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There are many tales of how man first emerged into the world. Some claim that the blood of Dunsun, spilled in his battles with Bul, splattered on the earth and from that emerged the first men. Other stories suggest that it was the final act of that titanic clash from where men arose, the castration of the cloud gatherer and the spilling of his seed. There are even some tellings of men emerging from the sundering of Xosu, or from the blood that was shed when the white dragon fell. Perhaps all these tales have a little truth in them, and indeed perhaps there were multiple instances man’s emergence. The Salxosu of the Islands claim they are an autochthonous people after all. Consensus is not something that can be found in these tales, but congruence is. For almost all agree that men first emerged when divine blood was spilt on the giving earth. So, it would seem that the spark that was needed for human life was derived from the immortals and as such it can be said that all men are descendants of the gods and carry that light.

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However, though the earliest of men possessed the potential that they display to our own day, they were primitive in their thought and deed. They grouped together in small bands and roamed the open lands of Kolgennon, hunting and gathering to survive. It was in these dark days, before the Dawn of the old kingdoms that men were often hunted and captured by the beings that inhabited the world. The Bulodon most cruelly. The gods mostly paid these first men no mind, seeing them as no more than curiosities if they gave them any attention at all. It would not be for many eons that man would begin to scale the heights of civilisation and grow close to achieving some semblance of the power of the gods.

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It is in these early tales of man than Kunpit felt he could most readily demonstrate two things that make us unique. Our potential and our vulnerability. We have the power to conceive of great things, the potential to imagine, to build, to construct societies that could rival the gods themselves. But without the knowledge, and, importantly, the structures to ensure that ensure we are fed, and watered, the ability to organise, to create weapons and build walls, then we are vulnerable to the whims of creatures with more brute strength than we possess. Without the ability to shelter from the fickle weather that plagues our land, there is little we can do to reach these heights. Intervention was needed then to seek out man’s potential and protect us from our vulnerabilities. An intervention only the gods could provide.

The Xosu tell tales of the knowledge of the skills of civilised life being brought to man by the gods. Either by the bright god himself, or by the twins, Thilkinsunos the Fire Stealer and his twin Kolossonao the Herald of Craft.

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It is my suggestion that the bright god did not come first, the tales of him agree that man had already established some elements of civilised life before his wanderings. Instead, what Xosu brought was elevation, lifting his people to a height that took them close to the gods.

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The twins however, they picked man from obscurity. They were the first to notice the stirrings of mankind, while the gods battled in the heavens. The twins took pity on man, so much so that they stole the fruit of the sacred trees, Thilkinsunos that of the Dolthil tree and Kolossano from the Hulthul tree, gifting them to mankind. It was this gift that imbued men with the desire to create and build, something only the gods held until this point. It was an act strictly forbidden by Dunsun.

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The twins were punished, harnessed to the trees from which they stole, held in place with the roots of the tree that their twin was tied to so that each time one struggled the other would be placed in immense agony. But Dunsun chose to spare mankind, and nurture them as his own.

With the old divinities held at bay by Dunsun and the knowledge of craft in the hands of man, the time of the old kingdoms was soon to dawn on the world. Soon the old kingdoms would flourish, and man would grasp for the power that only the gods had possessed.