Gods of Eriú Universe© Games

All games are derived from a central script written for the open world Rise of Lúgh/ Fall of Balor game.

It reimagines the epic second Battle of Moytura between the Fomorians and the Tuatha Dé Dannan (the Children of the goddess Danu). 

The third tribe on the island, the Fir Bolg, help and interfere along the way.

These three Tribes battled for supremacy on the island of Ireland in fantastic tales and a terrifying mythology that resonates in our placenames and local lore.

The story follows the life of the sun god Lúgh the Oildánach, the high skilled one, from his birth, to fosterage, to becoming champion and leader of the Tuatha Dé and his deciding confrontation with his grandfather, champion of the Fomor, Balor of the evil eye, whose life on the island of Tory in the North Atlantic is also experienced from the outset. Info dump over!

Two complicated characters fated to meet in battle with rich lives and experiences to share and reconnect us to our land's mythology and folklore.

What is the genesis of the project?

In the millennia before the arrival of the Celts to Ireland, the megalithic, neolithic and bronze age settlers had a vibrant stone monument building culture. We make educated guesses today about the purpose of the megaliths from the thousands of clues left behind in place names, stone circles, wedge tombs, dolmens, and burial sites like Newgrange, Knowth and Dowth. 

They were a prolific people who settled on the island of Ireland and many of the smaller islands, building great fortresses of stone and leaving their histories to be embroidered into the myths the Celts told when they arrived later on. 

It is a research area of enormous enrichment for those willing to step onto this island and seek out the ancient sites, weathered though they are. 

They still hold a powerful resonance to the observer and encourage us to imagine the lives of the original Irish ancestors. 

Irish mythology has influenced writers in creating their ethereal elven worlds with striking similarities to the Tuatha Dé Danann. Even Bram Stoker's  Dracula has similarities to the Droch Fhola (pronounced druck-ulla meaning bad blood) spectre who drank blood in Irish horror stories.

(see - The Noldor and the Tuatha Dé Danaan: J.R.R. Tolkien's IrishThe Noldor and the Tuatha Dé Danaan: J.R.R. Tolkien's Irish Influences by Annie Kinniburgh https://dc.swosu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1209&context=mythlore for further reading on Tolkien)

The nature of popular culture in the west is that it constantly repeats itself, keeps to the tried and tested formula of the same world mythologies being recycled and reshaped as they have built in audiences. So many other cultures have vivid and wild mythologies that would enrich the fabric of games, movies, books if they could nudge their way into the light beside the mythologies that are so often used. This project emerged from a desire to bring Irish mythology out into the world.

The kernal: 

Here then, a seed of a story started in the imagination, where an older Balor of the evil eye, champion of the Fomor People, awoke one morning beside his wife, Ceithleann, and prepared for his final day on earth. 

This simple process of ablution, dressing and talking with his beloved and reliving shared memories before he walks up the steps of his under water cave home and into the light of Tory Island to face his men before battle haunted itself into a story line, oscillating between Balor and his grandson Lúgh, fated to be his end on the battlefield. 

The pathos and regret, the fiery stubborness and the toxic evil eye that consumes him. This sort of story compels anyone to drive on, it consumes all thoughts until it's committed to paper, clay tablet or computer but then it nudges, take me further, out into the world, make me into an immersive game.

So here it is, but it needs support...