And so it was that we chose to expand to other isles, to seek safe havens in the seas and waterways near the coast and to treat with others from fortified hold fasts, or on the coast from ships in strength.

When we found a lonely shore we would note it and the resources there found.  We were always short of good lumber so often lumberman followed close on the heals of explorers.  With good timber we built great ships to range up and down the coast.  Other coastal people would try to compete, but we were the first and easily the best tradesmen.  We ranged north of our northerly home to trade for iron and gold with the Rus and far to the south for spices, cotton, and sugar from far to the south of the great Khan.  We are the Kings of the great Western Ocean.

We have become a great people, but we have not forgotten how we came out of the Gaels who had enslaved our fathers over the Eastern mountains.  Nor have we forgotten that our fathers came from a land beyond even the stars.  All this we, the Navigators, remember.

Are we not the true sons of Captain Bailey and his sky sailors?  We have lost the stars for now, but wide we range upon the Seas even, it is said, beyond the spine of the world.  Though none have returned from the far side of the world, one day they will.

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.