Pü squinted as his mother came out of the hut. His tribe might well be settled in a gigantic stump of a felled sky-tree, the bark ceiling, badly damaged, let in a few astral rays at certain times of the day, one of which had just found the eye of the little Zorai, who took refuge between his mother's breasts. In the absence of celestial light, the community was lightening itself with the help of lamps containing fireflies. Although some might have described the atmosphere as gloomy, Pü loved it when his mother took him for a walk in the sloping and winding streets, or on the suspension bridges that connected the different levels of the small city. The village, much higher than it was wide, was built vertically. The dwellings were located in the heights, while the lower levels were reserved for communal areas, such as stores, places of worship, the dojo, and the dining hall. Pü loved the dining hall. The other Zorais were very kind to him and the food was plentiful. Yet this time, the toddler sensed that the walk was nothing like ordinary. The other members of the tribe were present in numbers, forming a path from the family hut to the village heights. All wore their black ceremonial dress, consisting of a loincloth of vegetal fibers, a wide belt of braided straw, but especially recognizable by the imposing white amber lens that adorned each of the plexuses. As the family moved forward, led by Pü's mother, the people bowed deferentially and joined the group. As this scene suggested, the Fu-Tao family was no ordinary family.

Her husband '''Sang Fu-Tao was the Black Mask''', the First Warrior, military chief of the tribe. A few months after his birth, Niï, their eldest son, had been promised a great destiny by Grandmother Bä-Bä, the witch and seer of the village. According to the prophecy, during a major planetary event, Niï Fu-Tao would succeed his father as Black Mask, and above all, would become the Sacred Warrior. Elected by Ma-Duk the Great Genitor, Niï Fu-Tao would be brought to tour the world, converting the lost to the True Faith, subduing the atheists and exterminating the heretics. For the Zorai Theocracy, this prophecy was precisely coming under heresy.

But the discordance did not end there. The Zorai Theocracy, which had become particularly isolationist after the [[Fyros]] people had besieged Zoran and burned its Great Library more than a century earlier, had built the Great Wall, a gigantic edifice protecting the borders of the Jungle from all foreign contact. However, this Great Wall had never prevented the Theocracy from maintaining relations with the [[Karavan]], a strange group of hominoids dressed from head to toe in amazing black armor and using prodigious instruments. These singular entities, whose true nature no one knew, lived in the skies of Atys. Traveling with curious vehicles capable of overcoming gravity, they crisscrossed the planet to spread the word and serve the interests of the goddess Jena. In exchange for their loyalty, the Karavan had given the Zorais the secrets of magnetism and electrostatic properties, and had also taught them to write. The Kamis abhorred the Karavan, and did not hesitate to make this known to the homins, but this never prevented the Council of Elders from accepting their gifts, and use, today still, Karavan knowledge to levitate the buildings of Zoran. For the dissident tribe, as an apostle of Jena abhorred by the Kamis, the Karavan had to be seen as a serious threat and fought accordingly.