Shadows of a Dream: A history of the Sidar

Warning: This story is 100% non-canon. It is extremely dangerous and may damn your soul with unpure non-Kael-approved corruptions. DO NOT READ IT.

The Sidar were not always immortal. They began as another band of hardy men and women with the fortitude and ingenuity to survive both the ice and the beasts which its melting unleashed. As with all such groups their origins are submerged in the bardic legends that substitute for history in an era alienated from the written word. All we know for sure is that they found a way to survive in a land by a frozen sea surrounded by endless snow-laden woods.



These prehistoric Sidar moved from place to place, coaxing from the thawing earth where they could, and slaying beasts where they could not. The beginnings of the Rebirth did not so much ease their lives as gradually lessen its crushing burden. Their world was one of unyielding frozen soils, an endless wilderness of towering snow-laden pines, eternally frozen in the Age of Ice, slowly rekindling in the brief summers of the early Rebirth.

Their future capital, Celo, was originally a sacred burial space for the Age of Ice nomads of the region. The sea, then an endless desert of ice, was believed to be the dwelling place of Arawn, god of death. They would carry their dead as far as they dared through the ice and then leave them there to dwell with Arawn. Great stones which straddled the coast seemed to the Sidar to be gateways to the land of death. In the corrupted Patrian of the ancient Sidar, 'Celo' meant something like "gateway to death". Here many nomad groups of the region would gather to pass through the gates and deliver their dead to Arawn. It was this practice which differentiated the nomads from other wanderers of the region. The Sidar were simply the nomads who visited these gates of death and shared in the rituals, remembrances and rites which surrounded it.

When Erebus finally experienced its first faint summer after Mulcarn's destruction, the Sidar considered the waters which melted into Celo as holy and were inspired to develop a preceding stage to the long journey into Arawn's land. The seasonal melting of the sea spoke to them of the connection between the world of the dead and the world of the living. They dug out hollows in the earth around Celo and channels leading to the hollows. The dead were placed in the hollows and, when it melted, the sea flowed down the channels to wash over the waiting corpses, cleansing them in preparation for their journey to the afterlife. This journey now had to wait until the deepest Winter, when ice covered the sea once more.

This mean that the funeral of an ancient Sidar who died in late Summer would not be completed for nearly two years. First, they would be preserved in ice until next year's Summer when they could receive the necessary bathing in the melted seawater. Then they would be stored in ice again until deepest winter when they could be carried into the frozen ocean.

This caused Celo to become a place which could not simply be abandoned. The dead stored there needed to be guarded from marauding beasts. The sacred hollows and channels needed to be guarded from desecration by non-Sidar. The nomadic Sidar tribes began to co-operate to ensure the protection of the site and share the burden of maintaining its permanent settlement of priests and guards. This was the foundation of Celo-as-a-city, a tiny enclave of funerary-priests of Arawn and their devoted guards.

These priests were so tightly bound by ritual that they had no need of a formal hierarchy of leadership. They would do the duties of the funerary rites and preside over the annual remaking of the hollows and channels, the preservation of corpses and digging of the pit in the ocean. Collective decisions were made by the gatherings of tribal chiefs, as they decided how best to preserve Celo.

- A History of Erebus, Morrogoth the Amber

((This looks good, but consider asking a Moderator to move it to the Civ4 Stories and Tales Forum. If anything in this thread is not canonical lore, it belongs in there))

Aha, okay any wandering moderators out there: please move it. There will surely be much uncanonicalness here

I disagree, Diamond. This forum has had these kinds of things before... This can stay.

Yeah, but IMO those should be moved too.

Get this out of here! The lore forum must be kept pure!

Uncanonicalness? Indeed.

While we wait for the Powers That Be to take action, or not, against this impurity, I have added an important notice to the OP

Eventually the Rebirth reached a point where the sea around Celo ceased to freeze even in Winter. From then on the Sidar dead were stored in the still-permanent ice amidst the mountains near Celo. There the dead could await the time when the sea would freeze over again and the domain of Arawn could once more be reached.

By this time the Sidar tribes' whole lives revolved around the preservation of Celo. Erebus' warming had given greater resources for the Sidar to protect Celo but had also bred sterner dangers to its holy integrity. Beasts hungry for the corpses of the Sidar became more numerous, the eyes of tribes greedy for destruction and blasphemy more frequent to fall on Celo's sanctified coast and, most dreadful of all, the corpses of other lands and other times began to rise, animated with a demonic intent to bid the living join them in their unnatural half-death.

The tribes assigned more and more kinsfolk to guard the site and the activities involved in sustaining it became more complex. On occasion, non-Sidar peoples would arrive at Celo's gates begging protection from the ravages of marauding beastmen and orcs. The priests accepted them as, they said, Arawn welcomed all to the land of death, taking the opportunity to enfold them within Celo's funeral-economy.

- A History of Erebus, Morrogoth the Amber

Outside Celo, the still mostly-nomadic Sidar had become highly skilled in arts of hunting and herding. Their huge flocks of bison and sheep, teeming through the forests, supplied all the Sidar with food, clothing and, for the nomads, homes.

Sandalphon was born into one of these hunter-herder tribes, the distant cousin of a tribal chief. He was a gifted hunter but his wanderings in this purpose bred in him a craving for more than hunting – discovery. Sometimes, bands of hunters would break away from the main group for months, even years, at at a time to drive deep into the forest in search of suitably challenging kills to honour Arawn. As they roved the wilderness, the hunters discovered more than trees, animals and other peoples. More and more the thawing ice revealed fragments of the world that preceded it.

The forest was a dangerous place and few dared go too far south, where the increasing heat bred terrifying giant spider and where an innumerable goblins thirsted for human blood. Moreover there was no need to further when the opportunities for a worthy kill were so plentiful in more familiar territory. But Sandalphon was motivated by more than hunting.

When Sandalphon had not yet reached his second decade, his hunting band wandered far, far to the south and were camped out on a crest overlooking a great valley, where the trees were cut through by a vast streaming. The expedition had proved their worth and they carried the carcasses of many beasts to prove it. The band were eager to pay home and receive honour in Celo and to return to the security of the main tribe and its herds.

But Sandalphon's heart burned with a desire for more than hunting and repute: discovery. Here at the very edge of the Sidar world, he decided to go further, to seek what it was that the melting Erebus wanted to reveal, that spoke of a world that was more than just ice and hunting and a holy city of funerals.

- A History of Erebus, Morrogoth the Amber

Try to put the stories in the 1st post , and later in the 2nd. This way they won't be lost.

Good luck, I like it.

Yes this thread is mess, I have reposted it in the Stories forum