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Starting with Walin-Inuhin’s first lesson, the knowledge and skills necessary to construct ocean-going vessels slowly spread to the many tribes of the Payómkawichum. With this development, some of its constituent members began to undertake migrations to the southern land that Walin had first settled many moons ago. This process accelerated over the course of time until there were over a dozen distinct tribes from the south that had won the right of admission into the Payómkawichum, their domains spanning every part of the island, but splitting into two broad regions with two separate spiritual focuses.

The great fiery peak near the center of the southern land attracted much admiration among these migrants for both material and spiritual reasons. Unique plants and animals thrived in the valleys influenced by this volcano, towards the island’s north and west. Every so often, it would erupt and release forth great flows, which would incinerate everything in their path. After these events, nature would use the clean slate to start anew and seemingly more vibrantly than the last time. In this way, the peak’s processes reflected the use of fire among the Payómkawichum to shape their environments, only with more destructive results. In times of relative dormancy, too, many would venture up to the volcano’s summit to conduct spiritual ceremonies, swayed by the substantial role of fire, smoke, and peaks in many of the myths of the Payómkawichum.

The other great distinction of the southern land proved to be the towering, ruddy-barked trees that Tuye Utea-Min had noted with such astonishment upon his visit there. The tribes that arose in the east and south of the island, where these trees grew, worshiped them for their incredible height and life-giving nature. The inhabitants of both of these broad regions mainly fished from various small creeks, hunted small animals, and gathered various plant-related foodstuffs for sustenance. Separate but parallel cultural traditions gradually developed in each region – the damp, cloudy, and lushly forested southeast on the one hand, and the relatively dry, sunny, and open northwest on the other. The two traditions never quite intersected, thanks to the formidable barrier in the form of the island’s mountainous spine.

There was one last, particularly notable discovery to be made in the area, though. Struck by a fit of curiosity, a sailor one day set sail to the west from his home in the northwest region of the south. After a few moon phases had passed, with some waviness in the sailor’s course, he finally reached a sandy island, fringed in palms but devoid of larger vegetation. This in time grew to be the place where those exiled from the Payómkawichum for grievous misdeeds would live. These scum in time banded together to form an impromptu tribe of their own – albeit one that would never gain acceptance into the Payómkawichum regardless of their own thoughts on their identity.

A map on which all new tiles are marked with the capital letter P.