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Re: Smiths, Spiders & Dwarves
Posted By: SiliconDream (169.2.228.122)
Date: 10/6/1999 at 12:40 p.m.
In Response To: Smiths, Spiders & Dwarves (Forrest)
Interesting connection indeed!
I notice that in the Encyclopedia you say that the Smiths of Muirthemne built the Tain for Connacht, but is that textually supported? We know that they built it, and that he used it, but the connection you've discovered suggests a different story, to wit:
The Smiths of Muirthemne were an order of craftsmen who covertly worshipped the great spiders or, perhaps, a spider-god. For a time they were sanctioned by Connacht and his predecessors because their work was so valuable, but in the end they abducted and sacrificed so many people that he couldn't overlook the cult and he "assailed their shrines." (Incidentally, it seems to me it would either be incredibly scary or incredibly hilarious to be abducted by Dwarves, but I can't figure out which.) However, the Smiths had an escape plan; they had secretly constructed a hiding-place, the Tain, into which they could remove themselves and their holy spiders while Connacht searched for them, and then later use the Tain's secret exit to escape and return to our world.
But Connacht discovered the Tain and magically blocked the exit somehow, trapping the Smiths. After that, he often exiled enemies into the Tain, so that it contained not just the Smiths, the spiders and the Myrkridia but also many other horrible beasts (remember the narrator's description of the contents of a Myrkridian skull platform: "Many of the skulls were human, or at least humanoid, but among these were others which were certainly not, whose shapes and curves I have tried to forget ever since..."). Why waste time fighting your foes when you can simply imprison them and have them kill each other off?
Inside the Tain, the Smiths managed to survive for a time, thanks to the lightning towers and various other defenses they constructed (since time moves more quickly in the Tain, the Smiths might have had generations to build and fortify before Connacht started teleporting other enemies inside). But eventually they were exterminated in the vicious battles between the various imprisoned races. The Myrkridia were most likely the last to die out, since they survived long enough to build platforms out of everyone else's skulls. Probably they killed everyone else and then starved to death, their extinction hastened by the spiders who somehow found sufficient nourishment to thrive. Incidentally, what DO the spiders eat? Perhaps the Tain caverns have other exits, accessible to spiders but not to less nimble creatures, which open onto those "deepest bowels of the Earth" that the spiders were said originally to inhabit. Indeed, the Tain may have been intended initially as a way for the Smiths to reach the dwelling places of the spiders they worshipped. Probably not, since the spider-cults' shrines *were* found to exist in Muirthemne, but those might have been just a blind while the real worship went on inside the Tain.
What do you think, you clever connection-discovering lad?
--SiliconDream
Messages In This Thread
- Smiths, Spiders & Dwarves
Forrest (cache3.avtel.net) -- 10/6/1999 at 11:16 a.m.
- Re: Smiths, Spiders & Dwarves
SiliconDream (169.2.228.122) -- 10/6/1999 at 12:40 p.m.
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