History of Lost Hyperboreans

The Prehistoric Age of Zendula and the Rise And Fall of the Sidh Gods

The Ancient Hyperboreans

Prologue

The weary warrior looked down in shock at a bird which had just fallen out of the suddenly stormy sky. He knelt down and touched it with one fire scarred finger. The bluebird was frozen solid! But it was only autumn! The weary warrior stood and raised his gaunt, battle scarred face upward to the suddenly darkening sky. The grim grey clouds were suddenly whirling turbulently across the suddenly darkening sky. Then a massive flock of starlings flying across the darkening sky in a fantastical whirling, swirling, pulsating, mesmerizing murmuration gyrating in mass in the air as if an aerial ballet suddenly plunged down to the earth before him! Dead! Frozen solid! Thousands of  birds frozen solid and covering the autumn mud! 

Arawn stared shocked and dazed at the sudden instantaneous carnage as the air suddenly froze! But it was but autumn! And only a little time before on this very autumn day the world blushed warm and sweet! And now the warrior shivered in horror as he stared shocked at the carnage of thousands of little starlings littering the ground as if fallen leaves! He knelt down and picked up the frozen bluebird in his scarred and burnt fingers. ‘This is a dire omen!’ The Sidh god whispered to himself as he looked around in horror. ‘This is a dire warning of our decline and fall! Once we were gods and lived in paradise in a magical city called Hyperborea and now we are not even demigods…..it is the Great Diminishing ….’

Zendula’s ancient past is burnished with legends, myths, and epics about Gods and Monsters. Demigods and the Dark Lord. Heroes and Villains. Armies of ancient warriors fighting and dying, howling in ancient tongues now forgotten as they clashed together while welding their stone maces to crush each other skulls. But what lays beyond the legends, myths, and epics of so long ago? Legends, myths, and epics describing Gods and Monsters? Demigods and the Dark Lord? Heroes and Villains? The ancient far away and long ago time before the arrival of the Elves as we know them and the Dwarves as we know them and the glorious civilization they created which today we call the First Age of Zendula? The glorious Bronze Age of Elvish city states and the Dwarvish Citadel? What was Zendula like before the arrival of the sophisticated Elves and the Dwarves and the world of Metal? Before the age of Bronze? The Stone Age?

Who inhabited Prehistoric Zendula’s Heartlands when the Heartlands and Arcadia were covered by wild forests, and no plows cut the virginal soil, and no wild pastures fed great herds of domesticated cows and sheep, and the horse did not gallop across the face of the wilderness? Who were the ancient people of the Paleolithic and Mesolithic and Neolithic Stone Age and the transitioning Copper Age before the arrival of the sophisticated Elves and the Dwarves and Bronze and the first emergence of Iron and the first hint of the dream of Carbon Steel? Who first trod the ancient forests on two feet? And how and why did the Ancient Hyperboreans arrive in this primeval Eden? And what happened next? And why? 

Streng the beautiful young Firbolg Stone Age hero fighting his last fight with his stone mace before the Sacred Tree as evil invaders with pointed ears shot hundreds of arrows into his flesh. Unable to the end to understand the why and wherefore of the arrow and the invader. Bres The Black on his great horse as if a centaur riding across the unexplored wilderness as he slew the last gigantic monsters of the Ice Age. Heroic as his silk sleeves fluttered as he welded his recurve bow. Mapping the wilderness. Trail blazing the path for all of the Zendulians of the future to follow. Miles the Milesian in his exotic Indian Kushan couture as he rode across the alien landscape on the back of his Steppes pony after landing on an empty beach and stepping forth from his Monsoon ship from which he had transversed the Indian Ocean. His exotic face framed by dark hair and greenish eyes flashing. A Merrach peasant pausing in his toil to call his wolf dog to herd the first domesticated sheep with wool capable of being spun into thread to weave on a crude loom into cloth. Pausing and then walking toward the thatched hut that was both his home and his barn. His flaxen hair wet on his pink forehead, his baby blue eyes twinkling. His crude linen tunic sweaty. His calloused feet bare on the rich soil.

The female Dark Elve, a Wild Elve, pausing in her stalking of a deer through the wild primeval forest as her dark hair tangled with feathers blew in the sight wind, her dark eyes flashing, her body naked except for a loin cloth of leaves and feathers, as she plotted how to drive the deer toward the cunning share. The pale blond and grey eyed Green Elve nimbly climbing the great chestnut tree to harvest nuts naked except for leaves and strange tattoos on his small, lithe body. The Maleth Battle Maiden pausing as she cleaned her beautifully crafted flint spear and spear thrower as she stood over her kill, a stag. Her feathers of battle in her long dark hair. One shoulder sporting a strange tattoo of a curious stag with elongated and bizarre antlers. Her features exotic and striking.

Balor Of The Evil Eye creeping through the wild forest to ambush the invaders in his fantastical furs and leaves and feathers. His dark face tattooed with strange runes and his mutated pointed ears pierced with bones and shells. Hunting down his nemesis Arawn the Sidh from far away Hyperborea. The most dangerous invader of this primeval wilderness of all. The alien being who arrived in Stone Age Paradise and by his actions both intended and unintended was bringing about the fall of primeval Paradise! Arawn riding his monstrous horse through the dark wild forest with his hearthweru bodyguards in tow. Arawn the invader in his strange leather and linen garb such as Balor has never seen or conceived. The leather glittering with strange fish scales crafted of something alien and evil: bronze metal! Carrying a strange thing that the Formorian Savage god could not comprehend: a crossbow with its curious crank and shaft crafted of something totally alien to the Neolithic World: carbon steel. 

It should not be here! Carbon steel! Or engineered spiral screws and a spiral crank! Loaded with a metal bolt to hurl magically across the dark forest as if evil Magick!  Balor Of The Evil Eye crouched down in the dark wild forest  so his leaves and feathers would blend into the primeval wilderness. His one good eye studied the alien thing in the hands of the alien invader from the far north. His other eye was glazed over with the opaque whiteness caused by cataracts. The Stone Age savage god studied the invading god as he held his sling and acorn bullet to hurl it into the forehead of the invader from the far north and strike him dead! 

The blond haired Arawn’s handsome, hairless face and cool violet grey eyes were trying to pierce the depths of the dark wild forest as he turned to a smaller, hairy being with a tangled beard and hazel eyes to say ‘We are running out of supplies that we brought from Hyperborea Oderic! If we cannot find a source of metal ore soon we will be reduced to the same crude wooden bows and stone age clubs as the Wild Savages! Everything is going so terribly wrong….’ Then The Wild Formorian god loaded his cunning sling with a chestnut to hurl the missile into the handsome forehead of the cruel invader to smite him dead! At that moment Arawn told Oderic ‘I pity Balor Of The Evil Eye! We are destroying his feral paradise! We arrived here as refugees from doomed Hyperborea and now we are destroying paradise!’ 

‘This is not paradise!’ The grumpy, runty, bowlegged, hairy Oderic replied as he struggled to control the big horse. Beside him the much taller Arawn sighed. ‘This is a savage forest full of savage beings and savage gods and savage demigods and savage elves and savage monsters and savage animals and every sort of barbaric savagery!’ the gruff hairy man protested to Arawn. The complaining man was in shape echoing that of a sort of Neanderthal except by now the Neanderthals like the Denisovans were vanishing. And indeed Balor Of The Evil Eye had not seen either ancient ancestor for many decades. Barlor watched the alien being blustered to Arawn. ‘I was not wrong you know Arawn to advise everyone to flee Hyperborea! The city is doomed! We just have to kill the savages and civilize this dreadful place so we can rebuild our citadel anew!  Our civilization anew!’ 

Arawn shook his handsome head in reply. ’We are destroying paradise Oderic…’ In the darkness of the wild forest Balor the Savage God raised his sling to kill the invading Sidh God…

Zendula’s Prehistoric Age which is to say the Stone Age and early Copper Age reflects a slight delay in demographic settlement of Zendula which allowed Zendula to become a sort of Noah’s ark of diverse species and life forms and  array of humans and monsters depending on your definition of monsters and anomalous beings which ancient myths and legends and epics have since called noble gods and demigods or else savage gods and demigods or else monsters and feral creatures. The curious location of Zendula allowed life to continue to survive at least for a time as it died out in the rest of Eurasia. Today of course we would call this diverse array of unusual species and anomalous beings and esoteric life forms and atypical humans with hybrid mutations causing malformed pointed ears and other examples monstrousness or serendipity of alternative Darwinian Evolution in the Northern Hemisphere of Eurasia of which Zendula is the farthest most eastern landscape just off of Japan. And like Japan Zendula is a Galapagos environment that allows esoteric life forms to continue to exist after they die out elsewhere. 

The ancient myths and legends and epics describe the long ago prehistoric time according to the eyes of the participants who considered it all to be quite normal. Today we as historians must translate the ancient myths and legends and epics according to the eyes of Modernity and Reason and Science and Evolution. Is the long ago time the Paleolithic Stone Age or the Mesolithic Stone Age or the Neolithic Stone Age or the Transitionary Copper Age? Is this hairy Mammoth a monster or else a crucial species required to terraform the landscape for many other Ice Age species to survive? Is this gigantic Sloth a monster?  Is the Dire Wolf a monster because it is not yet a semi-domesticated wolf dog? Is this Paleolithic Neanderthal a monster as he shoves his skin boat into the river? Is this Denisovan Ancient Hunter Gatherer a monster? Is this Cro-Magnon - Neanderthal hybrid with a newfangled bow and arrow a god? Or is this Cro-Magnon Neanderthal hybrid just a monster if he has not yet figured out how a bow and arrow works yet? Or is he now a man if he has a Neanderthal crafted spear and thrower with a devilishly clever organic super glue and he is pushing a skin boat into the river which is mighty clever in the Early Paleolithic Age? Or is he only to be considered a man instead of a monster if he has a cunning flint blade? Or an obsidian mace? Or a crude copper blade? At what point does the Stone Age creature pushing the crude skin boat into the river cease to be a monster and become a civilized man?  

Is a Proto Indo European invader riding a semi-domesticated horse sporting a genuine bridle and bit crafted out of  crude leather and welding a recurve bow preparing to shoot a smoothly polished Neolithic arrow  a monster if he kills the stone age savage wilding a beautiful stone mace club? Or else is he now a civilized man killing a wild savage too primitive to understand a recurve bow and arrow? What about a crude copper knife which the Proto Indo European wears as a status totem? Does that turn him into a demigod or else a centaur if he is riding a monster called a horse? With out without a wolf dog? Or does he only qualify as civilized if he yokes his semi-domesticated horse to a spoked wheel chariot to hunt or else kill with a javelin topped by a socketed copper javelin blade? At what point does the Proto Indo European invader become either a monster or else a a civilized man or else a demigod? Or even a god? What if he is carrying semi domesticate grain seeds in a leather pouch instead of  wild herbs in a fur pouch while wearing this new thing called wool instead of fur or leaves or bark? What if he is guarding his fancy new domesticated cattle including milk cows and sheep with fancy domesticated wool that can be spun into wool for wool cloth? Guarding his expensive herd with a wolf dog? As he pulls out a chunk of cheese to eat as the guards his herd? At want point is he either a monster or else a demigod or else a civilized man? 

What about the Ancient Hyperboreans? We don’t exactly know who or what they even were. Whatever or whoever they were, they were biologically superior to Cro-Magnon Mere Mortals who were biologically superior to Neanderthals and Denisovans. And the Ancient Hyperboreans displayed evidence of advanced technology of some sort —- at least compared to the other Stone Age Peoples. Were the Sidh gods? Demigods? Monsters? Or humans from a more advanced civilization? What about the Dwarves? Well they were certainly Cro-Magnons with very high Neanderthals genes plus anomalies called ‘Oderic’ and today their genes are recessive. And the nature of their genes made them biologically superior to other Cro-Magnon Mere Mortals. Does that make them gods? Demigods? What about the Elves? Today their recessive genes live on in the Pedigrees and the Wisteria Project is mapping their DNA. The Elves were also biologically superior to today’s Cro-Magnons and Proto Indo European Mere Mortals as well. Should the Elves be deemed gods or at least demigods until we can map all of their DNA? Or at least until we can prove or disprove the ‘Ancient Aliens’ claim that the Elves were Alien Eugenics? 

In this blog I will try to explain as a historian the Prehistoric Age of Gods and Monsters of Zendula and rationally explain such Prehistoric beings as the Firbolgs and the Formorians, the Wild Dark Elves and Wild Green Elves, the arriving Tuathian ‘civilized’ Elves, the waves of invading Proto Indo European Mere Mortals from Eurasia, as well as the Neanderthals and Denisovans, the Dwarves, and of course the Sidh Gods from Lost Hyperborea. So let’s begin our deconstruction of the ancient legends and myths and epics about the Prehistoric Stone Age and Early Copper Age of Zendula!

This time delay of settlement in Zendula reflects the fact that Out of Africa Evolution happened in Eurasia in general and Europe in particular and especially in the Mediterranean Levant well before the rest of the temperate and nordic Northern Hemisphere of Eurasia resulting in a domino effect. Zendula being one of the last dominos. Great Neolithic (late stone age) civilizations were already raising in the Cradle of Civilization of the Mediterranean Levant well before the Northern Hemisphere’s Neolithic renaissance started. The Nordic Neolithic, Copper, and Bronze Ages occurred centuries afterwards their counterparts in the Levant. Zendula followed behind instead of being the forefront with the exception of our Sidh whose Hyperborean civilization occurred before the Younger Dryas Big Little Ice Age. Our Sidh being part of a group of Hyperboreans scattered along Greater Hyperborea in the far north of the Northern Hemisphere who emerged into an advanced civilization even before the Levant only to perish in ancient climate change as their far north utopias refroze.

The Ancient Levant Farmers started migrating northward into the temperate and nordic Northern Hemisphere after the Cradle of Civilization gave birth to the Neolithic revolution of sophisticated agriculture. The drive northward occurred when the Cradle of Civilization started to experience ancient climate changes which turned parts of the Levant into desert or semidesert requiring drastic changes toward totalitarian super city states to organize and build and maintain massive irrigation works. In the Nile for instance the rivers of the once fertile Sahara vanished up entirely leaving only the Nile. Ironically, as Hyperborea slowly refroze, the Levant was slowly drying up and becoming arid. As the Holocene Optimas slowly waned the cradle of civilizations around the world became crueler. Yet ironically the feral Trophic Zones did not by and large assume the lead as the Northern Hemisphere of Eurasia struggled. Instead, the people of the Northern Hemisphere evolved and adopted to meet the environmental crisis of ancient climate change. They adopted and invented. A pattern which the Out of Africa Evolution in a Cold Climate perpetrated over eons and displays to this day. When in doubt invent!

The migration of Neolithic Levant farmers into more wet and lush (if colder) frontiers of the Northern Hemisphere allowed for independent farming without need of large governmental irrigation efforts. This meant the independent sorts headed north the way independent sorts later headed toward the Americas. People willing to bite the bit of totalitarian mega states stayed put in the Levant. This is already Evolutionary selection in action. At this time the majority of the African population was still in the Trophic Zone and not the Levant. The Ancient Levant Peoples no less than the Ancient Hunter Gatherers of Europe were Cro-Magnon hybrid Caucasians displaying Out of Africa Evolution and lots of Neanderthal genes and even some Denisovan genes. The only thing missing from this evolutionary cocktail was the Proto Indo European Steppes People from the Baltic Siberian North of Eurasia. Cue the PIE!

The migrations of the Baltic Siberian Proto Indo Europeans followed the migrations of the Neolithic Levant Farmers. The Far North of Eurasia, once a lush Nordic paradise, was now refreezing as the Levant was drying. At the same time the migrations of the Old European Hunter Gatherers moving away from instead of toward doomed Hyperborea also occurred. And the Old European Hunter Gatherers were not only moving back and forth across Europe and back and forth toward the Levant they were also diverging from each other as Evolution terraformed Humans to fit particular environmental niches. 

These massive and diverging migrations spanned eons as Evolution terraformed the migrants of these migrations. As the environment of the once lush sea of grass of the southern Steppes dried up the Tocharians and other Proto Indo Europeans originally from the Baltic Siberian North of Eurasia faced either extinction, becoming swallowed up by the demographic conquest of the expanding Asian populations, or else the need to migrate westward, southward, or eastward before zigzagging and hopping over the Pearls of the Pacific to finally land on Zendula. A pattern also displayed by the Ainu who hopped and zigzagged across the map to land in North Japan and North Zendula. Zendula was the end of the road of the Ainu and the Proto Indo European diaspora (just like the earlier Neanderthal and Old Hunter Gatherer diasporas) and therefore reflects a time lag allowing a slower rate of change and extinction than elsewhere.

Zendula’s Paleolithic Era (Early Stone Age) featured the arrival of the Neanderthals and Denisovans and then the arrival of Homo sapiens, to be exact Cro-Magnon - Neanderthal hybrids, into a landscape slowly emerging from the last Pleistocene Glacial Ice Age called the Wurm. The sunny Holocene’s arrival was temporarily stalled by the Younger Dryas cataclysm: a big little ice age that temporarily stalled the Holocene Optimas. The Ancient Hunter Gatherers must have thought at the time that the Ice Giants as they called the Pleistocene glaciers were mounting a counter attack. A sort of the climatic ‘The Empire strikes back!’ in the form of devastating floods and a prolonged nuclear winter and erratic refreezing of the melting and warming Northern Hemisphere resulting in a mega-extinction of Ice Age life forms on earth. 

In Zendula’s myths Father God of Fire wages a great battle with the fearsome Ice Giants to drive them away resulting in the retreat of the glaciers allowing the warming Holocene to occur, symbolized by the arrival of Mother God of the Healing Waters —- though Mother God arrived with Holocene floods. But finally the Holocene ushered in a lush green paradise in the Northern Hemisphere as if a primeval eden in a landscape once covered by ice and snow and rivers of glaciers. Earth was finally warming and blossoming as trees swelled up into rich forests and the bounty of lush meadows rich with wild flowers and wild grains and herbs bloomed indescribably abundant and even exuberant. This was the Holocene Optimas, huge bursts of climatic warming periods unparalleled in this entire Holocene Era allowing Mankind to triumph and human civilization to flourish. 

The oxygen and carbon dioxide levels swelled up. The climate became unbelievably warm and nurturing.Green life exploded. Flora and fauna exploded. The biological Ice Giants, the larger than life Ice Age Mammals, frolicked as they lived out their last stand amidst a backdrop of resplendent natural prosperity. As if Mother Nature, knowing of their coming extinction wanted to give them one last hurrah. The myths of lost Eden surely originated during this amazing time of biological and botanical profusion of diversity of life on earth. To be exact in the Northern Hemisphere of Eurasia as well as North America where the far north became so lush forests ruled and in the summers the polar ice melted and Greenland was indeed green.

Of course the price for nature’s warming of the Northern Hemisphere was the slowly rising of the ocean’s waters flooding the coastlines and reconfiguring the landscapes of the world resulting in the loss of swathes of coastlines including the sinking of many very ancient cities built on such ancient coastlines which confound people to this day and give rise to lots of material for ‘Ancient Aliens’ on the History Channel.  The first cities to be built by emerging civilizations were also the first cities to be destroyed. Once such victim of the slowly raising ocean waters was the mythic land of the far far North of the Northern Hemisphere of Eurasia called Greater Hyperborea. 

The life forms be they biological or botanical must have felt it a crude irony for Mother Nature to first melt the ice and snow and glaciers to create a primeval eden in the far north only to flood it and then refreeze parts of it yet again when the magnificent Holocene Optimas crashed into the first of many mini ice ages which would toggle the Northern Hemisphere of Eurasia between Solar Maximums and Solar Minimums.  The Holocene Honeymoon turned into cyclic fluctuations of warm eras and cold eras accented by especially cold mini ice ages such as the mini ice age which brought down Old Mesopotamia and Old Egypt and the entire Neolithic World before bringing down the great Bronze Age civilizations such as New Egypt, Persia, Crete, before bringing down the great Iron Age civilizations such as  Hellene Greece, then Rome, then Medieval Europe and the Maya Civilization, then Louie The Last’s France, then Napoleon’s dreams of a world empire, along with every Indian and Chinese Empire. Eurasian civilizations swelling up only to be destroyed by cruel mini ice ages featuring the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse of Famine, Plagues, War, and Death in starring roles. The little ice ages featuring such names as the Wolf, the Sporer, the Maunder, and the Dalton. 

The Younger Dryas Big Little Ice Age was a cataclysm but it was also the first warming that the Holocene honeymoon between Pleistocene Ice Ages was just that: a fragile honeymoon which was still precarious whenever the sun chose to go into cycles of hibernation which were always heralded by the vanishing of the sun’s energizing sun spots and cosmic winds which caused the skies to oppressively cloud over to trigger the horrors of prolonged winters and erratic springs and dismal autumns along with volcanic devastation and earthquakes. Who needs Haley’s Comet to herald of disaster when you can simply count the sun’s spots or more correctly lack of sun spots!

Homo sapiens evolving out of Africa found Neanderthals and Denisovans along with other ‘ghost peoples’ already living in the Northern Hemisphere Eurasian landscape of the slowly retreating Ice Age glaciers including Zendula. In Zendula this included a huge inland sea which today is the gentle bowl of the Zendulian Heartlands which is rich with the fertile sediments of the once ancient inland waters. Fossil hunting of ancient sea creatures is done even today in the Heartlands. When Father God defeated the fierce Ice Giants the glaciers retreated and the frozen ice melted into pure lakes and rivers of life giving water. Thus, in Zendulian mythology Mother God of the Waters was born. Mother God of the Waters because the goddess of the Neolithic Age as the Agricultural revolution called ‘farming’ emerged in this reconfigured feral paradise created by Father God of Fire and Mother God of the Waters who gave birth to the Holocene before defeating the Younger Dryas Big Little Ice Age in a last fierce battle to finally and at last liberate Zendula from the clasp of the Pleistocene Wurm Ice Age. No wonder all over the emerging Northern Hemisphere the new god was a goddess of healing waters and lush fertility and new life!

There are still myths handed down through eons about the time before the Pleistocene Ice Giants or the cruel Pleistocene Wyrm when no ice or snow or rivers of glaciers covered the landscape of Zendula to be vanquished by Father God of Fire to give birth to Mother God of the Healing Waters. The time before the Younger Dryas Big Little Ice Age which some called Ragnarok or Kali Yuga or Flmbulvetr. The All Devouring Winter. The time before the Wurm Ice Age  which some of the Ancient Ones called Hel: the Land of the Ice Queen who lived in a world which she turned into ice with her Glamour. Her Magick. The world we see now is not the world that has always existed.Ancient myths too exist of Lost Hyperborea when the Far North of the Northern Hemisphere was Eden. Or else do this ancient oral memories recall the previous Holocene prior to the Wurm Pleistocene Ice Age Era predating our present Holocene? Because certainly the earth has been toggling between cycles of Pleistocene Ice Ages and Holocene Honeymoons of temporary warmth for eons. 

What caused the earth to suddenly be cursed with these freezing cycles is still unknown. Once Antarctica was ice free, green, and lush. Once the Sahara was a fertile eden. Once Greenland lived up to its name. Once Alaska was covered by rich forests and meadows. Once the Levant was not a semi-desert. Once Lost Hyperborea was Eden. And there was no ice or snow or rivers of glaciers anywhere on earth. Could a previous civilization which evolved during the prior Holocene somehow survive the freezing Wurm? Or did the freezing Wurm crush all evidence forever under its cruel glaciers and shroud of ice and snow? When our Holocene finally ends in some hundred million years will we survive? Or will every evidence of our civilization likewise be crushed out of existence by the rivers of glaciers and be covered by a shroud of ice and snow as well? 

Certainly the Neanderthals and Denisovans lived during the Wurm Glacial Ice Age predating our Holocene, our temporary honeymoon between Pleistocene Glacial Ice Ages. The Wurm Glacial Ice Age lasted from 70,000 BCE to 9000 BCE and the Humanoids appeared around 15,000 BCE of the Wurm Glacial Ice Age.  So it is possible that the Neanderthals and Denisovans passed on their oral myths of the previous Holocene or some other long lost era before the cruel Wurm devoured the world with its breath of ice  to the Homo sapiens as they interbred with them and hybridized into them. Ancient memories of a Lost Paradise of Warmth and Plenty. An Utopia of the Lost Gods. A primordial Eden. The Abode of the Blessed Ones until Flmbulvetr. The Paradise before it was defeated by the Ice Demons of Ragnarok. The time before Gotterdammerung. The Golden Age before Kali Yuga. The Lost Land of the Hyperboreans: The Sidh Gods of the wondrous lost city of the Tuatha de Danann who when besieged by the Ice Demons retreated underground into a magical place called the Sanctuary of Vara. 

Of course when the magical city of the Far North was besieged by ice and snow and permafrost some of the Sidh Gods decided to escape southward beyond the dense dark forest of the far horizon into a new temperate Eden further south. For every Hyperborean who stayed and froze or else went into cryogenic suspension in the Vara there were Hyperboreans who risked all and migrated southward into the unknown to start anew. The Sidh Gods claimed their ancient patriarch Nemed along with Oderic  trail blazed a route southward into Zendula Proper to help the Sidh (and their allies or hirelings the Dwarves) to migrate south and create a new Sidh (and Dwarve) homeland after their final Sanctuary of retreat, Vara, was buried under ice and snow, freezing the Ancestors of the Sidh in ice crystal coffins eternally. Not alive. Not dead. Suspended in time between life and death in suspended cryogenic animation. The last Dwarves fossilizing as they stubbornly sat on their stone thrones and stared out of their rock crystal windows over a freezing landscape locking Lost Hyperborea forever in a crystal chrysalis.  A lost city forever shrouded in ice, snow, glaciers, and mysteries to this day. A land still declared off limits by the government for security reasons to this day. This lost Hyperborean homeland of the Sidh Gods and the Dwarve Patriarchs.

This lost Hyperborean Homeland featured magical nights which were illuminated by the magical Northern Lights of the Aurora Borealis as well as wondrous summers as the sun danced on the far horizon. Magical optic mirages and atmospheric illusions. Sun dogs. Moon halos. Curious rainbows. Acoustic echos. Glamour everywhere! A world of Magick! The Magical Hrktos Bear Gods lived there which were not like the brown bears or grizzly bears or Angus Mac Org The Were Bear Sidh God though they might have sired him to procreate Were into the world. Swimming unicorns lived in the frozen waters and also mysterious primeval creatures and beings not seen in Zendula Proper. One day was six months long. One night was six months long. For the Sidh were gods who lived a day and a night which was for Mundane Mere Mortals a year or else an eternity. The Polar Star was in a different place in the sky. Magical Lode stones behaved strangely. Magnetic Ley Lines behaved most bizarrely. The stars were placed differently in the sky as well. Everything was pure white and sparkling. Yet at the same time everything was described as verdant green and fertile and pure and overflowing with life. And the Gods lived in magical bastion in golden plenty and there was no want. And there was no Death, Change, or Time. 

But then apparently there was a cataclysm and Hel came. The demonic Ice Giants came and waged war upon the Gods. And terrible monsters waged war too. It was Ragnarok! It was Gotterdammerung! It was the Fall of the Gods! And the Heroes were defeated. And the valiant were slain. And the Dire Wolves howled for blood. And their magical weapons all failed. And their wondrous technology failed too. And their defenses imploded and their powers exploded and their citadel collapsed. And the Gods were defeated. Even with the alliance of Father God of Fire the Gods were defeated. And the world went dark and cold. Such Gods that survived the  cataclysm were forced to retreat deep underground into a cave illuminated by a magical sun of fire mounted on a tall pedestal under a stony sky in a stony enclosure called Vara. And there the Gods laid down on their crystal beds and went to sleep eternally. The Dwarves who created the Vara chose another end perhaps knowing the truth which they did not tell the Gods. That the crystal beds were crystal biers. And there would be no great awakening of either Hero or God.

Different names were given to the cataclysm. The Amberlings later called it Yama Yima and Kali Yuga. The Beoarch called it Fimbulvetr. The Milesians called it Ragnarak. Gotterdammerung was perhaps the best name: The Fall of the Gods. And Nemed said the Gods did not die but rather slept an enchanted sleep. But perhaps Nemed lied. Nemed and Oderic led the few surviving Sidh Gods southward into Zendula Proper where he created mysterious stone monoliths and curious stone barrows and subterranean chambers to mimic the Vara. And Arawn used his Glamour of copper wire and rock crystal and also magnetic lodestone to create curious contraptions he called Glamour to try to contact Lost Hyperborea. And at first he claimed he heard the whispers of distant voices but then he said he heard only echos of distant whispers and finally he said he heard nothing at all for Lost Hyperborea slept eternally and could not be woken.

But many of the Sidh Gods suffering the cruelness of exile from their lost homeland of Hyperborea said Oderic was ‘wrong’ and many of the Sidh accused Oderic of leading them into a bitter exile. Dosojin the God of Exile wept and announced that he was ‘Going Home!’. And everything started to go wrong. And one day Nemed beheld a prophecy from Father God of Fire of the Ragnarak of the Sidh Gods after the Sidh rejected the bitter gifts of Father God of Fire: Time, Change, and Death. For once the Sidh had lived as if gods and now they lived as if only demigods. And Dagda declared war on Father God and the Shadow of His Nature and thus created Strife, Chaos, and War. And everything went wrong as their new Eden yielded the bitter fruits of a poisoned tree. So Nemed created a final monolith called the Monolith of Nemed. A gigantic fallen monolith stone pointing toward the Solstice when the fiery sun rose once each year to predict the defeat of Winter. Then Nemed vanished forever. Some say he entered his own burial chamber deep underground. Some say he was homesick and simply choose to walk northward. Walk away from his people. Walk back to Lost Hyperborea. And so Nemed vanished forever out of legends and into mystery.

The Sidh Gods after their long and terrible march south had  found Zendula Proper already inhabited. It was a feral paradise full of feral things. Some of these primitive, feral, Paleolithic people were the Neanderthals. The Neanderthals were a fair and ruddy people with blond or ginger hair and blue or hazel or else green eyes. They were stocky, powerful, exceptionally strong, and tenaciously resourceful survivors. The Neanderthals’ brow ridges and eyebrows, aggressive noses to withstand the cold, and also larger brains were different from Homo sapiens emerging from the feral Edens of the Trophic Zone. The Neanderthals preserved  thousands of years of knowledge from their pioneering migrations across the Eurasian Steppes along the sea of grass from one end of Eurasia to the other. Contrary to their later reputation based on the bones of an old arthritic and crippled old man, probably a patriarch of a clan of Neanderthals, the Neanderthals were actually powerful survivors of a people who had survived the horrors of the Pleistocene Wurm Ice Age only to find their new Holocene honeymoon spoiled by the arriving Sidh.

Perhaps the Neanderthals were the devolved descendants of a very old people who had tenaciously survived the entire Wurm from the previous Holocene as the Ice Age crushed their civilization to smithereens under rivers of glaciers and buried their advanced civilization under ice and snow beyond which their advance knowledge simply could not cope as everything around them broke down as the icy breath of the Wurm stripped them piece by piece of their advances and their technologies until all they had left were the most primitive of mountain man survival techniques. Certainly the Neanderthals had been driven down into a barely surviving population well below needful levels to maintain anything but the barest of survival. The Neanderthals should have been a cautionary warning to the cocky Sidh the devolution can occur as easily as evolution.

The Neanderthals used surprisingly ergonomic stone flint tools which required a complex serious of steps to create. They did not have metal and the Sidh assumed they were stupid because of that, not realizing how hard it would be for the Sidh to find metal ores. The Neanderthals buried their dead under stones. They migrated far and wide. They used wooden or hide canoes to sail the rivers and indeed the coastlines as far as the Levant in the west and the island of Old Terra Nova and also Zendula in the east. They painted the walls of their cave complexes with mysteriously abstract symbols and hand prints indicating some sort of preservation of memories and initiation rites. Their hand prints affirmed their tragic attempts to affirm their sentiency in the face of extinction.Their spears were boasted by the use of spear throwers so effective they had no reason to change it. They organized themselves into very effective teams of hunters to assault and take down the gigantic Ice Age Mammals. In the summer they used the gigantic bones of their prey to create cunning seasonal huts that were large and sturdy as well as flets: special seasonal tree platforms from which Zendulians inherited the concept and which today are still used by the Arcadians and Westlands and Blue Mountain Peoples. 

As the males hunted the females gathered every sort of herb, fruit, and wild grain. They had the knowledge of fire. They were able to care for their aged and crippled. They used an organic super glue to reinforce their spears. They harvested shells and traded shells great distances to craft into ornaments and also harvested feathers and wore claws and fangs of the large Ice Age animals they killed.  And some of these were sacred totems. They used minerals to make makeup. They worshipped the Hrktos Sacred Bear and considered it taboo to even utter the word. This they bestowed to their descendants: the Cro-Magnons whose descendants were the Proto Indo Europeans.  Even the Sidh Gods preserved this supernatural word in their languages to indicate Were. Shape shifting. The Sidh God Angus Mac Org was a Hrktos Were Bear. Did Angus Mac Org sire Were or did the Were sire Angus Mac Org? Were is a mutation of a gene and the Were gene once it takes hold is very tenacious in the DNA of its carriers. Were gives vitality and virility and fertility so through simple demographic conquest can take over a whole population in time unless the Were are exiled or killed before they can reproduce.

The Neanderthals possessed and/or evolved special genes and physical characteristics in order to survive in the harsher Northern Hemisphere environment of cycles of the seasons as well as eleven year cycles of Solar Minimums (short little ice ages) when the sun hibernates as well a 200 and 400 year cycles of prolonged little ice ages. The Neanderthals were evolutionary byproducts of the harsher Northern Hemisphere. Not the Tropic Zone. They were not African just as the Neanderthals hybrids, the Cro-Magnons, were not African in bone shape or skull shape or brain size or body chemistry or appearance or anything but the most remote of genetics. And everyone who evolved out of Africa carries some genes of the Neanderthal inside of them. And the highest concentration of Neanderthal genes is the Northern Hemisphere of Eurasia evolved Caucasian and Asian Races and also the sub species of Caucasian called the Dwarves. Curiously, the Sidh and the Elves originally did not have any Neanderthal genes indicating that they evolved from other ‘ghost peoples’ or ‘ghost populations’ of the Northern Hemisphere. By the time the Neanderthals reached Zendula they had mutated so now they had deformed ears. That is to say pointed ears. 

By hybridizing with the Neanderthals the Cro-Magnons were able to speed up Darwinian evolutionary genetics. In sort: eugenics. The Neanderthals did not vanish. Nor were they victims of genocide. Like the American Indians, they were absorbed into the population of the later arrivals who had the once thing the Neanderthals and American Indians did not possess: the ability to reproduce a larger population needed to create useful mutations to further evolve without the negative effects of inbreeding caused by populations which were too small to be viable. Just as almost everyone out of Africa carries Neanderthal genes, the general population in America carries a tiny percentage of American Indian genes as well. 

This Darwinian eugenics allowed emerging Humanity to survive in Eurasia and especially the Northern Hemisphere of Eurasia long enough to see the Holocene miracle occur. After all! Why did Mother Nature feel the need to evolve two new races if the original Homo sapiens could have survived? But even the arrival of the Holocene precluded Africans who evolved in the Tropic Zone from naturally or easily surviving in Eurasia and especially the Northern Hemisphere. The cycles of acute winters and harsh solar minimums and especially prolonged freezing grand solar minimums require huge amounts of meat to be consumed to allow the human to get enough vitamin C and D to survive in a non trophic environment. This environmental stress is not present in the Trophic Zone be it Africa or parts of south India or the monsoon south of Asia. The environmental stress in the Trophic Zone is from erratic diseases and erratic disasters. Not the lack of vitamin C and D. Not even the meat of the mega Ice Age gigantic Mammals could easily give humans the means to survive in this more hostile northern environment. Even the Levant was harsh enough to force Homo sapiens to commence evolving Out of Africa.

And once the mega Ice Age gigantic Mammals vanished from over hunting the Cro-Magnons were faced with replacing the meat protein in winter with lessor and lessor and ever smaller and smaller meat supplies from ever smaller wild animals and also the first domesticated animals as well as the first experiments in the domestication of wild grains which led to farming through sheer necessity. Winter in the Northern Hemisphere was relentlessly terraforming Humans. But crude farming does not provide enough proteins and vitamins needed to survive relentless cycles of prolonged winters devastating the food supplies and dimming the sunshine which humans need to process vitamin C and D naturally in the face of less meat and fruit which is plentiful in the Trophic Zone. Environmental evolutionary push was coming to shove. Something had to give. The Inuit and Ainu evolved to survive in the extremes of their isolated northern environments by way of hybridization with other ‘ghost peoples’ to acquire needful gene mutations. But large populations of Cro-Magnon hybrids had to adopt a different evolutionary strategy.

Neanderthals were not lactose tolerant yet to help Cro-Magnons to get enough proteins from milk and cheese. And the Cro-Magnons were rapidly driving the gigantic Ice Age Mammals to extinction. Push was coming to shove. Mankind living out of Trophic Zone had to evolve in the face of intense environmental pressure which was rapidly shrinking them physically as they struggled to survive. They are literally becoming runty. The Neanderthals clearly had not faced this intensity of environmental pressure. This means that Cro-Magnons no less than their Neanderthal kindred had to depigment their skin to process sunshine for vitamin D in order to concentrate their body’s resources on getting enough vitamin C from dwindling meat supplies and wild grains during the often prolonged winter months in the Northern Hemisphere, especially during the solar minimums and grand solar minimums of prolonged mini ice ages. Skin cancer was no longer a problem the further north that Cro-Magnons went. They had to do the evolutionary opposite and depigment their skin entirely as well as change their skull physicality and especially their noses. The arrival of blue eyes indicates the speed of evolutionary changes as Cro-Magnons mutated as well as hybridized.

Nevertheless, the Neanderthals possessed most of the genes deemed to be ideal for survival in the harsher Northern Hemisphere environment which Cro-Magnon hybrids needed such as K slow life history genetics including the ability to plan ahead and defer gratification to conserve precious limited resources in order to survive seasonal want during little ice ages as well as concentrating their populations in packs of nuclear families treasuring a few precious children instead of reproducing indiscriminately and then recklessly abandoning their children to survive or not on their own which is typical of Trophic Zone r fast live history genetics. 

Ironically today these Neanderthal genes translates into anxiety depression and addictions as well as other drastically different instinctively hot wired behaviors such as the compulsion to hoard, conserve, ration, brooding on the past, worrying abut the future, not living day by day for the ‘Now’, as well as being hot wired to be frugal, disciplined, responsible, able to control behaviors, defer gratification, and not be reckless, selfish, unreliable, or untrustworthy. The Neanderthals were the origin of something entirely new to now emerging K slow life history humans: the Heroic Virtues. Truth. Courage. Fidelity. Honor. Discipline. Hospitality. Self Reliance. Industriousness. Prudence. Moderation. Perseverance. Ingenuity. Inventiveness. Especially inventiveness! Consider this: Africa (not counting the Levant part of North Africa) never invented the wheel. Nor the Ancient Americas. The people of the Northern Hemisphere of Eurasia not only invented the wheel but 97% of all inventions in human history. The majority of this overflowing invention was done by the Caucasian Race with the almost all of the rest done by the Asian Race. Both of which are the most Neanderthal dense in genetics! Both of which are byproducts of Evolution in the Cold Climate of the Northern Hemisphere of Eurasia!

The Neanderthals possessed larger brains, skull shapes, and noses to breathe better in the cold. Neanderthals had blond, brown, and ginger hair and blue, hazel, and green eyes. Their skin was depigmented and often freckled. They possessed bacteria resistance and allergies ideal to ward off Northern Hemisphere diseases which today results in seasonal allergies. They possessed unique immunities. They possessed blood clotting to prevent fatal bleeding. Before hybridizing with Neanderthals Homo sapiens has smaller brains and more body strength. After hybridizing with Neanderthals Homo sapiens had larger brains (but not as large as Neanderthals) and less strong bodies than before. Before hybridizing with Neanderthals Homo sapiens was r fast life history. After hybridizing with Neanderthals Homo sapiens started to display both  r fast life history and K slow life history hot wired genetic behaviors. Mostly Homo sapiens in the Northern Hemisphere display K slow life history hot wired genetic behaviors along with larger brains (but not as large as Neanderthals). The Cro-Magnons won because they could breed more and faster than the Neanderthals (typical r fast life history) and therefore acquire more mutations over time without the danger of inbreeding while absorbing the generic best of the Neanderthal.

The Neanderthals explored and pioneered routes across the rivers, the seas, the continent of Eurasia, and the islands into the Zendulian wilderness. Later the descendants of the Proto Indo Europeans likewise explored and migrated across the the Steppes which became the Great Silk Road to every part of Eurasia be it west or east. The Neanderthals traded what they culled from their harsh and dangerous lives be it shells and amber and salt from the coast for furs, flints, bones, and sap from the forested interiors. Ironically, despite their stocky and powerful bodies, body hair, blunt noses, and aggressive faces the Neanderthals spoke in rather high guttural voices. Their descendants the Dwarves inherited all of this this along with their neuroses and insecurities and also their powerful, stocky tenacity counterbalanced by their sentimental love for their few precious children and penchant to bury their dead in caves inside stony tombs.The Neanderthals were hairy but not aggressively so. The stocky, barrel chested Dwarves inherited this penchant for hair and brow ridges bristly with eyebrows as well as weak chins and large brains including ‘genius bumps’. 

Most Cro-Magnons slowly edited out much of this Neanderthalness to assume the more characteristic visuals of today’s modern Mundane Mere Mortals. But even today every Modern Human outside of Africa carries inside of them the genes of their ancient ancestors who were Neanderthals. The Neanderthals created the Caucasian and Asian Mere Mortal Races and also the Mere Mortal Races of the Americas. Only the elusive genes of the ‘ghost peoples’ of Eurasia transformed a smaller group of diverse people into more interesting forms of evolutionary terra forming. 

The Denisovans were a distant kindred to the Ice Age Neanderthals. They are the even more powerful being physical giants and also possessed brown eyes, hair, and a darker complexion. Because of the lack of vitamin D from sunlight they compensated by staying mostly in the southern part of the Northern Hemisphere of Eurasia. They also appeared to possess a genetic adoption to prevent rickets and scurvy through both a superior absorbency of vitamins from meat and fish and especially blubber and their tendency to eat certain meats raw. While that sounds barbaric cooking can destroy some vitamins. Likewise the People of the Far North who have Denisovan genes as well as Neanderthal gens also eat every part of the animals including every organ and bone marrow and blood and also the contents of the stomachs and intestines of deer and stags to eat the semi-digested grasses containing vitamin C. Their bodies process fat very differently. Certain raw meat in seals and fish and some parts of whales and especially the blubber possesses high amounts of vitamin C. Even today the People of the North who possess the highest amount of Denisovan genetics as well as Neanderthal genes eat certain meats raw to prevent rickets and scurry which Modern People suffer from if placed in the same environment.They also eat blubber to compensate for what their diets lack. They have evolved to survive on this diet which normal modern people cannot naturally survive on. Likewise they cannot survive on the diets which modern people naturally survive on. 

Many Denisovans also developed the evolutionary physicality to survive in the cold and altitude of the highest mountains including Tibet and Nepal which boasts high levels of Denisovan genes as well as Neanderthal genes and Asian genes. But most of the surviving Denisovan genes today exist in isolated parts of the Pearls of the Pacific and especially remote islands where their blue eyed but dark complexioned descendants live today. Denisovans probably avoided the evolutionary stress of the Northern Hemisphere by migrating southward across Eurasia before becoming lodged in remote and isolated regions while Cro-Magnon hybrids seized control of most of their original territories. Most people out of Africa have Neanderthal genes but few or no Denisovan genes. So Homo sapiens ran with the Neanderthals and possibly fought the Denisovans.But one remarkable cave revealed the existence of a genuine child who was a Neanderthal-Denisovan hybrid as well as evidence of Cro-Magnons all over lapping so people were interbreeding and hybridizing as they evolved out of Africa. Why? They had to hybridize in order to survive as the harsher environment evolutionarily terra formed them!

The Denisovan giants were also surprisingly sophisticate stone makers and wore ornate stone ornaments. They hunted Mammoths and other large Ice Age mammals in the Far North of Zendula long after they went extinct in the Zendulian Heartlands. This echos what occurred elsewhere in the Eurasia. Some Neanderthals and Denisovans lingered in the Far North and also in the most densely remote and forested regions of Zendula up to the Zendulian Bronze Age. Oral myths of the Prehistoric Giants clearly are based on memories of the Denisovan giants. And rumors of Neanderthals living in the more remote and forested places of Zendula continued up to the Fourth Age. And recently it was confirmed that one last pair of Neanderthal hybrids still exists in the Old Citadel where their genetics are being extracted through eggs and sperm for the Wisteria Project in order to restore the Dwarvish Pedigree. But these ancient Humanoids clearly were on the losing side of evolution as the Holocene ushered in the triumph of the Cro-Magnon Modern Man. Cro-Magnons might have struggled to survive the brunt of the Wurm Ice Age. They thrived in the Holocene and survived the Younger Dryas Big Little Ice Age. So they could wage demographic conquest on the Neanderthals and the Denisovans. 

As the Paleolithic Old Stone Age progressed Zendula’s environment evolved out of the brutal Wurm Glacial Age into the more begin Holocene Age. The glaciers finally retreated northward. Homo sapiens interbred with the Ancient Ancestors who were the Neanderthals and Denisovans to create various hybrids who further crisscrossed their genetics as they interbred. In Zendula that crisscrossing spread the mutation for deformed or pointed ears the same way that a single mutation in Old European Hunter Gatherers finally spread all over Europe and beyond. 

The changing environment compelled further evolutionary genetic changes as Cro-Magnons evolved into the Caucasian and Asian Races and also the subspecies of the original Americans and of course the Sub Continent Indians. Everyone being terraformed to fit particular evolutionary niches. Thus what we call the Mundane Mere Mortals took their place on the evolutionary stage of history! Modern Man arrived! But this hybridization resulted in many different ‘models’ of the ideal Human for this new environment of the reconfigured Northern Hemisphere be it West Eurasia or East Eurasia or North Eurasia or South Eurasia or else the Americas or the Pearls of the Pacific or else Zendula. The result were evolving and competing hybrids of the Savage Age of Gods and Monsters. Zendula’s Prehistoric Age. The Ancient Hunter Gatherers of the Paleolithic Mesolithic Age.

One form of Zendulian Neanderthal - Cro Magnon hybridization became the ‘feral’ ie primitive ‘White’ Firbolgs. Another Denisovan hybrid became the ‘savage’ ie primitive  ‘Dark’ Formorians. The names reflect the views of the later Sidh and Elves and Dwarves. The Firbolgs and Formorians were more sophisticated  Early Mesolithic Stone Age peoples. They worshiped Father God of Fire, Mother God of the Waters, and other Unknown Gods. They they left no written language behind. Only mysterious cave art, rune symbols on stones and monoliths, standing stones, barrows, and altars ie massive stones masterfully balanced on top of each other to symbolize their Unknown Gods. Increasingly the fur or leaves and feathers garbed ‘Savage Gods’ lived in migrating camp sites of thatched or bark tents called ‘furry’ by the Sidh and also tree flets. Tree houses. Retreating to caves only for the winter. Their flints became more specialized. Their spears and harpoons as well as their slings became more lethal. Their snares were famously deadly. They left behind elaborate totems and fetishes symbolizing their worship as well as mysterious rune symbols. They augmented their meat from the dwindling Ice Giant Mammals with fishing and a skill with herbs and wild grains. Wild grains can be quite life sustaining if they can be harvested and conserved. Their herbal medicines were famous. 

The later peoples of Zendula called the Firbolgs and the Formorians the Barbaric or Savage Gods of the Barbaric or Savage Elves. Again the nicknames were bestowed on the Stone Age People by later Sidh, Elves, and Dwarves who were all diverse refugees of Greater Lost Hyperborea. The historical term ‘The Savage Wars’ is a consolidation of an eon of clashes between the Mesolithic Stone Age People and the arriving Neolithic People and the invading Sidh. Today the ‘Savage Wars’ is a famous opera trilogy of the fall of the Firbolg Hero Streng, the Formorian born but Sidh raised Hero Bres, and the Milesian Mere Mortal Hero Miles created by Horsham of Arcadia in collaboration with Lord Oakdale, and Lord Chestnutdale who were Twilight Terra Elves. Horsham wanted to immortalize the vanishing Stone Age Peoples in a positive light and indeed today these early Stone Age Peoples are seen as 'The Children of the Feral Eden’ who are destroyed by the Snake of Knowledge. Cue the arrival of Oderic!

Another being who appeared during this pivotal part of the Mesolithic Age was Oderic. Who or what Oderic was is unknown today though his is considered the Most Ancient of the Blessed Ancestors of the Dwarves. The Father of the Dwarvish Race. But who or what Oderic was can only be speculated today. He was certainly brilliant and cunning and inventive and deceptive and even treacherous. But like the Snake in Eden he also destroyed the innocence of Paradise and cast people into a bitter exile. 

Oderic arrived after the Rain of Fire and the Great Flood and the Winter Without End which corresponded with the aftermath of the Younger Dryas Cataclysm. He claimed to be from Hyperborea the Land of the Gods  ie the Sidh as well as the Dwarves. The Barbaric or Savage Gods who protected the Barbaric or Savage Dark and Green Elves thought Oderic was a Dark Wizard or Shaman who caused the Rain of Fire and the Great Flood and the Winter Without End. He arrived very dramatically from the Far North as if on cue and appeared to claim a causal connection with the Rain of Fire and the Great Flood and the Winter Without End. He wore strange clothes not crafted of fur or leaves or feathers. He welded weapons not of stone. And he did great Glamour. Magick. Apparently Oderic invented a way to carve obsidian stone into powerful spear tips and daggers as well as creating smoothly polished stone tools and weapons which is the trademark of the Neolithic Stone Age. This caused the Barbaric and Savage Gods and their Barbaric and Savage Elvish worshipers to worship Oderic as a powerful Dark Wizard or Shaman. 

Oderic ‘observed’ the Barbaric and Savage Gods of the Barbaric and Savage Elves. He crafted something he called the Scroll of Oderic out of paper bark upon which he ‘wrote’ runes. The runes were so magical the Barbaric and Savage Gods mimicked them and created ‘runes’ or magical symbols of their own to complete with Oderic. Oderic boosted four eyes.  Two eyes which were human. Two eyes which were magical. Today it is believed that Oderic wore glasses for Dwarves were notoriously near sighted. The Firbolgs considered Oderic to be one of their Ancient Ancestors (Neanderthals) and indeed Oderic looked very Neanderthalish.  But the Formorians whose Ancient Ancestors were the Denisovan Giants decided that Oderic was an evil wizard and started to shun him.  Oderic clearly favored the ‘White’ Firbolgs over the ‘Dark’ Formorians for whatever reason.


Oderic awed the Firbolgs with his Magick by making fire not with sticks but rather with Magick stones ie flint striking iron ore. The Heartlands did not possess iron ore. Nor does the Heartlands possess ore deposits to this day. So this was powerful Magick. Oderic could also make a Magick stick float in a wooden bowl of water and move around to always face the North Star. Today it is believed to have been a primitive compass using magnetic lodestone. As Oderic’s strange clothes wore out he assumed the garb of the Firbolgs and dressed in fine fur and woven fibers from plants. He experimented with wild plants which made very good fibers which he called linen. Today Oderic is called the Father of Linen. Oderic showed the Firbolgs how to create linen fiber into ‘thread’ and ropes which the Firbolgs prized very much. Oderic also showed the Firbolgs how to harvest wild sheep wool and pound it into ‘felt’. At this point in time wild sheep wool could not be spun effectively into a genuine threat to actually weave into wool. 

Oderic also used Magick to help the Firbolgs to lure wild wolves to the campsites with meat scraps. Then Oderic showed the Firbolgs how to domestic the wild wolves into wolf dogs to help the Firbolgs hunt the dwindling Ice Age Giant Mammals. This further displeased the Formorians who lost more prey to the Firbolgs. Oderic helped the Firbolg make fibers into snares and nets to snare beasts. This further angered the Formorians who lost more prey to the competing Firbolgs. But there was an explosion of invention of elaborate snares now and more refined slings.

Oderic also did Magick with a thing called a ‘flute of golden color like red-blond hair’. So the Firbolgs carved bones into flutes to make Magick. Music. So Oderic also showed the Firbolgs how to use skins to make into drums to pound to also make the Magick of music to augment bone flutes and clapping hands and singing. The Formorians became afraid because Oderic was helping the Firbolgs at their expense so the Formorians called Oderic an evil wizard and shunned him all the more. Oderic enjoyed the mischief he was making by dividing the Barbaric and Savage Gods and their Barbaric and Savage Elvish followers. Oderic called the Formorians the ‘Dark Gods of the Dark Nights’. It is not known if Oderic was referring to their swarthy  complexions or their ignorance at rejecting his Magick. But Oderic clearly favored the Firbolgs. This was creating tension as the Barbaric and Savage Gods and their Barbaric and Savage Elves hunted the Ice Age Giant Mammals toward extinction. 

As the Old Paleolithic Stone Age continued to evolve into the Mesolithic Stone Age more hybrids of the Ancient Hunter Gatherers appeared. These ancient hunter gatherers were yet more waves of Barbaric and Savage Green Elves and Dark Elves being driven into Zendula Proper by the still unseen migration of the Twilight Terra Elves. The Twilight Terra Elves were immigrating into the far east coast of Zendula which was still fairly verdant. This was driving the  Barbaric and Savage Hunter Gatherers in a cascade across the Mighty Majestic River and the towering mountains of The Pale into Zendula’s lush primeval Heartlands.            The Dark Elves worshiped the Firbolgs. The Green Elves worshiped the Formorians. The Dark Elves boasted dark eyes and hair and an olive complexion. The Green Elves were fair blond and blue eyed. These Elves were Mesolithic and later were called Barbaric and Savage though they perfected fitted their niche in the Mesolithic forests and meadows of the feral Heartlands and were cunning hunters with their spears, snares, and traps. They dressed in furs and leaves and adorned themselves with flowers and feathers. They also wore totems such as bear claws or saber tooth fangs or shells and drilled holes into raw amber to create necklaces. They wore hip high boots of skins and their suede and fur was fringed and beautifully adored with amber bone decorations. Their talent to track game was celebrated and they knew every part of the forests. They painted cliff faces with their symbolic art. They were not stupid. But like the Neanderthals and Denisovans as well as the Firbolgs and the Formorians  they were doomed. The Green Elves were awed by the Formorians because they were giants and when Oderic did Magick he scared them. The Dark Elves (dark referring to their dark hair and dark eyes) were awed by the magic of Oderic. So Oderic’s interfering mischief drove a cleft between the Barbaric and Savage Gods and the Ancient Hunter Gatherer Wild Elves as if sowing the seeds of a bitter harvest to come. 

The Mesolithic Stone Age blossomed as the Wurm Interglacial Age retreated northward. The evil of the Younger Dryas appeared to be an anomaly. Father God was believed to have vanquished the ice and snow forever though not the seasons which Father God told his barbaric children were his gift to them. Perhaps winter was his gift for winters further hot wired K genetics into the genetic marrow of the Peoples of Zendula. The Barbaric and Savage Peoples learned the wisdom of Father God of Fire. How to appreciate summer. How to harvest wild grains and nuts in autumn. How to conserve and be frugal in winter. How to survive the spring famine with wild herbs. How to ration. How to plan ahead. How to be careful and not be reckless. How to think about the consequences of their actions. How to save their precious children and their womenfolk. How to work very hard. How to never take anything for granted. How to be trustworthy and dependable so everyone can survive by working together. How to not lie or deceive or betray one another. 

The land grew verdant and heavily forested with seas of grass and great herds of wild creatures as the Barbaric and Savage Gods and their Barbaric and Savage Worshipers killed off the declining Ice Age Giant Mammals they called the Monsters. For a time this was a feral paradise on earth. Communal. Sharing. Blessed by Mother God of the Life Giving and Merciful Waters. Protected by Father God of Fire. Oderic’s mischief sowed the seeds of a bitter harvest to come but as yet that bitter harvest had not revealed itself. Then a new people appeared: The Sidh Gods. Oderic was long expecting them. He had blazed a trail of stone markers for them to follow.The Sidh Gods launched the apex of the Mesolithic Middle Stone Age and ushered in the Neolithic Stone Age. But the Sidh but also brought about its demise. 

The Sidh lived in magical tents which hovered above the ground and moved as if sentient, unlike the ‘furry’ bark and thatch tents draped with furs of the Firbolgs  or the green briers of the Formorians crafted of green willow and garnished with wild flowering vines. This might perhaps mythically describe the emergence of the peoples of Zendula from their Paleolithic caves to the open landscape where they dwelled in ‘furry’ tents creeping about the land or else floating across the land. The Firbolgs had started to pile their hides and bark on poles to be pulled by reindeer, donkeys, or newly domesticated dogs. Then they harvest thatch or vines or leaves to roof the bark or hide tents before draping their furs. The Formorians carried few possessions and made willow houses wherever they moved or else flet tree houses in the branches of oak trees. So the Formorians moved invisibly across the forest as the Firbolgs more visibly moved on creeping feet of their wolf dogs and donkeys or in some cases reindeer. 

 The Sidh appeared to be much more sophisticated which was seen by the Barbaric and Savage Gods and Barbaric and Savage Elves as being more ‘godlike’.  Their ‘floating’ tents were mounted on large wheel wagons pulled by oxen or else another new and fearsome ‘monster’. For the Sidh brought not only oxen and cattle and sheep but also a strange new animal called the horse. The Barbaric and Savage Gods and their  Barbaric and Savage Elves called the Sidh were centaurs for they thought the men riding the strange animals were one creature. The Sidh also boosted composite recurve bows and arrows, more delicate flint weapons, and more sophisticated slings as well as harpoons. And there were descriptions of other things too. Strange bows that were fired horizontally instead of vertically. And made of something strange. A thing that was not wood or vine or stick. And the bows shot more lethal arrows and some of the arrowheads were not flint or stone but something of Magick. Today it is believed to have been the metal of crossbows. Metal had never ever been seen in the Heartlands before. There was no metal ore whatsoever anywhere in the Heartlands. And the Sidh also drove a lethal new weapon of war called the chariot. 

The speed and mobility of the Sidh as well as their more sophisticated stone weapons  and other weapons as well as their curious ‘Magick’ which they called Glamour quickly defeated the Barbaric and  Savage Gods and their Barbaric and Savage Elvish worshipers and drove the Barbarians and Savages further into the wild places such as the Blue Mountains and the Westlands. So the Sidh seized control of the rich Heartlands of Zendula Proper. And this conquest was aided and abetted by Oderic whose mischief had so divided the Barbaric and Savage Gods and the Barbaric and Savage Peoples as to spawn tribal wars upon one another so the Sidh could use division to conquer the Barbarians and the Savages while they slaughtered the Ice Age Giant Mammals toward total extinction which the Sidh called Monsters. The New Age of Gods and Monsters had commenced and the Sidh would now be the ‘Gods’ and the ‘Monsters’ would be the Ancient Stone Age People of Zendula.

The Sidh were an ingenious people of superior genetics as well as superior technology which was called Glamour or Magick. The Sidh symbolically declared war upon Father God of Fire for driving them out of their lost Hyperborean Paradise where they were once as good as immortal. They blamed Father God of Fire for inventing Time, Change, and Death or at least forcing the Sidh to now experience Time, Change, and Death. So the Sidh invented Competition, Strife, and War. And the horses allowed the Sidh to hunt and kill both wild animals and wild people. The horses allowed the Sidh to hit and run in raids too. The horses modernized Stone Age Warfare. The Formorians had to reinvent war which they did. The started to hit and run in guerrilla attacks and ambushes. They waged war like the wild wolf. It was that or else fleeing into exile from their wild forest. It was never like this before the Sidh came! The Barbaric and Savage Gods and their Barbaric and Savage Elves said the Sidh were evil gods. Very evil gods. Evil gods who were turning their primeval paradise into a nightmare of blood and slaughter.

But the Sidh also invented things. Many things. Superior bows and arrows. Superior slings. Superior spears. Yokes and bridles and bits to harness oxen and horses. Crude plows to break the virgin soil. They gathered up wild seeds called barley and wheat and sowed the seeds to grow more wild crops of grain. They hoarded this wild grain for themselves and did not share it with the Barbaric Ones or the Savage Ones. They killed off more and more of the dwindling Ice Age giant mega flora beasts which caused hunger —- but not for them. They invented grinding stones to crush the wild grain into porridge and also superior stone drills and cutting stones. They invented fired clay which they called pottery. Their domesticated wild sheep had evolved in the far north so the Sidh could cull the wool and spun it and weave it into the first woolens. And Oderic showed the Sidh his learning how to make linen. In an innocent world of nudity where the only adornments were flowers the Sidh now flaunted the new wealth of cloth. They also had better suede and leather too. Nudity and flowers suddenly seemed lessor. Inferior. ‘Poorer’. 

The Sidh brought along goats and a thing call cows and ‘milked’ the strange beasts to drink the ‘Milk of the Gods’. They did alchemy and turned this magical milk into butter and whey and cheese to keep them strong in winter and spring when everyone else was starving. The Sidh were bigger and stronger than the ‘runty’ Barbaric Ones and rivaled the Savage Ones. The Sidh always won and the Barbaric Ones always lost and the Savage Ones usually lost as well and the Barbaric and Savage Elves lost the most. The Sidh’s Glamour or Magick was so much stronger so they always won. The Barbaric and Savage Elves wondered if their Barbaric and Savage Gods the Firbolgs and the Formorians were worth worshiping if they were now losing to the Sidh.

The Sidh crafted ever more ingenious tools like fish hooks and harpoons. Their skin boats became wooden canoes carved out of whole trees courtesy of their superior stone axes and also Magick axes and spears crafted out of Magick called ‘metal’ which they had arrived with (though the Magick metal was now being worn down from over use and was breaking down along with the Magick which they called ‘technology’). The Sidh herded ever larger and larger herds of cows, goats, sheep, oxen, bulls, as well as horses as they took over the land from the Barbarians and the Savages. Instead of sharing the land the Sidh hoarded the land. ‘Owned' the land.

After the initial disasters shortly after their arrival while being exhausted and demoralized by the harshness of the long migration into exile, the Sidh learned enough survival skills to survive winter better because of the Magick of their superior weapons and the Magick of their herds and the Magick of their improvised harvests and the Magick of their milk and cheese.So they starved less and stayed bigger and stronger than the Barbaric Ones and the Savage Ones. Unlike the Barbaric People and the Savage People the Sidh were lactose tolerant so they had more sources of protein during the times of winter famine. They could hoard wild seed to ride them over to the summer bounty too. 


The Sidh were so much larger and more powerful than the Barbaric Ones and the Savages Ones that it become harder and harder to compete with the Sidh as the Sidh took over more and more land. The Sidh said they ‘owned’ the land now. The Sidh moved from spring to summer to autumn to winter sites with their herds. These sites now boasted border stone markers and also piles of elaborate stone edifices which they lived in instead of caves. They were called ‘buildings’. The buildings did not move. The buildings were not suppose to move. The buildings were rooted to the soil. 

The Formorians resolved to stop this and they invented ever more brutal guerrilla attacks. Hit and run to inflect the maximum damage before vanishing into the forest. Hit and run attacks here and there and everywhere to force the Sidh to keep chasing them. Force the Sidh to keep moving so they could not settle down and put down roots. So the war would drive the Sidh relentlessly from hit and run to battle or attack. Drive the Sidh here and then burn there. Drive the Sidh there and then burn here. 

 By now even the Formorians were becoming runty, unlike their Ancient Ancestors the Denisovan Giants. And the Formorians were struggling in the long winters because of their dark complexions as the Sidh killed off more and more of the old mega Ice Age giant flora. The Formorians were starting to starve. The Sidh with their depigmented complexions and lactose tolerance and skillful herding and terrifying horses and especially their war chariots and Magick weapons were slaughtering the Formorians and terrifying the Firbolgs who kept trying to live in peace  —- to no avail. Balor Of The Evil Eye refused to surrender. He invented ever more effective guerrilla insurgency attacks to devour the Sidh’s camps. Hitting the spring camp when the Sidh was at their summer camp. Burning the winter camp before the Sidh could move from their autumn camp. ‘Burning the roots!’ Balor Of The Evil Eye said according to the ancient myths and epics.

 Arawn who commanded the warriors of the Sidh tried to make peace treaties garnished by gifts with the Barbaric Gods and their Barbaric Peoples and the Savage Gods and the Savage Peoples despite the mischief of Oderic who had ‘gone native’. Arawn wooed Oderic over to the Sidh. Arawn had a sort of Magick that controlled Oderic. Whenever the short, hairy Oderic looked into the violet grey eyes of the tall, handsome, blond god Arawn his own hazel eyes seemed to melt and water over and his bushy eyebrows would go limp. So Oderic abandoned the ‘quant’ and ‘picturesque’ Firbolgs trying to just live peacefully in the forest with the Dark Elves for the violet grey eyed Arawn. That doomed the Firbolgs no less than the Formorians. ‘Why give me a gift with your left hand Arawn when your right hand carries a sword?’the king of the Firbolgs told the Sidh.

Everything about the Sidh appeared to be better —- and getting ever better. Their saddles became better. They developed stirrups. Their bridles and bits became better. Instead of leather it became leather and bone. Their wheels soon boasted spokes and became ever faster. Their wagons became bigger. Their chariots became faster. Their weapons because ever more lethal despite their dwindling supplies of the Magick they called ‘metal’. They wore out their curious garb from Hyperborea but their linen was getting better all of the time and so was their wool. They reinvented bee keeping instead of relying on wild honey and domesticated the bee. Arawn and Oohagh The Fair debated endlessly over the bees as if children. ‘There were no bees in the dark northern forest or our dying fields’ Arawn would say. ‘We must treasure the bees here! Honey is better than gold!’ 

And Oohagh The Fair would fuss too. The myths always hinting of her fears of her cauldron being empty wherein she distilled medicines and alchemy. One myth has Oohagh The Fair chastising Oderic: ‘Why couldn't you learn about the cunning of the herbs when you lived among the Firbolgs? The world is entirely different here …. Everything is different here…’

Though the myths and legends and epics hint of the fears of the Sidh they appeared to be the masters of the land they were conquering. Their dogs were better than wild dogs. Their domesticated sheep, cattle, milk cows, oxen, and goats were better. So was their domesticated chickens. The Barbaric and Savage Peoples who relied on hunting and gathering could not compete with domesticated herds or horses.The Sidh domesticated the pig. They sowed wild grains in the summer fields and then migrated herds to lush Arcadian meadows of The Pale before returning in autumn to reap the wild grains — such as Balor Of The Evil Eye did not burn or loot. For Balor learned fast in a way that the Firbolgs could not.

So the Sidh killed the Barbaric and Savage Gods and their Barbaric and Savage Elves who ate the wild grain first, unable to understand the concept of ‘private property’. Instead of sharing Mother God’s bounty the Sidh harnessed and bridled Mother God’s bounty with ‘fences’ and ‘borders’ and ‘possessed’ it. They cut down swathes of forest to plant and killed more and more of the wild animals leaving none for the Wild People. Balor Of The Evil Eye would watch from the edge of the dark forest as Arawn fought with his own over how to handle the escalating war against the Wild People. Balor’s cataract milky eye missing nothing for it could see things no normal eye could see. And Balor could see that Arawn did not agree with Dagda the Rex or Rix or Raj or King. Arawn kept pleading for peace treaties and gifts and tithes to the Wild People for the ‘loan’ of the Wilderness. Dagda The Bow kept ordering Arawn to ‘Slay the Savage Barbarians for they are bleeding us and we are hemorrhaging supplies! Once we use up that which we arrived with we will be no better than the Savage Barbarians!’

Balor’s Evil Eye missed nothing. The Sidh had a magical rune called the Swastika which was more powerful than any rune the Barbaric and Savage Gods possessed. So Balor inverted the Magick and used it against the Sidh. He carved the inverted Magick on the severed foreheads of the Sidh his Formorians slain and hung the severed heads as if strange fruit on the wild trees for the Sidh to find. Balor watched from the wilderness as the Sidh introduced the Magick of hierarchy of power and privilege and the thing called ‘chain of command’ so he inverted it and disrupted the ‘chain of command’ to discombobulate the Sidh. Balor used Arawn’s clashes with Dagda The Bow to his advantage by tricking Dagda into ordering Arawn to wage retributive counter attacks. This just aggravated ever more aggressive tribal wars by the terrifying Formorians. The Sidh felt ever more intimidated by Balor’s masterful psychological manipulation of their weaknesses. Balor attacked the most precious things: the ‘supplies’ of the Sidh which could not be replaced. Arawn’s attempts to make peace failed utterly and the failure discredited Arawn in the eyes of Dagda The Bow. 

So the Sidh waged their most powerful Magick, the  the Magick of the Ashvamedha: the Horse Sacrifice to buy the awe of Father God of Fire with the bones and flesh and especially the blood of the war horse. Queen Oohagh The Fair sacrificed the blood by slashing the jugular to fill the magical cauldron for Dagda The Bow to offer as sacrifice as the Rix or Rex or Raj. The King. And these were all alien words. And other strange words like Aryaos.  Uttered one way it mean ‘Aryan’. Uttered another way it meant Heroes. Especially the word ‘Blond’ was alien for the Sidh were mostly blond. And now these alien words ruled Zendula. But the rule was tenuous as Balor Of The Evil Eye used the Sidh’s strengths against them until their strengths turned into their weaknesses. If Dagda The Bow could be shamed before the eyes of the Sidh then instead of the sacrificial horse the King would have die! Dagda’s authority to rule hinged on his ability to wage the wars he was unleashing. So all Balor had do to was draw out the wars until Dagda lost face and Arawn lost his supplies to wage war. 

The myths and legends and epics offer much confusion and also many curious details about this time of the ‘Savage Wars’. The Sidh had many alien words to describe the world they had left and  no words for the world they had arrived into. They had words for the northern wilderness where they migrated from including words for evergreen trees, oaks, ash, birch, and tundra too and frozen water and strange animals not seen on land and also words like Flmbulvetr. The All Consuming Icy Hell. But the Sidh did not have words for wild orchard trees or wild berries typical of the Heartlands or the gentle trees of the Heartlands such as the elm or the has or the chestnut. They did not have words for diverse fauna thy found such  or the donkey which they despised. They flustered over the bee. They flustered over the different predator birds or the song birds. Arawn in one legend wept on hearing for the first time the song of the Nightingale and used up precious grain feeding the wild bluebirds. 

They also brought dogs but different dogs from the wolf-like dogs of the Barbaric Gods and their Barbaric Worshipers.  Th Sidh dogs indicated a longer domestication time of  canine evolution.The Sidh had words for lakes and rivers and especially the shallow tundra lakes of spring but not the nature of the rivers and lakes of the Heartlands. They had endless words for odd atmospheric anomalies like the Sun Dog or the Moon Halo or the Northern Light but not the seasonal fog or mist anomalies of the Heartlands. They had endless words for flint which they called ak. The ak axe. The ak knife. The ak dagger. The ak drill. The ak throwing spear. They had endless words for metal but there was no metal ore in the Heartlands. They had endless words for the horse such as Ulster, Hengist, Ashvins, Ashva, Aspa, Asa, Equus, Eku, and Epo. They worshipped the Sky and Father God of Fire more than Mother God of the Healing Waters. But they were also confrontational with Father God as if bribing Father God with sacrifices instead of taking the knee and worshiping Father God with humility. Then they warred with Father God and the Shadow of His Nature: the Shadow of Father God —- the sentient Shadow of Father God —the Dark Lord.

Oohagh The Fair of the Sidh held elaborate horse sacrifices to bless their patriarch and rex or rix or raj  which is to say their king Dagda The Bow called the Ashvamedha. The Ashvamedha was considered an ancient and potent form of Glamour. Magick. The left over bones were given to Father God. The feast was offered to Dagda to offer to the people as their king to show his power and authority to rule as if a god. And the Ashvamedha terrified the Barbaric and Savage Gods and their Barbaric and Savage Worshipers though Oderic appeared amused by it and wrote of it in his srcoll  of Flammarion as he ‘observed its novelty as the Sidh devolved’.’The Blood is the Life’ so the Sidh started to do sacrifices of animals and also human beings which they called ritual ‘executions’.Why waste an opportunity? It allowed people who defied or mutinied against the Sidh or Dagda to be ritually slain as Black Glamour. The Magick of Human Sacrifice. The more the Sidh lost confidence as they lost control the more the Sidh did such Black Glamour.

Arawn The Warrior especially engaged in Glamour, Magick, which required the blood of human sacrifice which was odd for as many myths, legends, and epics record, Arawn was a sensitive soul and regretted the ‘Savage Wars’ which Dagda unleashed but he was expected to wage. Through Arawn commanded the improvised military of the Sidh he was clearly primarily, originally, an artist and creator of advanced technology and devices, some of which still cannot be fully explained to this day. Arawn would start his creation of powerful talismans and devices by doing Black Glamour ie Magick by slashing his own flesh to bleed. His Magick talismans and devices all supposedly drink human blood. All of his powerful Glamour was apparently ignited by blood. The myths, legends, and epics all stress this. It is hard to explain the meaning rationally or scientifically. Before the arrival of the Sidh the Prehistoric World did not have this particular fetish though they did engage in ritual bog sacrifices after disasters and perhaps during the Winter Solstice to bribe Father God to bring back the sunny warmth of spring and defeat the darkness of winter. But it was the Sidh in general and Arawn in particular who introduced Blood Sacrifice.

The modern examination of Arawn’s surviving talismans and devices, especially the last ones, have been confirmed to be ancient technology sheathed in ornate exteriors such as cauldrons or spear heads or swords or totems or charms or ritual objects. The exterior is elegantly  prehistoric and a clear precursor of the First Age of Elvish City States in their sinuous elegance and exquisite detail. The interiors are complex and deceptive and often sheathed to prevent dissection for analysis. But they do generate powerful auras and crystal piezoelectric energy and also magnetic energy. And there is at least some scientific evidence to indicate that at least some of the talismans have an unexplainable chemical reaction to human blood. But the stress in the myths and legends and epics on the blood of human sacrifice while in Arawn’s case often meant Arawn slashing his flesh might also indicate an escalating suicidal depression of this mysterious ancient genius.

Oderic was wooed by Arawn’s Magick and also Arawn’s blond hair and tall, stalwart appearance and strikingly violet grey eyes. Oderic called Arawn ‘Aryan’. Aryan + Arawn. Arawn = Aryan. But Oderic’s jealousy did not help Arawn. Quite the contrary. The Firbolgs now felt abandoned by Oderic. They became very afraid as the Dark Wizard appeared to be seduced by this ‘Aryan’ called Arawn. Oderic did not love them anymore. Oderic now loved Arawn. The Firbolgs had not wanted to wage war against the invaders like Balor Of The Evil Eye whose Formorians were now waging aggressive insurgency warfare. But now the Firbolgs felt they had no chose but to fight. After Angus Mac Org seduced and abandoned a  Firbolg Princess Arawn desperately tried to make amends with endless  gifts including a magnificent axe so powerful it could behead anyone or anything. Arawn’s gesture to give the hurt and angry Firbolgs such a weapon indicated his desperation to not alienate the Firbolgs and to prevent the Firbolgs from uniting with the Formorians in a united front against the Sidh.

The Sidh did worship or at least adopt Zendula’s ancient gods Father God of Fire and Mother God of The Waters. But they mostly adopted Father God of Fire with blood sacrifices which was the color of fire. The Sidh also worshiped the predator birds of the sky and of war. They gave tithes to Sojobo the Teugu Were Predator Bird God of War. They gave tithes to both ravens and wolves as well as engaging in ritual sun disk sacrifices. Myths now featured Arawn having magical wolves and ravens becoming his eyes and ears against the insurgency of Balor Of The Evil Eye. The wolf might mean Werewolves. To this day hybrid Dire Werewolves still live in the Far North no less than the Hrktos Sacred Were Bears. The role of the sentient all seeing raven is harder to explain except  the most simple explanation: Sojobo The Teugu had arrived in Zendula. But some historians now speculate that the metaphor personalizes some sort of communication device. Some sort of ancient technology.    

The Sidh turned these gods into their own patriarchal gods the way they took possession of the land of Zendula.  All within a strict patriarchal hierarchy of command. Dagda The Bow commanded the Sidh from his chariot of war commanded by his Gesith Maeve who protected him with a Magick spear. He welded Magick arrows that could slay anyone or anything. And Dagda The Bow represented absolute power though Oohagh The Fair who was his Consort and also his Adviser and Shadowy One (witch or shaman).The Sidh introduced bow and arrows to the Prehistoric Age. Up to then the spear thrower made the spear so effective there did not appear to be a reason for the bow. But of course after the bow was introduced everything else was obsolete the same way the introduction of the horse made slinking through the forest obsolete.

The bow changed form too as the Magick dictated and the arrows could be hurled through the sky which no sound which was most curious. Some of Dagda’s bows crafted by Arawn were held horizontally instead of vertically and featured not just wood but this alien thing called metal. They also had curious screw cranks which reconfigured the recurve bow into all sort of shapes. And we do have archaeological evidence of decayed remains of Sidh metal screws. Some of the bows could be loaded with multiple arrows. There were combination recurve bows which meant two bows were joined together to maximize the power. And the arrows inside some of the bow contraptions were most curiously elaborate and fantastical. Some descriptions almost sound like air rifles or some sort of air compression pump instead of a mechanical metal spring. 

What is interesting is the absence of a lot of archaeological evidence. The original Sidh monoliths were not used as graves and the later Sidh kurgan graves which did feature burials were much later after the Sidh devolved and resorted to more primitive technology such as the war bow. Also many Sidh graves that might have held artifacts were heavily looted during the Third Age of Darkness and Chaos —- especially for metal which was melted and reforged. Many Third Age swords of high quality steel can be proved to date to the Sidh. But the original form of the reforged metal cannot be guessed at. Certainly by the time the Twilight Terra Elves arrived the Sidh were devolving so that they did not observe anything they should learn about such as crossbows which were not introduced until the Second Age of Gildagad when Durham The Deathless was mass producing top grade carbon steel. 

Like a lot of Dwarves, Durham kept a lot of things close to his vest and did not share knowledge unless required to do so. Yet the sudden extravagance in the Second Age of elaborate crossbows of every size including huge siege crossbows which acted like a machine gun meant that Durham was sitting on a lot of knowledge. Dwarves can also be paranoid. The First Age as the Elve Age. The Dwarves were the masters of the Second Age. Once they were in control they produced amazing things once they also started to mass produce steel. And the best weapons of this type also required not just iron or wrought iron but steel. Bronze was useless for such technology. Wood cannot be carved to handle this. So while it cannot be proved, it must raise some suspicions that the Dwarves kept a lot of Sidh knowledge and probably the remains of Sidh technology up their sleeves in the Old Citadel until the Second Age to claim the acclaim. 

Oohagh The Fair who was Dagda’s Consort only mediated and as the Sidh imploded she did a lot of desperate mediation as the senior Shadowy One. She also did Glamour being a Shadowy One (shamanistic witch). Oohagh also taught her female worshipers Magick which she called ‘Glamour’ and also ‘alchemy’ or ‘chemistry’.  Oohagh definitely engaged in chemistry and was a chemist. She worked intensively with Arawn but not Oderic. Her followers because the Shadowy Ones and the Badbmalls though the latter later abandoned her to go ‘native’.  Arawn was both Dagda’s reluctant chief warlord and also the inventor of ingenious things for which myths and epics called him a  great Wizard of Glamour and a great creator of ‘Magick’ which further wooed Oderic over to his side and against the Firbolgs which Oderic now called the ‘Children of Lessor Gods’ 

Oderic’s jealous passiveness of Arawn would later cause Durham The Deathless to be equally jealous and resentful of Arawn’s genius which caused him to cache or conceal knowledge of Arawn that could have saved the Elves of the First Age and almost saved the Second Age of Gildagad when the Dwarves were at their zenith. We can understand the difficulty this caused because even now we are trying to recreate the genius of Arawn and it is difficult even today with all of our science. Back then the people involved would have considered the genius of Arawn to be Glamour or Magick or else something to be hoarded or concealed or jealously guarded and therefore easily lost. Even today not only is much of the genius of Arawn lost, much of the genius of the Dwarves is lost as well. All because of their paranoia, jealousy, and compulsion to hoard knowledge in guilds. For instance during the Third Age when the Dwarve Citadels were besieged and closed the knowledge how to mine ores and forge wrought iron and steel (as well as glass) was lost almost entirely. The monopoly had been so tightly held by the Dwarves. Even today it would be wondrous if we could rediscover just half of what Arawn was doing. Arawn did not want to wage war. He wanted to invent. Arawn was an inventor and artist reduced to waging war. 

MaeveThe Gesith (bodyguard or commander of the Heathweru bodyguards) drove Dagda’s chariot as the Virgin Amazonian Warrior and Shield Maiden while welding the Spear of Fire which drank blood. It could come and go on her verbal command. She called it a ‘drunne’. A drone? She was not the child of Oohagh and was supposed to have sprung forth fully grown so despite the myths the reality is that Maeve was probably part of the nearly ten thousand Sidh refugees from Hyperborea. Myths personify the Sidh as a family. They were an exodus. Maeve does reflect the Sidh and also other Proto Indo European cults of the Virginal Warrior and the Shield Maiden. Virginity was often considered sacred and Maeve as well as Oohagh The Fair considered virginity to be sacred. 

Oohagh’s Shadowy Ones originally were required to be virginal for the duration of the  cycle of the Star Venus. The original defection of the Badhbmalls was over how long they were required to be virgins. Today most Shadowy Ones can marry after offering their virginity as a ritual sacrifice to mark their right to graduate to become fully licensed Shadowy Ones (witches or shamans). But Court Shadowy Ones cannot marry or engage in sex until they retire from their court duties. Court Wizards in contrast do not have the same requirement except to marry. Sexual promiscuity is taboo. So is the violation of sacred virginity or pedophilia which is the violation of sacred virginity. This might simply be based on the biological burden of women being pregnant for so much of their lives which might burden their ability to do full time Glamour (Magick). Oohagh The Fair was married but Maeve was required (or else wanted) to be a sacred virgin. But this might also be part of a way to stop pedophilia and rape and to set rules for honorable marriage and moral behavior. 

Fianna The Slinger welded his lethal sling with ‘bullets’ and that sling also changed form. The word ‘bullet’ has always existed for the sling and that invites the question if Fianna’s sling was a sort of air rifle. Myths and epics describe Fianna’s sling as not being like the slings of the Barbaric Savages and Fianna was clearly described as a sort of expert snipper. Fianna’s later anger at Arawn relates to Arawn’s military failures and defective talismans and devices. Fianna’s legendary ability to kill anyone at any distance with his magical bullets seemed to wane over time as if his device was breaking down and he was forced to resort to a conventional slingshot to hurl his bullets forward. It is interesting that today the best examples we have of genuine Sidh metal are sling bullets. Mostly copper or early bronze but also some types of crude iron as well as two proven Sidh bullets of actual carbon steel. One is a piece of a broken bolt used as a bullet and was found imbedded in the skull of a Formorian. The other was also a broken piece of a screw and it was also found imbedded in the skull of a Prehistoric Orc. While the low quality copper and bronze were crudely cast for simple sling bullets the last two were clearly objects hastily used for self defense. The objects were also clearly now deemed worthless except as sling bullets. So the devices the objects were originally intended for were now clearly broken and unusable.

 Finnalana The Weaver who was Fianna’s twin sister ‘invented’ cunningly woven garments of wool and linen to conceal a withered third arm and hand. Oderic was recorded in myths of ‘inventing’ linen or at least reinventing how to do linen. And the sheep the Sidh brought to the Heartlands were not the wild sheep of the Heartlands but rather sheep which evolved further north and featured wool that could be effectively spun to be used as wool in fabric instead of crude felt. Myths usually personify events so Finnalana might be a personalization of a job or a person in a job to supply clothes for the Sidh as their original Hyperborean garb wore out. All myths, legends, and epics are explicit that Finnalana did have a deformed third arm and hand which inspired the warning ‘The Third Arm of Betrayal’. Finnalana was probably an example of the ‘Vanishing Twin Syndrome’ where one twin is absorbed in the womb or else was absorbed by the surviving twin. Sometimes the surviving twin does not absorb all of the sibling and a withered arm or limb might protrude. This is probably the case with Finnalana. 

Finnalana inspired the taboo for twins ever since and perhaps the taboo already existed for myths claim that only Oohagh The Fair knew that Finnalana was a twin who absorbed her twin in the womb. As she was the twin of Fianna that meant Fianna and Finnalana were part of triplets so it is remarkable that they survived and only survived by devouring their sibling in their mother’s womb. This certainly has led to the myth that Fianna and Finnalana were incestuous if they devoured their sibling in the womb. But the myths and legends of Fianna and Finnalana are also colored by their later treachery so we have to take all of this with a grain of salt. They could also have simply been lovers but not siblings. Certainly they were opposed to Arawn’s leadership in the escalating wars and were highly critical of Arawn and their nonstop criticism of Arawn did not help the situation.

Arawn was always fearful of Dagda inciting of ever more wars. His own policy was to appease the Barbaric and Savage Peoples. And Dagda underestimated Balor Of The Evil Eye’s ability to wage guerrilla warfare in the wilderness. By now Arawn’s  reserves of Glamour ie ‘Magick’ were running out. That was to say his supplies from Hyperborea were running out. Arawn was always being forced to retrofit things as they broke down or else reinvent things or else substitute things as the Magick broke down. Oderic assured Arawn that he could ‘Bamboozle the Savages’. Then Arawn would curse Oderic and go into his tent and weep and drink.  Myths, legends, and epics recount how Oderic would be frantic then and rush out to look for Magick stones that he called ‘metal’ to bring back as if precious gifts to Arawn. Once he found a stone in a river which he called ‘gold’ and rushed back to give it to Arawn. Arawn wept all the more. ‘What good is that? I need copper wire and a rock crystal galena and magnets you fool!’ 

However Oderic’s behavior was not entirely absurd even if the myths and legends did not understand what they were observing and describing. Arawn’s weapons and tools clearly were based on metal and that metal was running out and breaking down. Unless Arawn could find iron ore or any ore he could not begin to fix the situation of the Sidh’s devolving back into a Neolithic Stone Age society. And the Formorians were even preventing the Sidh from farming effectively and building a city to replace their lost city. The Formorian guerrilla insurgency wars were driving the Sidh here and there and everywhere as if wasps stinging a horse into a crazed gallop. And Arawn did not have enough Sidh to guard every field or bastion he was trying to create to recreate civilization. 

And evidence exists that Arawn was improving with weapons that were of wood and stone which greatly handicapped him. The Sidh clearly came from an advanced civilization that was at least on par with the Second Age of Gildagad and Ancient Rome as well as Ancient China at that point in time of the Iron Age. But by the end of the Prehistoric Age the Sidh were simply on the cutting edge of only Neolithic and Copper Age (including gold and silver) technology. The Sidh were devolving instead of evolving. Arawn certainly ushered in the Bronze Age and his last experiments were in iron ore from meteorites which incorporated carbon as in carbon steel. But they were also experiments and he did not have the  resources or industrial scale to mount a Metal Revolution. Therefore his talismans and devices increasingly were alternatives for the lack of metal in general and iron or steel in particular. 

Dagda The Bow had an elder son called Angus Mac Org The Bear. As Angus claimed a right to inherit he had to be the biological son, possibly the only biological son, of Dagda which explains Dagda’s behavior and ultimately his ruination and the ruination of the Sidh. Agnus Mac Org was Were. He was what the Barbaric and Savage Gods remembered hearing from their Ancient Ancestors the Neanderthals: The Hrktos. The Sacred Bear whose very name was taboo. But Angus Mac Org The Bear did not seem like a Hrktos. A Sacred Bear of The North. He seemed rather careless and nonchalant as he roamed the wilderness with the Barbaric and Savage Gods and their Barbaric and Savage Elves. He even went ‘native’ enough to marry a daughter of the King of the Firbolgs which offended the rest of the Sidh though Arawn create a magical axe as a wedding gift and finding The Bear gone having already abandoned his barbaric wife gave the talisman instead to the Firbolgs as a gesture of both apology and reconciliation —- which failed. Angus would thus procreate with anyone or anything and thus spread Were across Zendula.

During this time Oderic, seeing the secretively precarious state of the  Sidh and wooed by the handsome ‘Aryan’ joined Arawn who wanted (needed) to explore the towering mountains of The Pale for strange stones which ‘melted’ to engage in alchemy. Oderic ‘waxed nostalgic’ and ‘lamented his Lost Homeland’ and his Lost Citadel and spoke of the Hyperboreans who slept in the magical Vara as if enchanted in their ice crystal tombs waiting to be awoken once more. But he admitted the creatures he created, the Dwarves, were not as reliable as ‘Automatons’ having a ‘mind of their own’ who probably has fled Hyperborea by now. But where the Dwarves were was beyond his craft to know. Then Oderic went ‘red in the face’ and shouted ‘Why does everyone accuse me of being wrong? Hyperborea was doomed and everyone is dead except for us! If anyone lived at all they would be the Dwarves and the Dwarves would be here by now! So everyone is dead except us!’

Arawn and Oderic explored the mountains of The Pale with hammers to chip away at the stone. The Pale wooed Oderic as if siren for it reminded him of his Lost Homeland which he called Hyperborea and his Lost City’ which he called The Citadel. But the caves and caverns of The Pale were already inhabited by monsters. The Monsters of the Darkness. So Arawn and Oderic had to slay the Monsters of the Darkness of the Caves of The Pale. So Oderic lamented for his ‘Children of Stone’ ie the Dwarves. The Firbolgs not being ‘good enough to be my Scion’. Then Oderic told Arawn he should marry and sire scion. Arawn only shook his head. ‘You know why I cannot read the Tapestry of Destiny to see the Seed of my Blood therein!’


Another Wild God now appeared as the Sidh unleashed war upon the world: Badhb The Triad Goddess of War. She was both Morrigu fierce courage, Neamham berserker valor, and Macha intoxication of violence indicating the mythic consolation of more ancient wild gods into one lethal new god worthy of the all conquering and warring Sidh. And while the Sidh were both hierarchal and patriarchal they had a reverence for both Shadowy Ones and for Amazonian Battle Maidens. Badhb became their Goddess of War. But she was a fearsome inspiration! Arawn warned that ‘We are descending into damnation if we turn to such as Badhb and Oderic! We are losing our humanity!’ Dagda replied ‘We have already lost our Godhood so losing our humanity is a redundancy of remorse!’

Another Wild God also now appeared: Sojobo the Harbinger of War. He was a Were Teugu of a paranormal species well known throughout Japan, India, and China indicating the first Asian or else Indian migrations into Zendula from Eurasia. To be exact the Teugu were magical predatory Were birds of war. Part Human. Part predatory Were Bird of the battlefield and death. In India they were called the Garuda. The Teugu were Carrion Were Bird Gods of War who blessed war and mentored warriors such as the eagle, the hawk, the owl, the raven, the rook, and the crow. This buttressed the Sidh view of the bird gods of war and especially the raven as the eyes of the Sun and the Harbingers of War. Arawn’s eyes were the ravens and the wolves. By this time the myths and epics say the ravens were Were Shadowy Ones who could morph into ravens. The wolves were  Werewolves. Were was therefore spreading and mutating within the Sidh and among other peoples of the Heartlands. This also led to the belief in the Banshee ghost who washes the shroud of the warrior about to die only to seize his soul on the battlefield as demonic carrion birds after the battle feasting on human flesh of the dead. So the worshipers of the gods and demigods of war made Zendula their home and the land bled.

Dosojin the God of Exile had came with the Sidh which reinforced their origin in the Lost Land of the Hyperboreans. Dosojin viewed Zendula Proper as the Land of Exile. Dosojin spoke much of the Patriarchs of the Sidh who stayed in the increasingly dire North where the Wyrms of the Ice Demons besieged their magical Citadel and slew their Ancestral homeland with the icy hand of permafrost and glaciers. Dosojin because the God of Exile and keep threatening to ‘go home’. It was a view now shared by more and more Sidh.

Another Patriarch of the Sidh was called Nemed of the Last of the Court of the Tuatha de Dannan. Nemed had appeared with Oderic just ahead of the migration of the Sidh into their Land of Exile. But then Nemed vanished leaving Oderic to his mischief. Then Nemed reappeared as the trail blazer leading  Dagda The Bow and the Sidh into the Zendulian Heartlands. Nemed was senior to Dagda and was the oldest Patriarch of the Sidh. But he let Dagda command the Sidh. Nemed oversaw construction of stone monoliths and kurgan hills incasing stone chambers and other stone edifices and attempts at building the New City on the Hill. But then just as mysteriously Nemed left the Sidh. He gestured to Dagda The Bow as the Rix or Rex or Raj or King of the Sidh.  He gestured and bowed as if to a king. Then he simply vanished —which is to say Nemed left the Sidh. His vanishing is a cause of much dispute in myths, legends, an epics which record prehistoric history.

     Oderic said Nemed became homesick and simply decided to ‘go back home’. But myths also record a confrontation between the short, stocky, ginger haired, blustering, mischief maker Oderic and the tall, willowy, greying blond Nemed. From the disjointed oral Prehistoric memories it appears that Oderic and Nemed quarreled despite Dosojin’s attempts to mediate. Oderic was a mischief maker and he was ever quarreling over the why and wherefore of the Sidh’s exile from the Lost Homeland of Hyperborea and if the Sidh had abandoned it ‘too soon’. Oderic who appeared first, within a year of the cataclysm which was the Younger Dryas,  insisted that the Lost Homeland was defeated by the demonic ice Wyrms and the Patriarchs of the ‘Our Diverse Peoples’ had been forced to retreat inside or else under the stones of the earth in a magical vara enclosure or bastion where they slept their enchanted sleep in ice crystal tombs neither dead or alive but destined never to wake again. Oderic insisted that the Hyperborea was lost and ‘Our Diverse Peoples must reconcile ourselves to our bitter exile and conquer this new land from which we can raise up again as if a phenix anew’. Nemed did not agree.

Nemed predicted the End of the Sidh in this ‘stolen land which is not ours’ and also insisted that Lost Hyperborea was not abandoned and the Vara magical stony enclosures deep underground or else inside the rocks of the enclosure which he called the Citadel would save them. Nemed insisted that the cataclysm which ravished the far north was but ‘the breath of icy winter’s despair that spring would never come again’. Then Nemed accused Oderic of cowardice for abandoning the Citadel ‘which he had built’. Oderic struck Nemed. To be exact: Nemed’s chest for Oderic was short and Nemed was very tall. Then Nemed turned and walked away as Dosojin wept for the bitterness of exile. Oohagh The Fair tried to mediate to no avail. Her magical hair turning from golden blond to black in despair. Oderic cried ‘I will build the Citadel anew here!’ But Nemed replied ‘And your Citadel will kill you as it has all but killed Arawn. Read the stars. They predict your defeat and the defeat of all who listen to your mischief.’

The next morning Nemed gave Dagda The Bow a final prophecy and then simply walked northward. He said he was ‘going home.’ Nemed’s final prophecy was this: Father God of Fire had created three gifts of Change, Time, and Death. But Dagda had created three curses: Strife, Competition, and War. And it would not be Father God of Fire or his dark, flickering, sentient Shadow who would bring about the downfall of the Sidh but rather Dagda.  Nemed suggested that the Sidh should build their Kurgan Tombs accordingly. ‘We abandoned our Citadel. We abandoned our Vara. We abandoned our Homeland. We deserve what will happen next.’

According to the myths, legends, and epics of the Prehistoric Age the Sidh responded to this dire forewarning by doing many solar rituals at Taralii which was their sacred place wherein Oderic and Nemed built great stone monoliths and stone circles including the great stone alter for the Horse Sacrifice as well as rituals predicting the eclipses of the Sun by the Moon and the Moon by the Sun which they called the Head of the Dragon ie the Blood Moon or else the Tail of the Dragon ie the Skull of the Wyrm. For the stone circles were set cunningly to predict the stars and the raising of the sun on the solstice as well as eclipses which gave them much power over the Barbaric and Savage Gods and their Barbaric and Savage Worshipers the Dark Elves and the Green Elves. 

At the same time Arawn was nearly killed by a terrible shadow in the caves of The Pale which burned his neck so that the burn of a dark hand appeared ever afterwards on his pale flesh as if some evil thing sucking out Arawn’s aura. Thus the Shadow of Father God of Fire was born. And this dark, and now sentient  shadow would evolve into the Shadow of His Nature and then the Dark Lord. Arawn later warned Oderic that ‘We have awoken something dire in the depths of the heart of darkness of The Pale!’

Oderic was furious with Arawn for saying this and howled and curst and pulled out his balding hair and his mangy beard in fury. ‘I have found such priceless beauty within The Pale! The Glamour of Mithril!’ ‘Arawn replied ‘What use is a pretty form of silver that cannot be hardened? What good is gold or silver? There is no iron ore there! I almost died for nought! I need copper and tin! I need copper wire! I need rock crystal and magnetic lodestones! The amber I tried to combine with rock crystal  was worthless! My pot of pickled lightening is better! And using my flute’s music to active the power was utterly useless too! This mithril is a pretty deceit! And if you play away your life with this pretty deceit it will kill you!’ Mithril would indeed later kill the Dwarves that choose to worship it. Indeed when Arawn came back from a second trip to The Pale with copper ore he casually told Oderic that ‘I found arsenic! Not as good as tin but a temporary substitute! And the chemical reaction of arsenic and mithril  slightly hardens the pretty babble that so mesmerizes you! Why it is almost as good as a copper knife! Oh what wars we can win now with your mithril knife!’

As the tall Sidh god ambled back to his war tent Oderic all but went berserk according to the myths. ’What did you say? What did you say?’ In reply Arawn tossed out a lump of a shimmering ingot of mithril.  Oderic picked it up and ran off. Not to be seen again for weeks. He emerged wane and sick but still greedily clutched the mithril ingot to his mangy chest. 

‘I see you do not love me anymore Oderic but rather the mithril’ Arawn’s voice said from within the tent. Then Arawn tossed out a piece of copper ore forged and hardened to Oderic’s feet. It was crude bronze. ‘Which is better  Oderic? Bronze or your silly babble of shimmering mithril as if moonlight over water?’ In reply Oderic cried ‘Mithril is the most beautiful metal in all of the world! And as both need arsenic why not make something beautiful if we cannot yet make steel?’ Arawn emerged from his war tent and picked up the crude bronze and cut the crude mithril in half with the crude blade. Then without another word he left Oderic in the dust clutching his obsession which was destined to kill the Dwarves.

Another being appeared after Nemed departed forever with Dosojin running after Nemed’s tall lanky form as if a small lost child. This being was another hybrid human of unknown origin though not a god like the Sidh though he was not a Mundane Mere Mortal either. This hybrid human  migrated back and forth between the forbidding, dense, dark, forested wilderness along the permafrost line and the more benevolent temperate forests and meadows of the land north of the Heartlands. It was Myrddin Emrys Wyllt. All descriptions both vary and yet confirm that he looked only slightly human and not like any human. He wore a rune carved into his forehead and his eyes were described as most strange. He was not of the Lost Homeland of Hyperborea but rather the wild forests beyond the ‘Land of Many Lakes’. He might have been the hybrid scion of a Sidh and some weird Were being. Wyllt was certainly a sort of shape shifter. But he could appear to be any sort of Wild Thing at will. He could pass his hand over his face and appear for a moment to be any Wild Thing. And his eyes were described as ‘most curious and strange’. 

Wyllt felt pity for the Barbaric and Savage Elves whose Barbaric and Savage Gods, the Firbolgs and the Formorians, were being defeated by the Sidh. He led some of the Green Elves northward to escape the Sidh. ‘Dosojin says exile is bitter. I say exile is sweet if it is escape! Escape with me my Wild Things for I am the Eternal Protector of all Wild Things!’ Other Green Elves at this time fled over the Ice Pass of The Pale which Arawn had found into Greenwood. The Dark Elves saw the defeat of their Barbaric Gods, the Firbolgs, at the hands of the Sidh. So they fled to the Westlands and the Blue Mountains on the advice of Wyllt. So it appeared at least momentarily that the Sidh triumph was complete and they commanded the richest part of Prehistoric Zendula. The Heartlands. But before Myrddin Emrys Wyllt led the Green Elves away into exile farther north he warned the Sidh that their burial place would be called Taralii and they should finish building their mighty kurgan burial mounds and towering kurgan graves there in anticipation of their doom for Nemed had built the ‘Fiendish Machine which predicts the Fall of the Sidh and carved the runes of the date of their extinction’ upon its stony finger’. 

Arawn remembered the warnings of Nemed and heeded the warnings of Myrddin Emrys Wyltt. When Oderic finished being violently sick from mithril poisoning he helped Arawn finish the final building started by Nemed of the great monolith at this mysterious place called Taralii. The huge fallen monolith points West to the Land of Death and one day a year during the sunrise of the solstice its shadow pointed to a magical dip in the desolate landscape from which Arawn predicted that the sun would set for the last time on the triumph of the Sidh. This would be the infamous battlefield of Dannoura. Then Arawn built a great kurgan hill tomb for Dagda The Bow and Oohagh The Fair to be their Vara. Their underground vara. Their enclosure. Their sanctuary. Their tomb. But for himself Arawn said ‘my tomb lies elsewhere an in a different form of edifice.’ This became the talisman still guarded today by The Master of the Havens called the Cosmati Mosaic which is an organic computer powered by the genius of Arawn and brought to life by the human sacrifice of Oderic.

As the Mesolithic Age evolved into the Neolithic New Stone Age Zendula Proper changed as the Sidh assumed the mastery over diverse hybrids of  Homo sapiens as the power of the Barbaric and Savage Gods waned. There were now appearing more and more  hybrid humanoids just as there were many gods. It was a trickle now but the Mundane Mere mortals would relentlessly migrate into Zendula from the west. The first are the Merrach. A ruddy, flaxen form of Indo European Mere Mortals with baby blue eyes and curious garb they called trousers of plaid’.  Arawn awed the Merrach peasants and then offered them land to farm under the patronage of the Sidh. Arawn finally had his peasant farmers to farm and guard and maintain his crude agricultural enterprises! But he still needed to have his Sidh warriors guarding the Merrach farms as well as the extensive Sidh herds of horses, cattle, dairy cows, goats, pigs, chickens, geese, and sheep that was the portable wealth of the Neolithic Age. So the Sidh were still required to stand guard here and there and everywhere waiting like targets for Balor Of The Evil Eye’s Formorian warriors to ambush. 

Arawn fussed with the Merrach peasant farmers and waged protective wars against nonstop Formorian ambushes and raids. Arawn needed the Merrach peasants so he offered them clientage which was a quid pro quo of duty and responsibility. Profit and obligation. Arawn tried to make it a win win after his failure to establish a similar relationship with the Firbolgs or Formorians or the Wild Elves. Right now the Sidh were a precarious majority but soon of course the Merrach would become the majority though demographic conquest. The Mere Mortals were inferior in genetics but reproduced much faster than the Sidh or the Barbaric and Savage Gods or the Wild Elves. 

But war was seasonal. Mud and snow was hard on warfare. So in the winter Arawn and Oderic engaged in alchemy experiments in stones that ‘melted’ to invent (reinvent) copper, gold, and silver metals  as well as early  crude bronze (which required arsenic which was deadly) . But this metal which along with polished gemstones found in The Pale revolutionized the heretofore world of stone. It was considered an omen. From this alchemy Arawn created his final Five Talismans of Dagda. But the talismans were both powerful in Glamour (Magick) and  also powerful being ‘devices’ and also were dire because they drank blood. It was  a dire omen. Arawn said ‘Everything I have created devours my flesh!’ And indeed his alchemy of metallurgy was turning his flesh gangrenous because of arsenic poisoning. Arsenic poisoning was a common blight of all early metallurgists. And by now Arawn was drinking heavily for Finnalana had dabbled to invent alcohol to poison Arawn so her lover Fianna would watch Arawn die by inches. 

Arawn and Oohagh The Fair invented pottery. Pottery kilns are part of forge kilns. Metallurgy and pottery are metallurgy byproducts just as the search for ore follows the search for exotic raw gems and minerals to be used as dyes. Oohagh was also an alchemist (chemist) and she was helping Arawn with the alchemy of metallurgy. Everything had to be reinvented. Imagine finding yourself strangled in a foreign land with only the gear in your back pack. Even the most sophisticated scientist if removed from his modern laboratory to the middle of the wilderness would struggle to invent something he might have a book full of theoretical knowledge about. 

This was the problem for all of the Sidh. Finnalana perfected weaving anew as their supplies from Hyperborea dwindled down to furs and skins. Arawn and Oderic perfected polished stone tools to replace complex flint tools as well as the first new copper weapons as the struggled with the chemistry of bronze (which required deadly arsenic if tin could not be found). Copper wiring was still vexing Arawn. Without copper wiring he could not retrofit ‘magnets’ to light the camp of the Sidh despite his supply of raw new rock crystal and other crystalline minerals in The Pale and the Foothills of The Pale. Fire and polished stone axes were used to create larger canoes to sail the rivers which were much better than the birch bark canoes of the Barbaric and Savage Gods. The domestication of more animals occurred as the last ‘Monsters’ of the Ice Age vanished forever from over hunting including the giant stag and giant deer and giant musk ox and giant sloth and also the saber tooth cat and the dire wolf. 

The extinction of the wooly mammoth led to the mass extinction of other ice age animals which needed it to terra form the earth for them. Now Mankind terra formed the Heartlands to meet their needs instead. More wild grains were sowed and slowly evolution caused those wild grains to grow ever larger and heavier, requiring man to harvest and sow what heretofore nature and animals did. Wild fruit trees were likewise cultivated and hybridized so the fruits grew larger too as Mankind domesticated the orchards to serve them instead of nature and the animals. Arawn found every reason to fuss with this Merrach peasants on the land and he often visited them in their combination barn-homes of waddle and thatch as if a democratic fellow traveler. He helped them with supplies including copper axes and helped them with their herds by providing better breeding bulls from the Sidh herds. The  Merrach were lactose tolerant so he provided better breeding cows too. Oxen. Whatever they needed. Merrach myths from this time started to extol Arawn for his kindness, attentiveness, and care of them. He treated them as pioneers and loyal allies of the Sidh. He exchanged tales with the Merrach how they each arrived in the Heartlands from their lost homelands far away. Myths would recount the god Arawn eating a peasant’s meal and laughing and praising the food as better than ‘any that I have eaten in many an age!’

The Sidh themselves struggled to build larger summer and winter campsites indicting that back in Hyperborea they relied on Oderics’ ‘children’ the Dwarves to do this. So stonework was yet another thing the Sidh had to reinvent. Arawn would suggest lumber and waddle and thatch and praised the homes of the Merrach to the shocked Sidh. That clearly was not worthy of gods! And the Sidh still migrated seasonally with their herds which required summer and winter pastures to ride out the winter season. And the Formorians still fought a fierce insurgency war of hit and run attacks. There was no time for peace for the Sidh. Civilization cannot be rebuilt if there is no peace unless there is also demographic conquest so that one or the other of the enemy can be displaced and replaced and erased with the majority of the other. The Sidh were never more than some ten thousand refugees. They were twice the number of the Formorians but not enough to dominate the landscape. And the wars kept their population small. It was becoming one step forward and two steps back. 

 The Sidh were struggling with ‘farming’ as if relearning something they had long ago ceased to do because they had someone else to do it for them. The Sidh appeared to have been an urban elite who had lots of inferiors to do everything for them. Now everything was an effort because they had to relearn or reinvent or retrofit everything anew while waging nonstop wars against the now bitter Barbaric and Savage Peoples. The Formorians were proving to be masters of guerrilla fighters using the dwindling wild forests to do hit and run attacks on the Sidh. The Sidh were dwindling in population as war and survival wore them down. The Mundane Mere Moral Merrach were faster at reproduction than the Sidh.  They could afford to die in the Sidh wars. The Sidh could not afford to die in their own wars. They could not replace themselves so easily. 

Arawn and Oderic expanded their runes to become the alphabet for Zendula. Arawn carved them on copper sheets and placed them in every Merrach village and also on stone Sidh border markers and cairns. The runes exist today in the thousands but an Elvish alphabet of vowels and consonants has replaced most of the ancient runes. The runes of the Sidh quickly replaced the cave paintings and totems of the Barbaric and Savaged Gods who found the runes demoralizing. An especially dire form of Magick. Arawn encouraged the Merrach peasants to try to learn the runes but few could. That disappointed Arawn. But the runes evolved into rune serpents which were curious circler rune carvings on wild monoliths by by Rune Smiths and Rune Wizards to evoke Glamour. Some of this is real but much is symbolic. A show of garbled symbols of runes with and without meaning as if a sort of pidgin rune  for Mere Mortals to be awed by and to feel blessed. Some of this mysterious rune craft still cannot be understood even today but it clearly meant and means something however obscure and mysterious.

The milk and cheese made the Sidh taller and stronger than the Barbaric and Savage Gods and their Wild Worshipers who were not lactose tolerant. But now some of the Sidh were intermarrying and spreading lactose tolerance to the indigenous populations though the Sidh genes appeared to be heavily recessive. And the new arrivals, the Merrach, were lactose tolerant though they were smaller than the Sidh and clearly were Merely Mortal and not gods or at least demigods. The Sidh Gods did not seen to be gods anymore. Just as the Firbolgs and Formorians had ceased to be Barbaric  and Savage Gods to the Dark and Green Elves the Sidh now ceased to be gods to the Barbaric and Savage People. Demigods maybe but gods? Arawn called it the Great Diminishing. 

But Arawn could still keep the Mundane Mere Mortal Merrach at bay for a while more. The Merrach were still small in number and were not murderously defiant like the Formorians. Nor did they have the memories of a Lost Paradise like the Firbolgs. The Merrach had somewhat similar world views to the Sidh and seemed to share certain values as if the Proto Indo Europeans which the Merrach were shared ancient ancestors with the Sidh. The Merrach were invaders too so the Formorians attacked them as well. Arawn revised clientage to woo the Merrach into joining his army as militia and to patrol and protect their farming villages so he could spread his diminishing professional warriors around to cover more besieged ground. Arawn showed the Merrach respect.

Arawn would come down the dirt path with his hearthweru of warriors along with pack mules and horses and a herd of beasts. Copper horns blaring! Battle flags waving! Cheers erupting! Then Arawn would help the Merrach build village barricades of massive wooden logs to defend the village against Formorian attack. The wild forest was still so intact the use of a thousand logs for a barricade defensive wall as economical. Arawn and his men would help the Merrach peasants to cut and haul the whole tree trunks to the village. Mules and horses dragging the tree trunks down the dirt or mud to the village site. Arawn sometimes used his own horse as a Merrach child rode on its back. Then Arawn would oversee construction as everyone used ropes and pulleys to levitate the whole tree trunks upright in hedge circles around the village. After the wall was built everyone would haul the wooden gates upward into place on massive wooden hinges. After that came the feast of celebration!

The celebration would always start with a ritual sacrifice and the lighting of a huge bonfire with the debris of construction. Then food was shared and mead. Arawn would ask the bard recite a song of celebration to memorialize the great achievement. Then Arawn would praise the Merrach and give away gifts of copper knives and axes along with fine stone axes. Then he would give gave fine bulls and horses (mares only) as status gifts to the village to upgrade their cattle and dairy cows. Then he gave lavish gifts of crystalline stone maces to the village elders to symbolically deputized them as Arawn’s representative. Later in the stay Arawn would monitor if his deputized village elders were doing a fair job and if the village was happy with them. Arawn would also hold court to deliver the law. But that was always later, well after the fun of the celebrations. 

Arawn’s penchant for gifts had not awed the Barbaric and Savage Gods or their Barbaric and Savage Elvish worshippers but Arawn’s gifts impressed the Merrach perhaps because Arawn gave the gifts personally as if medals of honor and respect. Arawn had also developed a hybrid by accident through the breeding of a horse and donkey. The mules were sterile but larger and excellent for yoking to a wagon or plow or else to ride. They did not have the status of Sidh horses and they were sterile so Arawn started to give mules away as gifts to each Merrach village family. It was both practical and helpful for the Merrach were a pragmatic people. So the arrival of Arawn soon became a parade as the Merrach eagerly watched for the first signs of the hearthweru in rough armor and weapons on their stallions riding and herding cattle, bulls, mares, dogs, and mules carrying packs of supples with Arawn in the lead on his favorite chestnut stallion, his blond hair shining in the sun. 

Many an epic would start thus! Followed by the building of a life saving barricade and a sacrifice bonfire before the epic drama would commence stealthily during the feast and the dancing around the bonfire. The drama always ended with either a magical event occurring during a hunt in the forest which Arawn would survive through his cunning and the valor of the village hero or else a domestic village crisis which would be solved through the wisdom of Arawn’s wise court of justice. The Merrach myths, legends, and epics always centered around Arawn. Other famous Sidh never appeared in Merrach oral lore except perhaps as a distant symbol of arrogance to contrast with Arawn’s compassionate personality, quiet heroism, and deceptively unassuming wisdom. Usually if there was another Sidh (other than his hearthweru bodyguards) that Sidh would be the villain. And usually the oral lore would climax with the villain being exposed for Arawn to chide by taking the side of the Merrach. Usually with the villainous Sidh riding off cursing Arawn as degrading himself by associating with the lowly Merrach only for Arawn to say loudly ‘I would rather degrade myself with these fine folk that preside arrogantly over a feast with such as thee!’

Unlike the other Sidh, Arawn was still grudgingly respected even by the Barbarians and the Savages. The Fibolgs were bitter to all Sidh except Arawn. The Formorians would hold a truce long enough for Balor Of The Evil Eye (having only one eye the other being a cataract) to amuse Arawn with his sardonic banter. ‘It will be a shame when I am at last able to kill you Arawn’ the Formorian told his counterpart. ‘I will be sorry when I am at last forced to kill you too’ Arawn would reply. 

Or another myth would have Arawn say ‘I have a gift for you Balor Of The Evil Eye and it is not even poison or else the eye I plucked from a Formorian I slew in battle yesterday!’ Balor would laugh and gesture to the offered gift. ‘A gift Arawn? Are you reduced to trying to bribe me Arawn? Really? I cannot be bribed by your clever gifts though I will freely give you my respect! The day I can kill you in combat is the day I will achieve great honor for you are a worthy enemy!’ And Arawn would reply ‘And the day I must slay thee Balor is the day I will weep a tear ….or two.’

Or another myth would have the wane, weary Arawn laughing ruefully and telling Balor  ‘You and I are fellow warriors Balor! We can respect each other as fellow warriors can we not?’ And Balor would take the gift and reply ‘If I slay you Arawn I will give your mangy carcass excarnation rites so your troubled soul will cross over the Rainbow Bridge of Dreams to the Shining Plains of High Heaven! Pray that Destiny anoints me to be your murderer Arawn! For if your own kindred kills you then your body will be tossed aside as if riffraff for the wild things to devour!’

Or else oral lore would have Balor say ‘Arawn! Arawn! Why do you find every excuse to hold a truce with me your moral enemy?’ And Arawn would tell Balor ‘I find you amusing Balor. My kin do not find me amusing.’ And Balor would retort ‘Nor do I! But for some mad reason I find you worthy of insulting!’

As the last of the Ice Age Giant Mammals died off the once mighty Ice Age Monsters also died off and so did the Barbaric and Savage Gods of the Barbaric and Savage Elves who needed the beasts and monsters to survive. The Paleolithic Ancient Hunter Gatherers could not survive without the Ice Age Giant Mammals. Hunting smaller and smaller game was harder and harder —especially in snowy winter and during the spring famine. Without the Ice Age Giant Mammals humans had to turn to herding and farming. It was now the Late Neolithic Age and the older Stone Age People were doomed. The ‘Pale’ Firbolgs retreated deeper into the dwindling forests as if dwindling ghosts like their Neanderthal ancestors but the ‘Dark’ Formorian Giants fought the Sidh with cunning guerrilla tactics like their Denisovan ancestors. They would not go quietly into the goodnight of Darwinian extinction. 

Balor Of The Evil Eye waged a brutal counter insurgency war and started to attack even in winter so Arawn could not even have peace in winter. It says much of Balor’s cunning that his insurgency campaign against the Sidh lasted so long and so bitterly. ‘I will weep when I kill my mortal enemy Arawn!’ Balor would announce in many an oral myth. ‘I admire Arawn the way my right hand admires my left hand. We are opposites yet the same! What does Arawn call me? What fanatical name?’ And someone would shout ‘Verily Arawn calls you Nemesis!’ And Balor would laugh with his dwindling Formorian warriors garbed in leaves and furs to blend perfectly into the dwindling wild forest. His dark, tattooed face both sinister and frightening and his blind eye both fearsome and mesmerizing as if the blind eye could actually see. 

But Paleolithic stone age spears and clubs could not win against Neolithic bows and arrows, spear throwers, obsidian maces from volcanic stone for the Fiery Fissure, javelins, the horse, the wheel, the chariot and now copper. And while the Hyperborean devices called Glamour and Magick (which were probably advanced technology of some type) were breaking down one by one the beleaguered Sidh could still keep just ahead of the Barbarians and the Savages they once despised but now increasingly feared. As if to pay tribute to his nemesis Arawn gave Balor Of The Evil Eye a beautiful obsidian blade such has he had given Streng the Hero of the Firbolgs. Carving obsidian was very difficult but obsidian was as strong as wrought iron. So this was a fearsome gift to give to this mortal foe. 

Balor was for once without words and sent an Formorian boy to ask Arawn the why and wherefore. The Formorian boy came back and said ’Tis to aid thee to cleanly cut off my head!’ Balor then asked the boy what he thought of the mortal enemy of the Formorians. Bres replied ‘I found him quiet as he gently fed the blue birds and the nightingales. I was perplexed.’ Balor told Bres go back and ask Arawn to foster him. ‘My blind eye sees both fame and disaster as if a shadow following you Bres. But unless you are willing to live your life in darkness the shadow must follow you. So embrace the fame until the disaster comes! May we never meet again in battle or otherwise Bres for I do not want to be part of the shadow that will consume you. For you are destined to be a shining hero —- for a time….’

Farming was now becoming the norm in the Heartlands as the concept fo private property appeared and too root. The Proto Indo Europeans called the Merrach migrated in gentle waves into  Zendula and settled down under the fairly benign rule of the Sidh into communal farming villages to farm full time while augmenting their diets of cereals, milk, cheese, chicken, goat, pig, mutton, and cattle with dwindling wild animals and fish. All aided and abetted by their dogs and also now their cats as well as their mules and oxen. The cats protected their grain caches. Root cellars now protected their root crops of vegetables and fruits as well. The Merrach dug deep and started to line their root cellars with stacked stones as they developed the art of hoarding food over the winter to survive the spring famine. They started to cut lake ice and stack it between hay to further preserve foodstuffs. The Merrach were a prudent as well as a pragmatic people. 

Mobile tents on wheels increasingly because temporary homes which became semi-rooted into the soil and then fully rooted to the soil as lumber and waddle houses crowned with thatch appeared. The wooden barricades of massive tree trunks were augmented by deep trenches as Arawn built the first hill fort of the same materials. The hill fort was based on the kurgan with its subterranean vara of stone chambers and mazes of steps leading upward or else winding like tunnels to secret places or else secret escapes. The hill fort was built over a spring of water. The hill fort was then excessively piled with dirt to become an artificial hill and then was packed down and girthed with trenches to reinforce the hill along with massive wooden trunks sharpened and angled to be ‘Boar’s Teeth’. All of this reinforced the wooden barricades and wooden buildings within. By the end of the Neolithic Age this would start to become common though not of the grand size. Today Cadbury Hill Fortress stands there. Arawn also set up hill bonfires to serve as the eyes and ears of the countryside and to give him advanced warning. Today the site lines and roads for relays still serve the same function but for motorcycles. 

Seasonal migrations now were tethered to farms which became the epicenter of the people. They might move about but they always came back now to their ‘homes’. The villages which were extended clanns might share but increasingly the families were expected to uphold their end and care for themselves though their own efforts. Mother Nature no longer cared for her children. Her children were expected to grow up and care for themselves. There was no longer an Eden of plenty. Now there was a farm. Now life was no longer play. Now life was toil with a goal and children to rear. Now life was no longer that of the ancient hunter gather like the Barbaric Firbolg or the Savage Formorian living in the wild forests like animals. Now there was civilization. Now the most precious thing a person could have was a farm wagon, a scratch plow, and a pair of mules as well as oxen and a cow and sheep. A wagon with big solid wood wheels was the new thing everyone wanted to fight the mud except for the Wild People of course ….

The people were expected to be disciplined and work hard, conserve resources, hoard their harvests through the winter and spring famine, be ingenious and inventive, persevere, and be responsible for their own survival. K slow life history genetics were rewarded with fine farms and study homes and large families while r fast life history genetics were discouraged from reproducing. K genetics included deference of gratification, controlling one’s desires, delaying pleasure, thinking ahead, plotting how to survive the lean months, how to ration, how to work extra hard to increase the odds of surviving, discipline, self control, tenacity, determination, self sacrifice for one’s family, defense of one’s territory or farm assets, trustworthy reliability, altruism for group survival and especially family survival, and domestic love for one’s wife and children. Of course the Firbolgs and Formarians displayed many of the same virtues and loved their children just as tenderly. 

But now the Ancient Hunter Gatherers found it impossible to complete with this new way of life. They could not even adopt to keeping migrating herds. Much less farming. A life rooted to the soil violated their ancient ethics. Nature carved up and desecrated violated their sacred view of Mother Nature. The freedom to wander was now hedged in with hedges and fences and territory markers and Royal Sheriffs and village elders and Arawn’s hearthwerus as well as professional young warriors who were called wolf gangs hired by Arawn to fight the Formorians and law breakers and deliver the peace at the point of a copper blade. 

Things ought to have been better for the Sidh but raiding was still a serious problem and now the Sidh had guaranteed the safety of the Mundane Mere Mortal Merrach who accepted clientage and the authority of the Sidh to rule them in exchange for peace, security, and fair law. But wolf gangs of renegades were still a problem and outlaws were also a problem. Even paying wolf gangs to be lawful and work to keep the peace often attacked for the hell of it. Wolf gangs of young men often had no local loyalty to cause them to feel invested in keeping the peace. Even if a village pledged clientage to the Sidh in one area their young men might form a wolf gang and raid another village not pledged to the Sidh. Or else one tribe that pledged clientage to the Sidh might still wage vendettas against other tribes which had also pledged clientage to the Sidh. Cattle raiding was also a sport with mules if not with horses. Criminality did not go away. It just changed form. And the Formorians were still waging their hit and run guerrilla insurgency wars in the dwindling forest. The dirt paths from one village to another through the dwindling forest were ideal for ambushes by the Formorians. 

So the Sidh were still compelled to fight ever more wars against outlaws and desperadoes and feuding clanns of clientage people as well as the roving Formorians. Policing law and order in every village simply over stretched their already over stretched resources. Arawn was forced to introduce serfdom to tie the Mundane Mere Mortal Merrach to the land so they would not roam and raid. Such was the allure of lawlessness. Each village was assigned a Royal Sheriff from among the Arawn’s hearthweru to keep law and order. But that hemorrhaged soldiers from Arawn’s warriors and just provided more targets for the Formorians to attack. And Arawn had to keep inspecting every village to make sure that his Royal Sheriff was lawful and not abusive and the Merrach were loyal and not defecting and the village harvest was safe so the tithes of the harvest would be sent to the Sidh. So Arawn was being worked to death. Yet oddly Arawn still preferred this to living among the Sidh full time where he was attacked nonstop by everyone for failing in everything. 

And now new Monsters challenged the rule of the Heartlands by the over stretched Sidh. The Shadow of His Nature was appearing. The sentient shadowy darkness had emerged in The Pale after detaching from the flickering flames of Father God of Fire and was now congealing into a sort of doppelgänger or nemesis of the Sidh. The Shadow of His Nature was perversely mimicking the Sidh. IT now called itself The Dark Lord. But that mimicking was a deliberate parody as the Dark Lord offered his own clientage to outlaws and desperados and renegade wolf gangs to attack the citizenry of the Sidh. The Dark Lord also created his own serfs in the form of Orcs, a sub species between Cro-Magnon and something else as if Evolution was taking a detour into a nightmare.

Meanwhile, more Mundane Mere Mortals were migrating into Zendula from Eurasia. They were diverse incarnations of depigmented and lactose tolerant Proto Indo Europeans. Arawn started to struggle to absorb them into the Heartlands and into his clientage. The more Mere Mortals appeared the more they felt less pressured to conform and instead colonize. The Sidh were struggling. And the Ancient Hunter Gatherers simply could not complete at all as ever more of the wild forest was chopped down and the land was terraformed to become villages of farms. Even Balor Of The Evil Eye held a truce parley with Arawn. But the truce collapsed when Balor heard that a warlord of a Sidh controlled village had slaughtered a forested camp of Formorian women and children. When Arawn heard the news he was visibly shaken and wept as  the sole survivor of the massacre gestured to the butchered body of his small child. ‘I can offer Weregilt blood for blood’ Arawn whispered. ‘Your blood is worthless Arawn!’ The grieving Formorian warrior replied. ‘Your blood is poisoned and your flesh stinks of rot like your stinking soul!’ 

Balor gestured to break off the truce parlay. As Arawn mounted his horse to ride off the savage Formorian Balor Of The Evil Eye grabbed the reins and whispered to his long time foe ‘Arawn. Heed my warning! I am, believe it or not, the only friend you have left who cares how your soul will end! Face me in open combat and let me slay you cleanly and heroically in battle! I will do recarnation rites so your troubled soul will pass over the Rainbow Bridge of Dreams to the Shining Plains of High Heaven! I am a better friend to you than your own vicious family! You are dying by inches! Mired in the blood of war! Besmirched by treachery! And discredited by one and all! I will kill you cleanly! Like a noble stag! Like a valiant lion! I will give you the merciful death that is destined for your adopted son Bres. The orphaned Formorian child you have adopted as your son. I will give you the same death destined for Bres! I will be to you as Lugh the Black is destined to be to Bres!’ 

Arawn flinched. ‘Your evil eye sees the future as clearly as it is blind to the the moment of the here and now! But I fear that the Three Fates have already damned me Balor! My damnation is already woven into the Tapestry of Destiny! Save my adopted son Bres I beg you Balor! I cannot be saved and it is surely unseemly for you, my nemesis, to offer me salvation which I clearly do not deserve!’ 

The fearsome savage Formorian gestured to his enemy and replied ‘Arawn! I offer you a clean death in battle! Take it! I will not offer it again! And I see your death plainly with my blind eye! And your death will be shameful!’ Arawn rode away shattered. And from then on Arawn drank heavily and openly instead of fugitively and secretly in his war tent. 

The seasons were very regular and the summers were warm though the winters were snowy and the coasts were very foggy and the great rivers in spring were shrouded with mists. Nevertheless Zendula experienced a a precious but in hindsight remarkable time of peace and prosperity such as the Late Neolithic Age and emerging Copper Age was later remembered for. This lingering Dark Elve Summer was attributed to the Sidh which they deemed to be gods instead of superior Human hybrids. In fact this time was indeed blessed by the second of two huge climatic shifts known as the Holocene Optimas: excessively warm, balmy, climatic cycles boosting warm long summers and short, mild winters. The Sun smiled and the Sidh were praised for the fact that the Sun smiled. The Barbaric and Savage Gods and their Barbaric and Savage Followers the Dark and Green Elves were dwindling, driven into bitter exile. The sun blessed the arriving Mere Mortals who were taking their place. 

Bres, an orphaned Formorian boy adopted by Arawn, now gained fame by starting to explore and blaze a dirt trail from The Heartlands toward The Havens which was a bawdy fishing village. He mapped The Havens River among other rivers to discover new wildernesses. He explored wild places and slew diverse Monsters. Bres appeared to be the very essence of the hero which once a long time ago his stepfather Arawn used to be. The triumph of the Sidh appeared to be complete —- except for their nonstop wars against the New Monsters of the New Dark Lord and the New Invaders and ever more aggressive Mere Mortal Barbarians arriving from Eurasia who challenged their right to rule the Heartlands and  exacted increasingly high prices for clientage. Ironically, Nemed might have been correct. The entire Northern Hemisphere was luxuriating in the warmth of the second of the twin Holocene Optimas. It was the climate honeymoon of the Holocene. Its zenith of benevolence. Its cresting of warmth exorcising of the Pleistocene Ice Age. The Wurm appeared to be utterly defeated despite the momentary anomaly called the Younger Dryas Cataclysm which had caused the Sidh to abandoned Hyperborea to migrate south into Zendula Proper and this bloody new life. 

Even the far north of the Northern Hemisphere was warm, even though a third of Old Hyperborea was now flooded by the raising waters of the oceans caused by the melting of the Ice Age ice. Parts of the Antarctic and Arctic were ice free each summer. Greenland and Alaska and Siberia and the Baltic and also the far north of Zendula were balmy at least in the summers. The ice age threat was apparently exorcized forever. So if their lost homeland of Hyperborea, or least their ‘Citadel’ or Vara Enclosure of stone was far enough away from the original northern coastline it would be paradise anew! Perhaps Nemed and Dojosin had successfully walked all the way back home and found it alive and flourishing after all! Perhaps Oderic had been wrong to think the Younger Dryas was the return of the Pleistocene Ice Age as if Wurm was striking back! Perhaps their Citadel had survived the eon of the Younger Dyras and emerged from its hibernation like a butterfly! If so then the Green Elves who fled with their mysterious rescuer Wyllt would certainly find the wild forests which formed a natural shield wall south of Hyperborea to be a feral natural paradise. They could once again be happy Hunter Gatherers —- unlike the unhappy and dwindling Firbolgs and Formorians and the few Dark Elves and Green Elves who had not fled the bit and bridle of the Sidh.

Ancient oral myths, legends, and epics do not say if Oderic regretted his decision to flee. He was too busy. With Nemed gone Oderic was unchallenged in his self appointed role. Oderic organized the Proto Indo European Mundane Mere Mortal Barbarians to build ever more ambitious standing stones, long barrows, stone cycles, monoliths, and standing stones carved with fearsome symbols to be border markers declaring the authority of the Sidh, as well as kurgan artificial hills with tombs and vara enclosures implanted inside. All as he carved the finest ‘rune serpents’ upon the stone monoliths which was an alphabetic spell to command Fate and challenge Destiny —-which he declined to teach to the laborers he drafted and commanded with his self proclaimed Magick. They stuck to their own pidgin rune serpents or else they slashed ritual marks on the superior rune serpents to claim some of the Magick. 

The barrows and stone circles became more ambitious. The Mundane Mere Mortal Merrach buried their dead in subterranean stone chambers that could be accessed for ancestral worship and to affirm their claims to the land and to inheritance. As far and the Merrach were concerned if they were tied to the land then the land was also tied to them in inheritance through their ancestors.Combination house-barns appeared, and then the barn was separated from the home. Now the home was erected of timber and waddle and topped with luxurious thatch over elaborate root cellars lined with stone and the parvenu new thing: an ice cellar where winter ice could be stacked in hay to preserve perishables. It became as sort of iceberg house for the depths of the subterranean cellars. But tree flets (tree houses) were enjoyed in summer. This was picked up from the Dark and Green Elves though the dwindling Wild Elves now used their own sad flets for sky burials as they were defeated.  But most of the growing stone mounds and barrows were either communal graves to guard the Blessed Ancestors, Tombs for the Blessed Ancestors, or else Tomb monuments to Village Elders (mayors who were becoming hereditary squires) and also Shadowy Ones. All to affirm both authority and right to command but also rights of inheritance to the land. The need of farms to predict the seasons led to the development of astrological stone circles and henges to predict the solstices and the equinoxes. 

So Oderic’s Magick cemented his power over the Mundane Mere Mortals. He could predict the seasons as if a god! Shadowy Ones (if female) and Wizards (if male) also appeared at the expanding stone creations to watch the sky to predict the seasons and especially the winter solstice to hold bonfires to Father God of Fire to defeat the Wyrm of Winter and the Skuld Moldering Rot as well as to defeat the Slaugh Unforgiving Dead which had appeared with Death. The Slaugh were fearsome Monsters and even the Sidh felt mortality in their bones as more and more of the Sidh died in the wars as peace proved illusive. Arawn said the Sidh arrived to a Golden Age of Innocence only to turn it into a Silver Age of tawdry power tarnishing, only to be replaced by a Copper Age of bloody blades that could not keep their edge. By now Oderic had found gold and silver ores for Arawn to forge into luxury goods for the elite Sidh. The days of meritocracy and equity of the old Hunter Gatherers was gone. Classes were now appearing as well as a new powerful elite: emerging squires who were becoming warlords if they could recruit and command rogue wolf gangs of young warriors who swore clientage to the Sidh —- but expected to be paid. 

Arawn’s ‘magical’ invention of metal was used as talismans as well as weapons and tools that increasingly rivaled stone in prestige if not effectiveness. Copper was more status than pragmatic. Gold was seen as the incarnation of Glamour ie Magick which could be held in the hand to ward off Time, Change. And Death. Silver glittered and clanked and clinked. Rites to Mother God of Mercy continued ancient communal rites of the Green Man at harvest. The bonfires of the Winter Solstice worshiped Father God of Fire. Arawn showed Mundane Mere Mortals how to craft ornately polished stone weapons and tools of every cunning sort for he shared what Oderic hoarded. Arawn gave his gifts away freely though his talismans were feared because they ‘drank blood’. But the clink, clink, clink of smoothly polished gemstones and crystalline stones were status for gold was still a magical talisman few could acquire. and Arawn had a fetish for crystalline minerals. Today it is probably because of their potential for piezoelectricity though how far Arawn got is debatable because of the difficulty to create copper wire. The only thing Arawn did not share was his alchemy of bronze. That was emerging but Arawn was paying a steep price in the form of arsenic poisoning. He still could not find either tin for a safer bronze or iron ore except at meteorite crash sites. Arsenic bronze kept an amazing edge but still had severe limits that compromised every weapon and tool Arawn tried to forge. 

Meanwhile, Kurgan tombs and long barrows boosted ever more lavish sacrifices of bulls and horses and chariots and sun disks and ornate gemstones and amber from the far away sea. The greater the war lord the greater his tomb became. Even the Shadowy Ones started to inhabit rich tombs where their Magick could be preserved forever. Their bodies curiously arranged in a curled position. Their talismans and totems and the other strange tools of their trade of Magick arranged at their side. It is odd that the Sidh at this point still did not build ornate tombs or castles or fortresses beyond Cadbury Hill which was a military fortress of wood used mostly by Arawn for his hearthwerus and wolf gangs. The Sidh were still moving eternally across the landscape they claimed but could not entirely control as if being exiles for so long now prevented them from setting down roots. There was never the right time to rebuild their lost city to assume their old lives. Dagda The Bow lived in grand tents of splendor but was forever on the move. The Sidh in tow. Their herds around them. Their horses galloping across the changing landscape. The lack of functional tombs was odd as if the Sidh did not want to build evidence of their coming morality. 

Arawn stayed busy working himself to death while finding excuses to stay away from the Sidh among his hearthwerus and wolf gangs of young warriors and also among the Merrach. The Merrach held ceremonies at the Summer and Winter Solstice as well as the Spring and Harvest Equinox where they paraded the bones of their ancestors to affirm their claims of pedigree for inheritance of the land they now affirmed was their land though the Sidh. The Sidh did not own the land. The Merrach did. The Sidh were given a cut of the harvest as taxes. A stick was carved with the taxes to be paid and was delivered to the Sidh at their ever migrating war camp or else winter quarters here or there or somewhere else.The sticks were buried in stone graves to affirm their history. Never burned. Arawn ruefully quipped ‘We Sidh have become the donkey’s tail! Not even the dog’s tail! That might be worth something ….’

Arawn was increasingly ailing and the wars were going from bad to worse. The original supplies of ‘treasure’ the Sidh had brought from Hyperborea were used up. The Sidh now looked interchangeable with their barbaric clientage warlords and serf peasants and even the Firbolgs and Formorians. The Sidh Glamour ie Magick seemed less remarkable and less godlike. The Arawn ‘pillars of fire’ crafted out of rock crystal and certain crystalline stones plus copper wire to generate Ley lines (magnetism)  to generate the ‘blue lighting of the sky’ (electricity) to illuminate the Sidh war camps had become simple camp fires or flickering lamps of lard or tar or else pots of pickled lighting (crude liquid batteries of chemical reactions). But Arawn and Oderic relentlessly pursed their magical alchemy of ‘metal’. Arawn was trying to reinvent lost Glamour or Magick such as Lost Hyperborea once considered needful and plentiful which is to say ‘technology’. To be exact Arawn was trying to retrofit or reinvent piezoelectricity.

Arawn because fanatical about achieving copper wire to combine with crystalline stones to create piezoelectric magnets to reanimate his ‘pillars of fire’ of flickering blue lightning which is to say electricity. The descriptions of Arawn’s ‘pillar of fire’ appear to be akin to a Tesla coil. He appeared to be trying to reinvent or retrofit batteries to generate electricity. But he could not get the chemistry or needful supplies right without equipment left behind in Hyperborea or else equipment that had broken down from prolonged over use. Clearly Arawn’s Glamour or Magick was lost advanced technology. Imagine that you a child of Modernity who has suddenly been thrust back into the Neolithic Stone Age with just a backpack of commercial supplies. How do you reinvent everything you previously took for granted? Just reinventing copper metallurgy to reinvent copper wire would have been Herculean! And the Sidh appeared to be the remains of an urban elite who never did practical labors or acquired practical skills before their flight. They had finally learned a a practical skill during their exile: war. But not much else. 

Arawn’s talismans and devices were remarkable. But they were also defective. At least the other Sidh complained that they were defective compared to what they enjoyed back in Hyperborea. ‘Nothing I ever do is good enough for them!’ Arawn complained. No wonder Arawn found reasons to stay away. Arawn was also experimenting with revolutionary Glamour or Magick which is to say advanced technology beyond what was done in Hyperborea or even today. His talismans of unexplained revolutionary technology have certainly been tested and do generate power but also tend to explode or else be dangerously erratic. His devices are machines which are now broken and no one knows how they originally worked. Glamour is Sidh science which modern science still has not caught up with yet which the more primitive people saw as Magick. And Arawn left no explanations behind about what he was trying to do or how to use his talismans ie technology and devices ie machinery. Oderic of course understood what Arawn was trying to do but was unwilling to share any information with anyone whatsoever being paranoid. At this point Oderic was careening increasingly into a nervous breakdown. All of the Sidh were. 

The Wars against The Shadow of His Nature became ever more difficult as the darkness of the detached shadow of Father God of fire congealed into a new thing called the Absence of the Light. The Living Shadow. The Shadow of His Nature. The Sentient Shadow. The Dark Lord. When Arawn was attacked in the darkness of The Pale by some thing he said the thing not only grabbed his neck but plunged its spidery fingers into his very soul and sucked out his aura. His life force. He said the thing stole part of him as if to become his double. His doppelgänger. His nemesis. Like a dark reflection in a demonic mirror. Arawn but inverted and turned inside out. Arawn’s goodness and genius turned into evil and depravity. 

And just as Arawn was always trying to please Dagda the Dark Lord at least initially was always trying to please Father God of Fire —-and failing just as Arawn failed. After Father God finally rejected the Shadow of His Nature the dreadful thing did not react like Arawn forever trying to please Dagda. Instead the Shadow embraced Father God’s rejection of it and enthusiastically became the Dark Lord while rejecting the fiery light of Father God of Fire. The destroyer and the devourer of Life. The Dark Lord also displayed a fixation on its targets. Now it was Arawn to be systematically destroyed. After the destruction of Arawn the Dark Lord fixated on destroying the Twilight Terra Elves of Arcadia. When they were destroyed the Dark Lord fixated on destroying Gildagad. That fixation finally destroyed both Gildagad and the Dark Lord. 

The conquest of The Pale had been bloody as the Dark Lord’s Monsters fought the Sidh and Oderic in the great dark caverns of the icy mountains to control these new things call gemstones, crystalline stones, rock crystal, gold, silver, and copper, and arsenic which no one really wanted or needed excerpt Arawn and Oderic. Things which spawned envy and separated people into the ‘rich’ and the ‘poor, the ‘rulers’ and the ‘ruled’. Worse, Arawn and Oderic did not find tin or iron ore to advanced their metallurgy of copper to bronze so they had to use arsenic. Arsenic bronze is almost as good as wrought iron but is deadly to the metallurgist. And Arawn could not figure out how to make copper wire. Something so very simple and it appeared to stop Arawn utterly!

It was also during this transitional Neolithic Late Stone Age - Copper Age that someone now crossed over the Ice Pass to enter the stage of Zendulian history: the Twilight Terra Elves now appeared! They were a more genetically superior hybrid of Human to the Cro-Magnon hybrids called the Mundane Mere Mortals. They were not the Sidh though they rivaled the Sidh. They had no Neanderthal genes. They had evolved earlier in the Northern Hemisphere of Eurasia from other ‘ghost peoples’ who vanished into prehistory. They too claimed to have come from a lost place that was felled by ice. Entombed in ice. Another part of Greater Hyperborea. They had arrived from elsewhere. From the East instead of the West. From somewhere other than Eurasia. From the sea. From the Pacific. In curious ships that they used to transverse the seas while carrying their kin and their animals and their supplies while sailing the currents only with the cunning of their eyes and the stars and by reading the far horizon. 

They were tall, willowy, with wiry muscles, dark grey eyes, dark or else blond hair, and a mutation to the ears and foreheads which gave them a distinctive look. They were a cool race, both introvert and aloof. Intensely private. Courteous, gracious, graceful, but also capable of cold blooded killing with expert efficiency. They were incredibly tenacious yet curiously erratic too. They were brilliant yet self destructive in their martial valor and refusal to surrender or retreat. They were incredibly territorial yet possessed an amazing artistic sense. They incarnated what would become Elvish Civilization which defines Zendula to this day. 

This new form of Elve was not at all like the Dark Elves or Green Elves. They did everything with expert efficiency so they employed more sophisticated farming techniques as well as more sophisticated killing techniques. Their horses were larger and heavier than the horses of the Sidh. Their dogs were mastiffs or else miniature toys of no function whatsoever. Their sheep were larger and more densely wooled with a wool that was superior for spinning for wool. Their cattle were larger too. Everything they possessed seemed better. Their stone tools were exceptional. They had a mania for invention and were endlessly reinventing weapons and tools of stone. They already had not only wagons with sold wood wheels but chariots with spoked wheels and javelins which were every bit as good if not better than the Sidh. The Sidh were wary for they were already demoralized and now these new competitors had arrived to challenge their precarious claim to the Heartlands of Zendula Proper.

The Sidh had devolved in their prolonged struggle to survive exile from Hyperborea. Arawn called it the ‘Great Diminishing’.  Everything they possessed was cobbled together from what they could find or from what they could domesticate from the wilderness. The Sidh no longer awed the Mundane Mere Mortal Barbarians as the wars drained them as if the Dark Lord was a vampire feeding off their demise. What if the Mere Mortals decided to worship the New Elves instead? 

The wars were going badly.  But the Sidh did provide honest, and considering the situation, surprisingly effective Common Law (no one is above the law or beyond the law or outside the law). Where the Sidh camp stood there also stood law and order. But lawlessness would explode somewhere else so the Sidh were always forced to move to put down another attack or rebellion or assault this place or that place or some other place so they could never stay still or enjoy the bounty of summer or autumn until the winter mud or snow stilled the battlefield until the spring mud dried to allow yet more battles. Dagda The Bow has cast the seeds of blood and was reaping the grapes of wrath. No one dared to complain or condemn Dagda’s authority so they simply complained and condemned Arawn nonstop. Arawn was everyone’s scapegoat.

But while Arawn could not bring peace he did achieve some fragile sense of civilization and order to the anarchy and barbarity. If a Sidh violated the Common Law For One And All he was convicted no less than a Barbarian. Sidh justice was fair and impartial. Anyone could appeal to Arawn’s simple war tent and Dagda’s great hall (courtly tent) was fair and open to all for redress. The Sidh prized competency and provided a meritocracy if not a democracy. The Sidh considered property rights to be as essential as due process of Common Law. Arawn hung warlord hirelings or military wolf gangs from looting or raping. He even once hung a Sidh. Arawn outlawed the barbaric ‘right’ of the powerful to bed the virgin bride of the powerless.  For this alone the Merrach praised Arawn for the Merrach considered virginity to be sacred and the marriage bed to be holy. Clientage also had rules and mutual obligations and responsibilities. Clientage was a sort of franchise of  mutual respect between the ruler and the ruled. 

There was a hierarchy evolving so everyone knew their place be it Thrall (slave or serf) or Cearl (well off farmer and sometimes a mayor or village elder) or a Thegn (hereditary squire) or a Huscarle (a squire who can raise drafts of peasant militias)  or Gesith (commander of hearthweru bodyguards) or Warlord (local administrator for the Sidh who was not a Sidh) or else a Comite (Captain) or a Comes (Commander or Count) or else Field Marshal of groups of wolf gangs ie regiments who may or may not be Sidh). There was also an  Eald (Earl) or else a Baron (of Sidh rank). Dagda was the Rex or King. His unpleasant son Agnus Mac Org was in theory a Prince and his supposed heir. Arawn was the General of Dagda’s army and liaison with the Mundane Mere Mortals if Dagda did not want to be bothered.

Arawn banned Sidh or their warlord hirelings or military wolf gangs from demanding entry into personal homes and farms of the peasants by saying that ‘Everyone’s home is their great hall and while my tent is open for one and all I I will not tolerate my warriors violating the tents of my soldiers or my peasant shield wall or my citizenry! There is no altar fire as sacred as the home fire of the humble hearth for the hearth is the heart of the family!’ Arawn even outlawed the looting of domestic pigs of the peasants that they needed to last through the winter (courtesy of smoking the hams) and also the looting of domestic fowl including the trashing of feather beds achieved through years of gathering up feathers which provided even the poorest peasant solace at night. Arawn had to walk a thin line because increasingly the Sidh needed Mere Mortals to be their army so that meant that increasingly that army featured non Sidh in titles of command. And many of the Sidh did not like the fact that Arawn was the General of the Army of Dagda. Fianna for instance was always warning Dagda that Arawn could use the army against Dagda (which was probably projection because Fianna wanted to use the army against Dagda).

Arawn augmented clientage which was suppose to provide a chain of command and also accountability with the warlord hirings and the mercenary wolf gangs with a new concept called fosterage. Arawn adopted and raised children orphaned by war in the camp of the Sidh as well as offering to foster the gifted children of the warlord hirelings as well as the best children of the hearthweru bodyguards and especially the gesith commanders of the hearthweru bodyguards. Arawn even offered fosterage to the best children of the village elders and squires of the Merrach. 

To do this Arawn recruited Shadowy Ones (witches of shamans) to provide not only Green Glamour for the non-Sidh but also help the wolf gangs of rowdy young Sidh or Barbarians or Merrach Peasants to learn the bit and bridle of civilization. Court wizards of course only served the Sidh court. But Shadowy Ones (women) were more nurturing. Arawn and the Shadowy Ones  (also known as Badbmalls) evolved the concept of the wolf gang to not only mean a military unit of rowdy young soldiers out to prove themselves or else a regiment of company of professionals soldiers but also a sort of finishing school the way a wild horse is slowly trained to accept the bit and bridle without breaking the spirit or the body. Civilization!

The Teulu wolf gangs now taught fosterage on a grand scale. The elite of the boys and girls were raised in separate teulus until adolescence when they were transitioned into adulthood with initiation rites of the Shadowy Ones to ‘calm the inner wolf’ and ‘train the inner wolf’. The Teulus now educated the best of the children in the six feats of activity (running, jumping, climbing, swimming, and riding as well as wrestling or else some other form of martial self defense). The Teulus also taught the four exercises of weaponry (archery and the sling, javelins and spears, swords and shields, and quarterstaffs). The Teulus also taught the three sports (hunting, fishing and racing). The Teulus now taught the seven domestic games of poetry and music, heraldry ie the reciting of epics of heroes of the past, riddling and story telling, genteel conversation, dancing, chivalry ie refine social behavior before women and children and respect for one’s elders, and also boardgames such as the emerging game of chess which was considered the height of Sidh Civilization as well as the best teacher of strategy.

Arawn also started tournaments where warlords and their hearthwerus as well as wolf gangs of young paladins might display their skills in both tournament melees and courtly nights of hospitality among the Sidh. Besides training the children of the future, this served as a recruiting ground for Arawn to pick the best because many initial warlords recruited from the Barbaric Mere Mortals had been exposed as thugs or outlaws or raiders or other forms of criminals preying on the Peasants while also raiding the women and children of the Firbolgs and Formorians and also the fleeing Dark Elves or Green Elves and thus perpetuating war instead of restoring peace to allow civilization to be built. 

One such fosterling who was raised in a teulu and recruited by Arawn in a tournament at Dagda’s court (war camp) was Lugh the Black. Lugh The Black was an orphan like Bres the adopted son of Arawn. Lugh was a Were Swan Changeling cast out by Sojobo the Teugu Were Predator Bird Harbinger of War who for some unknown reason adored his scion who were White Swans but hated any of his scion who were Black Swans. Lugh was a Were Black Swan Changeling. Lugh kept his black hair  carefully coiled and pinned by elaborate combs to conceal random black feathers. [Were in whatever form often revealed itself in odd little details which exposed the Were as something more than simply human.] Lugh The Black was raise with Bres and were the best of friends with the orphaned Formorian youth.  This initially disconcerted Arawn who always remembered the warning of Balor Of The Evil Eye that Lugh was fated to kill Bees as if a horse being put out of its misery. Lugh would kill Bres his very best friend and Bres’ ghost would save Lugh’s soul so that hand in hand they would cross over the Rainbow Bridge of Dreams to the Shining Plains of High Heaven. 

Arawn could not see how this prophecy could come about for Lugh the Black and Bres the Shining Hero were the very best of friends. They were the Ideal Heroes that Arawn hoped would redeem the Sidh’s troubled reign and lead the Heartlands into a shining future. Arawn would look around the ever moving war camp of ornate tents and pickets of hundreds of horses and domestic herds filling the far pastures and furl his fair brows as one finger unconsciously traced his battle scars. Then he would say aloud ‘The day Bres and Lugh turn their weapons on each other is the day I will hang myself for I will know finally and at last everything I have ever tried to do is for nought and the Sidh are doomed!’ Sometimes Arawn would muse out loud ‘Why is everything going so wrong? As if we are paying out our life’s blood in a transmutation curse for sins we do not know we have committed?’ Then Arawn would stare frustrated at the ever moving battle camp of the Sidh and shake his fair head and say ‘Why are we still acting as if exiles? Why haven’t we built a new Citadel yet to replace the city we have abandoned?’ 

Fianna The Slinger would reply ‘Because the wars are never ending, and we have to continuously move from one battle to another, and one attack to another, all while putting down this raid or that ambush or some other melee or murder or assault or calamity! All because you cannot achieve victory for Dagda The Bow or peace for the Sidh so that we can finally and at least settle down and rebuild our lost civilization!’ 

At this Oderic would retort ‘You are just a snob Fianna! Cadbury Hill Fortress is a fine place to become the stronghold of the Sidh! You just don’t think it grand enough because it is wood! Instead of whining that nothing is worthy of you maybe you should realize that you are not worthy of anything!’

Arawn was always demoralized for Fianna knew how to stab his troubled soul as if with a poisoned stiletto or else a poisoned sling bullet hurled at him from behind. But while the Sidh increasingly condemned Arawn’s many failures the Merrach continued to admire the lawfulness the Sidh provided  so they stayed loyal and provided peasant soldiers to man the Shieldwall of archers and slingers protected by a Hearthweru of diminishing Sidh professional warriors against other Barbarians, Outlaws, and Desperados who were being seduced by the Dark Lord and his Orcs and Monsters. So many were the emerging Monsters of the Dark Lord, Arawn hired Shoki the Demon Slayer to create a scroll list of the Monsters which Arawn called the Kjiki Dictionary of Monsters And Demons. 

Shoki The Demon Slayer was a traveling expert in Demonology. Shoki was over ten feet tall and burly with a bushy black beard and wild black hair. He was assisting Arawn in handling an outbreak of the Slaugh Unforgiving Dead with new Glamour rites such as Mannax Gates and wooden stakes to stake the dead to their graves or else biers for burning though even as ash the Slaugh could come back like miasma to smother the living or else as ghosts or else incubus.

The outbreak of Slaugh was so bad even the Sidh could not deny the paranormal reality. The Dark Lord seemed able to awaken every sort of dark evil counterpart to the Sidh’s forces. As if a polished metal shield able to reflect the reverse of the day in the nightmares of night. The Sidh’s attempt to recreate their civilization from Lost Hyperborea was crumbling into something feral and black and rotten. The Diminishing of the Sidh was now indisputable and recently Arawn was confronted not only by a Slaugh but a Skuld which devoured everything as if rot or decay. Even to the Tapestry of Destiny itself. And the Badhmalls were terrified for now there were Habetrot witches who were the doppelgängers of the Badhmall Shadowy Ones: witches of darkness and evil whose wishes and gifts bestowed on the unwise always always turned out evil. Now Glamour was not Green or White but Black! The whole world was turning monstrous! And the Sidh gods were losing!

Arawn had found some tiny traces of iron ore from meteorites and it seemed lethal to the Slaugh and at least lasted longer than wooden stakes but that meant Arawn had to use the precious ore as Glamour instead of using it to advance metallurgy. Shoki suggested a new rite called Susuhara which was an annual rite of purification of the camp or tent or pavilion. ‘Out with the old Oni (ghosts)!’ Shoki especially feared dust bunnies which he called bogey hearts’ Small demonic beasties. Shoki gave Arawn a screaming skull as a talisman to protect his tent but Arawn gave the precious talisman to Dagda as was right and proper. Arawn keep the talisman of the mermaid. 

Shoki also exorcised a possessed teapot which impressed Dagda The Bow no end. Every night Shoki did the most amazing Magick. But Shoki was a traveling mercenary of demon exorcism so Arawn was left in a gillitrap without a solution. Shoki  said he would send Baku the Eater of Bad Dreams to help Arawn who now was an insomniac. Shoki also suggested that Arawn should try to find a lucky feather of a Divine Kalamack Bird of the Gods which occasionally flew down from the Shining Plains of High Heaven when rainbows filled the sky. 

Arawn waved goodbye to the towering giant Shoki the Demon Killer as he held the talisman of the mermaid. Then Arawn told Amergin The Were Fox who was visiting that ‘A more jovial conman I have never met! I laughed for all of the conning!’ It has been a long time since I have laughed! Perhaps that is Magick enough in this darkening age!’ 

Amergin the Were Fox also laughed as his mischievous tail waged from beneath his ornate over tunic. ‘I loved the Magick of the possessed teapot!’ Amergin replied. ‘In the hands of Shoki Magick becomes magic! Entertainment. You do know that the talisman of a mermaid is but a dried fish with a dried head of a monkey don’t you? But I assure you when Mr Long come you will laugh even more! No! No! Don’t shake your head my dear Arawn! Mr Long is the Red Dragon of Destiny! He lives with a companion he calls Lao in a tent that is bigger inside than outside! Mr Long will read your future for this new thing you have created: a copper penny!’ Arawn replied ‘I know my future already and it will be dire….’

Whenever Arawn condemned a blackguard to Nitthing Exile for some evil the blackguard just swaggered to the camp of the Dark Lord and boasted of his damnation to insure his recruitment by the Dark Lord who was  becoming the Nemesis of Arawn. The Merrach saw Arawn as their ever more fragile and diminishing hearthweru protector. Everything seemed to be going wrong and now there were these new people. So the Merrach were wary of these newest people: The Twilight Elves. Though at the time the Twilight Elves called themselves a different name: The Tuathians. Dagda found it odd for it echoed the Sidh’s own name: The People of the Tuatha de Dannan though that once bright name in turn had become the Vara which meant The Depths of the Bastion of the Citadel of the Sidh. A defensive term describing a final retreat of the Gods. But then a tomb could fit that description too….

The Twilight Elves had settled East Zendula about the same time as the Sidh has settled Zendula Proper but by now the east coast of Zendula was becoming a semidesert. This was now the second of the great Holocene Optimas but the Twilight Elves were on the receiving end of the negative impact of the Optimas. Like the Levant, the climate change of the Optimas was causing the eastern part of Zendula to dry out and become hostile to farming. So these new and most more advanced Elves were exploring more western and wetter environments to conquer with their larger plows and stronger draft animals. They had taken many years to migrate west. They had taken many years to wait for the broad Mighty Majestic River to freeze so they could cross it one winter to enter the dense forest called Greenwood. They had taken many years to find the Ice Pass to transverse the mountains of The Pale to enter the Heartlands of Zendula Proper. And now they had arrived.

The Twilight Terra Elves  decided to more quickly and efficiently kill off the last of the old Barbaric and Savage Peoples who still lived their wild lives in the dwindling forests while rejecting the bridle and bit of civilization be it the dwindling Barbaric Neanderthals and Denisovans or the dwindling Barbaric Firbolgs and Formorians or the dwindling Barbaric Dark Elves and Barbaric Green Elves who had not yet fled. Arawn’s approach had always been to try to woo the Barbaric and Savage Stone Age peoples with peace treaties. But the wild places were dwindling and the arrival of waves of migrations from Eurasia of Indo European Barbarians called Mere Mortals make any peace impossible. Throughout history the Ancient Hunter Gatherers always lost to the Neolithic Hunter Gatherer Herder Farmers. Wherever there is a feral Eden there is always a Fall and Exile! Paradise is always Lost! Even the Merrach saw the Heartlands and emerging Arcadia as a place to be domesticated and plowed and hedged and fenced and owned. Not shared with Ancient Hunter Gatherers. After all! It was now the zenith of the Late Neolithic Age and the beginning of the Copper Age! Wildness simply had no place in the modern Neolithic World anymore! 

Arawn visited the Firbolgs one last time and warned them that their feral eden was doomed. Their camp of bark and thatch, their elaborate wooden totems, their beautiful hand carved fetishes, their quant but clever spears and clubs and slings and snares, and their fantastical clothes of leaves and furs was still exotic and picturesque but the Firbolgs were dwindling even faster than the Sidh. And even now the Firbolgs did not have the bow and arrow.

And the Indo European Mere Mortals had brought diseases from Eurasia which were devastating the Firbolgs such as chickenpox, smallpox, and influenza. The Sidh had similarly suffered from these diseases because their Lost Hyperborea was a sterile paradise but the Sidh had greater biological resistance to diseases and biological decay than the fragile Firbolgs. The Firbolgs were not herders and did not have the immunity to diseases caused by herding. And the Firbolgs were not lactose tolerant. So the Firbolgs were a small and wiry but vulnerable people every winter as the great wealth of wild animals was killed off by superior hunters leaving them less and less to hunt and eat. And while the Firbolgs had wolf dogs they still did not have the horse which allowed riders to be so much more powerful survivors in the Late Neolithic World.

The horse allows a rider hunter herder to travel faster, farther, and carry more and hunt more effectively, especially with the recurve bow. The horse allowed the rider to herd larger and larger herds of commercial animals which was Neolithic potable wealth. The horse allowed hit and run raiding of mounted wolf gangs of young warriors to wage more effective warfare. The horse when yoked to the wagon or chariot hauled more, faster. The chariot was a powerful weapon of warfare. The the Magick of the horse when sacrificed bought more blessings of the New Gods. The horse blessed the winners. The horse made anyone into a demigod. And the Firbolgs only had donkeys or else reindeer to haul their large wooden poles that held up their fur skin and bark leaf tents on which the Firbolgs piled their pathetically few earthy goods for the Firbolgs did not even have the wheel. No one hunted faster and more nimbly in the wild forest than a Firbolg but now there was less and less wild things in the wild forest and there was also less and less wild forest for the Firbolgs to hunt in.

The Dark Elves no longer worshiped the Firbolgs as gods. Instead the Wild Elves were running away from civilization they could not defeat. Streng the greatest hero of the Firbolgs held his obsidian stone mace in his strong hands and stubbornly shook his head at Arawn. Streng was a magnificent warrior, handsome, wiry but strong, valiant, noble, and brave. His long dark hair was adored with feathers of battle. He wore a totem of Magick round his neck of amber and shells. And he wore a fur loincloth for his body was as beautiful as any god. But Arawn knew that despite all of Streng’s beauty and heroism the Firbolgs were doomed no less than the Sidh. ’You can’t shoot a bow and arrow my dear Streng!’ Arawn cried —- literally! ‘You can’t win! Neither of us can win…..Don’t you understand? We are no longer gods! It is the Great Diminishing!….’

The Twilight Terra Elves adopted the Sidh Gods. Not as serfs but as allies which the Sidh needed so badly the Sidh had no ability to negotiate the terms of the alliance. The Sidh needed the Twilight Terra Elves more than the new arrivals needed them. Dagda crafted a treaty that gave the Twilight Elves everything. It violated every treaty that Arawn had crafted with the Wild People. Arawn gestured to the wooden spear shaft of Maeve’s Spear of Oaths cut with runes to bless every treaty and oath which the Sidh had ever made. Then Arawn slashed his face as if to bleed tears of blood. Oral myths later described this as the Oath Spear of Maeve bleeding tears. In reply Dagda only turned his face away.

The Twilight Terra Elves also adopted Father God of Fire and Mother God of the Merciful Waters. They feared the Shadow of His Nature: the Dark Lord. But the Twilight Terra Elves (referring to their farming skills) were willing to fight hard for the land next to the Heartlands which they called Arcadia. The land between the Heartlands and the Foothills of the Mountains of The Pale. But of course they would soon demand the Heartlands too. Arawn drafted treaties between the Merrach Mere Mortals and the Twilight Terra Elves to at least uphold his promises to the flaxen haired and blue eyed Merrach peasants. ‘The land owns them and they own the land’ Arawn told the Elves. In reply the Elves told Arawn ‘We own Arcadia!’ 

Arawn called a truce with Balor Of The Evil Eye and warned the fierce dark Formorian that ‘All of the truces have been broken so Dagda can buy the alliance with the Tuathian Elves.’ 

Balor drew a rune of Glamour of a curse in the air. ‘I call back my foolish offer of saving your soul Arawn! Dress the bog that will be the grave of your eternally moldering corpse  with as pretty a craftsmanship as you wish but it will still be your grave! And your soul will never cross over the Rainbow Bridge of Dreams to the Shining Plains of High Heaven!’ 

And oral myths say Arawn cried out and gestured to grab the arm of Balor Of The Evil Eye as he cried ‘Do not curse  Bres! I beg you Balor! He is of Formorian blood but I love him as the son I will never have!’ Balor gestured the breaking of the oaths and marched off into the darkening forest never to be seen by Arawn again.

The Wars against the Dark Lord intensified as everyone waged war for control of not only the Heartlands and Arcadia but The Pale with its mineral riches and control of the Ice Pass into the eastern forests of Greenwood and beyond to the Iron Hills from which another stone that melted could be mined called ‘Iron’. Oderic had at last found iron ore! But mining it would be another matter. But more important was the access to copper and arsenic until the far far away iron could be mined and forged. The mountains of The Pale had copper and gold and silver and gemstones as well as a glowing mineral called mithril which shimmered as if the pearl at twilight if hardened with arsenic and mercury.  But the mountains of The Pale had no iron or tin. There was evidence further afield in the Badlands of silver and tin. But the Badlands was remote to the point of impossible right now. And the name reflected the awfulness of the place. Arawn’s alchemy experiments with copper required either tin or arsenic to achieve the magick he desired: bronze. 

Arsenic bronze could be forged with a quality nearly to that of wrought iron. Oral myths describe the knives of the Sidh. Beautiful knifes —- worn down the stub of the wooden handles. And curious devices  ——that no longer worked. And bullets —-that now were hurled by slings. Curious bows and crossbows —- except the crossbows were now failing because the metal was breaking from over use. Wood could be replaced. Not metal! Not yet! The Heartlands boasted the richest soil of Zendula and the foothills of the Pale possessed wonderful stone quarries including crystalline stones but without copper wire no Glamour of Ley Lines (magnets) could be achieved to generate electricity in any form whatsoever. Not even an effective liquid battery. And the Foothills of The Pale possessed no known metallic ores.The Prehistoric Wars were now over control of the crucial sources for minerals. Minerals to achieve colors for dyes and makeup. Minerals to make better pottery. Minerals to make jewelry and talismans of luxury and prestige. Minerals to make metal for weapons and to restore the Magick of curious ‘Devices’.

By now there was enough ‘civilization’ to allow the population to enjoy a fairly settled lifestyle of increasing prosperity if only the wars could be stopped. And the spread of horses actually meant warring was spreading too. Horses meant a wolf gang of young warriors could do hit and run raids with devastating effectiveness. So now everyone who had access to a horse engaged in raiding and warring. The irony was not lost on Arawn that the fierce Formorians who were such terrifying guerrilla fighters had rarely waged war before the Sidh had arrived in their primeval eden with the horse Now their primeval eden was a battlefield.

Despite the wars Late Neolithic civilization progressed as copper and other metals became more accessible Farming and domestication of animals with occasional hunting allowed a fairly good diet now that everyone except the Firbolgs and Formorians were now lactose tolerant to get protein from milk, butter, ghee, cream, whey, and cheese. Cheese meant that diary cows which produced less milk in winter could nevertheless produce enough milk in summer to make cheese to stock in root cellars along with root vegetables and fruit to ride out the winter months. Almost everyone was depigmented (except the Formorians) and got vitamin D from the sun. With increasing access to replacement protein and increasingly harvests including fruit orchards the population was now less runty and sickly. 

More and more wild grains were becoming domesticated including grasses that could be harvested and dried to become hay to ride out the herds in the winter months. Migrations from summer to winter camps were no longer required. The only people still ironically migrating were the Sidh who had to move their war camps endlessly except in winter because of the nonstop wars. For whatever reason the Sidh never built their New Citadel. Nevertheless, the Late Neolithic Age was at its zenith —- if only the wars could be stopped. If only the Dark Lord could be stopped. 

At the same time another hybrid human appeared: the Dwarves. They looked rather like Oderic. But not entirely like Oderic. They were closer to the Firbolgs and the Neanderthals. Short, stocky, powerful, with hazel or green eyes prone to weakness or near sightedness, aggressive brow ridges garnished by bristly hairy eyebrows, low brows courtesy of low hair lines of aggressive, depigmented complexions, bristly ginger or brown hair, blunt aggressive noses, weak chins concealed behind aggressive and bristly beards, and blustering demeanors as if over compensating for anxiety depression or inferiority complexes. The later certainly were triggered by the coolly arrogant Elves who loomed over them. Oderic embraced the Dwarves as his ‘Children’. He asked them if he was right and Nemed was wrong for these new people came from the north. In reply one grizzled young Dwarve said ‘Both! For now we have been driven into exile but not for the reasons you thought!’ In reply Oderic said ‘We will build a greater Citadel here!’ To which Arawn who was listening from his war tent casually shouted out ‘If we can conquer it!’. 

Then Arawn emerged holding a curious talismanic device  of great cunning of copper wire and rock crystal along with magnetic lodestones  as he said ‘I sent the message after all. Not for you to come but rather for reinforcements for we are losing the wars! Not winning them!’ Oderic did not like this and the Dwarves were dismayed. To this the Dwarves said ‘No more will come after us! Except perhaps the barbaric slaves who revolted and escaped as the farmland they toiled upon even south of the Citadel turned so dire even the dense dark forest to the south retreated ever farther south. But as we are stuck here we might as well finish the job you have started! Oderic! Your mischief always starts wars that we must finish! We will shove you in front to take the first blow for now on!’ 

Later the young Dwarve called Durham asked Arawn why everyone appeared so awed by Arawn’s primitive device. Arawn replied ‘Try to do better my cocky young Dwarve!’ Later in revenge Arawn gave Durham the mermaid talisman as a joke before the whole court of the Sidh. Durham held the ridiculous thing with a red face. But later Arawn apologized to Durham for the prank which was typical of Arawn. The Dwarves never apologized for anything so Durham never apologized to Arawn for insulting his crystal radio powered by piezoelectricity. Interestingly, Durham The Deathless never attempted to make a similar crystal radio device either out of inability or else out of shame. 

As the Neolithic New Stone Age evolved into the Chalcolithic Copper Age the stone edifices waxed into megalithic monoliths, ritual centers of astrological and astronomical worship of the skies, and the measurements of the cycles of Time and Change and Death essential to farming civilization. The year was divided between the Green Samon and the Black Giamon. Sometimes this was described as the Divine Twins bonded together as if doppelgängers forever warring. Beltane celebrated the arrival of spring for planting. Samhain celebrated the harvest. Each solstice or equinox had its special rituals now enshrined in the amber of myth. Rituals only half way remembered today in distorted recreations as if a supernatural game of telephone. The end distorted. The original message garbed by time. The Green Man of the Harvest was often burned to climax the the bull sacrifice which was done at Beltane and always done at Samhain to climax the sacrifice of the horse.  Spring famine being as dangerous as autumn harvest. 

So precarious were these times the sacrifices often entailed elaborate Glamour rites besides the killing of the bull or horse. Arawn would give the Shadowy One a ritual knife of prized copper or else high polished rare stone and especially obsidian which was hard to carve but as strong as iron. Arawn also gave the Shadowy One a ritual Cauldron to catch the blood of the sacrifice. Finally Arawn would give the Shadowy One flint and iron to strike the spark of the bonfire. Flint was easy to find but not iron. Arawn found iron at meteorite crash sites. So the fact he sacrificed precious supplies of iron ore not of this earth to help the Shadowy Ones strike ritual fire indicates he took the rites seriously. Sometimes Arawn gave a sun chariot talisman to the Shadowy One for a Samhain sacrifice to pray for the return of spring. Spring usually involved adoring a bull with flowers to parade it to the sacrifice ground. Then a heroic young member of Arawn’s hearthweru was picked to take the knife and slay the bull when it was released. A rather dangerous ritual to be sure. All Glamour (Magick) was deemed to be very dangerous for everything has a price and the repercussions cannot be anticipated by even the most wise.

After the opening rites Arawn would hold court for justice including Weregild blood money or else Weregild blood barter to atone for crimes or else Weregilt blood for blood. Death sentences. But Weregilt was only exacted on the Samhain or else the Winter Solstice because of the seriousness of the death sentence. There is evidence Arawn nudged earlier prehistoric human sacrifices called Wicker Man or Bog Man executions toward trial court verdicts of Weregild blood money or blood barter. Weregilt blood for blood death sentences, and executions could only be done after lawful justice held before Arawn. At the very least it stopped mob violence and vendettas. 

Arawn also tried to outlaw Bog executions which he considered heinous, the idea consuming him with acute fear. The idea of pinning a living man tied up and sometimes screaming to the bottom of a mire by willow sticks to suffocate in bog mire and be loathsomely entrapped eternally was horrifying to him. Bog executions meant the body did not decay being organically ‘tanned’ by bog chemicals and instead was grotesquely preserved. That meant the soul of the Bog sacrifice could never escape and pass over the Rainbow Bridge of Dreams to the Shining Plains of High Heaven. 

Possibly because of the Balor prophecy of how Lugh the Black would die, Arawn always stressed the horse or bull ritual or else Weregild as a lawful replacement for human sacrifice. And Arawn also introduced Nitthing Exile to replace as much as possible death sentences for Weregilt blood for blood. But Arawn privately told some of his most trusted hearthweru that the failures of the Sidh might someday require a Weregilt human sacrifice of atonement for clearly the Sidh had committed a sin so heinous they were under a transmutation curse. ‘Of course Dagda the Bow should never be forced to experience such a death though long ago the Rex was always expected to die for the sins of failure!’ Arawn told his bodyguards. ‘That is what the Scapegoat is for!’

The Dwarves, discovering to their dismay the difficulty of exile, built to excess with stone to reaffirm their sense of self worth. Pilgrim Mere Mortals migrated now to sacred places to offer sacrifices to the Sun and Moon and erected yet more tombs to their Blessed Ancestors to affirm their rights to the land by way of the history of their pedigrees and the legality of their clanns. The Merrach ancestral tombs were so complex they had many subterranean rooms now and ornate doors and even ‘great halls’ along with elaborate altars to their ancestors which they later mimicked with their deep elaborate root cellars and ice houses. Virtual homes for the dead and later mansions of plenty to ride out the winter with lavish style. Subterranean mansions so ornately cozy and filled with every farmer’s idea of luxury the Merrach used them for hot summer months or else to ride out terrible storms. The Merrach clearly got their ideas from the Dwarves. The only difference was the Merrach still built equally elaborate homes of wood and plastered waddle with elaborate thatch on top of the subterranean cellars. And from the Dwarves the Merrach now learned how to build a fire place. The fire place was the parvenu new thing!

Many myths, legends, and epics of Prehistory recount Arawn and his Hearthweru of bodyguards and also his celebrated Wolf Gangs of heroic paladins riding down broad dirt parade routes lined with fantastical monoliths and elaborate tombs to preside over the Glamour of the Solstices and the Magick of the Equinoxes with horse or else bull sacrifices presided over by fanatically garbed Court Wizards and Shadowy Ones in wooden masks doing rituals so ancient and distantly remembered that they became our Gigasdh Sacred Dances. The sacred performances were done on a raised wooden stage surrounded by the crowds. Arawn would build the stage with wooden parquet puzzle pieces that fitted together to form a fantastical image of the magical world which clearly inspired his last creation the Cosmati. As Modernity unraveled the Sidh were turning to Glamour and Magick. Even Arawn’s science was becoming drenched in Glamour and Magick. He would make his devices look talismans. He would present technology as Magick. The Sidh were devolving but perhaps that was the only way they could survive. 

Arawn always said the horse and bull sacrifices were to bless Dagda. Everyone watching the virginal Shadowy One in mysterious grab ritually slay the blessed horse or bull with her knife before draining its blood into the holy cauldron and consigning its bones and carcass to the bonfire except for its  skull which was always ritually buried with its tail tied inside its bony mouth. Its teeth gripping its tail eternally. But the prehistoric audience always  assumed and indeed wanted the powerful Glamour of the Ashvamedha horse sacrifice or else the Mithras bull sacrifice to bless the only Sidh most Barbarians and the Merrach Mere Mortals ever saw or met or trusted: Arawn. There are several ancient epics that recount Arawn himself ritually battling and slaying the bull. That was the one sacrifice which a male could also do..Often the bull would be fairly wild and would put up a fight so that Arawn would be blooded. However the Ashvamedha horse sacrifice always had to be done by a Shadowy One thought it was to bless the Rex. As Arawn always stood in leu of Dagda most of the epics conjoined the image of the Rex with Arawn rather than Dagda. 

It is interesting that in the last years of Gildagad’s regime he not only allowed by tacitly encouraged Artorious The Glorious to be seen as Arawn to his Rex. His best warlord and greatest general as his de facto legitimate heir instead of the Red Astels. In real life Dagda The Bow had a son, Angus Mac Org The Were Bear, and therefore a de facto heir though Arawn’s popular generalship quietly challenged the appalling Angus. Arawn’s attempt to create a Stone Of Fate talisman - device to pick the legitimate king with Glamour and Magic rather than primogeniture indirectly challenged Angus. And Arawn’s most secret Glamour Blood Sacrifice on the forest altar of an Unknown God directly repudiated primogeniture with the creation of the Y Ddraig Goch Blood Of Him The Red Dragon which is to say the procreation of what became the Line of Uther Dragon whose Standard was the Red Dragon which is the legitimate line of the Royal Family of Zendula today —- from the genes of Arawn. Not Agnus or Dagda. 

One does not have to like Fianna to wonder if his warning to Angus Mac Org was not right: Arawn’s quiet self effacing manner might have been a facade to conceal a man quietly deeply worried about succession and civil war who was looking for an alternative to primogeniture to anoint kings. Either way the Sidh were ultimately destroyed by a coup and internal civil war over the succession of Dagda by a son who was by all accounts an unmedicated disaster.

After the opening rituals Arawn’s hearthwerus including wolf gangs of fine young warriors and also shield maidens would preside over the bonfire burning of the carcass of the sacred horse or the sacred bull as the roasted meat of the sacred sacrifice was given in ritual portions to the people to bless them along with the anointing of the oil from the fat of the sacrifice. Then the Shadowy One would use a branch of mistletoe and oak leaves to spatter the blood of the sacrifice on the eager participants after anointing Arawn with a rune of blood on his scarred forehead. 

So whatever secular Modernity Hyperborea once embraced, the Hyperborean Sidh and certainly Arawn by this time was embracing a primeval religion the climax of which would sanctify the Sidh as gods themselves. This hallowing of the Sidh appears only later in epics and later First Age Elvish rites. The oldest myths and legends present the Sidh as demigods. Not gods. Also the epics composed around the death of Arawn present him as the Sacrificial Bull or Sacred Horse. Weregilt. The Human Sacrifice to save the people from the damnation of a transmutation curse. Today the Zenduian Zodiac has Arawn as the Sacred Bull of Spring, the Hanged Man, the heroic self sacrifice, the hero martyred. His followers are the Night Watchmen of Warning of coming calamity. Harbingers and Patriots. The characteristics of the Arawn sign of the Zendulian Zodiac are resourcefulness, tenaciousness, tenderness, inventiveness, artistic creativity, and strength. The inverse is possessiveness, cautiousness, stubbornness, compulsiveness, and addictive or self destructiveness. Horsham of Arcadia was also born under this sign which is interesting.

Traditionally the next day  Arawn would hold tournaments of war games and at night music, singing, reciting by bards, riddling, and dancing. He also held courts of justice and used a  scales crafted of gold by Oderic to visualize Common Law, Evidence of Guilt, The Right of the Accused to confront his Accuser, and Presumption of Innocence (which denies ancestral guilt or damnation for the sins of others). The myths, legends, and epics recount endless tales of this time. Some called it the new Golden Age for the splendor of the polished copper that mimicked gold which was becoming more common.  Amber and pearls and polished mineral stone were becoming more plentiful too. Feathers and furs were no longer the norm. Civilized people now wore woven cloth of linen and wool and also fine leather. The long kilt and over tunic was appearing. Because cloth was still precious it was not cut but rather was gathered or else sewed as squares or rectangles of cloth off the loom into kilts and over tunics so as not to waste the precious cloth. Later people portrayed the Sidh of this time in Heike couture but the was not the case. It was a transition into the later Elvish Heike style. Elves later reinvented the Sidh as themselves only more divine. But for the lowly Mere Mortal Peasant or visiting Barbarian there to pledge clientage or to foster their best children to be educated in teulus the sight must have appeared to be as if the Gods of Hyperborea.

The Twilight Terra Elves in contrast continued their sky burials on tree flets: platforms decked with sacred totems to the dead. Some of the bones were collected after a year and kept as talismans. They did not ‘go native’ the way the Sidh were. Later the Twilight Terra Elves adopted the Glamour (Magick) to become the symbolic weaving (or real weaving) of magic in ritual runes or ritual gestures of ‘weaving’ spells while uttering ritual incantations during ritual Gigasidh dances by Wizards or Shadowy Ones garbed in rich over tunics woven with Glamour and dense with Magick embroidery garnished with tiny totems or sacred talismans while adorned with sacred wooden masks.The Gigasidh dances replace most blood sacrifices. The Court Wizards or else the Court Shadowy Ones only did a ritual horse or bull sacrifice once a year in the Courtyard of the Great Maw. The Twilight Terra Elves gentrified Glamour (Magick) as the Prehistoric Age became the Age of Bronze and the Age of Elvish City States. 

However there is evidence that the Elvish Court Wizard Kitsume engaged in Prehistoric rites of Arawn as the Heike led Wars turned bad. It was recorded by Lady Wisteria that Horsham of Arcadia did several Mithras bull sacrifices including wild bulls armed only with a prehistoric stone knife reputedly once crafted by Arawn to slash the jugular to spray out the blood into ancient ritual cauldrons to bless the altars of the Sidh Gods and the Unknown Gods. But the rites failed and so did the Elvish wars against the Dark Lord. And certainly the Elvish Wizards and Shadowy Ones did not forbid Black Glamour (blood sacrifice). They only advised the ‘weaving’ of spells of Green or White Glamour. The Cosmati Mosaic is not repudiated for being a talisman - device -actually a sort of organic computer —- ignited by Black Glamour of human sacrifice. But it is also guarded  and its use is secret and rare and its Glamour is deemed dangerous.

 The Sidh ordered the construction of great monoliths (tombs?) as their wars against the Dark Lord started to turn deadly. Arawn wrote his first history of the Sidh on copper sheets in his new alphabet of runes as he created his final talismans including the Flammarion Scroll of Glamour Talisman while waging Dagda’s increasingly ruinous wars. Oderic oversaw ever more elaborate kurgan mound tombs to house the Sidh Gods as they died at Taralii. Everyone insisted the kurgans  were Vara crypts where the Sidh slept until they would rise up again.  By now the first curious monoliths which once featured elaborate arrangements of crystalline stones and curious copper wires built on Ley Lines (to generate piezoelectricity?) and become mere tombs for the Sidh dying in Dagda’s wars. Arawn made no pretense about it to his warriors. ‘It is the Great Diminshing’. 

Oderic also oversaw tombs in the emerging stoney Citadel inside the depths of The Pale for the dead Dwarves who fossilized as they died if placed in special tomb edifices. A sort of mummification. Oderic accepted an apprentice named Durham The Deathless to oversee the construction of the subterranean city in the depths of the mountains of The Pale called The Citadel so he could do his alchemy experiments of metallurgy with Arawn as well as their finale collaboration called the Cosmati Mosaic: a biological computer. Durham kept trying to invite himself into the experiments of Oderic and Arawn. Oderic who was possessive of Arawn keep pushing Durham away. ‘If all of this is so easy to recreate then go do it yourself Durham!’ Oderic would grumble. The word for ‘recreate’ is always used which is interesting and does support the thesis that the Sidh were Hyperboreans from a somewhat more advanced civilization who were devolving in their exile.

But Oderic found the Dwarves to be less his children than his contrary relatives. Increasingly alone as the Dwarves ignored him and followed the uppity Durham, Oderic wooed Arawn with promises about better talismans and devices that would win the losing wars being waged against the Dark Lord which required esoteric minerals and rare earths which no one really wanted for talismans and devices which only drank blood and caused tragedy. The metallurgy experiments had successfully reinvented arsenic bronze for the Dwarves to commence mass production but iron was still a struggle. Forget about carbon steel! But like all of Arawn’s talismans and devices and discoveries it came at great cost for arsenic bronze poisoned the smith forging it. Arawn was slowly dying and he knew it. Even if he did not die in battle he was already dying of poisoning be it alcohol or arsenic.

Around this time Arawn found a large meteorite crash site and harvested a remarkable amount of melted metal ores and other esoteric substances and rare earths (not of this earth?) burnt by fire and sodden with what appeared to be blood. Arawn buried the soul entrapped in the debris so he could pass over the Rainbow Bridge of Dreams to the Shining Plains of High Heaven. Then Arawn gathered up the mineral debris including parts of burned trees and organic forest matter which had incinerated at the crash site and in places turned into a rare charcoal. Arawn used this cache for his final forging of a Steel Sword to be his ultimate Talisman of Dagda. An oath sword. A rather pointed rebuke to Dagda. But the forge fire had to be increased drastically to make a success of the forging of this limited and rare supply by a brilliant man who had heretofore in Hyperborea never had to forge anything being able to buy it off the shelf.

Oderic who was becoming increasingly paranoid, told Arawn ‘The Sidh have become as wild as the Firbolgs and the Formorians  and even you enjoy the company of savages as if this barbaric place is a quant paradise instead of a bitter exile.’ To this Arawn replied ‘It was a paradise until we came.’ Oderic was forced to recruit Durham to pump the forge bellows after the umpteenth rebuilding of a forge furnace based on the evolving kilns for pottery. Together the three geniuses succeeded at last in a spectacular triumph of alchemy: the first prototype of a carbon steel blade! But of course it was flawed and when Arawn discovered the flaw he broke the prototype in disgust and ordered Durham to throw it away. Instead, Durham kept the prototype to reforge as he mastered the skill of metallurgy. This became the Oath Sword of Gildagad which later still became the Calibur Oath Sword of the Pendragon. 

At the same time the Twilight Terra Elves Elves started to build not villages but extensive farm estates and also a city. A remarkable city built around a single mountain in the foothills of The Pale called Arcadia. They even picked a King to rule them instead of the Sidh: Rhingol. It would prove to be a tragic mistake. Arawn had wanted Rufus Royal. Lady Wisteria also wanted Rufus Royal. Ryu The Snake also wanted Rufus Royal. The wisest of the wise wanted Rufus Royal. Dagda also wanted Rufus Royal but had no leverage anymore with the Twilight Terra Elves. No Glamour now existed to pick the true king except primogeniture. The oldest son inherits. So instead, the Elves picked a fool blinded by Malian the Goddess of Mirages.

This fiasco which turned into a disaster occurred after Angus Mac Org The Bear smashed a talisman device of Arawn: the Stone of Destiny created to to pick the true king.  Fianna The Slinger had tricked the drunken Were Bear to smash it so Dagda could not disown him as his heir to become the next Rex of the Sidh. After the drunken Angus Mac Org throw one of the broken pieces of the talisman at Arawn Arawn told the drunk that Angus’ only invention would be civil war. Agnus Mac Org ran off howling. Then Arawn sat on the ground and stared at the broken pieces of his genius. Then the Sidh beleaguered Sidh took a knife and slashed his wrist. Fortunately Oderic, who always hovered outside of Arawn’s tent, ran inside and saved Arawn’s life by binding up his wound. 

The broken piece of the talisman device conspicuously absorbed Arawn’s blood so it was kept as a sacred talisman by the Court Wizards of the Twilight Terra Elves and is in the Royal Collection to this day. DNA has even been extracted from it proving with modern science that the Y Ddraig Goch Red Dragon Blood Of Him not only exists but is the gene of Arawn and runs through Royalty via Uther Dragon and is also part of the Royal Family of the Maleth and also The Clann of the Golden Bear who today is Prince and Eald Bear Sherker as well as our young Queen Maeve (the youngest daughter of Bear Sherker as well as the Strathclydes who also carry the genes of Uther Dragon). Our young King Horsham in contrast carries the genes of Lord Blackheart and Rufus Royal —- the Elve originally picked by Arawn to be king. 

At the same time some of the Twilight Terra Elves heard the call of Unknown Gods from beyond the Seas to the West. It is unclear how the message came. Arawn was experimenting with his crystal radio talisman to try to contact Lost Hyperborea in the vain hope that someone would answer. But by now the contraption, if it worked at all, only brought back garbled sounds or else high pitched shrieks. It is hard to translate the ancient myths and epics to decode their exact meanings. The ‘message’ said to go West and not North. Nevertheless, some of the Elves decided to go West!

Some of the Twilight Terra Elves packed up to travel West. Bres was blazing a trail and was mapping the wilderness and the winding Havens River and had even beheld the Ocean for the first time. Bres had just come back with more of his maps (even using a crude lodestone compass) and also discoveries like sea shells and even fossils found along the beach. He even brought back the remains of a lobster! Everyone was awed and excited by the idea of the Ocean of the West. So the Elves went to behold the Ocean for the first time. Arawn was not impressed by the ado and pointed out that the Indo European Mere Mortal Barbarians had been migrating into Zendula from the West for some time so it was hardly remarkable. And the Wild People had been trading sea shells and amber for furs and feathers for eons too. Nevertheless, off went some of the Elves! Perhaps the call of the ocean again excited them for their ancient ancestors had sailed the ocean of the east to reach Zendula to begin with.

After Bres led the Elves part of the way ( before falling out with them). These adventurous Elves followed the Havens River and finally stumbled onto the beach. They found no lobsters but ate crabs. Then they  crafted skin boats to set sail for a promised land called Terra Nova. Fortunately, as their improvised boats were leaking, they immediately collided with a large island completely uninhabited and waiting for them to build a new world in. These Elves then promoted themselves to the exalted title of the Celestial Elves. 

However some of these Elves on seeing the ocean and the fishing village after dining on crabs decided to stay in Zendula. But the rest of the Elves stayed in the Heartlands and Arcadia to finish building the city of Arcadia  and finish building their country farm estates. The Celestial Elves sneered these Elves as inferiors for embracing the shadows of a bloody land haunted by the Shadow of His Nature. The Dark Lord. The Sidh Gods were failing and it was the Great Diminishing. But the Twilight Terra Elves and Twilight Ocean Elves rejected the call of the Unknown Gods as a trick of the Dark Lord. By now their blood had bled into the soil so they could not abandoned it despite the wars which had claimed the lives of Elves, Dwarves, and Sidh no less than Neanderthals, Denisovans, Firbolgs, Formorians, Dark Elves, and Green Elves. And anyway most of the troublemakers from among the Elves were these so-called Celestial Elves so no one missed them.

 At the same time more Indo Europeans were migrating into Zendula from Eurasia —- probably passing by the Celestial Elves going in the other direction. The newest arrivals were quite different from the fair haired and fair eyed Merrach who were part of a trans-Eurasian migration of Tocharian Celts carrying the lactose tolerant Baltic Siberian Ancient Hunter Gatherer Proto Indo European R genes as well as the U 5 genres of the Baltic Nordic Motala and Loschbour Ancient Northwest Hunter Gatherers. The Tocharian Celts had bumped into the frontier of emerging China and then were forced to detour ever southward and onward as they bumped into more emerging peoples who were either shocked by their flaxen blond hair and blue eyes or else their appalling fashion sense of plaid twill trousers. Either way the Tocharians were being driven into the deserts to die or else were being driven out of Eurasia altogether. Zendula was the end of the line of migration which was why the renamed Merrach Mundane Mere Mortals stubbornly stayed put in the Heartlands and worked with the Sidh despite the waves of yet more invaders from the west and the east and the north. ‘The land owns us and we own the land!’the Merrach insisted as they sunk down their roots into the depths of the Heartlands. 

The Merrach boast the R 1 a genes as well as the  R 1 b genes for blond hair as well as blue eyes including full depigmentation with an occasional freckled and green eyed red head. They tend even today to be of middling height and stout with deceptive looks as if one easily bullied. But the Merrach were actually surprisingly tenacious and unexpectedly capable of fighting for their territory and their nation. By now the Were gene was starting to appear among the Merrach. To be exact: Werewolves. This mutation would become the ‘Countryfolk’ ie Merrach Werewolves. King Gildagad The Great gave the Countryfolk an exemption from registering their Hidden Pedigree as well as an exemption from the draft into the Thiess Guards (the police of the supernatural and paranormal being supernatural and paranormal). The Merrach appear deceptively ‘Normie’ but underneath their flaxen banality are anything but. Now they stubbornly dug in as more outsiders appeared!

These were the Maleth who were Scythians from the Steppes. The Amazons. The Maleth were dark haired and dark eyed arrivals boasting the exotic Steppes pedigree R 1 b genes including the Yamnaya and Andronovian Steppes peoples which slightly diluted their original R genetic Siberian ancestors. They no longer boasted the brow ridges and large, strong, rugged contours of their Siberian ancestors. Asian Steppes genes also gave them a dark haired and dark eyed exotic look. But they retained the Siberian martial passion for riding horses and hunting and warfare and every sort of blood sports as well as martial arts —preferably on the back of a horse. 

To this day the Maleth preserve much of their ancient Scythian culture, totems, symbols, the cult of the magical stag and the predatory wolf, the passion for horses, and the cult of the sun and moon. Their horses boast symbolic antlers to this day.They preserve much of their original language which is Indo European and very close to modern day Hungarian. They still boast initiation tattoos into adulthood which date back to Siberian tombs of their ancient ancestors such as the Russian Ice Mummies. From the beginning they kept their trousers, long boots, and curious tunics and also tall coned hats instead of adopting the Arcadian kilt and short boots. The coned hat is often smashed down into a soft silhouette which has become the coned hat symbol of the witch and also the Phrygian cap of Marianne and Lady Liberty. While Zendula does not have an official Marianne the Battle Queen of the Maleth with her distinctive cap is the unofficial symbol of liberty for Zenduians. 

To this day the Maleth boost both the best Battle Maidens and Shadowy Ones (shamans and witches) which gives the Maleth a matriarchal quality. Many sacred rituals can only be done by the Shadowy Ones and today most of those Shadowy Ones are Maleth. The Maleth dominate the citizen militias even though most of the militia soldiers are Merrach. Ironically the Pedigees are accused of being the incarnation of the Hierarchy and Patriarchy but they send their children to teulu private schools run by Maleth Shadowy Ones no less than most of the ordinary country people of the fly over territories. The Maleth Shadowy Ones dominate the education of half of the country to such an extent the government schools cannot make headway outside of the cities. The Maleth Queen must crown the King of Zendula. This echos the Ashvamedha Horse Sacrifice where the Queen must sacrifice the horse to anoint the King. And of course the secret Ashvamedha must be done by a Shadowy One so the odds are a Maleth is doing it. 

Fortunately for the Merrach of the Heartlands and Arcadia the Maleth were a freedom loving people and they gravitated to the unsettled parts of the Southern Heartlands and Southern Arcadia. Arawn was very impressed with the Maleth and advised the Twilight Terra Elves to make treaties with the Maleth. For once the Elves took Arawn’s advice. The term ‘Beyond the Pale’ refers to Arawn’s last treaties. He knew many of the dwindling Green Elves had fled to the dense forest between the east side of The Pale and the Mighty Majestic River so he made a treaty to prevent everyone from settling in the Greenwood Forest. Arawn also drew treaty lines between the Heartlands and Arcadia and Southern Heartlands and Southern Arcadia for the Maleth to claim under liege to the Twilight Terra Elves and the Rex of Dagda The Bow. 

Arawn treated the Queen of the Maleth with great respect and asked the Amazonian Warrior Queen if she would attend some of the sacred rites which she did. She awed the Court Wizards and Shadowy Ones. Rumors spread that she awed Arawn. And certainly the Royal Family of the Maleth have evidence of the same Y Ddraig Goch Blood Of Him The Red Dragon (which is to say the genes of Arawn) as the Royal House of Astel which makes the Queen of the Maleth and the Queen of Zendula distant blood relations. It also possibly explained King Gildagad’s great respect and deference for the Queen of the Maleth. Gildagad was a bastard who claimed kingship but had no legal claim to the Siege Perilous Throne of Zendula. It also might explain the infinite wisdom of the Queen of the Maleth that her royal line has never lay claim to the Siege Perilous Throne of Zendula. Officially the Monarch of Zendula must be descended from Princess Luna’s descendants which is to say Uther Dragon who besides being a famous Werewolf was the most famous carrier of the Y Ddraig Goch Blood of Him The Red Dragon (which was the battle banner of Uther Dragon). The Y genes are the Sidh genes of Arawn.

 At the same time the Beorach People appeared out of the North. They were part of the most ancient of the wide flung R genetic  Indo European migrations across the Far North of the Northern Hemisphere of Baltic Siberian Eurasia which also makes them part of the Diaspora of the original peoples of Greater Hyperborea. The Beorach were also most likely the people the Dwarves referred to as the slaves or serfs of the Sidh homeland of Hyperborea who rebelled and fled the dying farms of a dying city to flee into the dark southern forests only to emerge from the same dark forests along the north frontier of Zendula Proper. This might explain the less than warm welcome the Beorach received from the Sidh and the equally less than warm welcome the Sidh received from the Beorach.

The Beorach were the roughest, toughest Mere Mortal Barbarians to invade Zendula Proper yet. They were aggression incarnate, second only to the Formorians in their combative refusal to bite the bit of submission to the Sidh. The Beorach boasted dark hair and dark grey eyes along with a strikingly pale, raw boned complexion. They were a more rugged, bigger, stronger, and powerful people  than the other Mundane Mere Mortals who were arriving to displace and replace the dwindling Wild Peoples of Zendula. The Beorach still boosted a distinctive brow ridge and body hair which reflected their closer interbreeding with the vanishing Neanderthals whose last stronghold was Siberia and the Eurasian Far North. Therefore the Beorach reflect an earlier example of the R genetic lactose tolerant Proto Indo European pedigree than the Merrach and Maleth with their diluted genes mixed with other U 5 Cro-Magnon peoples of the Steppes or else Europe. In fact the Beorach carry more concentrated R genes than any people other than the original people who migrated across the ice bridge into Alaska and the Arctic as well as the Zendulan Ainu who also have a heavy R genetic inheritance from their very ancient Far Northern ancestors along with a still not entirely identified U5 Ancient Hunter Gatherer source which still perplexes people to this day. 

Therefore the ancestors of the Beorach (and Zendula’s Ainu) must have transversed the Far North of Eurasia from the Baltic to Siberia to the Americas to the Far North coast of both Japan and Zendula when ice and land bridges still existed and much of Greater Hyperborea was not yet submerged or else severed by the rising waters of the Holocene. The Beorach like the other primitive Hyperboreans were originally drawn northward as the Wurm Ice Age glaciers melted and the Holocene warmed the heretofore hostile landscape, turning it into a temporary nordic eden where it because the sanctuary for the last of the retreating Ice Age Giant Mammals  and the last Neanderthals along with the early U5 Cro-Magnon Ancient Hunter Gatherers. 

Today the original Hyperborean homeland of the Sidh, the Dwarves, the Beorach, and our Zendulan Ainu must be what is today called Zendula’s Damnation Land. Damnation Land lies along the far northern coast of Zendula. The landscape is mostly submerged with only jagged islands and rocky coastlines hinting of a now submerged landscape where once this part of Greater Hyperborea existed. The frozen sea still concealing the rest of the submerged lost landscape of Greater Hyperborea which once connected all of the Far North of the Northern Hemisphere. Part of Lost Hyperborea also remains in the now refrozen northern tundra of Zendula as the Holocene Optimas waned. The timing of the arrival of the Beorach intersected with the arrival of the Dwarves. Both were fleeing Lost Hyperborea. Something was going very wrong there.

Lost Hyperborea was part of the original far northern homeland of the Hyperboreans. There is enough evidence to surmise that some Hyperborean civilizations stretched along Greater Hyperborea commenced before the Younger Dryas Big Little Ice Age when the first of the twin Holocene Optimas appeared to falter as if succumbing. So at least some of the Hyperboreans scattered along Greater Hyperborea had established advanced civilizations even before the Levant emerged into the beginnings of their advanced civilizations. The Twilight Elves name for themselves, The Tuathians, indicated a shared Hyperborean civilization had existed at some point. So where did the other advanced Hyperborean civilizations vanish to after providing mythic echoes such as Submerged Atlantis which interestingly are just as often placed in the far north as in the Pacific or Atlantic or Mediterranean? 

Besides being entombed in ice under the stormy northern waters another likely candidate for the Tuathian Hyperborea might be Greenland which is today locked in a frozen tomb of glaciers. But there is evidence that  Greenland and Iceland were once verdant. Like the Tuatha de Danann Sidh, the Tuathian Elves insisted they were fleeing a besieged advanced civilization or city in the far north. This echos the Vedas of the Aryan Bhat Brahmins who insisted their Vedic gods originally lived in the far north until they were driven out by the besieging ice. And the Nordic Peoples of Europe also have myths of a lost civilization or city in the far north which was besieged and destroyed by the Ice Giants (glaciers) during Ragnarok. So even today the hunt for other logical sites for lost Hyperborean civilizations continues.

When some of the Sidh fled their besieged Hyperborea there were still enough people left in the beleaguered citadel to appear to offer a viable option of survival. Hence the accusations hurled at Oderic by Nemed and Dosojin about Oderic being ‘wrong’ about the need to flee. When the Dwarves fled besieged Hyperborea there was still enough desperate  Hyperboreans left behind for Arawn to contact a few erratic times with his fragile rock crystal piezoelectric radio. But the Dwarves told Arawn that Hyperborea was not a Citadel anymore or a lavish and advanced city worthy of being called the Court of Tuatha de Danann but rather the Vara or Inner Sanctuary of Besiegement to escape the onslaught of the Ragnarok. The Flmbulvetr. The Kali Yuga. The Yamo Yima. The All Devouring Winter. Hel.

But now Hyperborea was covered by ice, snow, and glaciers. The far northern part of Hyperborea including its port was submerged into Damnation Land. The northern terrain was now permafrost tundra. The city was besieged in ice. Now the southern farmlands were becoming permafrost tundra as well. The far dark forest to the south was retreating before the invasion of the permafrost tundra. Farming was now impossible. Contact with the outside world was now impossible. Any people left were trapped inside that besieged city. Huddled in the depths of the Vara. And they no longer answered Arawn’s distress calls. And the Dwarves had also told Arawn they fled in part because of a massive ‘Implosion’. The best guess is that the power plant created with piezoelectricity to maintain the besieged city had blown up. 

The waxing warmth of the original Holocene Optimas which made Hyperborea possible were now gone. And indeed the last two harvests in Zendula Proper had failed. There was the feeling of a change in the air as if the warmth was ebbing away even in Zendula Proper. All of the rites and rituals and sacrifices and monumental stone henges could not read the sky to know what was about to happen. The Piora  Oscillation was starting which would ultimately bring down the Late Neolithic Stone Age and give birth to the bloody Bronze Age which in turn would be brought down by another horrific mini ice age before ushering in the bloody Iron Age. The first of many. No one knew it but this was the beginning of an endless cyclic tug of war between solar maximums and solar minimums garnished by little ice ages with names like the Wolf, Sporer, Maunder, and Dalton which finally defeated not only Lost Hyperborea but the Prehistoric Neolithic Age and every age to come in the Northern Hemisphere of Eurasia. Every great civilization in the Northern Hemisphere of Eurasia crashing into a little ice age as if on clockwork. Alas, the Sun’s only warning of its internal clockwork is the absence of sun spots. Arawn’s unraveling technology no longer allowed him to read the face of the sun. Otherwise he would have seen a sun’s surface all but completely devoid of sun spots. 

The fleeing Beorach were very bitter refugees as they fled into Zendula Proper. They were definitely even more bitter than the Dwarves. Probably became they were not originally invited to flee with the Sidh or with the Dwarves for that matter. Instead, they realized that they had been left behind, betrayed and abandoned. The Beorach would become the thorn in the sides of the Sidh, the Dwarves, and the Twilight Terra Elves as well as the Merrach and the Maleth. There was something about the Beoarch that pissed off everyone. 

The Beorach were classic Proto Indo Europeans with every R not only bold but CAPITALIZED. They were extremely patriarchal, hierarchical, masculine, caste oriented, and all conquering. Their castes included the Warlord King, the Warriors, the Bards, and the Conquered. They possessed no Amazons or Battle Maidens or Shadowy Ones. They worshiped the Sun and Father God of Fire. They scorned Mother God of the Healing Waters. They took slaves of other Mundane Mere Mortals, not acknowledging them as their biological equals even if they were their biological distant Indo European kindred. They did acknowledge clientage which was a sort of ritual alliance cemented by the taking of hostages which hinted at their original relationship with the rulers of Lost Hyperborea. 

Clientage to them was a relationship based not on loyalty but fear and hostages. At least Arawn changed clientage into a ritual quid pro quo with the Merrach and the Maleth. A give and take of mutual benefits and responsibilities bonded by lavish feasts and gifts of horses and mules and bulls as well as sacred rites and pomp and circumstances of lineage to the Rex Dagda. And probably the Sidh back at besieged Hyperborea had resorted to hostages to keep the Beorach from mutinying or escaping.  Now the bitter Beorach were merciless as they conquered all before them. They acknowledged no one. Not even the Sidh. Not even the Elves. Especially not the Dwarves. Certainly not the Barbaric and Savage Gods and their Barbaric and Savage Worshipers who were now all but defeated. They did not even fear the Dark Lord. Their motto was ‘Do whatever you can get away with!’.  The weather was turning dire. The harvests were rotting under too much rain and sleet and hail and ice and snow. The spring planting often flooded. The winter arrived before the harvest could be hastily gathered in. Rotting grain became infected with ergot fungus which was an organic LSD. Animals and people alike started to go mad. 

Despite Arawn’s best efforts the Mere Mortal Barbarians started to do Bog sacrifices again. Human sacrifices. Hunger stalked the land. More people turned to outlawry or illegal wolf gangs of raiders robbing and stealing. The Merrach started to fortify their villages. Many lived full time in their underground stone root cellars where they could not be burned out. Guarding their dwindling harvests with their bows and arrows and slings and spears. One of Arawn’s last inventions was a tricky little thing he gave the besieged Merrach: horse jacks. They are simple to make of copper or even bramble thorns rather like a child’s jacks. But thrown across the ground they could bring down raiding wolf gangs mounted on galloping horses. That meant that the horse was no longer the monopoly of the Sidh. The question was what other monopoly of the Sidh was about to be looted? For Arawn’s last trick of war was mass produced bronze courtesy of the Dwarves of The Pale. 

Arawn’s army was overstretched trying to put down raiders and robbers. Village elders lost the respect of their people. The Sidh lost the respect of their people. The Twilight Terra Elves decided the Sidh had never been gods to begin with. Just another form of them. Everyone decided the gods were either dead or else gone mad. Tombs were robbed and the bones of the ancestors were defiled. More people defected to the Dark Lord and his army of Orcs and Monsters. The Bronze Age of the great city states had arrived in rivers of blood. But first Zendula had to undergo the climax of the Savage Wars followed by the Celestial Wars. 

The emerging Bronze Age was a time of great strife, competition, war, and death as waves of invasions came into Zendula. Now it was the  Milesians and the Amberlings. Both exotic invaders came from across the Indian Ocean and were fierce martial castes who had cut their teeth waging war in Prehistoric India from the Kushan Mountains to the Punjab to Ceylon and beyond. They were mercenaries for hire. Right now the top payer was the Dark Lord. The Merrach surprisingly stayed loyal to Arawn if not to the rest of the Sidh. But it was just a matter of time. Once Arawn died in battle the Merrach would defect. The Twilight Terra and Twilight Ocean Elves were already preparing to fight alone. Rufus Royal was their general. The Ocean Elves picked Cleardan. By now some Elves wondered how wise it was to not have picked Rufus Royal as their king as King Rhingol failed to cope with the escalating crises. Oderic suffered what appeared to be a complete nervous breakdown. 

Fianna The Slinger plotted a coup against Dagda The Bow with Angus Mac Org The Were Bear. For the coup to succeed the plotters had to kill Maeve The Gesith the Shield Maiden of Dagda The Bow. Maeve was Dagda’s bodyguard and chariot driver. And of course for the coup to succeed the plotters had to kill Arawn. Though myths and epics visualize  the Sidh as a mythic family there is no actual evidence that the most famous Sidh were a biological family at all. The Sidh originally were some ten thousand refugees from Lost Hyperborea in the far north. So while the myths and epics describe this betrayal as a family tragedy which would bring down the Sidh it was more likely a coup of diverse disgruntled refugees of a lost city who were rebelling against Dagda’s autocratic rule as well as Arawn’s command of a losing war. Regime change by a people devolving into barbarity. 

The key to the coup was Arawn. The wolf gangs and hearthwerus which formed the semi professional army as  well as the Merrach peasant fighters were only loyal to him. Not them. The only Sidh most of the Mere Mortals ever saw was Arawn. That is why most of the epics and myths which boast convincing details that sound genuine concern Arawn. Though Dagda did fight in key battles he does not appear extensively in the prehistoric epics composed and recited by the Mere Mortal bards doing the time of the Sidh and preserved by continuous reciting by generations of bards after the death of the Sidh. The staring role in each epic poem or song besides the featured Mere Mortal hero is Arawn for whom the hero fights heroically and (if he survives) is praised and blessed by Arawn and his Court Wizards, Shadowy Ones, and Bards. And if the hero dies saving Arawn the epic ends with his heroic burial and bonfire celebration as the bard recites his dirge. All of the epics of this time follow a similar pattern. 

Arawn holding court and gesturing for a bard to recite a new poem about the battle and the heroes who died and the heroes who survived so the heroes both dead and alive can be praised and blessed. A hero meeting Arawn for the first time as a mere peasant and being invited to become a member of a wolf gang or else an exalted member of Arawn’s hearthweru private body guards. A hero fighting beside Arawn and saving his life. A hero sacrificing his life for Arawn. Arawn and his hearthweru riding to the rescue of a besieged village and saving the peasants or rescuing a girl about to be raped and her sacred virginity violated. Arawn rescuing a Mere Mortal orphan child who grows up to become a hero who then goes home to save his besieged village. Arawn defending a village from a monstrous Slaugh Unforgiving Dead. Arawn slaying a monstrous Dire Wolf besieging the village. Arawn slaying a monstrous saber tooth tiger killing children. Arawn ambling up to a lost wooly mammoth and gently whispering for the gigantic, misplaced monster to amble back into the wild forest and hide alone and forlorn.  Arawn reassuring terrified villagers that a misplaced giant sloth was not a monster but rather a lucky charm and should be protected. Arawn putting down his sword to gesture to a short snout giant bear that always walked upright that perhaps it should abandon its latest cave and amble back into the forest because the people would not understand the it was a Were Bear. (This is how Arawn met Beardan The Weird who was a Were Bear demigod). Arawn finding one of the last Neanderthals and leading it gently by the hand back into the forest to hide. To hide. To hide. Always to hide. Because the Prehistoric Age of Gods and Monsters was about to crash into oblivion only to reemerge as History: the First Age of Elvish City States. The Bronze Age.

Arawn defending a village and then helping it build a defense wall. Awawn helping the besieged Merrach to rebuild the sacred tombs of their blessed ancestors  which had been violated and looted. Arawn even helping to restore the violated bones of the ancestors to their original resting place. Arawn reassuring the peasants that even if the ancestral tombs had been violated and the talismans and sacrificial treasures stolen the bones of the ancestors were saved and that alone would bless and preserve the besieged peasants. Arawn showing a peasant how to draw a bow to defend the village. Arawn showing a besieged village of peasants how to defend themselves as their world unraveled. So many epics like this! Killing a king was one thing but for Fianna’s coup to succeed he would have to not only kill Arawn but kill the peoples’ love and trust in Arawn. The only way to do that was to discredit Arawn or else trick or manipulate Arawn into discrediting or besmirching himself.

Meanwhile, the Dwarves were retrofitting their emerging Citadel in the depths of the mountains of The Pale to become a fortress. They carved an ornate portal entryway on top of a steep cliff face over fifty feet straight up and then built a zigzag switchback stone road to it to prevent attack or siege engines. It was a marvel of engineering but also served an obvious defense need. At this point the Dwarves did not even pave the dirt road leading up to the steep cliff face. Mud was a defensive strategy. From late autumn mud to freezing winter ice and snow to spring mud the mud prevented armies from moving and therefore prevented year around war. So the Dwarves cleverly terraformed the landscape leading up to the steep stone switchback road to actually channel mud and rain to become a natural defensive foil for armies. Even today the Dwarve stone road (augmented over many eons by modern engineering) still stops traffic if there is any amount of rain or sleet or ice or snow and especially mud. The inhabitants of the Old Citadel today have engineered deep subterranean tunnels to reach the Golden Bear broad gauge railroad tracks and modern high speed highway system some twenty miles away from the steep cliff face that boasts that ornately carved stone portal over fifty feet all but straight up which today is sealed up entirely.

Meanwhile, the wars went from bad to worse. The Beorach fought everyone. The Maleth Queen privately consulted with Arawn and then retreated across the Ice Pass of the Pale into Greenwood along with the dwindling Green Elves and many Dark Elves who had not already fled to the Westlands or the Blue Mountains or else northward to the Merry Fords and Wild Utopia. The Barbaric and Savage Gods, the Firbolgs and the Formorians, struggled against extinction. The Sidh were both winning and losing at the same time. Mostly they were losing. Arawn formally adopted Lugh The Black the abandoned scion of Sojobo the Harbinger of War. Lugh was a Were Black Swan and Sojobo hated Were Black Swans. 

Arawn probably should not have adopted Lugh because that simply pissed off Sojobo the Harbinger of War against the Sidh whose wars were now going from bad to worse. Badhb The Triad Goddess of War appeared to revel in the rivers of blood. Badhb was either a Monster or else the evidence of the mythic merger of ancient gods of war. She was Morrigu fierce courage. She was Neamhan berserk valor. She was Macha intoxication of bloodlust. Arawn had to welcome the monstrous incarnation of senseless war into his war tent er she be recruited by the Dark Lord. That showed how desperate Arawn now was.  Badhb washed in the blood of the battlefield and devoured carcasses and danced as if possessed after every battle as if drunk on death. She led Arawn’s wolf gangs into battle stark naked. This was not a shield maiden of yore but rather a monstrous thing indeed!

Arawn had already adopted another orphan of mysterious pedigree called Bres The Black. Like Lugh, the name Black reflected Bres’ dark hair  and also his dark facial hair. But Bres did have a darker complexion being of Formorian descent. The Formorians’ ancestors were both Neanderthals and Denisovan giants who were not depigmented. The blond Sidh like the Elves were pale and lacking in body or facial hair. So Bres was embarrassed by his somewhat ruddy complexion and also his hirsute appearance which he concealed with elaborate helmets and cording to deflect attention away from his facial hair. Bres wore over sized battle tunics of imported silk with long sleeves which he tied up to fight in. Bres had acquired the silk at the Sea Port of The Havens to appear to be civilized, refined, and genteel like the Sidh who ironically were devolving. 

The later lavish Heike over tunics were supposed to have been based on this. But today it is believed that Bres acquired prehistoric Chinese silk  paddled armor surcoats which deflected blades. The silk was padded with cotton and recent tests confirm such a surcoat could deflect blades, sling bullets, and arrows to a surprising degree. The apparent oversized Bres sleeves were probably part of the surcoat padding and not an attempt by a savage to appear to be genteel or refined or civilized. At this point in time there was no place for gentility or refinement.

Arawn wore rugged leather armor faced with overlapping bronze scales like a fish against sling bullets and arrows. This included attachable  leather sleeves augmented with bronze chain links which was a crude form of chain mail. Battle helmets were the norm too. Arawn also ordered everyone to stop wearing highly identifiable symbols to stop the bullets of sling snipers. So the later extravagant Heike battle couture was not in fact based on the Sidh though opera and art persists in portraying the Sidh as if Heike Elves. By now Arawn was prematurely old with scarred, grizzled features and grey hair. He limped badly because of a rotting wound on one leg which refused to heal indicating arsenic poisoning from making arsenic bronze. Arawn would meet people in the open air instead of inside his war tent (which was surprisingly humble and utilitarian) and apologize gently for the inconvenience or else open the tent flaps of his battle tent to become a canopy so the open air (or rain) would blow through and cover up the stench of Arawn’s mortality. 

Epics would record the young heroes meeting their god and being quietly, grieving shocked. But then the young heroes in the epics would be awed by their god’s mournful dignity about his mortality and also his soft voice and quiet presence as well as his quiet dignity and quiet compassion. Everything about Arawn was ‘quiet’. His violet grey eyes were ‘quiet. His aura was descried as ‘quiet’. Arawn’s voice was described as both surprising quiet and also deep, rich, pregnant with pauses, and caressingly soft. Even seductive. But not sexual. Seductive as in hypnotic. Mesmerizing. And ‘quiet’. Arawn did not boast or bellow or shout. His quietness was hypnotic. Epics would tell of a swaggering, bellowing, young hero boasting of his prowess in battle and strutting into the war tent of Arawn only to feel the overwhelming awe of the quietude of the god as if  the blow of a fist in chest and the suddenly overwhelming awe generated by those violet grey eyes so quietly surveying him that he suddenly crumbled to the ground before his god. One epic frankly said the boastful hero on first meeting Arawn and being confronted by Arawn’s quietude  actually wet himself. He later redeemed himself in battle by dying for Arawn.

There is no mention in any prehistoric epic or myth  for that matter of Arawn displaying any sexuality whatsoever. The epics equate Arawn’s quietude and chastity to the sacred virginity of the Shadowy Ones and Maeve The Gesith. A divine sacrifice to achieve supernatural strength. A quid pro quo with divinity by way of the ultimate sacrifice. This is why the genetic confirmation that the Maleth carry the Y Genes of Him The Red Dragon (Arawn) is so surprising. So great was the physical presence of Arawn that despite the evidence of his quietude and obvious mortality the young heroes would in the thick of battle rush to surround Arawn in a shield wall to protect him with their lives from the Orcs and Monsters of the Dark Lord, willing without question to sacrifice their young lives for their god. 

Bres The Black was probably the scion of Angus Mac Org and a Formorian princess for he boasted dark Denisovan features while possessing demigod genes. Bres and Lugh were the best of pals and every time the beleaguered Arawn watch them laughing together he winced. So he encouraged Bres to keep exploring and mapping the wilderness of unexplored Zendula. The Blue Mountains. The Westlands. The Havens where the fishing village was becoming a town under the Twilight Ocean Elve Cleardan. Lugh The Black, an elegant would be Sidh who except for his black hair appeared to be a Sidh in every way served as Arawn’s gesith or commander of his hearthweru bodyguards. Lugh The Black was a master of the emerging long bow or war bow. Now as the old devices of war, crossbows, broke down and with iron and steel still a techological step too far, Lugh’s war bow was a compromise: a technological marvel in war though clearly it could not be welded on a horse or a chariot. For the former the recurve bow was used, for the later the javelin was used. Lugh could weld such weapons but his mastery of the war bow made him legendary. His aim was so amazing he once shot a long bow arrow through the V of the flapping wings of Sojobo The Teugu Harbinger of War as the monstrous Teugu flew across the battlefield in his Were form of a giant predator bird of war. 

But the wars the Sidh started were killing them off. They faced their own death and the reality of their own extinction like the taste of blood in their mouths. The days of Prehistoric Gods and Monsters was coming to a close. Like the Barbaric Gods and their Barbaric Worshipers which they were fast slaying, the Sidh were about to be slain by the very forces they had unleashed. And the Elves and Dwarves were also fighting among themselves as they created the first cities in Zendula: Arcadia City nested in the rolling foothills of The Pale and the Citadel carved deep in the rocky mountains of the Pale. The two cities were connected by the first formal dirt road reflecting the co-dependency which amounted to symbiosis as if harnessing two dissimilar beasts to the yokes of a war chariot. It simply could not work. And the awe the Elves and Dwarves felt for the Sidh was fast eroding. 

They Sidh  were fast losing their claims to godhood and were instead becoming demigods who were fast becoming simply exotic human hybrids akin to the Elves who were exceptional but not supernatural after all. The Elves should not have scorned the Sidh’s ‘Great Diminishing’ however because the Elves were claiming demigod hood before the Mundane Mere Mortals who would soon become just as disillusioned by their losing wars as well. No one was awed by the Dwarves which also pissed off the Dwarves. The Beorach were not awed by anyone. And the unraveling Oderic found his ‘children’ the Dwarves no longer considered him to be their patriarch. 

Like Nemed, Oderic was about to become redundant to his eugenic creations spawned from Neanderthal genetics and his genetics —-whatever they were. And the ambitious Durham The Deathless was fast taking Oderic’s place as the leader of the Dwarves. It was both a case of ‘What have you done for me lately’ and also a case of resentment for Oderic’s mischief and interference and especially the repercussions of his eugenic experiments which created the Dwarves. Like Doctor Frankenstein and his creature, Oderic was discovering that some ‘mischief’ could only end badly. 

Oderic turned to the increasingly weary Arawn who was dying of arsenic poisoning from bronze smithing as his increasingly flawed talisman inventions drank his blood —— which was to say failed or else resulted in dire repercussions. As the wars resulted in more defeats as the Dark Lord because ever stronger, Arawn withdrew into himself. His once famous good looks were now destroyed by war, illness, alcoholism, and despair.  Oderic who was also probably an unrequited homosexual started to devise his final invention: the Cosmati Mosaic. A biological computer. Arawn asked if it needed his blood. Oderic replied ‘Every talisman you have created my dear Arawn drinks your blood. The blood is the life after all. How else can we bring this creation to life?’ The suicidal Arawn simply nodded. ‘Let it be so then. Let us create the thing that will devour us. Dagda needs a scapegoat to suffer for his sins and we are expendable are we not?’ Arawn must have pondered the bitter last words by Balor Of The Evil Eye:

‘I call back my foolish offer of saving your soul Arawn! Dress the bog that will be the grave of your eternally moldering corpse  with as pretty a craftsmanship as you wish but it will still be your grave! And your soul will never cross over the Rainbow Bridge of Dreams to the Shining Plains of High Heaven!’

At the same time more Indo European Mere Mortals were migrating into Zendula. The Amberlings were more and more all of the time and now they were decisively changing the course of the war. The Amberlings were part of the Indo European Aryan invasion of India in the form of the Pathans, the Rajputs, and Bhat Brahmins. But by now the original Proto Indo Europeans had morphed into a more exotic form which little resembled their ancestors of the Steppes or their kindred in Europe.  In Zendula these amber hued warriors closely linked to the Aryan Pathans and Iranian (Aryan) Persians offered themselves as mercenaries to both sides: the Sidh and their Elvish and Dwarvish allies and the Dark Lord and his army of Monsters. The Amberlings were a war caste with great expertise in archery, javelins, and swordsmanship. Though they fought with chariots their special expertise was blitzkrieg war cavalry. Disciplined as a mounted shieldwall, the Amberlings could slaughter foot soldiers unless they kept a tight shield wall or battle square which few Mere Mortal barbarians could do unless Arawn himself was in their midst. The Amberlings could even wipe out the howling mobs of blue painted Beorach!

The Amberlings wore Indian Pathan style trousers, tunics, and turbans. Their hair was dark but their eyes were dark or blue or even  greenish. Arawn invited a truce. He treated the Amberling Ambassador with great respect and displayed the pomp and circumstances of the Sidh as well as the skill of his wolf gangs and heathwerus’ in the midst of the greatest of the monoliths and stone henges and stone barrows. Then Arawn’s court Wizards did elaborate rites and rituals —-which did not awe the Amberlings in the slightest. So Arawn’s best Shadowy One did a Ashvamedha horse sacrifice. The original Siberian Steppes People and Scythians would have understood it and been awed. But the Amberlings were not awed. And the day before there was a dire omen: the weather which had been cloudy suddenly froze into ice storm and all of the birds flying across the darkening sky suddenly dropped to the earth as if stones. The birds had frozen to death mid flight! It was a dire omen!

Though it was not the spring for such a rite Arawn did a sacrifice of a sacred bull under the full moon with just his boot knife as the bull charged straight at him. Leaping over the head of the fierce bull onto his back before plunging his knife into the fiery breast’s jugular. That performance of their own ancient Persian rite which was also an ancient  Crete rite awed the Amberlings into joining the Sidh. Forever afterwards the Amberlings reenacted this in their secret warrior cult of Mithras. Arawn The Warrior became the iconic demigod warrior slaying the sacred bull with his blade. The defection of the Amberlings turned the tide —-for a time. 

But the Milesian invaders were also becoming more and more and now they were turning the tide back toward the Dark Lord.  The Milesians were a dark haired and a blue or greenish eyed people of  ivory complexion from Ayra which was then called Persia and today is called Iran which means Aryan. The Milesians were of the same Proto Into European Steppes R 1 b genes of the Pathans and also the Amberlings but it was further garnished with the blood of the R 1 b- R1a genes of the Indo European Greeks left behind by the army of Alexander The Great in what was then called the Kushan or Gandhara Empire which today is called the Indian Punjab and the Levant to India Corridor through the Hindu Kush Pass. The Milesians were also fearsome mercenaries for hire.There was no ancient Magick which Arawn could do which might awe them or else quid pro quo clientage deal or increasingly frayed pomp and circumstances powwow extravaganza.  The was no more monopoly of horses to bribe them either. There was no gold or silver to bribe them. The Dwarves controlled The Pale and they were miserly toward Arawn now. No one could or would pay taxes to the Sidh. There was no more portable wealth as the harvests were blighted by the little ice age. Everyone was doing barter now including the Merrach. But mercenaries did not accept barter. And the Milesians did not see the Sidh as gods or at least their gods. Such was the ‘Great Diminishing’ the Milesian Mere Mortals were no longer awed by the Sidh or the Elves for that matter. 

Arawn struggled to woo these heroic warriors to his side. The battle scarred and weary Sidh warrior finally simply told Miles the elegant warlord leading many of the Milesians that ‘I have nothing to offer you but honor in war and my respect and friendship. I am so beleaguered I wish you could be my friend so that together side by side we could stand together fighting the good fight against the forces of darkness and venal barbarity. Not as clientage or as serfs or as slaves but as equals. Comrades in arms.’ Then the Sidh simply held out his right hand, his sword hand, to shake hands as if ritually disarming before a comrade or a friend. Bemused, Miles surveyed the battle scarred and forge burned hand offered to him and reached out with his own right hand. Both men momentarily symbolically disarmed. And then they shook hands. Thus was born the Zendulian custom of shaking hands. But the tenuous deal by Miles enraged the other Milesians who wanted gold and silver. It would ultimately lead to Miles’ brutal murder by his own venal kindred. 

Naturally the Celestial Elves decided to pick this appalling moment to reappear as Zendula’s precarious peace further dissolved into bloody war and invasion. These long lost Elves came as ‘civilizers’ but what occurred rapidly became yet another invasion.The Celestial Elves triggered yet more wars against the beleaguered Firbolgs who were being led by Streng in one last stand at their final bit of ancient sacred forest and their ancestral Sacred Tree as well as the Formorians who were fighting a last rearguard action against their own extinction. All as their Dark Elves and Green Elves fled their once time Barbaric and Savage Gods to save themselves. 

Streng, a tall, handsome, heroic Firbolg warrior garbed in armor crafted of the bony shells of giant Ice Age glyphtodont armadillos and wearing the skull of a fearsome Terror Bird while welding an obsidian axe as hard as iron fought his last stand against Celestial archers before the Sacred Tree, the most sacred and magical thing of the Prehistoric Heartlands, a tree so ancient it was believed to have been birthed from a seed of a comet on the first day of Creation. The Celestial Elves killed the heroic and noble Streng and defiled his beautiful body by dragging it from a war chariot as they set fire to the Sacred Tree. Thus ended forever the Firbolgs. According to some myths Bres when he heard about it cried out ‘I see my doom and it is dire!’Miles is reputed to have later said as much at least according to myths. ‘I see my death and the death of the Gods!’

The Savage Wars exploded into its final act of unspeakable horror as betrayal crowned betrayal as everyone betrayed everyone. Bres The Shining Hero who slew so many Monsters, and mapped so much of Prehistoric Zendula, and trail blazed the East West Road from Arcadia City to The Havens By The Sea, now was betrayed first by the Celestial Elves, then by their kindred the Maestusian Elves, then by his kindred the Formorians, then by the Sidh who adopted him. Knowing how much Arawn loved his foster son Bres, Balor Of The Evil Eye laid a trap to snare Bres into betraying the Sidh and the Elves as well as tricking Bres into betraying his best friend Lugh The Black. Thus Balor Of The Evil Eye fulfilled the prophecy he had long ago prophesied to Arawn. 

The fiery urge for battle which was the trademark of the Indo Europeans in their myriad incarnations and the Sidh in particular swelled into an orgy of war at the Fiery Fissure where the Dark Lord had built a terrible bastion on the side of a living volcanic fissure. In this evil place the Dark Lord bred Monsters like the Orcs in grotesque dysgenic experiments with captive Elves, Firbolgs, Formorians, Neanderthals, Denisovans, Sidh, Amberlings, Milesians, and Mundane Mere Mortals from the Merrach to the Maleth to the Beorach. On the cusp of triumph the allies snatched defeat out of the hands of victory and turned the Battle of the Fiery Fissure  into an appalling debacle. Lady Wisteria’s lover Miles of the Milesians was betrayed by rival Milesians and his body was desecrated and denied excarnation. His butchered body was instead shoved into a foul bog to deny sacred burial to allow his soul to soar up to the Shining Plains of High Heaven. 

Bres the once Shining Hero turned into the Bastard of Destiny fled the debacle in shame to hide among the tombs and monoliths of the Sidh. The disgraced hero dug his own grave while laughing before the small Elvish boy he had kidnapped as if playing a game of hide and seek. Then he sent the laughing Elvish boy skipping off to present his challenge of a duel to Lugh in the form of wild spring flower. Thus Bres forced his dearest friend Lugh the Black to kill him as they fought their last duel in Taralii the burial place of the dying Sidh Gods. Bres had no army but an army of flowers and no weapon except a stick. Lugh understood and refused to bring a war bow and instead slew his best friend with a clean cut of his sword as if an executioner. All a small Elvish boy witnessed the Fall of the Gods and lived to tell. The small boy was Lord Heike the Shining Prince of Elvish Arcadia. 

Then the Celestial Elves betrayed Lugh The Black and degraded his body in a foul bog to deny his soul salvation. Gleefully the Celestial Elves laughed at their treachery as they rode off. They did not know the full prophecy of Balor Of The Evil Eye. The ghost of Bres performed the ‘Butterfly Gigasidh Dance of Excarnation to free the soul of his best friend. Together hand in hand the souls of Bres and Lugh walked over the Rainbow Bridge of Dreams to the Shining Plains of High Heaven. It was a better end than the Sidh. 

By now Dagda had been betrayed to his ignominious death by Angus Mac Org The Were Bear. This occurred after the incestuous Finnalana murdered Maeve The Gesith with a long weaving needle. Finnalana tricked Maeve into embracing her at twilight only for her always concealed and grossly malformed third hand and arm impaled Maeve through her heart like the long weaving needle as if a stiletto. The Prehistoric myths do not recount what happened to Oohagh The Consort of Dagda after she cursed one and all and vanished never to be seen again. And of course all of this occurred after Arawn finished the diabolical Cosmati Mosaic computer talisman with the now deranged Oderic. Arawn went into a barn and hung himself with his final invention: a noose. Oderic used the body and blood of Arawn to baptize the Cosmati before cutting his own throat on the Cosmati. To this day the Cosmati lives on, the most fearsome of talismans locked away by Cleardan and kept to this day by every Master of The Havens. And to this day Arawn’s genius possesses the monstrous thing. And Arawn’s soul cannot pass over the Rainbow Bridge of Dreams to the Shining Plains of High Heaven but rather like a Bog sacrifice must haunt forever the supernatural mire concealed beneath the glowing beauty and fantastical artistry of the haunted mosaic. 

Angus Mac Org in turn was betrayed to his ignominious death when he put on the Crown of Dagda and bedded his new wife in the bed and tent of Dagda—- only to murder his pretty young wife in a drunken rage after he morphed into a wild bear. According to myths the magical tent of Dagda floated away to expose the bloody bed and the drunken Sidh laying  in a drunken stupor beside the bloody carcass of the girl he married and then murdered. Driven mad by grief and humiliation Angus Mac Org took a cord and strangled himself. His body was left to become carrion for the wild animals being a wild animal himself. The coup became a debacle and the Sidh imploded. By the Battle of the Fiery Fissure the Sidh were few and humiliated and staggering toward their final bloody exit from Pre-history into history. The end of the Neolithic Age and the beginning of the Bronze Age signaling their formal demise. All to the vivid reds of bloody sunsets as explosions of distant Pacific volcanos filled the sky with the ash  of nuclear winters which always goes hand in hand with little ice ages. 

The Prehistoric Neolithic Early Copper Age crashed into the horrors of a catastrophic little ice age called the Piora Oscillation that all but consumed it. But the Twilight Terra and Ocean Elves would rebuild Zendula Proper with amazing city states of which the greatest was Arcadia and The Havens as Elvish civilization reached its zenith. But the Bronze Age of the Elvish City States of Zendula would likewise crash down into a heap of tragic ruination caused by a tsunami caused by a Pacific volcanic eruption which flooded much of Zendula after a wave of  earthquakes from after waves of famines followed by waves of wars after years without summers and horrific devastations caused by endless floods and storms and ice and snow and rotting crops and birds falling out of the sky frozen stiff mid flight and and ergot blight caused by another little ice age which brought every Bronze Age civilization in the entire Northern Hemisphere of Eurasia to complete annihilation. For a while it appeared that no one could or would survive. 

But Zendula would not only emerge as if phoenix from its own ashes but soar as if a griffin into the magnificent Second Age of the Empire of Gildagad The Great. And the wily Elve would weld as his oath sword a Steel Sword forged by Durham The Deathless from the last precious meteorite ores sodden with the blood and sweat and tears of Arawn which history would call first the Calibur of Gildagad and then the Excalibur of Artorious The Glorious as Gildagad’s Empire likewise fell into ruination during the Age of Darkness and Chaos triggered by yet another horrific little ice age which would likewise bring down the Roman and Chinese Empires as well as the apex of Ancient India. There is a reason why Father God of Fire after defeating the Ice Giants warned that his gifts to Humanity would be Time, Change, and Death. The price of living in the Northern Hemisphere will always being the waiting for the annihilation of the next  little ice age.

You might also like to read the blogs about the People of Zendula An Overview and also the Rise of the Elves, the Rise of the Dwarves, the Rise of the Amberlings, the Rise of Men, and the Rise of the Morlocks as well as The Mystery of Burke and Hanning and their discovery of Lost Hyperborea.

Coming in 2022 will be the reformatted e books about the Prehistoric Age of Gods and Monsters and the First Age of Elvish City States. 

And you can also check out the slide show ‘The Werewolves of Zendula’ here and also read the coming book Walk Like A Werewolf coming in 2021.