2. More things that happened

To recap on the last post:

Romans, no Romans, war, war, war, King Constantine, less war, Vortigern kills Constantine.

The moment Vortigern declared himself the High King all the wars started up again.

This time, however, everyone was fighting for peace: see, Constantine was a pretty alright dude and everyone got used to the way things were when he was running Briton. Vortigern, meanwhile, was really shitty at being a king—and this is a time full of shit-tastic kings.

Oh, and Constantine had two sons who he sort of promised the throne: Ambrosius and Uther. They were off in Brittany when shit with Vortigern went down because in those days you hung out in Brittany a lot when you were the son of a king.

Anyway, back in Briton, Vortigern somehow managed to stabilize the area. He was semi-decent at talking other people into not killing him or each other.

He realized two very important things:

1. He needed a public building project to get the people’s attention off of how awful he was.
2. The ruined former Roman outpost he was chilling in wasn’t the best place for a despised usurper, and he really needed a home he could defend.

So he decided to build a fortress in Wales. It made sense—Wales was in the heart of Briton, and it was pretty much infested with dragons those days (the sheep-and-cattle stealing variety, mostly harmless).

Not being an architect in the Dark Ages, I’m not going to go into too much detail here, except that progress on Vortigern’s fortress didn’t, well, progress. Every day, his masons and other buildery type people would start on the base of a kick-ass wall, and every night it would be knocked down.

This went on for a month.

Finally, Vortigern decided to bring in a consultant.

His advisors told him about this kid, Merlin, who was wise in the ways of magic, despite being a kid. Vortigern listened and brought him to the building site.

“Merlin!” Vortigern said on his arrival.

“Yo,” was Merlin’s reply.

“You are he who is knowledgeable in the old magics and some of the new; you are he who can see the past, present, and future,” Vortigern said.

“Yeah,” Merlin said. “That’s me.”

“Tell me, oh Mystical One, why does my fortress not progress?” Vortigern asked. “Why do my masons and other buildery type people start on a kick-ass wall each day, only to have it knocked down each night?”

“Dude, this is dragon country, and you’re building on top of dragon wrestling grounds,” Merlin said.

“Oh.” Vortigern had some of his men investigate a cave that ran under the fortress’s grounds.

An hour or so later, they returned, confirming what Merlin had said: two dragons were asleep, one red and one white. What was more, the cave was lined with Dragon Wrestling Federation posters.

“I totally didn’t know that was even a thing,” Vortigern said.