Mickelmerck - Background to a borderland (1st day of advent)

Mikelmerck has always been borderland.

It borders the world of the fey and the mortal lands.
It borders the north and south of Albion, forming a barricade for both.
It borders fierce beauty and incredible danger.
Creativity and pragmatism.
Some say life and death.

Sleeping Older

For the followers of Cooshboth, the answers are simple.  Mikelmerck was created in the image of heaven and anyone who doesn't believe it can lump it.  Cooshboth is a latecomer however, and in the manner of latercomers, has simply appropriated what was already believed.

In reality, the Cooshboth answer is both the truth and not true enough.  Mikelmerck is the cauldron of the Older.  Here is where they made their first steps on the world and it contains the best and worst of their creation.  Here they marched on the land and made creatures.  Here they rest, waiting for the day when their creatures end their fumbling lives and they can start again.

The Older have no understanding of good and evil.  They simply are.  In mortal terms, the best you can say is that they have a sense of balance.  For now they rest, stirring only occasionally.  Such stirring is not a minor thing and their dreaming thoughts and shifts have profound effects on the landscape and the people. 

Straddling the mortal and fey worlds, the borders are thin.  Where the Olders sleep, the fey slip through.  Ever curious, they find Mikelmerck alluring.  It leads them to fresh places, new things.  Once, this was fey country, but they were driven back by the arrival of humans.

Stumbling into Mikelmerck, humans did what everyone who visits it has done.  They try to take it.  The history of Mikelmerck is a history of invasions.  None has succeeded.  The land lets them in and tames them, making each new arrival a part of itself.