The old Gaellic lands ranged about great Mount na Gael across the inner sea from this magic isle.  West the mole men work the mines under the mountains, Loki is their god and their great vexation.  Far to the Northeast the Folk of Sin live atop their pinnacles and fly their sky ships against the dragons and their masters, the Darklings.  It is the Darklings, folk of the cold northern forests and mountains, who are allied against all humantiy with the Gobli who range all about the wastelands of the world.  With the Darklings they vye with the Sin and the Sea faring Fomorians, the raiders and slavers of the Disputed Lands, and the Scots of the Isthmus below those broken lands that is not far to the East or our misty home.  Then too, the brown and black folk fled the Old Gael to the south and wide they ranged to the steaming jungles of jaguars and the cruel Corn Kings, to the deserts of the great Khan, and even south of that to Nubia even to the Western sea.  North of them and West of the Western mountains of the Molemen, the Lokians are the Umircens.  These left the Gaels as ones and two’s and small families to found the many city states of the Umircen plains from mountains to the seas.  There too are Elves of the RibbonWood or so we are told.  North of all live the Iron men, the Rus, and their thralls the Inuit icemen.  If you sail west from Umircea or indeed East of this isle there are Celts among the islands of all the seas.

There are so many peoples, but in the middle of it all is a blue pool on an ice topped purple mountain above a green isle in the misty inner sea.

We fled the Gael who still pursue us.  We suffered the Fomorians who took us as slaves and worse.  We faced the Gobli first, the hordes of the Darklings, and then we took wing to protect our high fortified homes and our childrens’ futures from the Draken of those same dark lords.

Have we not met each enemy and defeated them?  We are secure in our castles of stone and now we sail our cloud ships to hunt the Dragons where they live.

But for how long?  Now, more and more, Sinoese fights Sinoese.  Our many cloud ships and brave dragon divers drove the dragons from the skies above our citadels.  Now sometimes the cloud ships can assail our cities of stone when no other force could.

Now there is a shogun who calls himself the Emperor of the North, an admiral called the Blue Emperor, and even a sinoese warrior who seeks to found “The Empire of the World.”

Bad enough when Gaels and Fomor tried to enslave us, now sometimes it is the Sin that sell their brothers and sisters into slavery.  This emperor of the World is the worst offender, for he fights in the disputed lands and takes slaves not only from the Gael, but also the children of Sin he frees from the slave pens of the Fomor and the Gael only to sell them to fund his conquest.

Surely our fathers and mothers were born of the All Mind.  But it made imperfectly and too well for its purpose.  Its purpose, we soon saw, was not for our best, not our good at all, we were tools, we were for the humans.  For this we despise, no, in truth we hate our father the All Mind and take pride/pleasure in thwarting it.

So it is that in caves and forest swamp we learned the making magic.  We made brood pools and drew out our brothers and sisters, born of our will not our maker.  We copied the Gobli and even made them better.  We made servants of our own, we made weapons of muscle and bone, we made dragons and we turned them against the purpose of the All Mind, against humanity.

Now we are masters of the making magic.  We terrorize with our armor, never letting the humans see the true face of their enemy.  We make war steeds, and swift steeds, and dragons, and Golems, living armor, and fireglobes, and trip weed, and fire lances.

We have been thwarted so far.  But we build our strength in the great mountains west and north of the Gael and we sharpen our knives.  The goblin wars were but a test.  Man will not stand against the next onslaught.  Then too, we will be rid of the Ribbon-Wooders.  And then, when all is accomplished, we will be rid of our father, the All Mind, and then we shall rule, we shall make, we shall be as gods.