TILE#12 part 2 - 10/29/2025 - HERE BE MONSTERS

"Many ages past, Timmy" Charles said "The world was so very different than it is today that you would never have recognized it. Huge creatures roamed the Earth though despite that name it was really more wet than dry, consisting mainly of swamps and marshland and shallow seas all bathed in almost continuous rainfall.

We only know this by what was left behind, layers of mud became shale in which the animals bones were trapped and turned to stone in a long slow process of fossilization. You can find these remnants in the shale deposits that are now up high in the hills, people quarried slate to make roofs and that's how these clues were discovered.

Then later other delvers such as miners or diggers searching for minerals of all kinds, discovered more ancient animal bones which from the size of them gave rise to all sorts of make believe stories about wonderful monsters. The strange thing is that what used to live on the land, much later but still in the distant past, was much more fantastic then the wildest imaginings."

"How do you know this, Charles? I mean where did you learn it?"

"That's a wise question Timmy, always seek to verify the truth of received information. I learnt much through the good offices of your mother who being an elf had access to their ancient knowledge but that's a long story that must await a better opportunity. Also I shall need Freda's help as much of the knowledge was first imparted to her as she was the one that first rescued your mother from the ocean and saved her life. Now where was I?"

"Later on but still long ages ago?" offered Timmy

"Oh yes! You see originally Brythan was part of the continent that we are now kept seperate from by stormy seas. What happened was the Earth after all the swamps and rain, suddenly became very cold, so much so that it became covered in miles of ice and snow. This lasted many more ages until almost all except the life in the deepest oceans managed to stay alive.

Then after a few thousand years the ice began to melt and the seas rose so much that the low lying land that once was part of the mainland, became flooded and eventually washed away making Brythan the island that it is today. Then all sorts of changes took place with quite astonishing speed, relatively speaking compared to what had gone before.

Life as we know it emerged from the oceans and quickly became diverse beings of all shapes and sizes including but not limited to, elves, dwarves, brownies and many fierce creatures including our newly risen mountainsown brutish ancestors who lived, the males by hunting and their females by gathering what fruit and vegetables they discovered.

To keep away from our ancestors clubs and spears, the elves took to living in the tree tops for the forests were enormous and the trees much taller than today and the dwarves retreated into the recently risen mountains and became specialised in finding and melting different ores to make different metals from which they also made much better spears, arrows and axes than humankind had at their disposal.

That's how the trouble really began because the humans soon found out about how clever the fey were, their knowledge and tools giving them an enormous advantage. At first the elves arranged a system of barter, leaving out some metal tools in a clearing in payment for the many human food stuffs. However the agreement was never really satisfactory and the humans were getting the upper hand and learning how to find and make metals themselves.

There is so much more to the story than I have said, Timmy. I've had to omit a lot of very important details because it would take me days to explain all the ins and outs of what happened to drive the fey to emigrate to Brythan where they could be protected by a magical barrier. You'll have to wait to learn more because for now we're done and by the way my boy, never ever talk about any of this information to anyone else.