Post by DocQuantum on Jun 15, 2017 4:47:52 GMT
A wooden raft floated uneasily on the waves of the ocean. On that raft were two bedraggled men wearing wet furs and shivering from the chill of the night air. They were used to cold, of course, having come from the north where the great wall of ice was encroaching slowly over their ancestral tribal lands. But on this raft it was a futile effort to remain dry. During the day, when the sun blazed above, they kept warm and indeed had to hide their faces from that blazing eye in the sky, or they would become sick.
Already the younger of these two men had been struck by a fever and had fallen asleep despite the constant rocking of the ocean waves. His brother could not sleep at all on this piece of floating debris. It was impossible to forget that finned demons of the deep were circling the raft, waiting for one of them to fall off and enter their watery realm. Korg was determined not to let that happen to him or his brother.
The man named Korg had not understood and indeed could not understand all the events that had brought him and his brother to this spot. They were Neanderthals and lived simple lives of desperation from birth until death. The seasons came and went, but nothing had ever changed. Korg and his mate Mara had three children, two sons named Tane and Tor, and a daughter named Ree. Tane would come of age soon, and he would join the hunt. Eventually, if the spirits were willing, he would take a wife from one of the other tribes. Ree would soon be of child-bearing age and would be sought out as a wife. Her brothers always watched over her to ensure that she was not kidnapped, for most men did not want to pay the bride-fee to a girl's father in order to take her as a mate.
Bok was not much younger than Korg, and he had often sought out mates for his own as a younger man, but always without success. So Bok stayed with Korg's family and always accompanied Korg on his hunts. When Tane and Tor came of age, the brothers would probably follow in their footsteps, though Korg often worried about Tor. The boy was interested in strange magic, spending hours painting images on the cave walls after learning the trick from the great wizard called the Man in the Mountain, a Cro-Magnon shaman who lived apart from others. If things progressed as they had been, Tor might become a shaman someday, though Korg did not wish this life upon the boy. The tribal shaman was never an ordinary man, and he could not take a wife of his own, so he would bear no children. It was a horrible fate to be childless in this world.
Now Korg began to wonder if he would ever see Mara and the children again. Their path had taken them a great distance from their home, and two two brothers would not know how to find their family again even if they could somehow return to dry land. Would Mara take another husband? He hoped not; most men would kill the children of a previously mated woman before having offspring of their own with her. The warrior Moko was one such man. And if he found Mara and the children before Korg and Bok could return, Moko would certainly kill the boys and take Mara and Ree as his wives, just as he had done with the strange, white-skinned, pale-haired woman called Attina. It was the woman's fault that the two men were in this predicament in the first place.
It seemed like an eternity since Korg and Bok had trekked over the mountains in search of game. Ever since the great ice wall had begun encroaching upon their ancestral lands, the animals had begun to flee south, forcing Korg and his family to uproot and follow them. But hunts had begun to take longer and longer, sometimes even several days now. It was during one such search for game that the two brothers spotted a light in the distance, a fire that was not a fire, and they fought their way over jagged, frozen rocks to find what it was.
They found the corpse of a strangely dressed man wearing brightly colored furs, gloves, and boots. The fur was like nothing Korg had ever seen on any animal before. It was more like the odd coverings that the pale demons from the sky had worn many moons ago, the ones who had seized Bok and breathed the breath of life back into his still body. This corpse had a spear through its chest, and the skin had long ago fallen off the bleached bones. In the corpse's hand was a strange club that shined like water but was completely solid like a rock, and far too small to do much damage. But when Korg grabbed it, the small club fell neatly into his hand, and as he clutched it, a strange fire like erupted from it like an earthquake, which blasted a boulder into smaller fragments of rock.
Korg and Bok fled from terror, for the club made a booming sound as it caused great destruction, and they waited for several long moments to see if it would breathe fire once more. When it did not, Korg approached it and picked it up once more, in awe of the power of this club. How could a strangely furred man with such a wondrous fire club possibly be killed by a spear? Since Bok recognized the spear as one that belonged to the warrior Moko, they determined to go ask him about it, and Korg placed the fire club in his belt.
They climbed the mountain until they found the home of Moko in a deep crevice. There, they demanded that the recluse tell them about the strange man despite his demands for them to go away. Soon, they discovered that Moko had a woman with him. This woman, whose name was Attina, was unlike any other woman they had ever seen. Indeed, she wore the same strange furs as the dead man, and she resembled the sky demons, but she was not one of them. Moko told them that she was his woman, but the woman protested that she was nothing more than a prisoner.
Attina told them a bizarre tale of traveling across the expanse of a huge lake that was so large that no land could be seen in any direction. This was the ocean, Korg now realized. She and her brother, the dead man, had traveled over the ocean on the back of a strange beast that had no face or limbs, but carried them above the water and across dry land, flying a spear's length from the ground despite having no wings. Moko spotted them first and seized the woman, but when her brother tried to rescue her while in pursuit upon the strange beast, Moko threw a stone and struck the man. The beast went wild and crashed to the ground, and the woman's brother continued his pursuit of Moko on foot despite his injuries. Despite the power of his fire club, the man was unable to stop Moko from throwing a spear into his chest from an unseen location. The strange man died, and Attina became Moko's kept woman.
Bok became angry when he learned how Moko had shamefully taken the woman and killed her brother, and he attacked Moko, freeing Attina. The woman, fearing for her safety, asked Korg and Bok to accompany her back home, but Korg refused, for the day would soon end, and the brothers had still not found any game. But they reluctantly agreed to accompany her back to her beast of burden.
The beast was furless and had a coat that gleamed in the waning sunlight. And although it had smashed against the rocks, there was no blood. It looked like the dried carcass of a great fish. With fear and trembling, Korg and Bok approached it, and when Attina asked them to climb aboard to help her, they did so only to keep from losing face before the woman. As far as Korg was concerned, they should have just walked away. But Bok was only thinking with his little brain and had designs on the woman himself.
She had tricked them, for she caused the beast to come to life and lurch into the air, and by the time Korg and Bok could have jumped from it, they would have fallen to their deaths had they attempted such a thing. It moved more swiftly than anything they had ever seen, covering a many-day walk in mere moments, until it reached the ocean itself and kept on flying.
Korg and Bok had only once before seen the big water when they reached the end of of the land and looked upon the endless sea before them. (*) They had thought then that nothing could possibly exist beyond the big water, but as they stared in astonishment at the seemingly endless expanse of water before them, the woman merely laughed and chided them for their cowardice. She told them that she was going to bring them to the home of her tribe, which she claimed was the greatest the world had ever known. But the beast was too badly injured, and it fell into the waters before they reached land. And the three were plunged beneath the waves.
[(*) Editor's note: See "The Big Water," Korg: 70,000 B.C. (1974 Hanna-Barbera television series).]
That should have been the end for Korg, but as it was, he awoke to find himself on a cold stone floor sometime later. He was a prisoner in a strange stone cave with straight walls by the same men of Attina's tribe on an island called Basick. They intended to enslave him, Korg knew, but despite fighting back, the men subdued him, threatening him with another strange fire club. Korg was led through odd corridors and chambers filled with grotesque images of demons made of stone, until he came into a chamber where he glimpsed a scene that made his blood run cold.
A man who looked like one of his people was standing immobile in a trance as another man wearing a white covering and holding strange tools performed witchcraft upon him. His fellow tribesman seemed to be completely under this strange man's magic, unable to do anything he wished and could only do what the man commanded him. The men who had taken Korg told him that they would do the same thing to him.
Then Korg was pushed into another chamber, where he was reunited with his brother and other tribesmen. Bok told him that they had been plucked from the sea, but they had found no trace of Attina. The brothers knew that they could not remain, or they would become mindless slaves of these evil people, but they were completely weaponless. Then Bok surprised him, for he pulled out the fire club hidden in his furs, which he had picked up after it had fallen from Korg's belt.
Using the fire club, Korg blasted open the large doorway blocked with wood and made his escape, leading the others with him. But as they blasted their way to freedom, the gods had chosen that moment to judge the island for their evil ways. The island of Basick was shaken to its very foundation, and all who had lived on it died that day -- except for Korg and Bok. The brothers had, by some miracle, survived the earthquake and the sinking of the island by clinging to the very same large wooden door they had blasted down during their escape. (*)
[(*) Editor's note: See "South to Atlantis," Korg: 70,000 B.C. #9 (November, 1976).]
Korg and Bok had been drifting on that raft for days now, taking them toward an unknown destination that they could only guess at. But although Bok had succumbed to fever, Korg had done his best to remain strong, bedraggled as he was and cold from the constant spray of water upon the drifting raft. He wasn't sure how much longer they would be able to survive without meat or drink. Bok had tried to drink the water all around them, but it had instead made him sick, causing him to vomit up everything in his stomach.
Through the mercy of the gods, the brothers had found some food, however, when several fish unlike any they had ever seen in rivers and streams suddenly came flying in a multitude across the surface of the water and passed right over their raft. Using their wits, Korg and Bok had disrobed and used their furs as nets, catching a few of the fish in them despite their waning strength. The food and the blood from the fish had provided the greatest succour they could ever have imagined, and it helped them regain some strength. They could not have lasted as long as they had without it. But that was days ago now, and they had finished eating all the fish they'd captured. Bok had already succumbed to the fever, and he had been blinded by the reflection of the sun on the waves. Would they ever see dry land again? Would they ever see their family again? Their lives were now in the hands of the gods.
It was an unknown time later when Korg finally spotted something on the horizon. Something strange was gleaming in the distance.
"Bok!" called Korg, trying to rouse his brother.
"What is it?" said Bok after a moment.
"I see something, brother!"
"Point me in that direction, so I may see," said Bok. Korg did so, and Bok squinted but to no avail. "I see nothing, brother, but strange lights dancing before my eyes."
"It merely the gods' judgment on you for doubting them," said Korg. "You see again soon, I'm sure."
"Tell me what you see, Korg."
"It is like nothing I have ever seen before," said Korg as the raft slowly drifted toward it. "I see gleaming mountains rising in the distance... yet they are not like mountains at all, but narrow, and straight as a spear. Smoke rises from that place, and I can see strange beasts moving about, and people! We are saved, brother! We are saved!"
But as the raft edged closer and closer to this bizarre new land, Korg and Bok couldn't help but wonder if they would meet still more members of the evil tribe of strangely dressed men that had captured them. Only time would tell.
Already the younger of these two men had been struck by a fever and had fallen asleep despite the constant rocking of the ocean waves. His brother could not sleep at all on this piece of floating debris. It was impossible to forget that finned demons of the deep were circling the raft, waiting for one of them to fall off and enter their watery realm. Korg was determined not to let that happen to him or his brother.
The man named Korg had not understood and indeed could not understand all the events that had brought him and his brother to this spot. They were Neanderthals and lived simple lives of desperation from birth until death. The seasons came and went, but nothing had ever changed. Korg and his mate Mara had three children, two sons named Tane and Tor, and a daughter named Ree. Tane would come of age soon, and he would join the hunt. Eventually, if the spirits were willing, he would take a wife from one of the other tribes. Ree would soon be of child-bearing age and would be sought out as a wife. Her brothers always watched over her to ensure that she was not kidnapped, for most men did not want to pay the bride-fee to a girl's father in order to take her as a mate.
Bok was not much younger than Korg, and he had often sought out mates for his own as a younger man, but always without success. So Bok stayed with Korg's family and always accompanied Korg on his hunts. When Tane and Tor came of age, the brothers would probably follow in their footsteps, though Korg often worried about Tor. The boy was interested in strange magic, spending hours painting images on the cave walls after learning the trick from the great wizard called the Man in the Mountain, a Cro-Magnon shaman who lived apart from others. If things progressed as they had been, Tor might become a shaman someday, though Korg did not wish this life upon the boy. The tribal shaman was never an ordinary man, and he could not take a wife of his own, so he would bear no children. It was a horrible fate to be childless in this world.
Now Korg began to wonder if he would ever see Mara and the children again. Their path had taken them a great distance from their home, and two two brothers would not know how to find their family again even if they could somehow return to dry land. Would Mara take another husband? He hoped not; most men would kill the children of a previously mated woman before having offspring of their own with her. The warrior Moko was one such man. And if he found Mara and the children before Korg and Bok could return, Moko would certainly kill the boys and take Mara and Ree as his wives, just as he had done with the strange, white-skinned, pale-haired woman called Attina. It was the woman's fault that the two men were in this predicament in the first place.
It seemed like an eternity since Korg and Bok had trekked over the mountains in search of game. Ever since the great ice wall had begun encroaching upon their ancestral lands, the animals had begun to flee south, forcing Korg and his family to uproot and follow them. But hunts had begun to take longer and longer, sometimes even several days now. It was during one such search for game that the two brothers spotted a light in the distance, a fire that was not a fire, and they fought their way over jagged, frozen rocks to find what it was.
They found the corpse of a strangely dressed man wearing brightly colored furs, gloves, and boots. The fur was like nothing Korg had ever seen on any animal before. It was more like the odd coverings that the pale demons from the sky had worn many moons ago, the ones who had seized Bok and breathed the breath of life back into his still body. This corpse had a spear through its chest, and the skin had long ago fallen off the bleached bones. In the corpse's hand was a strange club that shined like water but was completely solid like a rock, and far too small to do much damage. But when Korg grabbed it, the small club fell neatly into his hand, and as he clutched it, a strange fire like erupted from it like an earthquake, which blasted a boulder into smaller fragments of rock.
Korg and Bok fled from terror, for the club made a booming sound as it caused great destruction, and they waited for several long moments to see if it would breathe fire once more. When it did not, Korg approached it and picked it up once more, in awe of the power of this club. How could a strangely furred man with such a wondrous fire club possibly be killed by a spear? Since Bok recognized the spear as one that belonged to the warrior Moko, they determined to go ask him about it, and Korg placed the fire club in his belt.
They climbed the mountain until they found the home of Moko in a deep crevice. There, they demanded that the recluse tell them about the strange man despite his demands for them to go away. Soon, they discovered that Moko had a woman with him. This woman, whose name was Attina, was unlike any other woman they had ever seen. Indeed, she wore the same strange furs as the dead man, and she resembled the sky demons, but she was not one of them. Moko told them that she was his woman, but the woman protested that she was nothing more than a prisoner.
Attina told them a bizarre tale of traveling across the expanse of a huge lake that was so large that no land could be seen in any direction. This was the ocean, Korg now realized. She and her brother, the dead man, had traveled over the ocean on the back of a strange beast that had no face or limbs, but carried them above the water and across dry land, flying a spear's length from the ground despite having no wings. Moko spotted them first and seized the woman, but when her brother tried to rescue her while in pursuit upon the strange beast, Moko threw a stone and struck the man. The beast went wild and crashed to the ground, and the woman's brother continued his pursuit of Moko on foot despite his injuries. Despite the power of his fire club, the man was unable to stop Moko from throwing a spear into his chest from an unseen location. The strange man died, and Attina became Moko's kept woman.
Bok became angry when he learned how Moko had shamefully taken the woman and killed her brother, and he attacked Moko, freeing Attina. The woman, fearing for her safety, asked Korg and Bok to accompany her back home, but Korg refused, for the day would soon end, and the brothers had still not found any game. But they reluctantly agreed to accompany her back to her beast of burden.
The beast was furless and had a coat that gleamed in the waning sunlight. And although it had smashed against the rocks, there was no blood. It looked like the dried carcass of a great fish. With fear and trembling, Korg and Bok approached it, and when Attina asked them to climb aboard to help her, they did so only to keep from losing face before the woman. As far as Korg was concerned, they should have just walked away. But Bok was only thinking with his little brain and had designs on the woman himself.
She had tricked them, for she caused the beast to come to life and lurch into the air, and by the time Korg and Bok could have jumped from it, they would have fallen to their deaths had they attempted such a thing. It moved more swiftly than anything they had ever seen, covering a many-day walk in mere moments, until it reached the ocean itself and kept on flying.
Korg and Bok had only once before seen the big water when they reached the end of of the land and looked upon the endless sea before them. (*) They had thought then that nothing could possibly exist beyond the big water, but as they stared in astonishment at the seemingly endless expanse of water before them, the woman merely laughed and chided them for their cowardice. She told them that she was going to bring them to the home of her tribe, which she claimed was the greatest the world had ever known. But the beast was too badly injured, and it fell into the waters before they reached land. And the three were plunged beneath the waves.
[(*) Editor's note: See "The Big Water," Korg: 70,000 B.C. (1974 Hanna-Barbera television series).]
That should have been the end for Korg, but as it was, he awoke to find himself on a cold stone floor sometime later. He was a prisoner in a strange stone cave with straight walls by the same men of Attina's tribe on an island called Basick. They intended to enslave him, Korg knew, but despite fighting back, the men subdued him, threatening him with another strange fire club. Korg was led through odd corridors and chambers filled with grotesque images of demons made of stone, until he came into a chamber where he glimpsed a scene that made his blood run cold.
A man who looked like one of his people was standing immobile in a trance as another man wearing a white covering and holding strange tools performed witchcraft upon him. His fellow tribesman seemed to be completely under this strange man's magic, unable to do anything he wished and could only do what the man commanded him. The men who had taken Korg told him that they would do the same thing to him.
Then Korg was pushed into another chamber, where he was reunited with his brother and other tribesmen. Bok told him that they had been plucked from the sea, but they had found no trace of Attina. The brothers knew that they could not remain, or they would become mindless slaves of these evil people, but they were completely weaponless. Then Bok surprised him, for he pulled out the fire club hidden in his furs, which he had picked up after it had fallen from Korg's belt.
Using the fire club, Korg blasted open the large doorway blocked with wood and made his escape, leading the others with him. But as they blasted their way to freedom, the gods had chosen that moment to judge the island for their evil ways. The island of Basick was shaken to its very foundation, and all who had lived on it died that day -- except for Korg and Bok. The brothers had, by some miracle, survived the earthquake and the sinking of the island by clinging to the very same large wooden door they had blasted down during their escape. (*)
[(*) Editor's note: See "South to Atlantis," Korg: 70,000 B.C. #9 (November, 1976).]
Korg and Bok had been drifting on that raft for days now, taking them toward an unknown destination that they could only guess at. But although Bok had succumbed to fever, Korg had done his best to remain strong, bedraggled as he was and cold from the constant spray of water upon the drifting raft. He wasn't sure how much longer they would be able to survive without meat or drink. Bok had tried to drink the water all around them, but it had instead made him sick, causing him to vomit up everything in his stomach.
Through the mercy of the gods, the brothers had found some food, however, when several fish unlike any they had ever seen in rivers and streams suddenly came flying in a multitude across the surface of the water and passed right over their raft. Using their wits, Korg and Bok had disrobed and used their furs as nets, catching a few of the fish in them despite their waning strength. The food and the blood from the fish had provided the greatest succour they could ever have imagined, and it helped them regain some strength. They could not have lasted as long as they had without it. But that was days ago now, and they had finished eating all the fish they'd captured. Bok had already succumbed to the fever, and he had been blinded by the reflection of the sun on the waves. Would they ever see dry land again? Would they ever see their family again? Their lives were now in the hands of the gods.
It was an unknown time later when Korg finally spotted something on the horizon. Something strange was gleaming in the distance.
"Bok!" called Korg, trying to rouse his brother.
"What is it?" said Bok after a moment.
"I see something, brother!"
"Point me in that direction, so I may see," said Bok. Korg did so, and Bok squinted but to no avail. "I see nothing, brother, but strange lights dancing before my eyes."
"It merely the gods' judgment on you for doubting them," said Korg. "You see again soon, I'm sure."
"Tell me what you see, Korg."
"It is like nothing I have ever seen before," said Korg as the raft slowly drifted toward it. "I see gleaming mountains rising in the distance... yet they are not like mountains at all, but narrow, and straight as a spear. Smoke rises from that place, and I can see strange beasts moving about, and people! We are saved, brother! We are saved!"
But as the raft edged closer and closer to this bizarre new land, Korg and Bok couldn't help but wonder if they would meet still more members of the evil tribe of strangely dressed men that had captured them. Only time would tell.
