The settlers of the Tilos prospered. So isolated were the islands that they were never threatened by seafaring raiders. The climate was congenial, with only occasional severe winters and drenching summers. No one much minded, as long as the fields continued to yield significant crops. With the use of guano hauled from the seabird rookeries, the fertility of the land was not only maintained but enhanced. There was even a modest deposit of dragonet guano, which as any farmer knows makes by far the best fertilizer due to the eclectic nature of dragon diet.
How and when the disputes began no one can say. History being a succession of individual memories clouded by lies and personal agendas, it was impossible to ascribe blame. Some insist it all started when a rogue from Greater Tilo stole away the love of a Gyre man’s wife. Others believe it had something to do with cheating involving a load of potatoes from Basweath, potatoes being the staple food crop and therefore a matter of some gravity among the Tiloeans. Still others insisted the arguments began when a group of villagers on Middle Tilo took to calling an old woman by the name of Granni Scork a witch.
Disagreements soon gave way to fighting. Shifting alliances between islands and even between individual villages were made and broken. Fights occasionally escalated into full-blown battles. Crops were carried off or destroyed, fishing nets stolen or shredded, young women treated with less than the respect that had formerly been accorded to them. Given the vagaries of weather that seasonally assaulted the islands, these clashes drew much-needed muscle and energy away from the business of growing and gathering food, repairing and building homes and shops, and generally maintaining the seemly level of civilization that the Tiloeans had hitherto enjoyed.