Tessarakonta, Triumph, and Time - Whence the Casque of Sorrows
by Ephraim "Prybar" Cade, Nocker Scholar of the Kingdom of Willows
Charleston Freeport, Autumn 1969
(Unpublished manuscript recovered from the uncatalogued effects of the late E. Cade, Willow's Heart Library Archive Box 14-C, "Miscellaneous Historical Fragments")
Editor's Note, added in pencil decades later:
Cade died during fighting associated with the Accordance disturbances. This paper was apparently never submitted for circulation. This typed original with handwritten amendments is the only copy.
Introduction
I submit this paper with hesitation.
Not because I believe it wrong, mind. More likely because it is unfinished, insufficiently sourced, and built from a mountain of contradictory testimony and old nonsense. Which means it is scholarship in the Kingdom of Willows.
The problem with any study of the Tessarakonta, the so-called War of Trees, is that one quickly discovers that everyone who writes of it either disagrees or lies.
The sidhe remember songs.
The commoner kith remember tragedies.
The pooka remember jokes.
The redcaps remember meals.
The sluagh remember things they refuse to repeat.
And the old records—the few surviving ones—often disagree with one another in ways that exceed ordinary confusion.
This may simply be expected when discussing events fifteen centuries removed.
Yet I increasingly suspect a more troubling possibility:
That the War did not occur at a fixed place in history at all.
I. On the Impossible Dating of the Tessarakonta
The ordinary approach among historians is to assign the War of Trees to a date somewhere in the fifth or sixth century following Christ.
This is done mostly because one must write something.
The favored argument is straightforward:
- Rome collapses.
- The old orders break.
- Strange upheavals occur.
- The Dreaming changes.
- The Tuatha depart.
Simple.
Too simple.
The problem is that other accounts place the ending of the War alongside events that mortal chronology insists occurred centuries apart.
Certain Eshu narratives place its final years near the collapse of caravan routes eastward.
Some eastern records place disturbances concurrent with dynastic shifts whose mortal dates do not remotely agree.
There are references to migrations, calamities, and sky-signs that cannot coexist in ordinary chronology.
One explanation is simple error.
Another is that all our ancestors were idiots.
Both are plausible.
But I propose another possibility.
We know the wizards have their own Autumn People scientists that reshape consensus and memory.
We know mortal history itself shifts around their notions of reason.
Why should such revision stop at the present day?
Suppose the ordering of history itself became altered.
Suppose dates, records, memories—even the remembered sequence of events—were adjusted to fit a cleaner mortal conception of time.
The Dreaming is not wholly bound by mortal chronology.
Neither are we.
A changeling in dream remembers impossible things daily.
Why should ancient memory obey stricter laws?
Perhaps asking when the War ended is itself a foolish question.
Perhaps the better question is:
Which ending do we mean?
Nevertheless, if one requires a proximate answer, I suspect the Fall of Rome serves as the nearest useful anchor—not because it caused the War's ending, but because later European kith imposed their interpretation upon surviving Dreaming history.
II. Concerning the Triumph Casque of Sorrows
No artifact associated with the War has accumulated more contradictory nonsense than the Triumph Casque of Sorrows.
Most common histories repeat the familiar account:
That Kureksarra was defeated.
That the Casque was shattered.
That its key was broken into nine pieces and scattered.
Nine.
Always nine.
Nine annoys me.
Nine is tidy.
Nine is convenient.
Nine appears in stories invented by people who need symbolic numbers and lack imagination.
The War of Trees was not fought by tidy people.
Nor did the Tuatha traffic in convenient arithmetic.
Thirteen appears repeatedly in old material surrounding the War:
Thirteen banners.
Thirteen guardians.
Thirteen camps opposing the Red King's remnants.
Thirteen roads.
Thirteen oaths.
Thirteen survivors.
Repeated coincidence ceases eventually to be coincidence.
I increasingly suspect the tale of nine fragments is misinformation.
Possibly deliberate misinformation.
One hears too many stories of iron keys carried by secretive kithain families.
Too many tales of wandering custodians.
Too many hidden inheritances.
Too many absurd stories dismissed as local folklore.
The world possesses enough false relics to build a castle from "pieces of the True Cross."
Yet occasionally a false thing conceals a true pattern.
One old account states:
"The shards were scattered among the camps of the Red King's enemies."
This line has traditionally been read as metaphor.
I increasingly suspect otherwise.
What if the key truly was divided?
Not shattered in defeat—
—but divided deliberately.
Or broken by allies.
Not to destroy it.
To hide it.
III. On Hidden Custodians
If thirteen trusted survivors received portions of the key, their mission would have been obvious.
Scatter.
Hide.
Wait.
Preserve.
Not forever.
Only until need returned.
The possibility of the Fomorians' return never truly vanished.
Stories insist the Casque itself could not be safely destroyed.
Indeed, many sources avoid discussing its destruction entirely.
One notices something strange:
There are countless references to keys.
Almost none to the Casque itself.
No burial place.
No vault.
No final resting site.
Nothing.
As if scholars have spent centuries discussing door handles without asking where the door might be.
I wonder whether we misunderstand entirely.
Perhaps the key itself always possessed access.
Perhaps the Casque never needed location.
Perhaps location is irrelevant.
The Dreaming often cares little for such distinctions.
IV. On the Shattering and the Lost Custodians
Even if my speculation proves correct, no secret order survives history untouched.
The Shattering destroyed kingdoms.
Broke lineages.
Silenced freeholds.
Scattered memory itself.
Why should these guardians fare better?
Most likely they did not.
Keys would pass to descendants.
Or strangers.
Or fools.
Perhaps some sit forgotten in attics.
Perhaps some lie buried.
Perhaps others survive as heirlooms whose owners know nothing.
Entire freeholds have vanished through lesser accidents.
V. Speculation: The Lauren Estate
I admit local prejudice.
As a son of Willows I cannot ignore a peculiar regional anomaly.
The Lauren Estate near Atlanta remains among the strangest freeholds in our Kingdom.
Established under obscure circumstances during the Antebellum period by unusually secretive kithain.
Partially destroyed during the burning of Atlanta.
Yet surviving.
Not wholly.
Stories insist portions reappear at night.
More troubling:
Its Rath famously failed to reopen during the recent return of the sidhe.
Others awakened.
It did not.
No explanation satisfies.
I offer none.
Only a question:
What if it was never truly a Rath?
Or not merely one?
I have encountered repeated references associating key-fragments with hidden thresholds.
Doors.
Passages.
Places of transition.
Suppose these keys establish only metaphorical access.
Suppose possession of the completed key allows approach to the Casque itself from wherever one stands.
Suppose the key creates its own road.
Wild speculation.
Likely nonsense.
Still—
the Estate troubles me.
Conclusion
I fear I write this during dangerous times.
The sidhe have returned.
Old structures awaken.
Ancient grievances stir.
Many insist the world moves toward restoration.
I remain unconvinced.
If the return of old powers signals anything, perhaps it is this:
Things sleeping may awaken.
Not only kings.
Not only nobles.
Not only dreams.
The old stories insist the Fomorians sleep.
Stories also insist they slept before.
If they wake—
if they truly wake—
then perhaps somewhere hidden among attics, ruins, old lineages, forgotten holdings, and iron curiosities...
someone possesses a key.
And perhaps the Casque of Sorrows was never destroyed at all.
If so—
I rather hope wiser folk than I find it.
Because if I am correct, I increasingly suspect its legends of fire and poison were misunderstood.
Weapons become stories.
Stories become myths.
Myths become lies.
And sometimes lies become truth.
Whatever rests within the Casque—
I suspect it is stranger than anyone remembers.
(handwritten beneath)
No, damn it, Ephraim, if everyone says something is nonsense perhaps eventually stop ignoring them.