These stories are told across the face of dead Earth. They are speculative or original mythology based heavily on PIE, Semitic, and to a lesser degree Mesoamerican ('lesser' for relative lack of comprehensive knowledge, not interest) motifs for a
setting/game I tentatively have titled
Snowblind & Hungry, a
post-apocalyptic fantastical bronze-age-collapse milieu that I began
writing a couple of years ago.
You live in an unsettled time - a time of the First Winter - a time for the snowblind and the hungry.
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| All art by me. Beyond this point lies copious artistic nudity - be warned! |
On Divine Nomenclature: In every mortal tongue the personal names of the oldest deities are synonymous with the works and deeds which they gave name to—thus we are given Earth Father, Sky Mother, Ocean, Shaper, Thunder Princess, Sun Princess, etc…
In common parlance, these are called gods. Deities with lesser attainments are called demigods, and have ordinary personal names.
An Account of Early Times
In the beginning there were the primordial waters, which were without light, heat, or solid matter. In this time Earth Father and Sky Mother dwelt far above, and saw nothing of value in the abyss. For uncounted eons they lived with only one another for company and contended with things that are forgotten by history.
In time, Sky Mother learned to birth others like her, and her get swelled the ranks of the gods, some conceived with the aid of Earth and others born of her own seed. Earth Father made from his fingernails and toenails the metals, solid things which lacked the changeability of water, and so houses and tools came to be and the districts of Heaven were first built.
The younger gods became curious about the abyss their parents had scorned, and began to swim in the upper waters. One day Thunder Princess, the loudest and boldest of Sky’s daughters and greatest wrestler in the Universe, was embroiled in an argument with her siblings; to prove her superiority she climbed to the highest point in Heaven and dove into the waters, sinking deeper than any had before. She found in the deepest abyss a thing which assailed her eyes and caused her to squint and tremble, a thing which she had never seen—light. She chased the light through the depths, having all sorts of folkloric adventures, and eventually managed to pin it between her thighs and drag it up from the waters. This was how fire was discovered.
At first all the gods marveled at the flame Thunder Princess had discovered, and joyously basked together in its warmth and illumination. Eventually, Earth Father and Sky Mother began to squabble over its stewardship—since Thunder Princess was their shared daughter, they each believed they had a filial right to watch over it. Their children despaired to see them fight, and for a time the two elders consented to share fire, trading it back and forth equally.
Soon this pact dissolved, and the deities battled. Sky castrated Earth and threw him down from Heaven, and where his body landed in the primordial waters it became the land, and his innards formed the Underworld, the realm of Death. His genitals fell into the waters and from the foam and the mingled fluids of life and death came the goddess Ocean, who sired the serpents of the sea.
Thereafter, Sky sat in judgment over the courts of the Gods. Those of her children who had sided with Earth were exiled to live in his belly, where they became the gods of the Underworld. Of Earth’s sons, all the metals save Iron clove to him, and were cast down to rot with him. Bronze, the captain of the rebellious metals, was divided into Copper and Tin as punishment for his leading role. Iron was rewarded with special privileges, and in time came to furnish the stars.
Thunder Princess continued to be fascinated by the fire she discovered. She sought the aid of her full sibling Shaper, who had inherited more of her father’s nature than most, and was the most skilled in Heaven at the creation of beautiful things.
With her sister’s help she wrought fire into the three grades of lightning and presented it to her mother as a coronation gift. Sky Mother was so pleased that she granted Thunder the right to wield the first two grades of lightning at her leisure, whereas the other gods were permitted to use only the lowest grade without permission; she kept the highest grade of lightning for herself.
One day Shaper descended to the Earth to give offerings to her father’s corpse and noticed that some of his body had been softened by the waters and turned to soft clay. She learned that this clay could be shaped like metal, yet kept some of the fluidity of water. She began to create new forms.
During this time Sky Mother came to regard the fires of Heaven as insufficient. She desired to create a light that would illuminate the entire Universe, so all could behold the majesty of her queendom. She tasked Shaper to build a throne and altar that would display her spoils and proclaim her glory to the world. The great work of building the Disc of the Sun began.
As Shaper labored she began to grow despondent. Whenever she could escape her duties she furtively returned to sculpt the clay, but she despaired of Sky Mother finding her out, for she knew that her mother would forbid her from wasting her efforts on such a worthless diversion, and she knew that once the Sun was completed the Earth would be lit up and she would no longer be able to return in secret. Still, she continued.
One day Thunder Princess discovered Shaper sneaking out of Heaven, and since the two sisters loved each other best of all the gods she decided to aid her. Thereafter, when Shaper wished to sculpt, Thunder Princess would go forth to give battle to Ocean and her sea-monsters, causing such a clamor with her bellowing voice and her booming lightning that all the Universe couldn’t help but stop and observe, and while Sky weas distracted Shaper could descend to the dark Earth and do her work freely. And so it is that the upper surface of the Earth was entirely covered in beautiful forms.
The night before the Disc of the Sun was to be lit, Shaper returned one last time and sculpted a figure in her own image. As she turned to leave she was struck by the loneliness of the sculpture, and created a second figure in the image of her favorite sibling, Thunder Princess. Upon her return to the Heavens, she was struck by inspiration and realized a way to keep her creations safe from her mother. She appealed to Thunder Princess, who was apprehensive but agreed to help,so long as her role in the scheme was kept hidden. Thunder Princess went forth to treat with Ocean on Shaper’s behalf; she informed Ocean of the impending lighting of the Sun’s Disc. As Ocean raged at Sky Mother’s arrogance, Thunder suggested to her a trick: if she were to take some clouds and fill them with water, they would become heavy and dark and block Sun’s light. Ocean was convinced, and set to work filling the Middle Air with rainclouds.
The next day, when Sky Mother fire to her Disc for the first time, she was furious to discover a solid wall of black clouds that barred half of the Universe from witnessing it. Shaper suggested that she use her mighty Breath of Life to blow the clouds away; Sky Mother did so. As the Breath of Life blew over the Earth, all the sculptures that Shaper had devised became imbued with motion; immediately thereafter, the Sunlight shone through the parted clouds and began to bake and fire the clay, fixing the forms. This is how mortals came to be.
When Sky Mother saw the surface of the Earth writhing with living things her fury redoubled. She began to hurl lightning, and commanded all her children to do so as well, and so the Earth shook with their wrath, but because the animals had been filled with the Breath of Life they were able to move to seek shelter and so the gods were unable to cull them all. Then Sky Mother saw the animals which resembled her daughters and realized that she had been fooled. She called Shaper and Thunder Princess before her and demanded an explanation. Shaper resolved to shoulder her mother’s scorn, and so claimed sole responsibility for the deed.
Sky Mother decreed that Shaper was to be executed and cast down from Heaven to lie beside her father, but was moved at the last minute to mercy when she beheld the blazing palace that Shaper had built for her. Instead, Sky Mother had Thunder Princess cut Shaper’s hands from her wrists and exiled her to the Underworld, where she was given a hero’s welcome and hailed as Queen. It is said that the decision to make Thunder Princess the instrument of Shaper’s punishment taught both siblings anger, and was the cause of things to come.
The first humans, made in the image of Shaper and Thunder Princess, were called Manu and Yemua. It is said by some that they were Man and Woman in whole, by others that they were only alike to Man and Woman in the function of their genitals, and yet others will say that both possessed the duality of Sky’s form.
They made fruitful and multiplied, and in time came to be found in all parts of the Earth.
An Account of Later Times
In the beginning fire belonged to the gods. The trickster Laughing-Dog taunted impetuous Thunder Princess, daughter of Sky Mother, until she smote them with a purloined thunderbolt and lit the first wildfire. So it was that fire became no longer the sole province of the heavens. Thereafter she was exiled from the upper air and became vengeful Storm, raging across the land and attempting fruitlessly to extinguish that which she loosed upon the Earth.
In later times the first witch En tamed wildfire to make campfire in the same way that men subsequently turned wolves into dogs. Fire was bred into new forms—bonfires, cookfires, temple-fires, forge-fires. The trick of burning offerings was discovered, and used to propitiate Storm until she gentled and became grudgingly fond of mankind. Copper and Tin were dug up in this time, and subdued into the form of tools with the aid of fire.
A wizard called Tubalcain sat in his forge and heard a song of lamentation as he beat copper into spearheads. He found its counterpart in the sounds of tin, and realized the two yearned to be brought together. With the help of fire he facilitated the marriage of copper and tin to begin the Age of Bronze. He brought into mortal hands swords, armor, and kingship.
In more recent days the Lich-Queen Amaranth began to covet Iron, which was reserved by the gods for their own use. She assembled a cabal of sorcerers and worked a subtle magic to subvert and command the celestial fires that mantled the stars. She dragged iron from the sky, laying waste to the greatest kingdoms of the Bronze Age and beginning the Age of Iron.
Apocrypha
Some people say that when Thunder Princess dove into the primordial waters and saw the light in the deep, it was not a flame that she wrestled but a deity, flaming and glorious. Some people say that she laid with Fire down there in the water, and returned to the surface with a dancing lock of his hair as a token and a flaming seed in her belly. Some people say that the hair was given to her mother and her father but the seed she kept for herself, and that it grew into a radiant child, and that eventually she called Shaper to midwife the birth and the horned serpent Lightning came forth from her loins.
Those same people say that she repeated that feat with the deity Ocean, in the time before the Sun was first lit, and that the child of this coupling was the feathered serpent Rain.
The rain-fed rivers are Rain returning to their mother. The artesian rivers are the veins carrying the blue blood of Dead Earth. The shared heredity of Lightning and Rain is why they often travel together, and why rivers and lightning take the same shape
There are also, I presume, versions in which Lightning is envisioned as the child of Thunder Princess and Shaper, born of a furtive assignation in which the two lovers coupled hidden within a hearth in order to avoid the attentions of their jealous divine spouses. The version in which everything is Thunder Princess’s child is generally told by cultures that understand her as a fertility goddess, and the rain as life-bringing. The Earth People have their own fertility-god, Oasis.
On the Underworld
The cavities and abscesses of Dead Earth’s body were the great caves, and these became the countries of the murdered and exiled. Earth’s belly became the kingdom called Xibalba, and this is where Queen Architect reigns from. His intestines became the Labyrinth (or perhaps the great eyeless worm called Labyrinth).
Some people say that Shaper Mother, being the maker of us all, lays claim to our bodies and souls. Some people say that she laid with Titan, avatar of Lead, to make the race of Giants and put them to building a giant set of bellows from her father's lungs, and with the pumping of the great bellows all the dying breaths of mankind are sucked into the world below to be reunited with their bodies. Some people repeat the same story, but say that she laid with a mortal hero—one who dressed so beautifully and walked so gracefully that she mistook them for a spirit—and that from this act of accidental incest were born the vile Nephilim, who she set to back-breaking labor out of shame.
Some people say that Queen Architect lives in a pale-shining palace of kingfisher jade, and that a moat of black mud surrounds it from the outlying districts of the City Down Below. Only a soul as light as a feather can cross the mud to feast with her; those who cannot will find themselves sinking down, down, forever-on-down until they emerge from a cyst in Dead Earth's back into the deep lightless abzu below.
Some people say that, having gained animation via Sky Mother's breath of life, she lays claim to our souls after death, that our breath rises all the way up to her.
Some people say that Storm, having grown fond of the boldest of us, intervenes to spirit away the brave to her cloud-pavilion in the middle air.
Creation of Demons
Many stories tell that when Shaper first came to live in the belly of the Earth she attempted to craft new living things to keep her company, and this is where demons and monsters come from. Some people say that these creatures were ugly, malformed, and hateful because, lacking the use of her hands, she had to make them with her feet; some people say that she dictated her instructions to another, whose skill was insufficient to make the beautiful and noble forms she had in mind; some people say she was simply in a bad mood. Notable products of this phase in her creative career include Flayed Ape, Great Big Olm, and Aspen Tree (of which there is only one in the world, with a great many shoots).
One version of this story: Shaper was such a skilful artisan that, even with her feet, her sculpting was immaculate. But every night, when she went to sleep, the Moon (who is also called Lunatic) came to her in her dreams and filled her up to the brim with phlegm.
Digression: phlegm is the missing humor, seemingly absent from Earth’s corpse. It belongs to Moon, who only shows up in dreams—there is a reason why particularly deep dreamers tend to drool.
She began to walk in her sleep, and every night she would sabotage her day’s work, making it ugly and evil. Eventually she became so disheartened by this that she began to swaddle her feed in strips of thick cloth, so that she would not feel tempted towards the act of creation.
Others attribute this act of creation to a shedu called Thousand Demon Mother, who is sometimes identified with En, the first witch. Here is a story that is often told about her: when she went down to Xibalba after her death, she found herself a mendicant in the outer districts of the City-Down-Below. Frustrated, she banked the cookfires of the shedim with a word, and denied them their cooked food and mulled shedeh, and refused to speak the fires back to life until the shedim agreed to give over one quarter of their provisions to the dead people of the outer districts. This is how the sacrifice of one quarter of a cooked animal came to be known as the “dead man’s share,” and how it became the rightful sacrifice to one’s ancestors.
Thousand Demon Mother is known to have five awful daughters, the most wicked of her creations: Lady Famine, assigned to torment peasants; Lady Fear, assigned to torment foreigners; Lady Blindness, assigned to torment artisans; Lady Weakness, assigned to torment warriors; Lady Madness, assigned to torment kings.
A common synthesis is to believe that Shaper made the fleshly demons that walk, crawl, and slither, whereas Thousand Demon Mother made the intangible spirits that drift and fly. A third deity, the Great Satan, child of Sky, is sometimes also said to have made the invisible spirits—in this case, the division is further made between the children of Great Satan, who made the heavenly demons out of wind and smokeless flame, and the children of Thousand Demon Mother, who made the chthonic demons out of miasmas and smoke.
On the Men of Uruk
Tubalcain married Tin and Copper into Bronze, and turned that gift to bloody ends. He made the first sword and cut apart society at knifepoint, inventing class stratification.
The Four Evil Deeds
This is a story told about Tubalcain: that he had four friends who he loved, and no one else.
The first was called Conquest, and he came to Tubalcain one day and said “the people of Uruk spring to your commands like well-broken dogs. It should be like this everywhere.” Tubalcain agreed, and he toured the young cities and brandished his sword and everywhere he went the people were made to kneel and lay flowers at his feet. But when he left they went back to their old ways and composed bawdy poems about him and drew caricatures of him with white clay and ocher.
The second was called War, and, seeing this, she came to Tubalcain one day and said “we should break the bodies of the lesser men, so they know that we are the best.” Tubalcain agreed, and so he raised up all the men of Uruk, and armed them with Bronze, and he fought the first war, and churned the fields to bloody mud, and all the men of Uruk were stained forever. But after a time the sons of those he had killed in the first war grew restless and threw his men out, and they met on the martial plain, and again the fields were watered, and again his men emerged from the charnel pits, and though this happened many times his subjects would not cease their clamorings.
The third was called Famine, and she came to Tubalcain one day and said “the people fight you because they enjoy the fruits of the earth and are hearty. We should take away their food, and then they will be too tired to resist.” Tubalcain agreed, and so he had his men round up all the corn, and he locked it all away in great towers, and put bronze-shod guards at the doors. But after a time the people remembered the old ways of living, and filled their bellies with the spear, the net, and the foraging knife, and though it was a meager life compared to the plenty of the fields it was better than the bargain Tubalcain offered.
The fourth was called Death, and he came to Tubalcain one day and said “you should kill everyone.” Tubalcain agreed, and gathered up the headmen of the cities that paid him tribute, and made them all draw lots, and sent his men to the city of the lord who drew the shortest straw and put every last resident to the sword. After this, the people no longer made any clamor at all.
The mixed-up parts of the people he had buried under a great tumulus made of the broken-up pieces of their own city, and the name of that place became the Ghostmound. It is known as a place of evil miasmas, and all those who live upon the tell suffer terrible dreams every night, which makes it attractive to artists and doomsayers.
After this, Tubalcain drew together his four captains and handed them each a sword of Bronze, and said “I will make you my horse-men.” He changed the language so that the names of his captains were remembered forever as synonymous with their deeds, and the arrogance of this so angered the gods that his people suffered great misfortune forevermore.
The Four Horse-Men
This is the story of how he made the four horse-men: for each of his captains, Tubalcain gathered up a thousand horses. He slaughtered them, and milled up their bodies, and for each of his captains he gathered up a hundred horses and fed them the remains. Then he took those hundreds, and slaughtered them, and milled up their bodies, and for each of his captains he gathered up ten horses and fed them the remains. Then he took those tens, and slaughtered them, and milled up their bodies, and for each of his captains he found a single mighty stallion—for Conquest, a white horse; War, a red horse; Famine, a black horse; Death, a ‘pale’ horse— and fed them the remains. Then he severed the heads from the stallions, hollowed them out and breathed his pride and malice into them, and made war-masks of them.
Did they do anything? Well, they were apparently pretty scary to look at.
