The Skjaldborg / BORG

The Word of Borf

In a fit of brotherhood, booze, and battle, the Word came unto the Speaker and dost was it did be write. This inspiration has lead the Speaker to a new focal point in life, the spreading and the Speaking of the Word.

The Borf is not a deity. One can not come to know Borf without the Mead and the Meat, and without the Borf, the Mead and the Meat cannot be sustained. The snake eats its tail, the dude smokes his own pole, the unbeginning chain resumes without ending. The Borf is inside all of us, as is the Meat and Mead, and only through the expression of said delectables does one come to understanding and fellowship with the Word.

• The Book of Conception – A treatise on the origin of Borf and how we came to understand its Way.
• The Book of Fellowship – On how the Borf demands that we behave towards one another, in order to stay plentiful in the Meat and Mead.
• The Book of Rumination – Ponderings of the Speaker, captured as the Word flows through him.
• The Book of Indulgences – The Mead and the Meat come in a variety of forms.

We are the Skjaldborg

The Book of Conception

Introduction

In the beginning, there was Prohibition. The Great Starvation succored the Others, and there was no joy to be had. Toil and pain, in the full consciousness of sobriety, was all that was Known.

And lo, the Others were misshapen and cruel. Filled with ever present hunger and hatred. They dwelt in all corners of Prohibition, their eyes ever open and searching for the hint of jubilation and joyous revelry. Their bodies did taketh upon the form of their festering anger and became loathsome to behold. And yea, thus it was for millennia, for time unknowing.

But there came a day, the glorious First Fermenting. Upon this day Borf was given unto Prohibition, and its splendor kindled the Chaos. And thus it was, from thence. Borf is. In the First Fermenting, there was Borf and Borf spoke its holy rambling and birthed the Chaos. The Chaos flowed and ebbed, heated and cooled, and soon formed the two materials, liquid and solid. These took the holiest of forms, the Mead and Meat.

Then followed the Great Ignorance. For, though the Borf had come unto Reality, the Imbibing and Mastication had not begun. The Others, ever watchful, scoffed at the gifts of Borf, jealously guarding their familiar Prohibition. Borf was labeled the Great Evil and Scourge, and the Watchers of the Others were set to guard the bounty. And yea, thus it was for millennia, for time unknowing.

There came a time, however, when Borf could no longer be constrained. The Initial Inebriation spawned from the folds of Chaos. A great vessel of the Mead did burst, raining upon the forms of two Others. Thus it was that two Watchers, supposed guardians against the Great Evil, did ingest the golden glory of the Mead. This day, forever after, was known as the First Imbibing. The Borf came upon the Watchers, filling their desiccated forms. The Great Starvation no longer satiated them, and the Craving did come upon them. The first of the Imbibers did then continue their drinking, in secret, always aware of their breaking of the Laws of Prohibition. And thus did they change. Slowly, the new hunger came upon them. While the Mead was satisfying, and brought to Them the whispers of Borf, they were incomplete. And yea, thus it was for millennia, for time unknowing.

Now did the Firsts, forever changed by the First Imbibing, become discovered by the other Others. A great battle ensued as the Others attempted to force Abstention upon the Firsts. For the Others are cruel, the Others are filled with loathing, and the Others feed on misery and sobriety. But the Firsts sang with the song of Mead. This aspect of Borf fueled their struggle, and the Others were beaten back, and the Firsts did escape into the folds of Chaos. Injured, their unknown hunger raging within them, the Firsts did look for remedy. With them in their hiding place, the bodies of Others. And unto the Firsts did the flesh of the Others seem desirous. And the Firsts did feast and Borf was content and declared it good. Thus began the Long Feast. The First Imbibing was followed now by the First Mastication, and together the Mead was joined with the Meat.

Slowly, as the Long Feasting commenced, the Firsts continued to change. No longer did they resemble emanations of nightmare, but now unto them more familiar shapes of Meat were formed. The Mead sang within them, flowing from one end to another, sharing the joyous song of Borf throughout their body. And now was Borf made whole upon the Firsts. Within them the full synergy of Meat and Mead.

The Firsts, sated from Long Feasting did know each other. From them was birthed new beings to live among the Chaos, hiding from the twisted hordes of the Others. These beings were of Borf but not Borf, as they existed within the Universe and not without. The first of these beings was of the Meat, stubborn and strong. The second was of the Mead, gentle and jolly by nature. Yet, within both of them roiled the entirety of Borf. One cannot contain Mead without the fleshy vessel of Meat. One cannot nourish Meat without golden glory of Mead. These first beings did twist and reform from the horrid freakishness inherent in the Others. And these children of the Firsts were thus known to us as Vikings.

Borf sung within their veins, guiding them on the Path. From within the waves of Chaos, the Vikings did hunt, the Vikings did gather. They collected unto themselves other forms of Meat and Mead, which spawned from their own Creation. And all of these did the Vikings cherish, and all did they honor. The song of Borf did sing joyously from the halls of the Vikings and Borf was content and declared it good. And yea, thus it was for millennia, for time unknowing.

And then emerging from Chaos and unto the wider Universe, the Vikings came upon Others, and sought to share with them the joy of Imbibing and Mastication. The Others, who found all joy abhorrent, clung to their Prohibition and became more cruel and vile. The Others were enraged, knowing that the Firsts had feasted upon their fellows during the Long Feast, enabling them to spawn their children. And thus did the Others seek to enslave those Vikings who ventured forth to share in Borf. From them was stripped the freedoms of their birthright. Onto them was force Abstinence. While retaining the same form as their brothers and sisters, they became separated from the glorious Song, imprisoned to a hellish existence.

It was in this time that the Fracture began. With the Others aware now of their existence, all could not remain as it was. It was during this time that the Word of Borf did sing to its chosen peoples. Filled with the Knowledge of Borf, a Viking formed from the Chaos an Axe and took up the defense of the Meat and Mead, to protect these sacred forms from the onslaught to come. And too, his brother, also filled with the Knowledge of Borf, formed from the Chaos a keg and took up the passing of the Word of the Meat and Mead, to bring back the essence of Borf to the brothers and sisters enslaved by Abstinence. Thus began the Fracture of the Vikings of Borf.

While divergent, these brothers recognized the dependency each had to one another, just as the Meat cannot thrive without Mead, and Mead cannot give its Knowledge giving song without Meat through which to flow. Years did pass, and each brother begat a following of their own. As generation upon generation followed their forbearers, the Fracture began to produce rifts within the Vikings.

And yea, thus it was, that the Great Calamity did come upon the Vikings. During a debauched night, in celebration of the Long Feast, did brother fall upon brother, and sister upon sister, and brother upon sister, and sister upon her brother. A great battle raged within the Hall, stemming from a Brother of the Axe, filled with the spirit of Borf, intentionally spilling his Mead upon a Sister of the Keg. A great philosophical argument immediately began. The Faction of the Mead, enraged at the spilling of their most holy of consumables, did take up the position that what had occurred was Most Foul, and should never be allowed to occur during celebration without immediate retribution. The Faction of Meat, ever stubborn, guffawed. Words, flowing with Borf, spewed from each side of the Hall. As passions rose, a Meaty fist was thrown, shattering the Community with violence.

The Great Calamity did commence, and consumed the entire Hall. It spilled from the Hall, then, and engulfed the entire Chaos in which the Vikings dwelt. No longer was Borf honored by all, for the Meat and the Mead was again separated from being. Those who followed the Mead, holding firmly to their grudge about the Wasting, placed the Mead within ever increasing protective layers. Any use of Mead became viewed as waste, and great quantities were gathered, yet not allowed to be Imbibed as Borf would will. The followers of Meat, deprived of the Mead suddenly, fell into a dreadful state. As the warm glow of Borf faded from their veins, the Great Drying Out caused many to be unable to even walk in the harsh Light that burned the Eye and pounded within the Brain. These miserable souls were thus placed upon a Wagon, to be carried from destination to destination. And yea, thus it was for millennia, for time unknowing.

The Great Calamity did not go unnoticed by the Others, who reveled in the bitter split of their enemy, Borf. It was during this time that their sense of superiority lead them to complacency, for they did thus retreat from the Chaos and abandon their enslavement of the captured Vikings from Ages bygone. Confident that the Meat and Mead had been irrevocably torn asunder, they turned their gaze upon other corners of the Universe, seeking to demolish any Joy and Jubilation that might remain. The Enslaved, free from the clutches of the Others, gradually encountered the Fractured Meat, and the peoples were rejoined. Deprived of Mead to give the essence of Knowledge and Life to their bodies, they grew together as one people, the Ignorant. The Old Ways were forgotten. The Word of Borf did flee from their heads and their hearts.

It was also during this time that the followers of Mead, now themselves fully deprived of the Golden Fluid over the gradual Age, did come themselves unto Sobriety and a Great Forgetting. Mead, so long regarded with its rightful Holy Light, was forgotten and ignored. No longer remembering their purpose, they began to wander the Chaos, leaving the great Stockpile of Mead to be lost for time unknown. As with the Enslaved, these poor souls also encountered their brothers and sisters. And yea, thus it was for millennia, for time unknowing, an Age of Ignorance.

Ages forward in time, the Ignorant lived a simple, boring life of Ignorance and Abstinence. Their very nature was rendered incomplete, and the Great Misery was well known. A sense of longing, a sense of regret, filled all of the Ignorants’ hearts. It was thus that Seekers came unto the Ignorant. Dissatisfied with the lonely existence of Meat without Mead to nourish it, they ventured forth throughout the Chaos, they ventured forth beyond the Chaos and out unto the Universe, searching for those pieces of their being that they knew was missing. Long did Seekers of the Ignorant search, finding a great many Wonders, but always they felt the Longing, never sated by their discoveries.

It was unto one of these Seekers that Whispers of Borf did come. Nearly at the end of his Seeking, he did stumble into a long lost Temple of Mead, hidden away in a deep corner of Chaos by the Faction of Mead, millennia past. Parched and near death, the Seeker did search for sustenance and succor within. The Temple, built long after the Fracture, contained little of the Knowledge of Borf but for a meager Stockpile and the rudiments of Recipe. Uncertain of the Golden Fluid, but clinging on to the life of his Meat, the Seeker did Imbibe. A Great Awakening began within him, and the Word of Borf did sing again within the veins of the Children of the Firsts, and Borf was content and declared it good.

This Seeker, the First Speaker of the Word, did take with him the fragments of the Recipe. Long years of study and toil commenced until at long last, the Recipe was successfully followed and once more the Knowledge of Mead was available unto the Ignorant. The First Speaker did Imbibe. The First Speaker did share the Knowledge with those Ignorant who would listen to the Word. The First Speaker, touched by Borf, did rekindle the unity of Meat and Mead. The First Speaker did then, with his Brewmasters and Pitkeepers, take out among the Ignorants in an attempt to bring them back unto their birthright.

Thus it was, not so long ago, that the Word of Borf did come back unto the Universe.