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Response to a Gallic Mythworld *PIC*
Posted By: Archer »–)› (40-54.tnt-1.allentown.supernet.com)
Date: 8/12/2001 at 7:49 p.m.
This was posted by Forrest in the Delusions section. Go here to read the articles in full and see the pictures.
http://myth.bungie.org/legends/delusions/forrest_connections.html
Take a look at the two images below. The one on top is the map from Myth, and the one on the bottom is an image of France during time of the Crusades. Notice the similarities (keep in mind that the map from Myth would be much less accurate than the France map)? In the northwest corner is the fragmented land leading into the ocean, similar to the Drowned Kingdom Of Yr-Ka in Myth. The Deep, near Rhi'Anon; doesn't that look surprisingly similar to that inlet of water in northwestern France? Where France leads into Spain in the southwest is a mountain range. Raise the sea level such that Spain is drowned (also drowning Yr-Ka, and likely altering the contours of the coastline a bit as well), and you'd probably have an island off the southwest shore, near where Covenant is in Myth. And in the southeast...
Hmm, yes, the mountain ranges seem to correlate directly to the real ones, with the exception of the Cloudspine (which was supposedly created along with Tharsis by Nyx). In fact, to show how the map really is tilted, the TFL map had the compass rose pointing to the same North as it would if the map were tilted from a different position.
Now, from a terminal in Marathon 1, on "Smells Like Napalm, Tastes Like Chicken":
....n 15 ~~~~~~Be~rn border of the Roman Empire to the Danube River. During a skirmish with barbarians in Raetiain the mountains near the borof modern France and Switzerland), 117 men under Gaius Licinius MarcW#&I~?f/f/xxfxfff`~~~ THM@#%!@# 233nce of weird and frightening monsters under his control, many successful raidsecty the fall of the Roman Empire and remained unmolested until the ninth un~~~ written ls into the lex vita. Clovis moved the settlement farther south i the mountains, nearer the spring, to escape the notice of Charlemaligne and later the Holy Roman Empire. Clovis remain```` ~fxf«f`~Fxff«xf~~~~ 427q3w8459806ladimir in 1902 and Frederi~just recently. Both, however, carried out reforms before their deaths which slowly integrated their people secretly into world society, which are now scattered all over the globe- to meet only once every seven years in southeast France~FFFffxfffffF?F?FF?Ff must be chosen. Let me clean that up a bit, take out the garbage text. You get several chunks of information...
...border of the Roman Empire to the Danube River. During a skirmish with barbarians in Raetiain (the mountains near the border of modern France and Switzerland), 117 men under Gaius Licinius Marc...
...once of weird and frightening monsters under his control, many successful raids...
...the fall of the Roman Empire and remained unmolested until the ninth...
...written ls into the lex vita. Clovis moved the settlement farther south into the mountains, nearer the spring, to escape the notice of Charlemaligne and later the Holy Roman Empire. Clovis remained...
...Vladimir in 1902 and Frederic just recently. Both, however, carried out reforms before their deaths which slowly integrated their people secretly into world society, which are now scattered all over the globe- to meet only once every seven years in southeast France...
...must be chosen.
Of particular interest are the "weird and frightening monsters under his control", and the septannual meetings in southeast France.
It’s describing the fall of the Western Roman Empire and its replacement in Northern Europe by the Holy Roman Empire. The third party, from which it seems the perspective is, appears to be Gallic, of the Franks.
An early Pathways Into Darkness plot follows, as dictated by Jason Jones of Bungie to Richard Rouse III in the October 1993 issue of Inside Mac Games magazine (thanks to Hamish Sinclair for this tidbit).
One of the more complicated plots involved you as the descendent of Roman soldiers who had been separated from the rest of their legion while attacking a group of barbarians in what is today Switzerland. They found a mountain spring that extended their lives by hundreds of years and founded this society of semi-immortals. Every seven years they would gather and the leader of the group would descend into this cave system and return with water from the spring to assure their longevity. Now and then their leader would be killed while getting the water, none of the other members knew why or how, and a new leader would have to be chosen. The game starts with the player having just been chosen by lot to descend into the caves, find the location of the spring, and become the new leader of the cult. Of course this was extremely dangerous, and several people had already died trying. It was a very interesting plot since your quest wasn't necessarily virtuous, it didn't involve doing good things or saving the world. It was just you were chosen, more or less against your will, to become the next leader of this freak cult of immortals. It's similar to Pathways in that you would find dead people who were previous leaders of the cult or had died trying to find the spring.
Where am I going with all this? Well, lets assume my above theory about Myth being in France is correct. Then what's in southeast MythLand? The Great Devoid. Every seven years these people would gather in southeast France to descend into some catacombs and get some spring water which made them immortal. Who in Myth lived near the Great Devoid? The Callieach, of course!
Huh? Since when did the Callieach live in just the East? It’s definitely possible, but they only had their last confrontation there with the Trow, at the Battle in the Valley of the Red Seal. So did the Oghres.
Now, why would this spring water make then immortal? Perhaps there was or is a W'rkncacnter buried deep below there. When the Trow nearly exterminated the Callieach, they destroyed themselves and many Trow, shattering the surface of the catabombs in the process, leaving a gaping hole to the to the W'rkncacnter below, and creating the Great Devoid. If W'rkncacnter are chaos being who do not obey the standard laws of physics, as Durandal proclaims in the beginning of Marathon Infinity, then couldn't a pit leading down to one, where things simply turn to oblivion and the normal laws of the universe cease to work, be considered bottomless? Things go down, but they never come back up again, they fall forever, into oblivion. Perhaps, when we throw Balor's head into the Devoid, it "nudges" (the same way a meteor nudges a planet) the W'rkncacnter below, causing the violent magical explosion seen at the end of Myth. Also, could those "weird and frightening monsters" under "his" control be the Myrkridia, W'rkncacnter dreams? If so, who is controlling them?
Also, ever notice the similarity between Trow and Roman architecture?
Lol, to say the least! The Trow are the enbodiment of Rome, including architechture, their names, language, empire, and fall by babarian-like invaders, such as Connacht. For instance, the Huns (like the Dark) forced the Germanic babarians (like the Cath Bruig) into destroying the Romans (like the Trow). The similarities are vague here, but otherwise interesting.
And in the above Pathways storyline, it says the freak cult of immortals moved farther south to escape the notice of the Holy Roman Empire. And we know the Callieach were under seige by the Trow. So, could the Trow perhaps be the "weird and frightening monsters under his control", where "he" is some ruler in the Roman Empire?
I’d be more inclined to believe that the Huns would be akin to the Myrkridia-like monsters, driving the barbarians against the Romans, the Romans falling in the process (the events have been, as of yet, disconnected in Myth, one event happening after the other, but I always found that strange, it not happening all at once (no Thrall popping out from water at the beginning like Crow’s Bridge?)). To go from Myrkridia to Trow to Moagim in sequence seems odd. I think Myth III might shed a little light on this.
So the Romans sicked their Trow on the Callieach, and then later the Trow rebelled against their masters and took control of their lands.
Wtf? Forrest, are you sure you wrote this? No one rebelled but the Oghres; the Callieach just came into conflict when they started getting bitchy, but they weren’t enslaved.
The only problems I see with this theory so far are that Rome was east (and slightly south) of France, but their empire may have spread to the north (forgive me, I'm not a history/geography major) to where we currently find the Trow empire.
The text uses “Roman Empire” and “Holy Roman Empire” synonymously. The barbarians wanted to be Roman, so they tried to organize itself by its ideals. It took the name of Rome itself, as well as a large portion of its land along the Rhine in the region of present-day western Germany. This all used to belong to Rome…and it still did, in a manner of speaking :-). Horizontally west from the Danube, the Germans also cut off communication between Gaul and Italic Rome. This isolated the Franks and gave them a chance to form their own kingdom.
As a matter of fact, on the map from which I took the above image of Crusade-Era France, there's a large nation to the east, bordering France on all sides but the southwest, which I presume to be the Roman Empire (in fact, it's even labled "the empire").
By the crusades, that was the Holy Roman Empire, which indeed stood in a similar place as the Trow capital of Rhi’anon. Rather than it representing the city of Rome, it far more likely is analogous the capital of the Holy Roman Empire: Aachen (a beautiful city with a really cool museum next to the Cathedral of Charles the Great (Charlemagne)). The Holy Roman Empire dominated everything, just like the original Romans, imperializing all in its path (Saxon blood was everywhere!). They could easily be the equivalent of the Trow.
And lastly, an interesting correlation between the Cath Bruig and the immortals from the early PiD plot. In Myth, Clovis was the first emperor of the Cath Bruig. A man named Clovis also seems to have been a promiant figure in the early PiD plot. And the immortals gathered every seven years to retrieve more water from their enchanted spring; the Cath Bruig in Myth hold septannual tournyments for election into the Heron Guard, who then become immortal. Something to think about.
Lol, Clovis ain’t just in Myth, sonny :-). From Britannica.com: http://www.britannica.com/eb/article?eu=24849&tocid=0&query=clovis
Clovis I
born c. 466
died November 27, 511, Paris, France
king of the Franks and ruler of much of Gaul from 481 to 511, a key period during the transformation of the Roman Empire into Europe. His dynasty, the Merovingians, survived more than 200 years, until the rise of the Carolingians in the 8th century. While he was not the first Frankish king, he was the kingdom's political and religious founder.
This sounds awfully similar to Clovis of the Cath Bruig, not founder of the Cath Bruig people, but founder of many things Cath Bruig.
Clovis was the son of the pagan Frankish king Childeric and the Thuringian queen Basina. He succeeded his father in 481 as the ruler of the Salian Franks and other Frankish groups around Tournai (now in Belgium). Although the chronology of his reign is imprecise, it is certain that by the time of his death in 511 he had consolidated the Franks and expanded his influence and rule to include the Roman province of Belgica Secunda in 486 and the territories of the Alemanni (in 496), the Burgundians (in 500), and the Visigoths (in 507). Clovis's kingdom began in the region encompassing modern Belgium and northeastern France, expanded south and west, and became the most powerful in Gaul. He was the most important Western ally of the Byzantine emperor Anastasius I. The Pactus Legis Salicae (Law of the Salian Franks), a written code combining customary law, Roman written law, Christian ideals, and royal edicts, likely originated during Clovis's reign and had a long history of emendation and influence. Clovis married the Catholic Burgundian princess Clotilda and had five children with her. A son, Theuderic, was born prior to the marriage; his mother is unknown.
This guy seems to fit with our Mythical Clovis well.
So, it seems that there are closer connections than we thought regarding a Gallic Mythworld.
Atlantis: The Lost Continent Finally Found
Messages In This Thread
- Response to a Gallic Mythworld *PIC*
Archer »–)› (40-54.tnt-1.allentown.supernet.com) -- 8/12/2001 at 7:49 p.m.
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