Tafod Ddu
Chronicle Entry - Secret Annex
Recorded by Brother Wyn of Caermynach, Anno Domini 921
Known As: Tafod the Black, The Black Tongue
Born: c. 4000 BC, Mesopotamia
Notable Achievements: Inventor of the wheel, builder of the twin forts, creator of steel
Status: Departed from Annwn c. 600 BC after attempting to poison the sacred springs
Tafod Ddu was a blacksmith and inventor whose innovations enabled the westward migration after the scattering at Shinar and whose genius in the forge of Annwn produced marvels beyond what mortal craft could achieve. The merchants who preserve his memory speak of him with sorrow rather than condemnation, honouring what he was before time and isolation changed him.
The Record
Tafod Ddu was born in the lands the Greeks call Mesopotamia, in the generation before the towers rose at Shinar. He worked as a blacksmith and possessed the gift for seeing how things might be joined or moved in ways others considered impossible. His contemporaries regarded him as half mad, for he spoke often of designs that had no apparent use and spent hours drawing plans on cave walls near his forge. Among these designs was a circular device with spokes radiating from a central axle, a pattern that made sense to no one who saw it.
When the towers fell and tongues divided, terror struck many silent. Tafod was among those who lost speech at Shinar. During the westward migration, the stranger whom the merchants identify as Arawn taught him the Dragon Tongue, and Tafod became the first among the refugees to recover his voice through this teaching. His name, which means Black Tongue, marks both his recovery of speech and the darkness of his beard, which remained black even when he drank from the waters that lent him long seasons.
The chaos of flight from Shinar forced Tafod to abandon his forge and the plans he had drawn on cave walls over many years. This loss set his work back significantly. During the migration, necessity gave purpose to designs that had previously seemed impractical. The refugees needed to move heavy loads across vast distances, and Tafod remembered his circular design. From memory, he recreated what he had perfected on stone, producing the first wheel. He shared this knowledge freely among the migrating peoples, and the device enabled transport of bronze tools, supplies, and those too young or old to make the journey on foot.
The merchants believe that Sumerians later discovered the abandoned cave where Tafod had drawn his plans and learned from what he left behind, which would explain why wheels appeared in eastern lands centuries after they had already reached the west. I have no means to verify this claim, though it would resolve certain chronological difficulties that trouble scholars.
The Builder and the Forge
After the refugees reached the western lands and settled in the high ridges, Tafod led the construction of Caer Fawr and Caer Einion, the twin forts that became the capital of the Cymroth people. His knowledge of stone and understanding of how sound travels through earth allowed him to position the structures so they functioned as instruments rather than mere fortifications. The work took seven years and established him as master builder among his people.
As reward for enabling the migration and building the twin forts, Arawn invited Tafod to enter Annwn and granted him a forge there. He became the first mortal to cross the veil and drink from the springs that lent long seasons. In Annwn, where time moves differently than in mortal lands, Tafod could work with materials unavailable elsewhere and pursue craft beyond what bronze permitted. He maintained a blacksmith's shop in the twin forts but spent most of his time in the otherworld forge.
Near the year 500 BC by merchant reckoning, Tafod succeeded in creating steel, a metal harder and more durable than bronze. The process required techniques only possible in Annwn, where heat could be controlled with precision unavailable to mortal smiths and where time's different flow allowed patient work across what would be generations in the mortal realm. The merchants report that he petitioned Arawn to allow mass production of steel weapons and armour for distribution to the Cymroth peoples, who had fractured into the Silures and Ordovices some four centuries earlier.
The Disagreement
Tafod argued that steel weapons given to noble and honest men among the divided chiefdoms would allow them to vanquish those who had strayed from the path of the Joined Ones, making reunion possible. He saw the fracture of the Cymroth as wound requiring correction, and steel as the tool that could accomplish what persuasion had not. The merchants report his exact words: "There are noble, honest men in both chiefdoms. Give them the gift of steel blades and armour, and they can vanquish all those who have strayed from the path so we can build anew."
Arawn refused this petition. The merchants preserve different accounts of his reasoning, but all agree he considered mass production of superior weapons to be dangerous. Hafgan, who had initially seen some wisdom in Tafod's proposal, came to agree with his brother that steel weapons in mortal hands would more likely create despots than restore unity. The difference between bronze and steel was too great, and those who possessed the superior metal would have overwhelming advantage over those who did not.
Tafod received this refusal poorly. He had spent centuries in Annwn, and the merchants suggest this long separation from mortal life had made him more detached from the complexity of human nature. Where Arawn saw genocide in the proposal, Tafod saw only necessary correction. The merchants report that Arawn believed Tafod's heart remained pure and that he would return to reason with time, but this proved mistaken.
The dispute over steel marked the beginning of Tafod's estrangement from Annwn. He had watched the Cymroth maintain unity for nearly three thousand years, from their first settlement until the fracture around 950 BC. He alone among mortals remembered when they had been one people, for all others who had built the twin forts were long dead. This memory became burden rather than gift. Every generation that passed with Silures and Ordovices fighting each other deepened his conviction that Arawn's mercy was misplaced and that harsh measures were required to restore what had been lost.
The Poisoning
Near 600 BC, Tafod returned to the springs in Annwn carrying a jar of fine black powder. He proposed adding this substance to the waters so they would test those who drank, separating the worthy from the greedy. The merchants report that he believed this would strengthen the Cymroth peoples by removing weakness, though Arawn saw it as corruption disguised as wisdom.
Arawn prevented the poisoning and told Tafod he would not be permitted to drink from the springs again, for the waters judged him as corrupt in heart despite his continued belief in his own righteousness. Hafgan moved to strike him down, but Arawn allowed Tafod to flee. The merchants disagree on whether this was mercy or calculation, though they agree on what followed. Tafod's shadow would trouble the borderlands between Powys and Brycheiniog for generations, becoming the threat that would eventually drive the fractured peoples to seek common ground.
Final Entry
Tafod Ddu departed from Annwn near 600 BC after Arawn prevented the poisoning and told him he would not be permitted to drink from the springs again. The merchants report that Arawn allowed him to flee rather than strike him down, though Hafgan moved to do so. What became of Tafod thereafter, and whether his story found any resolution before its end, the merchants preserve in accounts too lengthy and painful for inclusion here.
To seal a man's fate in a single chronicle entry would be crime itself, particularly when that man invented the wheel that saved the westward migration and built the twin forts that housed the Cymroth for nearly three thousand years. I find myself troubled by his story in ways that resist the scholar's restraint this work demands. Here was genius that created wonders, that enabled survival, that shaped beauty from vision. Here also was isolation that twisted purpose into obsession, that turned love of unity into demand for it, that made a saviour into a threat.
The merchants who told me of Tafod spoke with voices that carried grief more than judgment. When I asked the eldest why they preserve his memory with such care when his end brought such darkness, he replied that to forget what he was before the fall would be to lose the warning his story carries. Those who see farthest ahead sometimes lose sight of what stands directly before them. Those who work alone for centuries lose connection to the peoples they mean to serve. And those who drink from waters that lend long seasons may discover that time itself becomes enemy rather than gift.
I often think of the moment when Tafod walked through streets he had designed, in the city he had built, and recognised no faces. Everyone who had laboured beside him was dead or elderly, their children grown and aged whilst he remained unchanged. The horror of that recognition must have been complete. When he requested permanent residency in Annwn, was it honour he sought or escape from unbearable grief? The merchants suggest both, and I find no cause to dispute them.
The red clay soil of the high ridges where Tafod once worked his mortal forge still marks the ground where the twin forts stood. In spring when rain loosens the earth, the colour shows bright against green grass. The merchants claim they can still identify which earthworks date to his time and which were raised by later peoples, though I lack the knowledge to verify such assessments. What remains certain is that a man of extraordinary gifts once walked these lands, created marvels that changed the course of peoples, and was eventually consumed by the isolation that his own nature and circumstance combined to create.
His fate thereafter belongs to accounts I have recorded separately, for the merchants insist his story did not end with his departure from Annwn but continued in ways both terrible and strange. Whether any redemption was found before the final close, or whether darkness claimed him entirely, I will not presume to judge in this entry. Some stories are too complex for summary, and some men too tragic for simple condemnation.
