This is the story of the history of my clan, told from myth and legend, up to the current era. As it was passed on to me, so too I pass on the story. How much is true, and how much myth, I will leave as an exercise to the reader.Â
The Tale of Aiathich and Sgath
Long ago, when Matar was young, the spirits and men lived in harmony. Mother Matar watched over the world of men and of all things living, and Father Pator watched over the world of spirits and all things dead. Dividing these two worlds was the Great River Annan.Â
On the shores of this river lived three clans, the Asgath, the Riordan, and the Seraen. The river Annan was not a normal shore, and for the mortals of the river clans, it seemed as if the river stretched away forever into a grey mist, the waters growing rougher and rougher until any boat was dashed to pieces, and the souls of those unlucky enough to be aboard were carried away by the river to the world of the dead, never to return.Â
Then, one day, a spirit named Sgath travelled across the river to the world of men. She took the form of a beautiful young woman, and wandered the world. She was fleeing from her mother, Amanira the spirit of the great northern mountain, who sought to marry her to Causalus, the spirit of the western sea, into which the River Annan flowed.Â
It came thus to pass, that Sgath fell in love with a man named Aiathich. Aithich was a kind and honourable soul, who took great care of his otherworldly lover, and it was with great happiness that Sgath was found to be with child.Â
But Amanira was clever, and sought her daughterâs return with a cruel and fearsome desire. Her icy breath reached across the River Annan and tore down into the homes of the men, freezing them where they stood.Â
Sgath and Aiathich fled south, trying to escape the bitter wrath of Amanira, but at every turn they found their path cut off by the vicious spirit creatures of the mountain, whom Amanira had dispatched to find her daughter. Aiathich fought bravely to save Sgath, but to no avail, and she was carried off across the River Annan, where Aiathich could not follow.Â
Aiathich begged the river to calm and let him cross to save his love. But the river was a powerful spirit, and her domain was not so easily forded. To allow a living human to cross her would disrupt the balance of the worlds that had held for so long. She told him the only way for a mortal to cross was through death, and so, stricken by grief, he threw himself into the river, where he was dashed upon the rocks.Â
Awakening as a spirit, in the world of the dead, Aiathich flew north to the great mountain, intent on saving his lover. Aiathich burst into the home of Amanira and demanded she release her captive daughter. Amanira was overcome by a great rage, and shook the mountain, sending rivers of snow and fire cascading down from the peaks.Â
But Aiathich would not give up his pregnant lover, and Sgath sang a song of love that calmed the mountain. A sorrowful tune that reduced her mother to such tears, that she wept a new river down the mountainside.Â
Thinking quickly, Aiathich and Sgath grabbed hold of a fallen tree and rode it down this new river, escaping from the grasp of Amanira.Â
They soon found themselves once more on the shores of the River Annan. But Aiathich could not return to the world of the living, having given his body to the river in order to cross it. Sgath, being a powerful spirit of nature, could ford easily, but she did not want to be apart from her lover. Being with child though, she knew she must go, for the world of the dead was no place for a child of the living to be born.Â
The two lovers sorrowfully parted at the shores of the river, and Sgath flew south to the world of men, where she gave birth to her daughter. A happy, laughing girl whom she named Sgathiach.Â
Sgath raised Sgathiach until the day of her Marking, never telling her of otherworldly heritage. On that day, when Sgathiach became an adult, her mother left her, once more crossing the River Annan, never to be seen again.Â
Notes about this tale: Its important to note that no where on Mikramurka is there a geographical river known as Annan. Its possible that an actual river of that name existed, but it is equally possible that the river is merely a metaphor for death.
The Tale of the founding of Sgathiach
Sgathiach was now a young women, and she was one of incredible skill, beauty, and intellect, and the three clans coveted her, each wishing for her to join them. The three clans argued and pleaded with her, but she would not chose among them. The Saerens were wise and enlightened, the Riordans were skilled and clever, and the Asgaths were noble and brave, and she had a great love for all of them, as the kin of the father she never knew.Â
The three clans grew increasingly angry with one another, and ignoring the wishes of Sgathiach, they went to war with each other, each intent to take Sgathiach as prize for victory.Â
But Sgathiach, being part spirit, grew enraged at their ignoring her wishes. Summoning the powers of her grandmother, the great northern mountain, she tore the ground apart beneath the feet of the three clans, and the violent waters of her sadness and anger flooded into the gaps, separating the three clans by two new rivers. At the place where the two rivers met and became a third, there was an isle, and it was upon this isle that Sgathiach made her home.Â
The waters of the three rivers were treacherous beyond measure in those days, so the three clans could not ford the waters to reach their kin on the far shores.Â
Sgathiach was clever, and sought to unite the clans of her father. She ventured out from her island, and told the chief of each clan that she would bear a child for them, adding her strength and magic to their bloodline. However, the crafty girl did not give the children to the clans from which their seeds came. The child of the Riordans went to the Asgaths, the child of the Asgaths went to the Saerens, and the child of the Saerens went to the Riordans.Â
When the three chiefs found out of her subterfuge, they grew angry, but they could do nothing about it, save to cast out the children, and these children were much beloved as the light of the clans.Â
Sgathiach was still a mortal, and one day, many years into the lives of the three children, the rivers around Sgathiach's isle suddenly calmed. The children, ever curious about their mysterious mother, crossed to the isle and met one another for the first time, discovering their mother had passed into the land the dead.Â
Sgathiach was buried on the island beneath a stone cairn, and the three children together agreed that the times of conflict between their clans must pass. Together, they founded a town on the isle, naming it Sgathiach, after their mother. This town grew in prosperity and population, and the clans mingled together, and for a time, it was good. Three bridges were built to the isle, one from each of the lands of the clans. This town became a beacon, and clans and tribes from distant lands travelled to see its beauty.Â
Notes about this tale: There are historical records of a town named Sgathiach in the Ko'lor region of northeastern Mikramurka, south of the Uhr Mountains. However, the town no longer exists, for reasons that will become apparent in the next tale.Â
It was a stormy night when they came. The great golden leviathans, descending out of the heavens full of wrath and fury. A great storm had arose across all of Matar, as the world desperately tried to shake loose the invaders.Â
Many great deeds of loss, bravery, and courage took place on that dark day, and it was no exception among us. When one of the golden ships came down into the center of Sgathiach, belching forth armored soldiers, they were met by the warriors of the three clans, armed with any weapon they could find, from hunting rifle to kitchen knife. Â Though many lives were lost, the golden ship was eventually taken, the invaders rounded up in the square.Â
The warriors of the three clans were celebrating their victory when the great vessels still in orbit lashed out in rage and fire, and reduced the town to a pool of liquid rock, slowly filling with the boiling waters of the three rivers. In time, the place where Sgathiach stood would fill in completely with water, becoming Lake Unida.Â
The three clans were shattered, the majority of its members dead, and the golden ships and amber clad warriors returned and rounded the people up, never to return to Matar.
On that day, courage was not enough, bravery was not enough, defiance was not enough. The Matari people were brought to their knees and stepped on.Â
This tale I am told is intended to teach humility. There is always a stronger opponent, and strength and courage and bravery, for how valorous those traits are, cannot win every battle. Sometimes the bad guys win. My mother, aggravated at me for not bathing from time to time, would sometimes use the excuse, âAnd our ancestors didnât want to get enslaved by an evil empire, sometimes we donât get what we want.â As she put me over her shoulder and carried me against my wishes to the washroom.
 The surviving members of the three clans were taken to a world far away, called Hjyn, in the local dialect. Hjyn was a hot and moist world, home to narrow seas and wide marshy continents; much of which had been converted over into vast farms that extended as far as the eye could see. Despite growing a huge bounty, the slaves that worked these farms were allowed to eat little of it, the harvest mostly reserved for the hungry mouths of the Evil Empireâs armies. Â
The survivors of the three clans toiled in the oppressive heat and flies of the farms and plantations of the evil empire, proud men and women reduced to the lowest form of manual labourer. While sometimes men were captured and kept as slaves by marauding bands in the old days, the scope of this misery and horror was unlike any hell that could be conceived of. The River Annan roared close to the ears in those days. Its tug constant and inescapable as the misery flowed around menâs ankles. So easy was it to slip away into its dark and cool embrace, that many of those distant ancestors would simply lay down and die in their sleep, unable to survive the torture their captors inflicted upon them in the name of their cruel faith.
Wise Aeorise of clan Asgath prayed every night to the spirits, but received no reply from their ancestors, unable to cross the vastness of Father Patorâs darkened reaches. But Aeorise was not alone. the alien souls of this world spoke to her, and began to teach her the ways of the earth and the land. Which of the wild plants could be eaten, and which were poison, when to sow, and when to harvest.Â
Clever Milreld of clan Riordan spoke sweet words to their captors, winning himself prestige and respect. He became employed in the huge palace of the local lord. Milreld desired to feed his family, and so carefully stole grain from the stockpiles, replacing only a small amount of grain from each bag, and replacing what he took with sawdust to make sure it weighed the same. Milreld was also kind, and shared his food freely with the other survivors of the three clans.Â
Brave Eledar of clan Seraen snuck out of the slave compounds to roam the wilderness and commune with the spirits and the creatures of this world. He walked silently in the forest and spoke to the alien trees beneath the moonlight, learning their ways and secrets. Each month, he snuck back inside to deliver wild game to the clan survivors.Â
Eledar and Aeorise became enamored with one another, and married in secret, in the forest beneath the moonlight. They decided then to combine their clans as clan Asgath, to make their surviving line stronger and ensure their people could survive as one. While the clans were three, they were but one people.Â
The son of Aeorise was named Adaki, and he would go on to marry Thilisa Riordan, daughter of Milreld Riordan. It was Thilisaâs suggestion to keep their family names, and combine all the clans into one, with the name Sgathiach, to honor their lost home.Â
When night is darkest, it is important to stand together. In those days, though under the yoke of oppression, the clan Sgathiach moved as a united people. Their hearts beat as one, sharing in their personal tragedies and gaining the strength together to keep going. It is because of those brave and defiant men and women that we are here today.Â
The meaning of this story is obvious, as it represents the beginning of the modern Sgathiach clan. Still much of it is shrouded in superstition and hyperbole, a grain of truth and wisdom can be found threaded through the stories. We managed to come through an incredibly violent time of history relatively intact as a people, despite the pain and suffering inflicted upon us. We stood together. And weâre still here, that alone is a testament.Â
Eledar wandered near and far, he and his scouts walking the length and breast of their world many times. He learned the safe places in the deep bogs, where the trees grew thick overhead, their scaled metallic hides black and rusted in the salty waters. He learned of the spiny pines in the high hills, whose thin leaves were so hard and sharp as to make fine knives and arrowheads. He spoke with the spirits of the game, and learned which prey was nutritious and sustainable.Â
He swam across the narrow oceans and warmed himself beneath the sun on secluded beaches, ever hidden from the watchful eyes of the Evil Empireâs giant farming machines.Â
The Evil Empire made no attempts to learn the ways of this world, instead they merely imposed their will across the virgin landscape at a vast scale. They crushed millions of kilometers of forest and plain beneath their boots, and spread vast monocultures across the rolling hills.Â
The oppressed spirits of the world whispered to Eledar like one of their own, and Eledar listened. For many years he wandered alone, rarely returning to the slave compounds where his wife and son still dwelled.Â
Slowly, Eledar began to train his rangers. The Sons of the Forest built elaborate chains of tunnels, leading to and from the slave dwellings. They stored the ill gotten grain of Milreld and his ken in secret chambers carved into the soft earth. The sons of the forest learned to move in the ways of this new world, passing silently through the forest, always eluding the guards and their devastating laser weaponry. Yet, while none of them were ever caught, many a guard would be found with his throat slit in an alley, stripped of all his possessions. In time small communities would form who lived entirely beneath the earth, invisible to the eyes of their captors above.Â
A tiny village took shape, hidden in a grove in a valley far away to the north. The paths took one through many miles of tunnel, and many many more of rough treacherous wilderness that the Amarr had not bothered to inhabit. These sons and daughters of the forest held the traditions and stories of the clan alive, in a time where so much as speaking the clan tongue could earn one the lash. The shaman passed down through Eledarâs line for many generations.Â
Our clan history has a whole lot of âEledar is awesomeâ sections. Heâs considered one of the more important of the ancestor spirits, and his character is really, quite amusing to me. Heâs not the sort of savior you expect, heâs definitely just a dude, but heâs painted as a pretty badass one.Â
Aeorise went out one night with Eledar into the wilderness, and there she divined a great destruction. She spoke to the forests and the soil and animals, and written in their forms was a prophecy of death that came once to this world every two thousand years. A disaster their Amarr captors had no knowledge of even as it loomed obviously all around them. Aeorise was frantic, the terrifying revelation of their imminent deaths sent her into a frenzy. She rushed back to warn her family, but was discovered trying to sneak back in and was thrown into a prayer cell as punishment. Eledar, brave he was, tried to sneak into the prison which held Aeorise, and was captured himself. Milreld however, spoke softly to the local priest, and was able to secure their release. Eledar had already been given to the lash before he was able to be freed, but despite his pain, continued onward.Â
The three of them began to plan as they established the details of their fate. Â In 300 years time, the world would burn, the irregular variable pair that Hjyn orbited would swing close together for the first time in two millennia. Matter would fall from the sun onto the white dwarf, building up until a titanic explosion blasted all the material away. Then the stellar embrace would end, and the dwarf would sail back out into the darkness for another two thousand years. The blast would set fire to the sky, and scorch the soil down for many feet. The life had learned to live deep in the earth or grow hard shells to survive the cataclysm, and Aeorise was able to divine from the life the forecast for the next disaster.Â
Mildred was clever, and saw the distant and yet looming catastrophe as a chance to gain advantage over their captors. The trio plotted to smuggle members of the clan away, slowly bleeding their ranks into the forest, and establishing small, hidden communities, built deep in the earth or beneath the waters of the salt marshes, where they would be safe from the conflagration. In the wake of the disaster, their people could be completely overlooked, taken for dead, while they survived and thrived.Â
The Daughters of the river Annan began as a secret passed from Aeorise to her son, and from there to many others. Over the three hundred years leading up to the great burning, the Daughters of the River would become a powerful secret organisation, with eyes and ears scattered all across the planet. Secret villages were constructed, hidden in rough hillsides, marshes, and other areas the Evil Empire didnât want or need.Â
Their legacy would prove to be the salvation of our clan, along with many others.Â
The great burning came as forecast. The Evil Empire did eventually notice the white dwarf of course, but when they did it was barely six months away from its encounter with the sun. This was barely enough time for the Empire to evacuate all of its citizens, much less their millions of slaves. Thus the people of Hjyn were condemned to burn for their sins. It was preached as a great cleansing of spirit that would send the souls of those consumed straight into the arms of their evil alien god.Â
Alphonse Riordan would prove in those days of looming cataclysm, to be the architect of salvation. Alphonse was told of the prophecy of fire a a young age, and had spent years worming his way into the Amarrian bureaucratic machine that controlled Hyjn; waiting for the day that they discovered the falling white dwarf star.Â
He and other members of the Daughters of the River. collaborated with the Amarrians to ensure their people were all evacuated as quickly as possible, giving the slave population nearly a month of total control of Hyjn.Â
With the Empire having fled, the sons of the forest and daughters of the river were faced with a heart crushing choice. Despite over three hundred years of careful planning and preparation, there were simply not enough shelters to house the entire slave population of Hyjn.Â
Over the years, the sons and daughters had created nearly enough dwelling space for 400,000 people to ride out the disaster. Hyjn had a slave population of over two million.Â
Alphonse was a hero to all of Hyjn, acting as effective governor of the planet in the absence of Amarr authorities. He was instrumental in ensuring all the shelters were stocked and filled with as many people as they could hold. However, the crippling guilt of not being able to save everyone hung heavy over Alphonseâs shoulders. He ensured his wife and daughter were safe, then, to the chagrin of many, returned to the planetary governorâs office, which he had taken over when the Amarr had fled.Â
Hyjn wept as the firestorm built. The air grew hot and steamy as the oceans roiled uncomfortably. Clouds filled the sky, as if the world was trying to shield its fragile ecosystem from the looming destruction it sensed building in the void.Â
And then a second sun was born over Hyjn. A long tether of fire connected the sun to the new star. The dwarf shone brighter and brighter as it swung around the sun in a tight orbit. The brilliance of the dwarf built and built and built, growing brighter and brighter until the entire daylight side of Hyjn ignited.Â
A new spirit was born in that instant, as the oceans boiled and the skies ignited. A spirit of death and fire, and it roared. Towering walls of fire and smoke curled around the night side of Hyjn, as the spirit of firer stretched its fingers out over the world. The world turned into daylight as the light from the type I supernova faded away. Auroras danced through smoke filled skies as fires continued to sweep the globe.Â
The storms lasted nearly two months, reducing the Evil Empireâs farms to ash, turning over the soil, and blasting their cathedrals down to the foundations. Where once grand structures had stood, only pools of cooling bronze remained. Alphonse never returned to the shelters, having given his place away, and when the fires came, he was swept into the embrace of the River Annan, saving him from the jaws of the evil alien god.Â
The Amarr would return to the world once the ash finally settled. When the survivors heard of their return, they fled back to their shelters, hiding in their burrows beneath the earth.Â
In time the Amarr would bring new slaves to Hyjn, and the Sons of the Forest and the Daughters of the River would go out and walk among them, finding those they could help, and spiriting them away into the wilderness.Â
The Amarr never learned of the survival of clan Sgathiach, or any of the original slave stock they brought to Hyjn, the Sgathiach, along with hundreds of thousands of others, would ride out the next 400 years in the secret places of that misty world.Â
The rumblings of resistance spread through the worlds of the Evil Empire like an itch that could not be scratched. The Minmatar were a resourceful and crafty people, not so easily tamed as the prior conquests of the Amarr. Many worlds had, through various methods, established hidden populations such as had been done on Hyjn. One day, a young woman of Sgathiach by the name Hyori Saeren, was out exploring the woods beyond her camp, and discovered a supply pod belonging to an unknown race.Â
Hyori carried the pod back to her village, despite its bulk, she took the prize back alone, and refused attempts to aid her, wishing to hold the prestige of returning the pod herself. She opened the alien machine and discovered it contained weapons, medicines, and a method of secret communications which could slip the notice of the Evil Empire.Â
Hyori used the machine to call an emissary of this strange race, who arrived one dark night with a huge cache of weapons, food, clothing and medicine. The emissary introduced herself as a representative of the Gallente Federation by the name of Etena Essorie. While her ship returned to the stars, Etena returned to the village with Hyori, and together, they planned the liberation of Hyjn.Â
In coincidence with mass uprisings all across the Evil Empire, and the destruction of an Amarrian war fleet at the hands of the alien Jove, Matari warriors stormed the capital of Hyjn, and wrested control of the space port from the Empire. A series of protracted street battles were fought as the Amarr gave in block by block, eventually falling back to their ships and fleeing into space.Â
Hyori was hailed as a hero to the Matari people, and granted a ship for her part in the rebellion. It was aboard this ship that the Sgathiach would leave Hyjn to wander the stars.Â
This is the last tale I will be sharing at this time, there are two more that completely bring this record up to recent times, one told by Hyori herself, and one told by my grandmother, passed down to my mother, and then to me. However, these two stories cover much more recent political events, and may paint the Minmatar Republic in a negative light. While my clan is no longer a member of the republic, we seek to foster no animosity with our kin residing there, and thus it has been requested that I keep the last two tales private at this time.Â
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