Colby: Difference between revisions

Colby
Colby Founding Vharnhold, oil on canvas, 17th century, Vharnhold Imperial Museum
Epithet	The Unpinned
Role	Legendary founder and first king of Ulmarka
Traditional dates	fl. 871
Founded	Vharnhold (traditionally 871)
Parents	A storm and a grey seal (legend)
Sibling	Corvin (twin; killed by Colby, legend)
Successor	The Brotherhood of the Oil (claimed)
Cult	Revived as state religion of the Ulmarkan Empire (2032)

Colby (/ˈkɒl.bi/), called the Unpinned (Ulmarkan: Kolbhar Óbundinn), is the legendary founder and first king of Ulmarka, said to have united the island's clans and founded the city of Vharnhold in 871. According to tradition he was the greatest wrestler who ever lived, never once pinned, and the first to fight in the grave circle, the lethal form of Ulmarkan oil wrestling, when he killed his twin brother Corvin in a bout over where the city should stand.^[1]

Most historians regard Colby as mythical, or as a composite of several early clan champions. The earliest surviving accounts of him were written more than three centuries after his supposed lifetime, and many of the stories attached to him appear to be older folk tales.^[2] He has nonetheless been central to Ulmarkan identity for a thousand years.^{[citation needed]} The Brotherhood of the Oil claimed descent from his companions, and since 2032 the Ulmarkan Empire has revived his worship as a state cult, presenting its ruler, Emperor Torvald, as the Heir of Colby.^[3]

The fullest version of the legend is preserved in the Saga of the Held Ground, a verse chronicle compiled around 1190.

Colby and his twin Corvin were born on the northern shore of the island during a winter storm, to a mother who died in the birth. The infants were found by a grey seal, who kept them warm among her pups and coated them in her fat against the cold; this is the legendary origin of the oil used in Ulmarkan wrestling. A fisherman of Skerra later found the boys on the rocks and raised them as his own.^[1]

As a boy Colby is said to have thrown a bull at the Skerra harvest fair, after which the bull followed him home and served him for the rest of its life. He defeated every champion of the island's clans at the seasonal oil moots and was never pinned; the saga explains that "the ground refused to touch his shoulders". Corvin was his equal in strength but not in endurance, and the brothers were said to have wrestled each other every day of their youth without either winning.

When the clans agreed to follow the brothers, Colby and Corvin quarrelled over where to build their hold. Colby chose a headland above the sea; Corvin chose the valley below. They settled it in a circle drawn in the sand, and fought for a day and a night until Corvin died. Colby built Vharnhold on the headland and buried his brother in the circle where he fell. The legend is the origin of the grave circle, and of the Ulmarkan saying that "the circle chooses".^[1]

As king, Colby is credited with the laws of the oil moots, the first fleet and the custom of wrestling the tide: each New Year he waded into the sea at Vharnhold and grappled the incoming waves until they turned. In the thirty-third year of his reign he walked into the sea during a storm to wrestle the tide and did not return. His body was never found. The saga says he was carried off undefeated, and that he will return when Ulmarka needs him.^[1]

There is no contemporary evidence that Colby existed. Archaeological work at Vharnhold has found a settlement on the headland from roughly the right period, and a ring of standing stones in the valley that has been identified, without proof, with Corvin's grave.^[2] Scholars have noted that the motif of twins raised by an animal, one killing the other at the founding of a city, appears in the founding legends of several peoples of Orylia, and that the seal and the bull stories are found in older clan tales attached to other heroes.

Veneration of Colby as a protective ancestor was common across the island for centuries, centred on New Year rituals at the shore. The Brotherhood of the Oil, founded in 1340, made him its patron and claimed that its grand champions inherited his authority.^[3]

After the Night of the Oil in 2031, the new regime made the cult of Colby the state religion of the Ulmarkan Empire. Torvald Hesk was crowned in 2032 on the sand of the Great Arena, which is said to stand over the original circle, and took the title Heir of Colby. Each New Year the emperor re-enacts the wrestling of the tide at Vharnhold, and the legends are taught in Ulmarkan schools as history. Questioning them publicly is a criminal offence.^[3] The empire's persecution of the Cult of Landon is officially justified as the defence of Colby's faith, in which the open hand of the Landonites is a refusal of the grip that founded the nation.

Colby's image, a wrestler standing in a circle with his arms raised, appears on Ulmarkan coins, stamps and the flag of the Brotherhood of the Oil. Outside the empire he remains a popular figure in folklore, and exiled Ulmarkans of the Free Circle League honour him as a sporting hero while rejecting the regime's use of his name.

• Ulmarkan Empire
• Ulmarkan oil wrestling
• Corvin
• Torvald Hesk
• Brotherhood of the Oil
• Thymara
• Vharnhold–Sylvaris chronology discrepancy
• Colby–Vharnhold foundation discrepancy