TO begin with, the goddess Anú was born out of the fertile earth of Ariú, her land, and she lived there alone with all the beasts and all the glories of her Nature. After a time, she awoke four great kings to be her consorts: Bel, of the wind; Crom, of the fire; Lír, of the sea; and Dis, of the earth. With each of them she brought forth many children, and there were at that time many spirits in the earth, in the forests, in the rivers and springs. Her fair children lived forever and the Four Kings ruled over them, with Her on high, and all was peace and plenty.
Then among the children of Lír there was a rebellion, and their hearts were sick with rage and lust. They, the Daoine Faoí Mara, the Fómóirí, made war on their kin, to win dominion over all. The Slúa Ghaoith, the Daoine Sídhe, and the Slúa Tinne united against them and drove them off into the Western Ocean. They had become foul and misshapen in their degenerate ways. Sick at heart, the other Hosts began to fade. Some left this world and sailed off across the Western Ocean. Some chose slumber in the Mounds, or in the forests and rivers. Some faded completely into the Otherworld with the spirits, and no longer did the Otherworld and their world coincide. But some lingered, for they so loved the world, and stayed to dance and sing in the moonlight and listen to the seasons turn. But they were a fading people, a twilight people, the Forgetful People. And the theologians of the Holy Church of the Triad today would say that these were all as angels that walked upon the Earth, and some rebelled against the Gods and were cast into Hell, and some fought on the side of Good and ascended into Heaven, but that those Forgetful Ones took no sides, and are punished for it in haunting the Earth forever, never to die and go to their reward.
And as the people of the Time before Time faded, Anú feared to be alone and put a call in the heart of a man across the sea that he might come to her and bring the race of men. And his name was Nemed, and he came from a far country with thirty ships, and they found Ariú. For a thousand years they and their descendants ruled Ariú, and cleared out plains, and adored Anú. The Four Kings were their gods, and they sacrificed to them, and were fruitful and their seed multiplied. And Nemed was their king for three hundred years, and he was wise and good. After Nemed died, the land went into mourning, for he had been Anú’s lover. But his son Aircind became king after him and renewed Nemed’s vows, and the land was restored. But then the Fómóirí came from the sea and made war on the Nemedians, and they did take their daughters and lie with them and produce hideous offspring. The war continued, and finally the Nemedians succeeded, with the help of the Sídhe, in driving away their enemy. But they were much reduced. Their forts and earthworks fell into disuse; their standing stones were no longer the site of sacrifice. They wasted away. A plague struck them, and their last king Tighernmhás brought thousands of his followers to Magh Slecht, the Plain of Prostration, where they sacrificed their children to Crom, now called Crom Crúach, the Twisted One, that they might live. Crom devoured their souls and blasted the plain, appearing as a great Wyrm from the Earth. Iann was a king who had refused the sacrifice, and when Crom blasted the ground and the Earth quaked, Iann took his tribe and fled Ariú, and a storm scattered them to the four winds. This is why the people of Ariú called themselves the Tíriani, for they are all of the seed of Iann. Nemed also is their father.
Ariú was left barren, and Anú wept to be alone. Lír in his grief at what his children had done sank beneath the waves of the Western Ocean. Crom Crúach had become the Wyrm; Bel swept off in the winds of the world, and Dis slumbered in the ground. Only the last few Fae wandered the lonely coasts and forests and mountains, and the Fómóiri were free to despoil the land and kill any of the Sídhe they found.
Many years passed. The sons of Nemed were scattered over the Earth. But eventually they heard Anú’s song pulling them back to the green shores of Ariú. The first to return were the Crúachán, led by their king Crúan. They had fled to the frozen North and now returned gladly to a land of trees and rivers, where they could hunt and fish to their hearts content. They made sacrifice to the Four Fathers, and Ariú welcomed them, Anú welcomed them. King Crúan made the sacred marriage to the Goddess, as his successors would, and they built mounds as the Nemedians had done, which was holy to Dis. They worked in flint and stone, and were hunters and gatherers mainly, and lived off the rich land, few in number and widely spread. Their holy place was in the North, and would later be called Emhain Macha for a great warrior queen of theirs. They took the great Nemedian burial grounds there and made them their own, and buried their kings there. Anú was pleased.
The Fir Bolg were the most numerous of the tribe of Iann, and had travelled far to the South, where eventually they were enslaved by the cruel denizens of Ur, the First City. They were forced by them to carry earth and stones to build their great palaces. At last they escaped, stealing the flocks of cattle and sheep that they had been made to tend. They drove them forever North and West until they reached the sea, and there built boats to bring them safely home. They found the Crúachán there and made war upon them, and drove them North and West into the forests and the hills, and took for themselves and further cleared the wide plains of the South and East. Eventually, a truce was made with the Crúachán and they lived in relative peace. The Fír Bolg had weapons of bronze, and had learned the secrets of its making in Ur, and had mastered animal husbandry and the tilling of fields. They learned from the Druids of the Crúachán how to appease the spirits of the land, and they remembered to sacrifice to Anú and the Four Fathers. The Fair Folk and the Foul Folk were rare, but sometimes could be seen trooping and feasting as of old, or wandering alone in the forests. And they met with men.
The last of Iann’s tribe, as for them, had taken the name of the Children of Anú, or Tuatha Anann. Their leaders claimed descent from the Fair Folk, the first children of the Goddess and the Four Fathers, and this last band were their heirs. They had taken refuge each in turn in four great cities of the East, Gorias, Falias, Findias, and Murias. There they had learned all the Arts and Sciences, as poetry, music, healing, herbals, astrology, metalwork and magic. They were called home. Bréga Bright-Faced led them, with her brother Odos Ogham-Giver, and with them came those other heroes who would become the Young Gods: there was Saorith of the Dark, and her son Ceridan the Horned-One; there was Marenus the Walker in Mist, and his foster-daughter and lover Ríbha of the Moon; there was Gallos Great-Hearted, who was their king, and the husband of Bréga, and there was his mistress Rígana Battle-Crow, and they were king and consort in Ariú in the fullness of time. Gallos would marry Anú, but it was Rígana who set the torc of kingship around his neck. But we get ahead of ourselves.
The Tuatha Anann landed at Magh Tuiread in their flying ships, having traversed the country and found it bountiful and fair. They burned their ships once they landed, for they knew they had come home. They made a parley with the Fír Bolg, and their champions Bréas the Beautiful and Streng met in the forest, and exchanged gifts and weapons. The Tuatha Anann claimed the land for their own, for their blood was of the Forgetful People, but the Fír Bolg would not have it, and so they must make war. Terrible was the battle, and the pillars that the champions tied themselves to still stand, and give Magh Tuiread its name, the Plain of Pillars. Eóchaid, the king of the Fír Bolg, was killed, as were his sons. Many heroes fell on either side, and the battle turned one way, and then another. Bréga sang her song of battle, and led her elite warriors to the field, and tipped the scales. The Fír Bolg were losing. Their chief Druid, Césair, called upon the Old Gods, and raised the monstrous Wyrm of Crom Crúach from the mists, many-headed and writhing. But Gallos, the bright hero, took the Claíomh Solais, the Sword of the Sun, one of the Four Treasures of the Tuatha Anann, and was carried into the sky on the wings of crows thanks to his lover Rígana, and flew to cut the heads of the Wyrm. With that, the Time of the Old Gods came to an end, and the Young Gods reigned.
It was decided that the Crúachán, who had come in aid to their erstwhile enemies, the Fír Bolg, should retain the North for their own, and that the Fír Bolg should have the South and the West, and the Tuatha Anann should have the East for themselves. They built a city there, of limestone and sandstone, and it was called Bréacú, the Speckled City, and was greater than any that had been seen. As well as druids, they had sorcerers and soothsayers, witches and astrologers, for they had learned the magic of many lands, and the lore of many more. They brought with them the secret of iron, and the writing of runes called Ogham, and the lore of the trees and the stars, and all that had been lost since the time of Iann, and the Scattering. They were fair to look at, and fair of skin, and had light eyes and bright hair, and dressed in many colours, where the Fír Bolg and the Crúachán in their dun clothes were darker, and not so tall. They played the harp and worked in gold. They built in stone, and unlocked once more the secrets of the monoliths and the lines of power across the land. They spoke to the Fair Folk, with whom they were kin. Little by little, they married into the Fír Bolg, and made war with the Fómóiri, who came once more from the sea. Gallos left Bréga to embrace the land, and be wed to Anú, and he became the High King over all, and it was Rígana who placed the torc of kingship around his neck, and she was a war-witch, and his right hand.
Their son Nuada, in later years, would fight against the Fómór, led by Balor of the Evil Eye, in the Second Battle of Magh Tuiread, and the Children of Anú were defeated, and Nuada lost his hand. Bréas the Beautiful married Líath of the Fómóiri, daughter of Balor, and became the High King. The Tuatha Anann were forced to pay tribute to the Fómóiri, and send them a hundred young men and hundred young women every year, to slave for them in their island fastness, and submit to their lusts. Nuada wandered long in exile, but returned, unable to leave Ariú to her fate, and Bréga made him a hand of silver, and he became Nuada Airgidlámh, Nuada of the Silver Hand. He slew Bréas, and became king in turn. The line of Gallos ruled in the South, and the people there became the Galloi. Bréga, who had once been Gallos’s wife, and was still queen of the Tuatha Anann, set up her own realm in the East, and her people became the Brégoi.
Saorith and Ceridan went North to the Crúachán, and they were welcomed as their Dark Queen and Dying King who had always been, for the Crúachán had kept alive their memory of them for ever, since the Scattering. But Marenus and Ríbha, his daughter-lover, set sail in a small boat, on the first Imramma, a voyage to the West, beyond the Western Ocean to the Sunset Lands, and there found their people, and led them back across the sea; they were the Everni, and they came last, and were Strangers. They had sailed the World, and finally followed the Twilight People over the sea to the Sunset Lands, and there they had settled, and made peace with the Red Folk who dwelt there. They took for themselves a land to the North of the Sunset Lands, the Green Land, and there made their home. They had wandered longer and further than their kin, and they stayed away longer.
A hundred years Marenus and Ríbha dwelt with them in the Sunset Lands, and in Ariú the Crúachán, and the Galloi, and the Brégoi lived in relative peace. The Tuatha Anann had spread, and became kings and sages and bards and druids and warriors among the Fír Bolg. Their blood mixed, and Anú was pleased. They prospered. They established many kingdoms, and it was the Time of Heroes.
The High-Kingship alternated between the Brégoi and the Galloi, and the peoples warred and sported and feasted and intermarried. Many of the great stories of the Tíriani date from this great age, such as the tales of Culleann and the Knights of the Red Hand. One of the tales tells of the coming of the Everni, from across the Western Ocean. They could no longer ignore the call of Anú to come home; Marenus navigated their way across the Northermost margin of the Western Ocean, past the Land of the Young, the Isle of Apples, past the Great Ice Dragon, and the ice-flows and past the pirates of the fjords, ancestors of the Lochlannach, past the island fastness of the Fómóiri. They started off in three hundred ships, and only one hundred survived. But what bounty they brought from the Sunset Lands! They had a new way of forging iron into steel, learned on their travels, and armour like the scales of a fish. Their swords, spears, and axes were keen and bright. They brought gold and iron, furs and seal-skins and amber, sacred tobacco and holy hemp, the lowly potato, and the art of distilling, taught to them by Ríbha, which they had perfected to make the Water of Life. They brought kavé and coca, and the secrets of the roots and mushrooms that make men mad, that make them see holy visions. They were warriors, sailors, and seers, and they spoke no longer the language of the Tíriani, but rather their own Iron Speech. They were the Everni, and they were strangers, but they had come home. They were handsome people, very black of hair, very pale of skin, and lithe and long as the Tuatha Anann. They wore many rings in their ears, and iron decorations on their bodies, and dressed in furs. They made their city where they landed in the West, and it came to be known as Caer Galla, the City of Strangers, and they took the Western land for their own, which they won in a war of conquest.
There followed the High Age of Heroes: all four of the kingdoms now had their people: Crúachán, Galloia, Brégoia, and Evernia. Each had a king or queen of the cúige, and in the centre of the Southern three was Midir, a holy place of the Nemedians, where the High King or Queen would sit, if there was one. The tribes were each divided among various clans, and each clan had several small tuatha, or kingdoms, and each kingdom was made of forts and farms, forest and fields, crannógs and duns. War was sport, and cattle raids were as common as hurling matches among the young.
Many were the adventures of the Red Hand Knights, of Queen Niamh of the Everni, or Amergin the Bard, of the Clan of Uisneach, of King Conor Uí Neasa, of Aillil the Swift. The Tuatha Anann were the greatest heroes of all, and it is in this time that they completed their ascension to godhood. They became the patrons of each of the Four Tribes, and ventured more and more into the Otherworld, and were rarely and more rarely seen in Tíranann. But they still touched the world of men.
As they faded from sight, the kings quarrels began to be petty; they would argue over a fine bull, or a golden torc. The Tuatha Anann began to be worshipped, more than met, and wonder and magic faded a little from the world. Men dwindled in stature. Often, there was no High King. Many seasons turned.
Then, a thousand years ago, there came the Khorosi across the sea. They had heard of the bounty and beauty of Ariú, and came to conquer it as they had conquered Harronia. They fought and bribed and negotiated their way into Tíranann, and soon came to rule it at least in name. They built a city, at Cargallium in the port of the West. From there, they planned to set sail across the Western Ocean. They also made great strongholds at Casilium, by the Rock, and at Carnacaum. They built the Great North Road, and the Great West Road. They built baths and villas, and subjugated the tribes, dividing and conquering, and taught them many things, and made slaves of them. But their kingdom would prove short-lived.
After only a hundred years, Bodua of the Everni, a warrior-queen, rose up against them. She enlisted the help of King Conn of the Crúachán, and they overthrew the City of Strangers. Soon the war was taken to the other provinces, and Queen Rhianna of the Bregoi and King Túran of the Galloi fought the great legions in the South and East. The Khorosi fled, taking ship some to the Western Empire of Harronia, and some few, the Lost Legions, across the Western Ocean. Túran united the Tíriani, and became the first High King of the New Age.
It was at this time that Finnán and his Company of the Stag rose up as well, and in his old age he became King of Bregoia. The Company of the Stage were mystic warriors, organised like a legion of the Khorosi, and they provided the elite troops of the insurgency. Finnán and his men had many adventures across the land of Ariú, and gave us many tales, and theirs was the last age in which magic and marvels and meetings with Fair Folk and Foul were known.
After the time of Túran, the High Kingship continued for seven generations, but then broke down. The Four Kings warred among themselves, and the Petty Kings took more importance. Each kingdom split into several Petty Kingdoms, and war was on all sides. Kings were deposed, plotted against, and slaughtered.
After the time of Finnán, and as the Petty Kings warred, some of the greatness of the past left the world. The Young Gods came no more amongst men, retreated to the Otherworld, along with the Fae. Marvels and wonders were few. The tales from this era are of greedy and foolish kings, of bullies and vagabonds getting their comeuppance – or not. Occasionally a king of one of the Four Kingdoms would rise, and claim Midir, but they were always weak. The line of Túran were the last of the True High Kings. The Chosen were very few, and the old warrior bands – the Red Hand, the Company of the Stag, the Way of the Crow, the Wayfarers, grew few and weak, and there were rarely any more great schools of druids, or colleges of bards, colloquies of sorcerers, covens of witches. All of these things gradually faded from the world with the stories of Old.
By the time the Lochlannach began raiding, the worlds of the Tíriani had faded to their local lord and clan, to hedge witches and wandering bards. The druids retained some organisation and tried to keep alive the Old Ways, but the glories of the past were long gone. The megaliths of the Nemedians, the mounds of the Crúachán, the cities of the Bregoi, the travels of the Everni, the armies of the Galloi: all were things of the past. The temples and villas and roads of the Khorosi all fell into disuse, and people remembered them as the work of giants from across the sea, as distant as the megaliths.
Only the druids and brehons and bards retained the stories of the past, now either shrouded in mystery, lost in minutiae, or plagued with exaggeration and poetic licence. Only gradually did some clans and septs rise up to some semblance of power again. Gradually, the Kingships of each of the Four Kingdoms became active again. The druids began to recover some of the learning of the past, but there was little magic, only learning. It been the Second Dark Age. But as the chieftans began to consolidate their power, there came a threat from the North.
The Lochlannach made the journey to Ariú, and, seeing that it was fair, sought to despoil it. They raided the druid sanctuaries around the coast, and descended upon farmsteads and the haunted and almost-empty cities, seeking plunder and slaves. They raided for fifty years, before beginning to settle, at Weissphort, Ava’s Dun, and Ulveren, which would become Linn Dearg. They sought rich farmland and gold, and fought and bargained with the local kings. Eventually the Tíriani united under Bryn Barra to do battle with them, and turned the pool at Ulveren red with blood, which ever after was called Linn Dearg. But there they stayed, and it became the seat of the their Western Kingdom. They made peace with the Tíriani and intermarried with them. They mixed, and their scalds and seers learned the ways of Ariú, and there were great alliances between them, and wars, and feasts and games, and all was well.
And then came the Angathar, Harronan people from the land to the East. First landed Gwillem Longsword with his band of adventurers, roving knights, landless and luckless in their own kingdom of Angath. With thirty knights and their squires and spearmen he landed, with archers with their great yew-bows. They landed on the South coast and established a fort at Utwich, on the invitation of Aengar, the weak king of Galloia, to aid him in war against Bregoia and the Lochlannach, but from this alliance, he took much more. Soon Galloia, Bregoia, and Evernia were under Harronan sway, only the Crúachán of the Northern Highlands holding out against the invaders, and Gwillem pronounced himself King Gwillem I, marrying Aífe the daughter of Aengar who had been promised to him in the alliance. Thus began nearly a hundred years of rule by the Harronan, from 742.
Gwillem was a lusty fighting man, under the patronage of Sathar, and those warrior-priests of the God were prominent among his knightly followers. Many of these, however, took Tíriani women to wife and thus were born the old nobility, of mixed blood, tolerant of Tíriani worship and customs. Gwillem’s eldest son, Eremond, called the Wise, succeeded him to the throne in 773. He was half Tíriani, but rejected his heritage and began a process of land confiscations and settlement by planters from Angath, often of a starkly religious bent. He set up somewhat of a theocracy, and banned bardry, druidry, divination, and established the Penal Laws, forbidding the Tíriani from inheriting unless they converted, forbidding the wearing of swords and torcs and tattoos, or the plaid. He suppressed and slaughtered the druids, disbanded the college of bards, established religious law in the name of the Triad. But he also was a ruler under the sign of Hallor, and had scribes and Grey Brothers take down all the history and legends of the Tíriani, often from druids or bards they had captured and tortured. Under him were the Famine of 803, and the Everni rebellion of 816, which was put down after the siege of Westport was broken. He eventually died without issue in 825, and his crown was taken by his nephew Gothmund, a petulant and weak king, much under the influence of the Church, and devoted to his only daughter Elyse, whose mother died in childbirth.
MARK DEVLING
Born in Australia to Irish parents, Mark Devlin spent most of his childhood in Ireland, with occasional spells in the United States. As a child, he was obsessed with fantasy literature and roleplaying games, but kicked the habit in his mid-teens, when he realised that sex, drugs and rock’n’roll, and being a Dungeon Master, were mutually exclusive. He would still read The Earthsea Trilogy at least once a year, but he didn’t talk about it. After studying English and Philosophy at University College Cork, he became a secondary school teacher in an all-girls Catholic school and started a theatre company. When his nerves couldn’t take it anymore, he applied for a position as a lecteur in English literature at Université de Paris-Nouvelle Athènes. One thing led to another, and he ended up getting sucked in by academia again. Initial enthusiasm gave way to diffidence and procrastination, and he defended his very pedestrian thesis in 2015, after spending five years researching irrelevant and esoteric topics in the dark corners of the internet and furtively reading RPG forums, and one year desperately typing the thing that he ended up calling his dissertation.
Eventually, he gave up pretending and started writing a fantasy novel. He very much enjoys hiking and camping, and communing with Nature. He lives in Montmartre with his wife and two children. He works as a Passeur, a Guide and Translator, a Smuggler across borders of people, ideas, culture.
