When the face of Seilid was yet dark, before the chalon first wakened the forms who slept deep in silent halls of stone, the stars kept watch. Eres formed the stars from his fire and filled them with his lifebreath, giant beings to tread the vault of heaven and give guiding light to the world. His spirit though he did not give to them, desiring them to be entirely other than our world. The stars share not in our joy, pain, full life, and death with all its mysteries. Brilliant in their vigil before the first dawn on Seilid, the stars traversed the black heavens, settling into the constellations or solitary places Eres had intended. The purest of white beings became Arthach, the Great Longship, or Artos the Bear, the name that all dwarf kings take at their crowning. Blue as day and green as life are the Maiden, the Longbow, Iontach the Horse, and the Horn of Valour. But the red stars were proud and each desired to rule alone in the great firmament. The few that did come together became the Dragon. They looked on empty Seilid, and feeling the strength of the great forms given them by Eres they desired to descend, and possess it according to their own will and power. But Seilid is not for the stars. Eres knew that not all of his first beings were content in their places. He fashioned a shield about the earth and ordered the stars to remain in their cycles. The seeds of arrogance do not die at a command however, and four stars of the Dragon wheeled in their travels around Seilid. Rearing red against the night, they sped toward the surface of the land with tails blazing out behind them and fire streaming from their cosmic spears. But as their spearheads pierced the invisible shield, the living, celestial flame was quenched in them, for Eres’ fire can not go against its own Maker. They fell then, metal as cold as death, and shattered with their impact, sending out fearsome quakes. Landmasses were sundered, mountains threw up towering heads, rivers surged free from subterranean paths. Ynis Adrach, island of the dwarves, was driven far north from the mainland in a great tidal wave. Up burst the Cior and Boreas mountain ranges, and the River Natare gushed forth across the face of the isle. Images of the giant figures in their fall were seared in the Maker’s shield, an eternal reminder of the cost of their rebellion. On the coldest of northern nights they still dance across the sky, a frenzied tapestry of reds and golds. Dwarves call them the casurus, the overthrown, or the naufragi, shipwrecked.

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