THE DESTRUCTION OF THE SENTIENT SINNERS

From Research (Week 3):

(I don't think that we can take this as anything other than a childrens' story, or maybe a morality tale against excessive drinking and loud music - no matter how much other rubbish we believe! - Ed)

## A Strange Legend – Repeated In A Couple Of Documents

**THE DESTRUCTION OF THE SENTIENT SINNERS**

When the World was yet young, the Ancient Gods lived in person among the created peoples to rule over them in a serene Golden Age of prosperity and peace. But when the peoples multiplied, their self-confidence grew and they swarmed away from the sway of the Divine Seats. Soon free-will became a pretext for misbehavior and sin, and crime and adultery took a flight (and horrid musical novelty called in-door stone-clapping).

Seeing that greed and fighting and intemperance more and more got a hold of their flocks, The Ancients spoke: "Shall our poor Ears have to listen to the noise of their endless quibbling and babbling forever?! Shall our noses have to bare the smell of their hairy bodies and breaths till eternity?! Come, let us make an end to these little pests, these pains that wallow in their inequities like pigs in the mud!". And in unity the Serene Powers created many kinds of monsters that since roam the lands. And although these beasts took a heavy toll of the life of the peoples, the people multiplied and sinned even more - "For tomorrow we may die!"

So again The Ancients took council, and out of the seed of all the monsters they had created, they made one enormous Beast, a Chimera the size of a mountain. And one of The Ancients pulled out one of his own Eyes and place it on the forehead of the monstrous being, where it flickered like lightning. When the Beast walked, the earth shook (THUMB, THUMB), the gaze of its one Eye set forests in fire and stoned all flesh, and the peoples fled in utter panic before it. Satisfied The Ancients reclined on their Seats - this would solve the problem once and for all! No mortal flesh would remain alive, and a new Serenity would soon dawn.

But among the Ancient Gods there was one who did not agree, whether out of vanity or out of mercy, that is not known; his name was Rantah. And he went to one of the peoples (some say it were the ancestors of the mead loving Dwarves) and ordered them to make 7000 jars of red beer. And when the Beast came their way(THUMP, THUMP) they quickly poured the jars out on the ground, as Rantah had commanded. And when the Beast saw the pool of red fluid on the ground it eagerly advanced, thinking it was a pool of blood. Greedily it gulped down the red substance - oh how sweet its taste! - and soon found that its massive legs felt oddly rubbery, and its little brain dozy. So when it saw, in the surface of the red pool, the reflection of its own head and of the furious Eye gazing up, it staggered and tripped and fell to the ground (THUMB, THUMB, THUD!)- and broke its neck under its own weight.

When the Ancients Gods saw that their plan had failed, and that the sentient beings they had created proved ineradicable like weeds, they shrugged their mighty shoulders, and serenely retreated upwards to the Heavens, leaving the peoples to their dubious fate down there in the mud.