Terms of Invasion

Question: Would you consider Partholon, Nemed and the previous generations of colonists to be gods like the Tuatha?

What a neat question! Yes, we probably would!

For those who aren't up on their Lebor Gebala Erenn, Partholon and Nemed were the leaders of previous invasion forces that took and colonized Ireland, before their eventual descendents the Tuatha held it for the most major part of Irish mythology. Irish mythology is very fond of the idea of magical lands being located beyond the sea, so that those who come to the World from elsewhere do so by sailing across the waters. The earliest stories of the Irish universe are therefore about successive waves of sailors from across the sea, coming to Ireland to colonize it and wave their banners of kingship before the next set of people come to repeat the process.

Now, the sources we have the invasion myths from are heavily Christianized; they were rewritten after most of Ireland converted in order to change older stories into Christian ones to prevent lingering paganism from being remembered for too long. The first inhabitants of Ireland were the survivors of a great flood (the Flood of the Bible, in the rewritten version), who called upon an unnamed god to advise them so that they were able to sail through the disaster and land on and settle Ireland. Their leader was Cessair (granddaughter of Noah, according to the Christian writers), who successfully brought her people to Cork but eventually died of grief after her family was destroyed in the ensuing years.

After all of Cessair's people died, Partholon (another descendent of Noah, but one many generations further away) led the next invasion of Ireland, and after a seven-year journey established his people as its new rulers. Partholon shaped much of Ireland, creating new lakes, hills and other landscape features, but he and his people died en masse of a plague (another recurring feature in Irish myth), leaving the island once again empty.

Three generations later (in the same family tree according to one tradition, although the Noah genealogies don't agree), Nemed took his fleet of ships to sail to Ireland, although disasters along the way caused only the ship he himself sailed on to actually reach its shores. This is the first time the Fomorians appear as major characters in Irish mythology; they were inhabiting Ireland already when Nemed arrived, which means they must have settled there some time after the end of Partholon's reign, and Nemed is forced to defeat two Fomorian kings before he can solidify his hold on his territory. But alas, you guessed it - there's another plague, and Nemed and most of his followers go belly-up. The remainder are reconquered by the Fomorians, and eventually only a single ship of them makes it back off the island, to return to wherever they came from.

A period of "uninhabited" Ireland follows, which really just means that Ireland was populated by people that Irish mythology doesn't consider to be people: the Fir Bolg, who were said to have lived on the island on and off over the centuries and to have returned to colonize it in force after the end of Nemed's reign, and the Fomorians, whose origin is unexplained but who probably come in some way from or across the ocean (after all, everyone else does). Scholars spend a lot of time trying to come up with historical explanations for this period, including claiming that the Fir Bolg and/or Fomorians might be in actuality invasions of other Celtic peoples such as the Picts or the Gauls mythologized over time, but no one really knows for sure, especially with Christianity muddying the waters. At this point, Nuada shows up with his people and conquers the island again, and the rest is the period of Irish myth we all know and love, at the end of which the last invasion - that of the Milesians, who become the modern-day Irish - ushers in the end of the age of myth in Ireland.

So who are these waves of folks? We would say they're most likely definitely previous generations of gods, probably part of the mysterious generations of descendents between Danu and the Tuatha who sprang from her. It's hard to know the exact line or where people like Nemed and Partholon fall on it because of the rewriting of the myths in a new Christian context, but they definitely display a lot of the same kinds of behavior and imagery the Tuatha themselves do, not to mention doing distinctly god-like things like creating features of the landscape. Nemed even has a very interesting feature in that he's married to a woman named Macha, which is one of the possible aliases of the Morrigan; there's no proof that the two Machas are the same, of course, but it would certainly be a neat twist if she'd been around meddling even in previous invasions, wouldn't it?

These ancient figures are mostly dead, usually of plague, so you might rule that they're long gone; but then again, most of the regular Tuatha are also technically dead and we still run them as living, so it's really up to you whether you'd like them to be historical figures or living, breathing Legend 9 and 10 gods. You could also perhaps consider them Titans; while most of them aren't particularly nasty, they are obviously of an older generation with little to no connection to humanity, and exploring the idea of the waves of invasions fighting Fir Bolg and Fomorian as a raging ongoing battle between Titans that was only interrupted by the coming of the Tuatha might be some good story fodder, too. You could even say they might have been some of the ancient forbears of the fairy folk, predating even the Irish gods in their habitation of the Emerald Isle.

Irish mythological history is both very well-attested and hopelessly difficult to figure out, thanks to strategic rewriting and conflicting genealogies, so it's likely that every game that tackles it will come up with a few unique takes on it of their own. Go bananas.