All the nations of this world we call Aldria started the same, as wandering tribes of hunters that ended up gathering in and around the richest region known to man, the lowlands at the east coast. After they were hunters they became farmers, though some tribes stuck to the life of the gatherer, banning all technology, and decided to live in the highlands, only occassionally emerging to trade with the other settled tribes.
As time passed the small settlements of the tribes became villages and then the second split in culture happened. Preferring the closeness and tranquility of small settlements, one tribe became a congregation of communes in the northern area of the lowlands. Each with its own voice and in each settlement every person was equal to the other. Food and tools were shared and luxury frowned upon, unless common. The other villages grew on however and became so large they were called cities.

With that growth came classes and divisions within the tribes themselves, one man became worth more than the other and the power to decide came to rest in the hands of only some. Again the tribes became split up, one giving all the power to a single person who would decide over bread and meat, wealth and poverty, life and death... A kingdom was born, using the natural defences of the mesa in the south east as its domain, expanding its knowledge of magic and annexating every city on it as its own. The other cities however resisted the rule of one absolute monarch and grew on till one mage tried to gain absolute power in one of them. And again the nations split.
The nation struck most by the mage's thirst for power banned all forms of magic and turned to technology alone to replace it, while the other bonded their mages; arcane vows to serve the nation, not lead it, controlled the mages from then on. The industries of the first nation boomed and soon its technology equaled and even surpassed that of what magic could deliver. Technology required resources though, and those cities not allied with any of the former succumbed to the might of the mechanized armies. And with that the final split had happened.

Of the hunderd tribes that had settled in the area, twenty had managed to keep their own way of living while all the others either had joined or were annexated or exterminated by the four tribes that had formed the nations.
Of course wars have been fought in the lowlands in the past, their tales lost till a historian would find clues to them, and for sure more are to come, but right now... right now there is an uneasy peace. Struggles between technology and shamanism, technology and magic, absolutism and democracy, strong and weak, one of these will spark the next real war... but only the gods know which will be the first to erupt in all its destructive voilence.

So far the story...