Many's the Windkin that tried to rally and lead the tribes, and many's the Windkin that left and sought their identity outside the Deserts of the Wind. Some came back with new ideas, others came back wanting the old ones, and still others never came back at all.

Many's the Windkin that tried to divide the tribes, driving their own to a new identity. Some went over the mountains and became absorbed in other cultures. Others came back, and others still just died out.

Many's the Windkin that broke tradition, and many more that upheld in the face of changing times. Many's the Windkin that made their own way in the sands, and many more that made a name for themselves in the world wide.

Jawahir, Four Hundred and Fifty Ninth High Princess of the Western Oasis Tribe, was just another Windkin girl who dreamed of making her mark on the People of the Wind. She studied war with her brothers, studied the lores with her aunt, studied the desert with her uncle, and studied horse breeding with her father. Like many in the desert, her mother did not survive childbirth the fourth time. Her father, Four Hundred and Seventy Eighth Wind-Leader of the Western Oasis Tribe, raised her, in the tradition of the Winds, as an Ambassador of the Tribe.

She learned the languages of the world and the desert. She learned of other cultures, but mostly of her own. She was trained to fight, to negotiate, to engage in commerce and politics. She was taught everything a woman of the People of the Wind needed to survive in the world beyond the mountains and the seas.

She left the deserts at the age of 15, sent north to Tara'hin, in the Age of Destruction, and there, she met a distant relative--Emperess Viri CLXVII. She became a close companion of the Emperess and thus had a place in the halls of power during the Eschatonic Wars. She forged new alliances, made deals to bring new Windkin steeds north, and made close friends and a few enemies during her time there.

Then, her father died. An illness had swept through the tribe, reducing its population to a fourth of its size. She rushed home as soon as she heard, and when she got there, she found her home, the Western Oasis, a dry and dead place. The Eschatonic Wars had penetrated the deserts.

She joined her surviving brother and aunts and cousins, taking the hundred and sixty members surviving in her tribe east, to the Gathering. There, she saw all the tribes unite under the banner of truce, ancient custom, and tradition. They gathered to once more try a unified approach to the world, to unite against a common enemy. It had happened before, for brief periods over a hundred thousand years of history. Relative to the eldest tribes, the Western Oasis Tribe was a young one--only about five hundred unbroken generations.

She sat in the back of the massive Gathering place and listened as great men and women spoke of the wars to come, of the struggles, of the terrors of the world, and she realized something: she knew just as much if not more than most of them. To even her own surprise, she stood up and spoke, telling what she had learned in the courts of Tara'hin, and of what she believed the best course of action to be. To her shock, people listened. No one laughed. She had their respect, their ears, and their voices. They discussed with her--as opposed to shouting her down.

Within a few weeks, she had a place on the High Council and was named Wind-Leader not just of her Tribe, but of a new Tribe comprised of several depleted Tribes. The Tribe of the Western Edges and Oases was but one generation old now, and she was First Wind-Leader, but it was well respected, even by the older tribes still there. The war began in earnest, with Jawahir at its forefront in the deserts.

Years passed, and the Eschatonic Wars wore on. A Messiah walked amongst them, and the Divines stalked the world. Jawahir followed the Wind, and it lead her southward. She faced dark hordes that had slaughtered her neighbors on the savanna and in the jungles, and she won through. She pushed further south, into the heart of Taggarus, and there she found the Mountain of Trials.

Not knowing entirely what her plan was, she fought to surround it and at least keep it out of the hands of the enemy. Succeeding, she rested her army for a week, planning, but before plans were complete, the enemy counter-attacked, driving her army back. In the heat of battle, she fell from her horse and had to retreat on foot. In the chaos of the battle, she got lost, and stumbled into a wall of smoke--and onto the Mountain.

When she came down again, her army was being routed, but in her was the Wind Itself, and she summoned it in the form of a thousand tornadoes to drive back the fell foes before her. During the last days of First Shem, the Windkin were well and truly united.