CaerBraint & the Dewin.

CaerBraint - Plas y Dewin, Llanddona, Môn, Cymbri.

Whilst the Druids were the masters of all ceremony, the ingenious and widely-feared Dewin focused on otherworldly matters, such as archaic magic and alchemy alongside the more human, secular business of anonymous assassination. Their business were the secret and the truly ancient, powerful Rhegau and Swynau; the tools of their trade. These took so long to master and took such a ferocious, personal cost on the students, only the few iron-hard individuals prevailed. These curses and spells ranged from Rheg y Tywyll; the awe-inspiring curse of darkening, to Swyn-Trymhau which made heavy an object or person. To a-man, the Dewin of Prydein were acknowledged masters in the dark, insidious arts of blameless poisoning, and Lludd Llaw Ereint was the chief among them.

The Gorddofic Kings had always been strongly allied with the Druids, being the original Druid-Kings in their ancient history, and each great King had been both High-King and Druid-King. That ancient order had evolved over the centuries and had become a religion, independent of mortal, secular matters, and the first true Druids had emerged to lead their religion into a new future. The prehistoric King’s line was preserved and became known as the Gorddoficau, also known as the Aer y Derwydd. These influential aristocrats who became the fearsome ‘Fire of the Druids’ were now effectively the military nobility of Prydein’s Druids and the protectors of its sacred religion. The highly intelligent and educated, extremely powerful warrior-priests this ancient order produced were known as Dewin, and Lludd Llaw Ereint was the current King and Brif-Dewin of the Gorddoficau. This unbeaten warrior of incalculable Bri was a man of extraordinary knowledge and abilities, but the real, black heart of this ancient and powerful order of the Aer y Derwydd resided in a dark and mysterious fortress on Môn’s south-eastern coast. There, in a high and black, palisaded hillfort live the wizards, warlocks, sorcerers, magicians and alchemists, the tutors and the testers and all manner of monstrous teachers of these ferocious Dewin. It is a secretive, deeply mysterious region visited by nobody of right mind. King Lludd ap Beli Mawr had been brought up as a Gorddofic Prince and his Gorddoficau proudly hold the Rheolwr y Grym over that nation’s tribes, being the modern-day military force of the Druids across Prydein. Some of their nobles are chosen to be Druid trained themselves in that truly ancient order, usually the surplus male Princes of the Gorddofican royal families. This intense and unforgiving training of body, mind and soul takes nineteen years, and to become one of these fabled wizard-warriors the Druids called Dewin, the acolytes had to pay a price very few were able or willing to pay. One in a thousand would be able to cope with the martial, mental and the spiritual demands that were constant and unending on them, making eye-watering rates of attrition. Lludd had hammered on the great gates of CaerBraint in Llanddona soon after he had lost his right hand to poisoning, demanding admission. 

He had not just qualified and become one of them, the son of Beli Mawr had quickly proved himself to be far superior to any Dewin they had ever trained before. Nine long and challenging years he had toiled within that stygian fortress of the Dewin, and nine long and hard winters he had endured inside its fearsome walls. It was a completely changed man who eventually passed back out of those great black gates, but in reality, it had been just three years later. Ten more years of training had remained, this done in the real-world and in real-time, but Lludd was a man driven by his unique bloodline ever-onwards and he had completed his training as a wizard-warrior some years ago. Lludd Llaw Ereint as accommodating and sociable as he was, was the most fearsome weapon in and of himself, and none knew his true capabilities, except perhaps his brothers and his life-long mentor and teacher; HênDdu. Busy little Treflan Pentraeth has always lain under the oppressive shadow of the fearsome, inviolate Caer of the Dewin which towers darkly over the small town. CaerBraint, or the Plâs y Dewin as known by its scholars is a huge, hill-top fortress and is the secretive, mysterious and spell-bound Caer where Lludd’s esteemed nephew Gwerdded ap Nynniaw also trained. It is where all students of this most demanding and archaic of all the Druid’s orders are schooled in their dark arts. At night the Druid’s Mist; the living, writhing tentacles of Tarth y Derwydd always crept under the huge black gates of this glowering fortress, to slink down the northern ramp and sully the grassland below.

That foreboding but hallowed seat of learning was an old hillfort Dun, which had been transformed over recent generations. It’s sharp, blackened and towering palisade tore the sky apart above the village of Pentraeth like the savage teeth of a gigantic, leaping shark of the night. Towering above even this, was the tallest dream-tower in all Prydein and its timber-lattice framework reached up out of the shark’s mouth and into the heavens like a long black tongue. From the timber box-room atop that dizzying tower and on even an average day, you could see the beacons at Pen y Gogarth and further to Disglair Gwaenysgor whose tall and cage-mounted beacon towered over Tref Gronant further up the coast. On a clear day the view stretched further still, all the way eastwards to the huge tribal beacon of Disglair Býr at the head of Penbedw. Penbedw is the great rectangular promontory of the Cornafau Calon in south-western Breged and which pushes out into Arglwydd Belissama, daughter of Bel himself and the major arterial boundary river which serves their busy Porth Dyfry.

CaerDyfry’s palisaded might commanded the Aber of the river Dyfrdwy, which runs alongside that huge riverside ‘toll’ Dun and pays eternal and constant tribute to the great grey rushing Goddess Belissama, just west of the Port and its long expanse of Elm wharfing. From the busy harbourfront of Porth Dyfry you can look west, all the way to the hazy, closely facing but distant coastlines of Decawangly and Gangania. On a bright day and there before the verdant hillsides of sacred Môn, you will see the hideous and black tongue of the Dewin’s dream-tower, reaching up from CaerBraint into the rarefied atmosphere above the mother of Prydein herself.

Whilst used for lookout duties in times of crisis by the brave, the high dream tower of CaerBraint was a Dewin’s creation and its primary function was to house an acolyte in one of the wild storms which regularly assault this coast. With all the shutters fastened and gripping tight to two wooden handles on the floor, he may ride out the swaying, creaking and terrifying ordeal and achieve his awen, or to at least gain some command of his fears. It is said that the petrified howls of the Dewin acolytes often overpowered the howling gales which assaulted them, bringing down the tall tower and a great number had perished in the endeavour. The dream tower was commonly rebuilt taller and rather less-robustly than many students thought wise, but this was for a reason and this forty-foot tall, latticed structure and its boxed crown would sway alarmingly in any stiff wind. Many acolytes had perished over the years, when wind occasionally overcame timber and the whole structure would come crashing down. However, with regular practice they had got the rebuilding down to just twelve hours.

The black, jagged and monstrous fortress of CaerBraint dominates the landscape of this region and no person of ordinary family would even dare look at that terrifying edifice, even in broad daylight without quaking with fear, let-alone draw near to its malevolent bulk at night. The children of this dark and mysterious corner of Môn would whisper the hair-raising stories they had heard their Tads, Taids and Hêndaids tell around the hearth, whilst they were assumed asleep. In the dead of night beneath their bed furs, they would listen to these dread tales of long dead, eerily singing wraith-maidens, haunting the red sands of Traeth Coch on nights of full-moon. They would re-tell these dark stories to each other in whispers and with wide-eyes; of rotting headless corpses, which the elders had seen walking around the stark battlements of CaerBraint in the small hours. They had all been told what those dread sounds on the wind were on these auspicious, sacred and penultimate nights. The children of Llanddona knew first-hand they were wondrous, dragon-slaying Dewin-Warriors flying through the air on hazel branches, as they battled enormous and winged, fire-breathing demons in the night sky above them. That omnipotent, jagged black Dun was also seen by the working-folk of Llanddona as the mythical Plâs y Wirod, the invisible but widely-known spiritual ‘Palace of the Gwyllion’ and CaerBraint was a dark place of nightmare, steeped in unfathomable concepts and rituals and a place to be feared and avoided, even by the eyes of the ever superstitious werrin.

That palisaded black hillfort with its fantastic dream tower scared the locals witless, and apart from the servants and the indentured skilled men of the locality who were bound to enter its foreboding depths, all gave the Dun a wide berth. If one of the village folk inadvertently caught sight of that haunting hill-top fortress and its sky-reaching bulbous tongue, they would cry-out, kiss iron and pray to their Gods to keep its Gwyllion away in the dark terrifying hours to come. These stories were grounded on age-old truths, as all had heard the pitiful and haunting, often hysterical screaming that would float down from this stronghold of the powerful Cymbric sorcerers during the terrible hours of darkness. The people of Cymbri are wise and fearful, so the streets and lanes of Treflan Pentraeth are always deserted as soon as Bel’s fiery coat-tails vanish over the western hills.

The night is ever the time of Arglwydd Lug Ddu, when the land comes alive in this rare darkness and a heavy, portentous dusk descends on this feared part of this most sacred island. Unseen things begin to rouse and scurry in its deepest shadows, stirred and commanded by the terrible Black God of Prydein and first-man himself. That merciless dreadnaught the ancient Persians had called Yima and who on his immortality had come to Prydein, to become the grim, pitiless and implacable black Lord of the Underworld. In that ancient, primordial soup of creation Arglwydd Lug Ddu had taken his throne with no struggle, no ceremony or preamble just a victorious celebration of his Dominion. He did this by vomiting up darkness from his long-dead but yet squirming bone-throne of horror, from which monstrosity he now welcomes the countless souls of the foolish and the unfortunate dead, with his lean and black-draped open arms. Only the priests, the brave or the truly foolish venture abroad on this Gods-sworn, spirit-wreathed region at night, especially on such an august night as this. Fro Llanddona however for all its fearsome reputation, is the golden apple in the eye of Mam Cymbri and Nain to all Prydein; Arglwydd Môn herself, much beloved by Lug and all of Prydein’s Gods.

Arglwydd Lug Ddu - The great Black God of Prydein.

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