: That title (from GURPS) isn't presented as being invented
: by the Trow themselves...I think "the Time
: Before" is the time before Men and Dwarves and
: all.
I'm more inclined towards the Archerous Über-Theory and the Forrestine Discources.
The Callieach were never sovereigns when the Trow were around. When they tried to become more powerful, the Trow slaughtered them. And since the designation is Trow in origin, that would indicate that the Callieach came before the Trow.
The Archerous Über-Theory suggests that the Earth, as a spherical planet, was once inhabited by horrible looking things in a chaotic and sadistic world not unlike what is seen of the nether world from the comic.pdf "Inside the Tain". This chaotic proto-(or very futuristic)Earth was dominated by gods of a rather dark nature.
Then one of them had a dream, the One Dream of Wyrd. Wyrd envisioned a paridisial Earth of peace with far more pleasant creatures and life—basically, our world. He started creating the world, perhaps starting at the mangled-looking Europeanish continent. As the wave of reorganization spread, the Darkness was changed to Light, and the evil and foul creatures were transformed (or destroyed) into those envisioned by Wyrd. The patron gods of these creatures surely weren't happy, and were diappointed with Wyrd's actions.
Nyx was jealous of Wyrd, wanting a world of her own, so she tried to fight Wyrd for it. The result of that conflict was a scar in Wyrd's world, Tharsis, which was simultanously the place where the Trow were forged out of clay and stone. The Trow would act as representatives to Nyx, being an eternal reminder that Wyrd did not control his world.
The Dark Gods beheaded Wyrd's son, Segoth, and also halted Wyrd's wave of terrestrial transformation, shattering Wyrd's One Dream into 49 pieces. Wyrd had forever lost control of his world, what little there was of it…just a single continent of an entire sphere. Nothing exists beyond the the Edge of All that is a part of the world, but it is everything of the former Earth, filled with all the same evil creatures which manifested themselves in many ways as millenial waves, they crossing the boundary from the external world to the new one, attempting to take back a sizable portion of land from the light. Nyx, represented by the Trow, dominated the land and held it as her own world, her Trow minions defeating any such millenial wave of Dark creatures.
::tired::
So the Callieach, a race that was once held the namesake of Sovereigns over other Dark creatures of the nether world, came back to reclaim the land that was unjustly taken from them. As they were thwarted by the Trow at the Battle of the Valley of the Red Seal, they destroyed themselves…or did they? More likely, they opened a whole through the Earth to the other side to get back to their side of the Edge of All.
That's enough to talk about right now…
