The first arrivals to the Losterlies were Wanderers, 2 males, 3 females, 1 pre-teen female, and 1 young boy with their cargo of small, alpaca like, beasts (who’s descendants become known as king’s sheep) and a number of seeded food plants and herbs.  Having lost their boat to a storm, they develop a life-style on the main island of the Losterlies.

The coming of the Whale-Talker,  the fellow marked by the bear clan, reduces their population, narrowing it slightly in the third generation.  Several generations after that, conflict with the Fomorians reduces their population and drives the wanderers into the mountains.

The Wanderers develop a herder/hunter-gatherer life-style on the bones of their earlier agricultural society.  The folk still seed favored plants and use fire to control undesirable ones.  They maintain mobility and, to a lesser extent, develop stealth almost incidentally, but these traits serve them well when the Seabrook colony is established.

The wanderers have some association with the agrarian and fishers of the original Seabrooke colony, but avoid the domination of the Celts.  Hiding away — drifting into the misty hills, they stay free and maintain their distinctiveness.

They and their alpaca “king’s sheep” live among the hot-springs and steam vents of the volcanic mountains.  They know the landscape, where the water is good and bad, where the lava is safe, where it has formed tubes and caves large and small, and they know where they have planted gathering gardens and where among the basalt wastes grass and wild flowers have taken root.  They have cultivated trees too, and they hide in crevices among the rocks.  They have a small grove they call the Ribbon Wood where they go to have council and “be of one mind”, but it is only a memory of that origin from which they spring, in part.

By the time of “The Man Who Forgot Himself” (TMWFH) the wanderers trade personally with outlying farms, coming out of the mist to exchange pleasantries, crafts, and food only to disappear, magically it seems to the farmers, back into the same mists.  

There are a handful of fairs in which wanderers participate.  For the country folk it is a chance to meet and mingle.  Dancing and song are part of the social event and the wanderers distinguish themselves in both.  The fairs are as long as a week and leading up to them are surrounding market days where there are dances and trading at crossroads and in villages.

There are other “meets” before and after fairs where mostly youth of the Seabrookians, Celts, and Wanderers meet and mingle.  Mostly the young islanders meet each other in ways that lead to marriage alliances and the magical, sensual wanderers lend a magic to the festivities.  Rarely the connections are between islander and wanderer, but these loves bridge alien worlds and do not often survive those differences.

Though wanderer clans are independent there is a recognized King and the wanderers use fairs and meets to conduct their business.  More rarely a King might gather the folk or their leaders to the Ribbon Wood.  Since the Wanderers are a world of their own, they might favor a particular market day or even meet over the fairs.  Such a meet is a glimpse of magic to the islanders who find their small meet is a major gypsy gathering.

The Occupations of the Losterlies

What led to the conditions at the time of “The Man Who Forgot Himself.”

The first folk to come to the Losterlies were probably the Grey Elves. In their wanderings they became aware of it, used it as a shelter, and for provision, but one can not rule out the Fomorians as possible first arrivals. The Grey Elves, it can not be denied, certainly used the isles, stored cache’s in it, and used them, sometimes even wintering over on rare occasions. It is therefore safe to conclude that they were the first residents no matter how brief the occupations. *Considering their longevity there might be a written record or even living memory of Grey Elf occupation.*

A ship’s company of Wanderers, folk related to the Grey Elves but not long lived, are known to have been ship wrecked with a cargo of items including live goods from the far South, among these are a small species of Alpaca, potato, certain peppers, yams, and other tropical fare, many of these things did not and do not thrive in the climate of the Losterlies, but the wanderers have made the best of the available genetics, breeding things to the conditions and finding volcanically created micro climates that have allowed these stocks to be cultivated if only to preserve them and for very limited, sometimes medicinal, use. However some of these experiments in botany and animal husbandry have succeeded well enough to gift the islands with a unique and particularly favorably diverse and rich flora and fauna. The Wanderers have added these and continue to husband others in their mountain micro-climates. They continue a semi-nomadic lifestyle despite being limited to the Losterlies. They seem to prefer the mountains and seclusion coming out to trade their biologicals and crafts for the things that make their lives better.

It is a company of Grey Elves that tell Seabrooke about the Losterlies and they find and establish a colony in the sheltered bay of the main island. Though the going is difficult the group survives and begins to establish a strong presence. As soon as survival seems assured, a crew member, Calvin, begins to cause trouble. When the boat that bears them to the isle is no-longer needed for survival, Calvin takes charge of it and moved with a couple supporters and their families to the Northeastern side and establishes a separate village focused more on fishing and the sea.

The Coming of the Laird and the Celtic Overlay on the Seabrook Base

Despite numerous Fomorian raids over the years and the occasional interaction with the Gypsies, the Seabrook colony remains largely homogeneous until it is overwhelmed by a Celtic invasion. Initially the overlord Celts maintain a highly bifurcated population, but in just a few generations the two halves begin to integrate.

Homogenizing the Population

Defending against a wave of Fomorian attacks unifies the island in two (2) ways. 1) Working and fighting together is a great leveler and 2) the Fomorian wave isolates the island from greater Oceanic Celtia–Celtia contracts leaving the Losterlies isolated, embattled, and with these shakings the island’s population begins to homogenize. the survivors value their co-survivors and come out of the battle as islanders together. Celtia forgets them and the Folk of the Island become a people. Their is still a Laird and a Tanist, but Tanistry reaches deep into the community and by the time of “The Man Who Forgot Himself” it reaches across race, occupation, and even surname.

Initially, in the first generation, Capt. Seabrooke sought to keep the colony together in the one village, but Calvin’s defection, Fomorian attack, Celtic overlordship, Gypsie influence, intermitant growing and contracting population, trade, and even the Skellig Monastry all work to spread out the population.

Probably the biggest factor was the periodic Fomorian incursions. The benefits of having some resources decentralized and some population base to at least have a place to flee to, became apparent when Brookton was attacked by the Fomorian sea raiders for the first time.

Landmarks and Works of Man

The Celts build a stone ring fort, stripping the village surrounding fields of their walls. As agriculture moves up the valley and around the lake, crannogs are built for defense. There is a narrowing of the river bed that leads from the lake so it is a natural defensive point that the colony fortifies and the Celts improve making a stone stronghold between Brookton and the Lake region.

The Separatists use the black stone (basalt) of the North Shore in all their buildings and after the first Fomor attack they create a tightly organized village with narrow corridors, blind corners and various defensive strong points and escape routes, it becomes known as Blackwarren.

The southside of the island relies on poor moorage and remoteness for its safety. This is particularily true of the Skellig Monastry. The coast is very rugged. Even if a safe landing is made on the narrow beaches, raiders face a difficult climb up cliffs to reach the widely spaced farms and a long hike further into the interior to two or three settlements any larger than a single extended family compound.

The last act of the heroic heyday of the Losterlies was a pitched battle against a large Fomorian raid. In it the Celts are aided by both the “native peasantry” and the mysterious Wanderers. There is much death and destruction AND volcanic eruptions add to the chaos.

Harvests are poor for years after–the population dwindles–the Losterlies are forgotten and they too forget, focusing on survival again through the lean times. Volcanism in the Losterlies is only the local manifestation of world wide disasters and a much less generous climate — the Losterlies are spared the wars over diminishing resources. War with Fomorian raiders reduced the population already and the survivors used an infrastructure and an agricultural base built for a larger population. The living was hard and there were technological losses, but starvation was not a great concern.

So it is that a healthy and somewhat happy population of Celtoseabrookians is filling out the loose garment of the earlier golden days. There is much hope for progress, indeed this typifies the population, that they are eager for gain and not afraid of hard work to reach it. Trade has recently been re-established within the last 3 or 4 generations and young men have sought glory fighting for Celtic Kings in distant lands — The Oceanic Celtic world is the big city to the Losterlies village farm.

So, in their wisdom, our great father and mother built a wall to keep out the Gaels and Slavers and Fomorians and Sinoese and the Darkling’s Goblin hordes.  The sea we leave to the war crows, on hill and cranog we live.

When raiders came ashore the clans gathered.  We would rise from the mist and annihilate our enemies until our lonely shore brought no raider.  Reavers knew to sail on.

Rarely they would come in greater numbers than we could easily crush on the beach so we let them come, bleeding them all the while.  At some point they would realize they had gained nothing and lost much.  The trip to the sea was harder still until they found their boats burned or taken and the end of the survivors was the same as the first to die.  Such was the way we dealt with invaders.

It was strange to see clans who fought and raided each other coming together against a common foe, or perhaps it had more to do with how most disputes were settled by the combat of champions and rarely involved general combat.

Our interior valleys are rich, our cattle grow fat on the hills and grain for bread and ale grows in profusion in the plains.  All our men have time to train in arms and to hunt.  But our heroes and champions train skills to levels unparalleled in the world.

It may be of interest and is ironic to think, that the mother they honor, Scota, is in truth that same creature, the Morrigan of war, that they abhor.

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.