress-temple of Ithralia. When the Time Of Chaos came, Valaria headed Northwards. She appointed her favourite subject, Zenia, as Amazon Queen, and headed off to fight "the great darkness" - never to be seen again. Since then, there has always been an Amazon Queen, the ruler of the all of the Amazon Kingdom. The current Queen is Helena. Valaria ascended into godhood.

The true facts to the rise of Valaria and the establishment of the Amazon Kingdom is all but impossible to establish accurately. Valaria is the goddess of the Amazon people, and has become so much embroiled into mythology and folklore that the facts are very blurred. The Amazons are primarily a warrior tribe, and keep few records apart from the odd carving on a Totem pole, and the enscriptions on the walls of Ithralia - a place where no man has ever set foot inside, and no outsider has ever visited. In some cases Valaria is depicted as a women warrior with six arms, carrying a sword in each. It is thought that this is symbolic of the way that Valaria was said to wield her swords with lightening speed and agility. However, due to the mysterious nature of Valaria's background, her alleged awesome combat prowess and the fact she just seemed to appear from nowhere suggests that the hand of the Old Ones can't be ruled out.

AMAZON CULTURE AND RELIGION

Valaria is reverred and worshipped throughout the Amazon tribes. The tradition of the Amazon Queen states that the Queen is not the ruler of the Amazon Empire, merely it's custodian until Valaria, The Once and Ever Queen returns to claim her thrown. Valaria is the principal godess of the empire, but after the Great Lizardman Invasion, the Amazon's have never truly been one tribe again. Valaria united them, but by this time each of the individual splinter tribes which fled the onslaught had developed independant of each other, and worshipped their own godesses, and also had unqiue cultures. Valaria didn't try and chage these cultures, and allowed each of the tribes their own independace. However, the way the Amazon's appear to be scattered individual tribes mask their true numbers and power from their enemies, particular the Slann, and this has allowed them to thrive in secret. Most of the other Amazon minor goddesses are derived from jungle spirits and jungle lore. For example, the Amazons of Tia'ran Mutanbo (literally "high trees") worship the goddess Serena, the snake mistress and goddess of trickery.

MAJOR AMAZON TRIBES AND SETTLEMENTS

ITHRALIA

Itharalia is a great temple city, hidden deep within a massive natural cave system, the enterance to which is hidden behind the massive Swallow Falls. Ithralia is on the small island named the Island of Amazons by the conquestidor explorers from Telia and Estalia. It is here where the Amazon Queen rules the empire, surrounded by the most powerful members of the tribes. Only a select few elders from each village know the location of the temple. Initially founded just before the Coming of Chaos by the first Amazon Queen, Valaria, Ithralia has never had a single man enter it's sanctity.

TIA'RAN MUTANBO

Literally meaning "the high trees", the village of Mutanbo is one of the largest Amazon villages. It's location is deep within the jungles of Lustria, and is a massive treetop settlement where the village has been built high into the trees. One of the features of Mutanbo is so high up that it is very difficult to capture in a seige. One of the favoured tactics of the villagers is to destroy the lower levels of the village to isolate attackers, and fire a rain of deadly arrows down onto them. The tribe of Mutanbo worship Serena, the Snake Goddess almost as much as Valaria herself. The tribe is also unqiue in that it is governed by the Sister-Sorceresses of the Priesthood of Serena, instead of the conventional warrior cheiftans of the other settlements.

MORR'TEBIO

Morr'Tebio translates as the Swamps of Death. Located deep within impenatrable Swampland, Morr'Tebio is a dark and forboding place. The builings of the sttlement are built on talls stiltis to elavte them above the murky swamps. Those of Morr'Tebio are treated with the most trepidation by the other Amazons, as their dark surroundings has given them a reputation of being strange and unnatural. Close to the Swamp Of Death are the msyterious fungus patches of the Blue Stumps, home of the reclusive Curse Witch Lwaxana, a particulary old, scary, and reclusive individual. The Sage Of Lillies, and old goddess from folklore, is prevalantly worhsipped in Morr'Tebio.

The legend says that Zerena was once a beautiful and powerful sorceress who tragically fell in love with a venerable Slann Mage Lord. The Slann cursed her into becoming a large toad, claiming it was a gift to make her beautiful. Cursed, Zerena made her way to the swamps and lived their with a broken heart and a bitter emnity towards the Slann. Although a somewhat unlikely tale, the legend of the Sage of the Lillies is, as the folklore goes, that the transformation also granted her a unique grasp of the machinations of the cosmos. The Sage supposedly hides in shame, fearing that anyone might see her in her froglike state, but is also regarded as a goddess of wisdom. The story is also used by the Amazon's as a warning of granting mercy to their hated foes.

The sorceresses of tribe of Morr'Tebio brew potions and poisions of varying degrees of potency and deadliness from the unqiue funguses and creatures that lurk in the deepest Swamps, some of which turn the tribal warriors into foaming pyschopaths.

VAL'RON NUBILAR - THE LOST VALLEY

The Lost Valley is one of the most closely guarded secrets of Lustria.Within the vally lie a massive enclave the Amazon's. The enterance the valley is nearly impossible to stumble onto, being hidden by a series of caves, waterfalls and dense jungle paths. However, the inhabitants of the Lost Valleya re somewhat unique in the Amazon race. Where as the rest of the Amazon tribes have a hatred of anything reptilian, those of the Lost Valley have actually learned how to train the indigenous Lizard life. The armies of tribes of Val'Ron Nubilar ride to battle on the backs of might Stegadons, Cold Ones and Terradons swooping high into the sky. The reason this has happened as these creatures are common to the valley.

The valley holds a greater secret than just the Amazon's hidden there. Confined within the basin of the Lost Valley is actually a complete Slann society. However, they are not the large, venerable Slann of the Lizardmen empire, but actually savage Slann. Human sized, frog like warriors, they must have broken away from the Old Ones ages past, and have developed independantly of them. The greatest thing about these Slann is that they are not slowly becoming extinct, but their numbers are naturally replinshed by new spawnings of Slann. Should the conventional Slann learn of this and the Valleys location then they will stop at nothing to capture the secrets of the valley's location. However, whilst the Slann don't know of their savage brethren in the Lost Valley, it is unlikely that the Old Ones didn't. The fact they let this splinter faction of Slann escape so easily, and hide within the Valley suggests that the Old Ones wanted them to do, and like the Amazon's themselves, they may be part of the Old Ones plans to finally avert the armageddon of the Warhammer World. There has been little theorising about the nature of the savage Slann, because none except themselves and 12 of the Amazon cheiftans in the Lost Valley know of their existence. Not even the Amazon Queen knows that they exist.

In return for the protection the Savage Slann gain from the Amazons of the Lost Valley, the savage Slann taught the Amazons how to master the mightiest Lizardman creatures. This mastery has been taught to generations of Nubilarian Amazons, and when the tribes of the Lost Valley send troops to fight in the Queens armies, they frequently send their dinosaur riding warriors. On the rare occasions when the Nubilarians are attacked themselves, entire armies based around dinosaur riders are common place.