In the days of The First Age, it is said that savagery was among us. For generations beyond measure did we fight and plot and toil in the earth until those who would not abide this time would take up the talent. They spake aloud and thus began those who would recount their history-- the shamen. The best among them they would call "bard" for they did not speak our history; they put it to song. With this they could call sagas long forgotten and enigmas never unraveled and they were raised high, for chief among The People was their history.
And so it was that we would cast aside our old ways and take up the tilling of soil and the building of wood homes, that we may live in peace. Thus began The Second Age, as they sought the Gods to ask for bountiful food, and children aplenty. The First among The People was Lear, who stood among them as chief, thus our name that endures to this day. The family grew and endured many moons and the shamen and bards kept the lineage. The Gods grew weary, though, and set upon the people an abomination. The Tome teaches us that in those times, the dead walked among the living.
...so that he brought a ruination upon the lands of the north, breathing into the dirt a black smoke from which rose an army of corpses who wrought fear, and disease and The Consumption. Many among them, once called kin in ages past, now stood as ghastly epitaths to their new enemy.
The Dark Ones did summon a Great Tyrant, a Daemon, that it may again ply it's malice. The People were nearly extinguished when... (from The Shaman's Mantra)
...Lord Lear looked upon the hordes of The Daemon and was shaken by the carnage that the Dark Ones had wrought. And he knelt to his knee, touched his bloodied sword to his head and prayed to the Great God that he did not know, who was Chief of all the Gods, that he would answer his call for mercy and deliver them from the Time of Trials.
The Great God summoned a swirling pool of mist in the sea, that Lear may lead his clan through into unknown, but presumably safe lands, as he fought back The Daemon, keeping him at bay. Thus ended The Second Age and the Time of Trials.