The Coming of the Tuatha

This is an article on the History of Feyworld
Years: c. 4925 BF to 1459 BF
Age: The First Age of Man
Continent: All
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The Druids of Feyworld
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There is much dispute in druidic circles as to the nature of the Tuatha de Dannan prior to their ascension. Some claim that they were druids who followed Amairgen’s search for Truth to its ultimate extent. Others suggest that they were philosophers who came to understand Truth independent of Amairgen’s teachings. Regardless of the details of their mortal lives, Danu and her “children” discovered the Ultimate Truth: the Secret of Immortality. Though weaker than the Old Gods, the Tuatha had attained a divine transformation and transcended their mortality. Recognizing the danger that the Secret posed to Existence itself, the Tuatha began their long search for a people that could be trusted to respect the power that they had discovered.

They came first to the druids, who recognized that the Tuatha traveled the same path as they and welcomed them. The Tuatha taught the druids how to draw upon the power of Nature through them. In a sense, the Order became priests of the Tuatha. But unlike the priests of the Old Gods, Druidic Magic drew on the power of Nature through the Tuatha, instead of directly from their divine force. The Tuatha also revitalized the Order, which had become stagnant since Amairgen’s death. They taught that Truth was found not only in nature, but also in the world around them, in the lives of every mortal, in everything that carried the spark of Life and, thus, a part of Nature within them.

As the Tuatha continued their search for a people to impart their knowledge to, many mortals began to look to them for guidance. Since Amairgen’s time, humanity had become disaffected by the arrogant foibles of the Old Gods and their faith had waned. Where once the Old Gods were worshiped, they were instead propitiated in an attempt to mollify their dreadful wrath. The Tuatha, who had known what it was to be mortal, nurtured humanity, encouraged it to grow and thrive and not to serve. People flocked to the Tuatha and the hope that they represented. The Old Gods were at first enraged by the presumptuousness of the Tuatha, but even they eventually came to understand the crimes they had committed upon the world. Ancient temples closed their doors as the Old Gods withdrew in a self-imposed penance for their sins against Creation. Some few priests remained to carry on the traditions of the Old Gods, to prepare for their promised return, but the grand priesthoods crumbled.

The druids, as the conduits of the wisdom of the Tuatha, were looked to by humanity to fill the void left by the departure of the Old Gods. By this time, the druids had introduced the Tuatha to the elves and the long search of the Tuatha came to an end. The elves withdrew from mortal society as the Tuatha taught them the Secret of Immortality. The druids, ever contemptuous of those who would surrender themselves to jealousy, remained faithful to the Tuatha and upheld their responsibilities to both the people they gave guidance to as well as the Tuatha who in turn provided them with guidance.

Perhaps because the druids were not the champions of civilization that the priests were or perhaps because such things must come to pass, humanity’s great cities and monumental empires fell. Orcish hordes and the manipulations of the wily giants pulled society apart at its very seams. When the First Age of Man faced its twilight, the druids became one of the few to maintain the wisdom of ages past, laboriously memorizing their philosophy and knowledge. If it were not for the efforts of the druids to retain what had been learned, the story of humanity may well have ended in that dark time and would today be nothing more than a few tribes huddling in fear at he edges of the world.

But, with the help of the druids and the Tuatha, humanity did survive and even began to recover the grandeur that was lost. But with the return of that grandeur, also came the yearning, the greed and the dominion humans are so well known for.