Wars of the Cauldron
The Wars of the Cauldron are a partially mythical account of a series of conflicts in Antiquity between the Elw, here called the Elwys, and a culture-group known as the Eraiseraislâi ('all the sisters of the Deer'). It is a story that seeks to explain the displacement of an indigenous population of reindeer herders by the Elwys and the changes this process wrought on the victors who, by the end of this period, became increasingly nomadic - and would remain so down until the Mediaeval Period.
The earliest written account of the Wars of the Cauldron were recorded by the Grand Historian of the Court of Kadmi Rachumion, known to us as Doderinonicus. This would place it between seven and four thousand years after the events it purports to record. However there is every reason to believe that Doderinonicus was drawing upon traditions of some considerable antiquity (with apologies to Herodotus...).
The Account of the Grand Historian
The Elwys, are primitives who grow daily more strong and numerous in the lands of Lirikoth. They seldom wash and carry with them the stench of their animals as they live in dark and foetid huts made of stretched animals skins covered in thatch and moss. They make crude music with instruments fashioned from the bones of their enemies and it is accepted by all that they bark and howl and gibber like the murderous prattling fools that they are. A peculiarity of the Elwys is their fondness for eating their own lice... [Note: Doderinonicus continues his diatribe against the Elwys for a further sixteen conventionally ordered paragraphs which are, for the sake of brevity, omitted here]
About the Elwys there is the following story. In the earliest years of the Age of Khaz Modan, before the first bloom of its fabled empire, slavers from the islands far to the south sailed into the boreal wastes (Absentia?) and raided amongst the primitive folk who eked out an existence along the frozen shores of the High North. The country there was forest with trees of all manner. In the most densely wooded part there is a frozen lake surrounded by a reedy marshland where the ground is firm in winter but slickens into oozing mud during the months of the thaw. In this marshland mirelurks dwell, this being a creature of scale and shell with a square face and pincers [an Ohl'Tar?], whose skin - once the scales are rubbed off - that tailors use to make edgings for the fashionable jackets of the southerners, and also eels with a fury pelt were caught that disgusted and amazed all, but it was not for the trapping that the slavers had come this far north.
The men, the young and the old, the halt and the lame, these they killed without hesitation. The women of the Eraiseraislâi, they corralled, as many as they catch alive, and set Cimmerian guards over them. The slavers, well satisfied with their haul, sailed off in three ships, the holds bursting with human cargo. Once at sea, the women murdered their captors, but, as they had no knowledge of boats and were unable to handle either rudder or sail or oar, they soon found themselves, when the men were done for, at the mercy of the winds and tides, and were blown to the Cliffs of Despair (Cape Farewell), here they were wrecked and those who did not drown came ashore.
Blown far from their kin and in a strange land, they set their course south overland in search of the paths that led back to their kinsmen, such as may have escaped the depredations of the slavers. Searching for the migration paths of the Arassath (aras - deer, reindeer) that would lead their way westwards and home, the Eraiseraislâi pressed into the familiar ranges of the Ancient Midlands out of season. In so doing they passed into an inhabited part of the land, wherein the Elwys had set their goats to pasture. The first thing the Eraiseraislâi did was fall in with a herd of horses; these they seized, and, mounting on their backs, rode off in search of encampments to raid and the path home.
The Elwys were astounded and at a loss to know where these marauders had suddenly appeared from, as their dress, speech and nationality were all strange to them. Thinking that the bandits who had fallen upon them were men, the Elwys fought ferociously albeit without success, to defend their herds. It was only when they examined the bodies of their slain enemies that they discovered what was amiss. The chiefs of the Elwys gathered together and decided upon a pursuit; that their assailants were women gave a new direction to their plans.
Meanwhile the Eraiseraislâi discovered that these horses that they had stolen, though short, were sturdy and capable of a flying pace. Now at last they would have mounts that could keep pace with the arassath that were their sustenance. A great gift they were bringing home to their people. Greater still was their shock when they realised that a pursuit was on and that they were the prey.
