Long ago, in the Age of Plenty, men lived like God Himself in villages which stretched further than the eye could see and whose huts stretched up until they touched the sky. However, the heights man had reached were tainted by his use of the evil metal in his climb.
As time went by, men came to believe that by the use of metal they were as mighty as God Himself and at this affront God rose up in anger and on The Day of a Thousand Suns cast man down from the heights to which he had raised himself.
Only a few of the faithful survived Gods wrath and were able to flee into the wilderness where they survived by God's grace and the abandonment of the evil ways of their fathers. Living off the land in the way God intended and avoiding all contact with the evil metal, these were the ancestors of the tribe.
As time went by, God showed his approval of the way his people were now living by granting certain of them special abilities. However, in order to keep people vigilant in their observance of his ways and to remind them of the crimes of their ancestors he causes about half of all children to die in the womb or shortly after birth, and many other members of the tribe carry less serious signs of his displeasure. For this reason all people, no matter how deformed, are precious to the Tribe and must be cared for, except if they turn against their own, for which transgression death is the only punishment.