Creation Story
The creation stories of the Meron were born in the animistic traditions of the old religion and bear close resemblance to those told in the Aeone region, most specifically its western areas: the country now known as Eemeo [see map]. Though the languages have evolved far apart (the people of Eemeo now speak the vowel-laden speech of Uau), the terms used to describe the birth of Annuvar are similar in form and meaning.
The sun, Habara, (say the old myths) was born from the woman Starmother. It was lonely, so far away from its brothers and sisters in the black, and Starmother took pity on him and gave him a wife: the earth. Their children are the three moons, their grey-skinned son Pabrade and their icy daughters Palizha and Mafarzha.
In keeping with the traditions of the early religions, these five celestial bodies obeyed the laws of family life. The wife, Annuvar, circled the husband, Habara, while their three children looked to her and revolved around her. (In this sense, Meron science has been ahead of Earth astronomy for thousands of years. When the two planets between the sun and Annuvar were discovered, they were named Annuvar’s sisters, but no room was made for them in the mythology.)
Habara burned hot and bright while Annuvar grew green and vibrant from his light. It was then that the Great One, the father of the Starmother, deemed that there should be a smaller kind to walk upon her earth and tend to her growing locks of green and the animals that wandered her forests. For while Annuvar and Habara and their children were good and beautiful and strong, the Great One wished to have another lesser kind who could look upon the stars and the earths and the moons and see the greatness of his vision. So the Great One called forth humankind out of a tall-striding animal and made him above all the other animals. He said:
“I am your Creator. You are the children of my daughter’s children, the people of Annuvar. Here you will grow, prosper, and you will learn how to speak and how to love. And you will look up at the stars and you will remember the gift I have given you. And when you grow too old to move and close your eyes to rest, I will call your spirit up to the heavens and you will be with me forevermore.”
So it was that humanity lived in the forests and plains of Annuvar, and made children and learned to eat the things of the earth and to speak among the animals. But after a time, they forgot the words they had learnt from the Creator, for their lives were short. A time came when they did not even remember that in death they went to be with Him, and so they grew to fear it and use it against one another as a way to get what they wanted from their fellow men.
The Creator had foreseen this and said to the Starmother as she gazed with worry at the conflict wrought upon the soils of her son’s wife, Annuvar:
“I knew they would forget, but do not worry. In time I will send a messenger to them in the form of one of their own. They will not know him at first, but in him will be a piece of my wisdom. He will teach them to lay aside their sticks and stones and build themselves lives of peace, and he will tell them of Me and of My ways. And he will explain that when their spirits leave their physical cages, they return to Me.”
So it was that a man came to the peoples and taught them the ways their Creator wished for them, and when he died they remembered. But after a time, memory faded, and so the Creator said:
“There will be no end, for my spirit will come again and again to them, reminding them of the duty they must carry out to their people and to their selves and the peace that they must make with their own kind. It will not end; they will never be wholly cured of their human frailty. But, with the guidance of these messengers from Me, they will remember Me and remember peace and one day they will come out of the dark and into the light of eternity.”
This story, or some variation thereof, is a remnant of some early religion but was adopted into the traditions of Karbea, the only religion wholly native to Meron, and some form of it is also found in the Hafel doctrine, which is imported from Etana but which is gaining rapid popularity among the lower classes in Meron.
Arriving in Meron
The remainder of the prehistoric tale of the Meroned is not found in religious texts, and it does not begin on Meron. As evidenced in the origins of the creation myth, the Meroned are believed to be descendants of the original people of Eemeo (originally Vezhle), a country in the west of the Aeone region. Little of Eemeo culture remains, because they were long subjugated by their more militant eastward neighbors, Uau.
There are several possible explanations for the remarkable fact that Eemeo people ended up in Meron, when early evidence indicates that they did not possess long-distance ships until they acquired the technology from their northern neighbors, the Korbeth (of Ñist descent), well into their recorded history.
The first—and most widely accepted—scenario is that they were escaped slaves. The Uau, who are still infamous human traffickers, were shipping Eemeo laborers to buyers on Qajendu long before the earliest records of people on Meron were written—before, even, a writing system was known to exist anywhere but in what is now Shqo (the main recipient of the human cargo). If a slave ship were lost in a storm (or, some propose, was taken over by its cargo) and wrecked on the shores of Meron, it could explain the presence of Eemeo people there. The slave ships were known to pack as many as 250 people below decks—a substantial gene pool. The Eemeo were not habitually watermen and would probably have salvaged the remains of their ship to build homes, losing their seafaring technology.
The main argument against this theory is that there is no proof of it. Another equally improvable possibility is that Meron was a failed colony of Eemeo, or an attempt to escape the thumb of Uau, which even then was in the business of empire-building.
Whatever the case may have been, a group of Eemeo found their way to Meron and established themselves there. It is possible that they had to fend off early forays from the east; the people of what would later be Qaqia had already moved into Etana, and might have also been interested in their northern neighbors as well. The Korbeth would not have arrived from Ñist until much later; their first contact with the Meron was in the early years of Dadurab Mar.
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