So we rose up and killed the task masters.  We fled their spears and their chariouts to the south lands, over the Freedom River, thru the great swamp, deep in the dark jungles, beyond the desert waste, to our lands, to our forested hills, to our high plains and tall mountains.

We traded with the Bedouin and the Corn Kings, but we do not allow them to live on our lands.  The sea lords anchor in our harbors but they do not go beyond the quay, these are our lands.  We were equal, but they enslaved us, we were wise in the old knowledge, but they stole our knowledge and sent us to the fields.  Never again will they have power over us.

This is why we kill our enemies.  This is why we do not sell our brothers and sisters to our neighbors.  This is why we do not take slaves or buy slaves or trade with any who do.  For one man to own another is abhorant to us.  We live apart and do not mix our blood with others.  We remember the years of our enslavement and it will never happen again.

Our land is free land.  Our people are free.  So it will ever be.

The Rus and the Ice Folk

Ours is a cold hard world of red rock and ice.  But better to rule in Hell… much worse to serve there.  So we thank the gods of ice and fire that we are not the ice folk.  They are our subjects, our prey.

We have the magic of iron.  We have the slavers chains.  We have the branding irons.  But we have a fear of them ever rising against us so the only answer is to keep them crushed to the ground.  This we do with our ice ships and our contempt for them.  The best and the brightest we cull and sell to the south.  The strong we use in our households and mines, under close watch, lock and key, and the whip. The devious and sly we use against their own folk.

Through their labors we live well enough.  It is ironic that once we had left the Gaellic chains behind it was the ice folk who led us to this place.  They hunted and fished, feeding and clothing us, they even took a turn in the mines and gathered the thin timber on the spine of the world with us.  They prefered the ice while we exploited the red rocked scab.  Then, when wood and iron had made us stronger, we took from them what they would have freely given.  And then we took their freedom.

Our is a cold hard world, we Rus who live near the endless ice.  Some say that we serve to keep their blood lines fresh.  Some even say the slaves we take live better with us as thralls than they would on the ice.  Easy to say as the master.  Tis better to rule in Hell than to serve in heaven, or so said the Devil and so say the Rus, finding our place in this cold hell.

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.

Much was forgotten and much hidden by the priests to give them power over the people.  How else to make them erect temples to far off gods?  This is why my family, a family of scribes, passed knowledge of the ancients by story and poem, passed by memory.

We know what a star is and that we live on a planet and that the planet we live upon that is near there stars is not the planet from which our forefathers came.  We know that our folk came to this place in a great ship and that they slept in a deep chill to preserve them in their long journey.  Perhaps this is why the priest leave young children, tightly bound, in icy mountain top retreats, some perverted memory of our arrival here or perhaps it is just that they love death more than anything.

We write their words and copy their proclamations, we record the annals and publish their oracles.  We know their desires and they are not even to their gods, but rather, they lust for blood, for death, always for death.

The Corn King’s people they call us. It would be truer to say we are the Corn King’s Priest’s slaves if we live and the priest’s victims if we don’t.