This game, like its predecessor, is obsessed with unavoidable tutorials. You cannot interact with your creature until you do the creature tutorial which becomes active at the end of Land 3. You'll see a bronze scroll appear over the pen where he's sleeping. The other villages cannot be taken over until you progress through the rest of the tutorials. You have to do everything the objectives window says in this land or you'll be stuck in the sandbox mode. You don't really start playing the game the right way until Land 4.
These tutorials are built into the storyline, and given the lack of skirmish capabilities, you have no choice but to do it.