Of Mannanan’s Door

From the Chronicles of Gerrick the Historian

“It is recorded in the oldest chronicles, in ink long faded and in songs whose words crack like dry branches, that there once was a door of such cunning artifice that even the gods stood back to marvel at it. For it was not forged of mortal craft alone, nor even of the high magics of the druids, but in the subtle, layered way of the Tuatha Dé Danann themselves, who shaped not merely matter, but meaning.

Manannán mac Lir was its maker. That strange and mercurial lord, said to be born of sea-foam and stormlight, who strode the beaches between worlds with sand in his hair and secrets on his tongue. He was never content with the boundaries set by others. He preferred to make his own. The Door was his answer to the riddle of separation, a bridge that was also a gate, a promise as much as a warning. It was meant to bind the realms together under covenant, not conquest.

In those days the Tuatha were nearer to us, though they kept to Tír na nÓg, that immortal and perilous land. And to them were born the Uá, their children with mortal lovers, blessed and cursed alike. The Uá were not as gods, yet more than men, and they were meant to be guides, judges, teachers. The Tuatha gifted them with wisdom enough to raise kingdoms from tribes, and the Door was the sign of their trust.

Eighteen keys there were, carved of star-iron, plain and unexceptional in style and some set with stones that held captive starlight. Each was attuned to a single dominion, one of eighteen far places the Uá were charged to watch over. A single key opened a path to its precise land, always the same, unchanging in where it let travelers pass. In combination, it was whispered they could open ways stranger still, routes through the Feywild where time bent like willow branches, or even to places unnamed by either mortal or immortal tongue.

In this age of promise, druids flourished as well. The first Circles were taught by the Tuatha themselves, learning the secret names of trees, the old treaties with rivers, the signs left by stars. They were set as counselors and watchers, lest the Uá forget themselves. But forget they did. Pride festered like a wound. The Uá, once patient, grew harsh. Their wisdom became decree, their guidance tyranny. Wars among mortal kings became proxy wars among the Uá, and blood was spilled on fields where even the grass wept.

Some accounts speak of the great conclave of the gods, where Danu herself wept tears that fell as pearls into the deep sea. It was Marra the Druid who dared speak to them in rage and sorrow, demanding they see what their children had done. The Tuatha answered as only gods can, with cruelty hidden as mercy. They brewed an elixir of forgetting, mixed with mead in which the dreams of the world slept. At a grand feast the Uá drank, and when they slept, the gods unmade their memories. Their powers were unbound, scattered into the void, their knowledge reduced to embers. They awoke as mortal men and women, ignorant of who they had been.

So the Door fell silent then. Left in Tír na nÓg, it darkened with disuse, but it was not destroyed. For Manannán was no fool to discard what had cost him so dear in thought and magic. When the gods themselves began to falter, when wild magic twisted even their immortal realm and the great fairy trees closed, the Druids remembered the Door.

They bore it from Tír na nÓg into the mortal lands, enacting old pacts and deep rites to keep it from the chaos. It was no longer the covenant of the Uá, but became the final trial of their own. In temples now lost to briar and silence, initiates passed through the Door to distant lands where they were strangers, sent to learn what no teacher could tell them. It always opened in the same place, unchanging, and when they were judged ready to return, it would appear to them there again. Yet it refused those who would return only to bring harm to the druids or threaten the ancient compacts. In this way it tested, and in this way it chose.

Time, however, is a patient conqueror. As the bonds that protected Tír na nÓg failed, so too did the Druids’ strength. The old circles fell to schism or simple forgetting. Keys were lost, buried in tombs swallowed by earth, cast away in fear or forgotten in places where even memory did not go. The temples crumbled, their ogham stones split and covered in moss. The Door fell silent once more, its purpose unfulfilled.

In later ages, when the Raven Queen rose from the west and the Morrigan turned her arts to dominion over death itself, the Door was stolen away. It is said she held it in a realm of unbroken dusk, guarded by shades that whispered prophecy and threat in the same breath. Heroes pursued it into that cold half-world, Druids spent their final magics to recover lost keys. In the end the Uá were destroyed, the gods freed from their silent prison, and the Raven Queen cast down. The Door was recovered at terrible cost.

It was then given to the Forest Inn, not as a prize but as a solemn trust. For the Inn is old, older than any city standing now, woven through with ancient protections and bound by oaths spoken in the first tongues. The Inn itself is a ward against those who would seize such power for unworthy ends. The Door cannot be moved from it. It is entwined with the Inn’s old magic, anchored to its hearth and walls. The Innkeeper is its steward, bound to use it wisely and keep it safe from greedy hands.

Of the eighteen keys, all were lost to rumor and time. Yet a few years ago, one was recovered, and its finding was no mere happenstance. The one who carried it spoke of dreams and compulsions that drew them to a narrow crevice in a canyon, where broken walls and ancient ventilators hinted at a society swallowed by centuries. There, in that forgotten place, the Door appeared to them with ancient patience and opened upon the Forest Inn itself. Since then it has remained under the Innkeeper’s care. Seeing the worth of swift travel to that far place, the Adventurers’ Guild pressed for an accord. The Innkeeper, cautious and sworn to duty, agreed only under stern terms. The Guild’s parties might use the Door to travel for their ventures—seeking profit, lost cities, treasure or glory—but any other key found must be returned to the Inn under sacred bond. No other key has been recovered since. Their resting places are lost to memory and rumor, whispered of in quiet moments but unknown to any living soul.

And what of the Door itself? It is no mere slab of wood and iron. It remembers oaths and betrayals both. It rarely speaks, and then only to the Innkeeper, with whom it shares a long, wary dialogue of argument and familiarity. For others it offers only silence or the faint brush of dreams that linger like old perfumes. Some claim it listens to every word spoken before it, storing secrets like coin in a coffer. All agree that to stand before it is to feel the weight of old promises pressing on the shoulders like a mailed hand.

So writes Gerrick the Historian, setting down what lore survives so that even when the walls of the Inn are one day moss and memory, these truths might remain. For a door is not merely a passage. It is a choice. A promise. And a warning.”