Yoshitaka Amano and the Animals of Annwyn
If you wonder why Dungeonposting has devoted so much space to Final Fantasy VI, it’s because we believe the game is a Renaissance Masterpiece in 16 bits.
Like the works of Michelangelo, Da Vinci, Caravagio and Bernini, Final Fantasy VI functions multiple levels. It is at once a sweeping artistic gesture —and a heavily encrypted tome of arcane symbols.
Today’s exhibit:
The original concept art for Shadow and Interceptor, by the venerable Yoshitaka Amano:
In the story-telling tradition of ancient Wales, the appearance of red and white animals was a sure sign one had crossed the threshold into Annwyn, the Otherworld.
Yoshitaka Amano depicted Interceptor as a red and white striped animal.
Was Interceptor concieved as an animal of the Otherworld, a denizen of Annwyn? Had Yoshitaka Amano read the Mabinogi poems?
Walk with me into the Shadows of Annwyn, as Dungeonposting hunts for traces of the ancient Welsh poetry in Final Fantasy VI.
The Hart and The Hound
The Mabinogion is a collection of eleven poems which are believed to preserve what remains of the tribal memories of the early Welsh and Britonic Celts.
The oldest layer of the Mabinogi is divided into four ‘branches’— because ‘branches’ are what the four poems were called by the original redactors.
We enter the Otherworld of Annwyn in the first branch of the Mabinogion.
Annwyn is a world that exists alongside our own. It is a mist-shrouded mirror and a shadow, everywhere and nowhere— a Land of the Blessed whose entrance is stumbled upon only by the worthy, and always by accident.
Annwyn eludes those who seek it and seeks those who are destined to find it, much like the Holy Grail in later Arthurian myth. Annwyn exercises a magical influence over the affairs of mortal men that only poets and seers can grapple with, and is so distinct from our world that it even has it’s own flora and fauna; for example, the Mabinogi tells us that pigs were gifted to mankind by the Lords of Annwyn.
Here is translator Patrick K. Ford, addressing the curious matter of the animals of Annwyn in his introduction to the first branch of the Mabinogion:
‘In our tale, Pwyll is [] hunting when he becomes separated from his companions. No other territorial markers signal the entry into the Otherworld, nor is the return from the Otherworld indicated by any precise demarcation.
The only indication for the audience that the Otherworld is at hand is the color of the other hunter’s hounds, for red and white are the colors of the animals of the Otherworld in Celtic tradition.’
As harbingers of the Otherworld, the animals of Annwyn are associated with another order of being.
This association was so strong that it was still ringing through the legends of Britain and France long after the heroes and gods of the Mabinogion had faded from popular memory; probably because living people could still spot the red and white animals of the Otherworld at the edge of the forest in their own time:
Sir Thomas Mallory’s 15th-century work of French prose L’morte D’Arthur (The Death of Arthur) is treated as the definitive Arthurian Romance.
Here, the appearance of a pure white stag at the wedding feast of Arthur and Guenevere becomes the pretext for a great adventure — but the disastrous results of the Hunt for the White Stag are read as an omen foreshadowing the dark fate of Camelot and the fall of Grail Knights.
The Hunt For The White Stag can also be read as an allegory for the spiritual quest. The animal is a messenger, an initiator; but it frustrates its most ardent pursuers.
The quest for Shambhala and the Quest for the Holy Grail are like the Hunt for the White Stag: each slips from grasping hands like water.
The same can be said of the Welsh Otherworld, Annwyn.
But the red and white animals we encounter in the first branch of the Mabinogi are not deer at all.
Rather, they are the hunting-dogs of the Lord of Annwyn.
‘Toward the middle of the clearing, the pack chasing the stag overtook it and bore it to the ground. [Pwyll] looked at the color of the hounds, not bothering to look at the stag, and of all the hunting dogs he had seen in the world, he had never seen dogs the color of these. Glittering bright white was their color, and their ears red: the redness of the ears glittered as brightly as the whiteness of their bodies. Thereupon, he came to the dogs and drove off the pack that had killed the stag, feeding his own pack on it.
As he was feeding the dogs, he saw a horseman coming up behind the pack on a large dapple-grey horse, a hunting horn about his neck, wearing a pale grey garment for hunting gear. The horseman came to him, saying the following… ‘
Hounds are associated with ideas of the underworld and the afterlife across cultures (see: Cerberus; the hellhounds of Papa Legba and Robert Johnson; the jackal-headed Egyptian God of Death, Anubis); has the Prince of Dyfed crossed over the thin membrane dividing the Land of the Dead from the Land of the Living?
Here’s Interceptor again, looking like a candy-cane striped hellhound; looking like some kind of neo-psych goth-pop psychopomp, or the hounds of Annwyn from the Mabinogion…
Are those horns, bro? There is a medieval tradition where Satan was depicted as, not red, but blue…
Yoshitaka Amano’s art has this unsettling, almost Luciferian vibe to it that comes through stronger in some places than others. For that reason, I find this presentation of Shadow astride the Hound of the Otherworld somewhat jarring. Are those horns, bro? Here Shadow looks like a spirit-man transgressing the boundaries between dimensions.
If you’ve made it this far and never played the game, Shadow is a ninja mercenary with a chip on his shoulder. The first time we meet him he’s sitting with his Doberman at a bar in Niccea. Edgar pulls you aside to issue this dire warning:
Delving deeper into the shadows of Annwyn, the ‘otherworld’ and the underworld began to look functionally identical— is Shadow secretly the King of Hell?
To pierce the veil and pull Shadow out from the ‘shadows’ cast by his brooding demeanor, we’ll apply the psychoanalytic method of dream analysis.
Prepare to enter the mind of a ninja assassin, a stone-cold killer.
The Five Dreams of Shadow
Because men would rather walk the earth in silence cosplaying a ninja assassin than go to therapy, the haunted history looming over Shadow begins to unfold through no volition of his own.
it’s only through a series of dream sequences (that only trigger if Shadow is in your party, and you sleep in the right beds) that Shadow’s mask begins to slip, and we catch a glimpse of the man behind it.
There is a rumor that there are seven dreams, but everyone I’ve talked to has only ever seen five of them.
The dreams don’t occur in any chronological order; and, again, they only happen if and when you trigger them. It’s all very puzzling, and only serves to deepen the enigma— until you’ve gathered all of them. When all the pieces are in place, we are left with few questions and a lot of sadness.
Dream #1: Train Robbers
Linearizing Shadow’s dreams into a narrative with an end and a beginning, we first learn that in a past life Shadow was called Clyde, and Clyde had a friend named Baram. After their first successful train robbery, Baram comes up with ‘Shadow’ as a name for their two-man criminal organization:
Right away, we notice a few things.
The environment this exchange takes place in is identical to the Haunted Forest environment, which we encountered on the trail that leads to the Ghost Train.
The Ghost Train scenario is the first major adventure where Shadow is featured as a party member:
After criss-crossing the map a few times in our airship, something else stands out:
There are no other trains to rob, anywhere in the world.
Besides the mine cart ride in the Imperial Capital, the Ghost Train that ferries the souls of the dead to the Other Side is the only train anywhere in the game…
Did Shadow’s troubles begin when he and his partner made an illegal trespass into Annwyn?
Did Clyde and Baram rob the God of the Dead?
Dream #2: The Death of Baram
Their life of crime has backfired.
Baram is dying, bleeding out like a punk.
Baram demands that Clyde put him out of his misery before their pursuers find him helpless and do worse—
but Clyde can’t go through with it:
The background environment here is the same one we saw when Cyan and Sabin washed up in the Veldt after leaping off the waterfall at the end of the Ghost Train scenario.
The waterfalls edge is where Shadow first abandons us— perhaps he didn’t want to revisit yet another painful memory…
What could he and Baram have been trying to steal that got Baram killed?
And why does everything seem to tie back to the Ghost Train, a vessel bound for the other side of reality?
It was probably a bit of laziness on the part of the developers (why create whole new backgrounds when we could just repurpose old ones?) but the recursivity is surreal.
Dream #3: Interceptor
After Baram’s death, Clyde goes into a fugue state.
He wakes up in Thamassa, the City of the Mage Warriors, unsure of who he is or how he got there. Beneath the tree at the center of the town square he is ‘intercepted’ by a dog; the Doberman later known as Interceptor.
The dog fetches its owner, who turns out to be a smoking hot Mage Warrior babe:
Dream #4: Leaving Thamassa
Clyde and Interceptor’s mom started dating.
But Clyde couldn’t settle into a domestic lifestyle; like the Ghost Train, he’s too haunted.
He would rather leave than see his violent past catch up with those he loves…
Except the dog.
He either takes the dog with him, or the dog won’t let him go alone.
Shadow is in our party the first time we visit Thamassa.
Here we meet Relm, a 10-year old girl who likes to draw. She is being raised by her grandfather, Strago.
According to an NPC in town, Grandfather Strago is not related to Relm at all; instead, he is a good man who stepped in to raise an orphan.
Interceptor is usually as standoffish as his master— but the dog runs right up to Relm the first time they are in the same room together.
Shadow keeps his distance, but the player can’t help but suspect that something is going on here.
The relic ‘Memento Ring’ drops a tantalizing hint. The item’s description says: The Memento Ring imparts ‘the love of a departed mother’, and it’s an item only Shadow and Relm can equip.
In a later interview, the developers confirm what fans had long suspected; Shadow is Relm’s father.
Dream #5: Baram Returned
In a din of anxiety-inducing 16-bit klaxons, Clyde is isolated against a solid black background and confronted by the ghost of Baram. The face of his dead partner haunts the darkest corners of his darkest dreams.
The ghostly Barram beckons Clyde to join him in death:
Arranged in this manner, Clyde’s dream sequence begins with a scene that implies the Ghost Train and ends with the summons of the restless dead.
The former Clyde is ‘shadowed’ by profound guilt and the fear of being an albatross to those close to him. He got his best friend killed, and in consequence developed an aversion to companionship.
In a dark satori, he has cultivated the virtues of non-attachment often observed in those with complex post-traumatic stress disorder.
Leaving a broken family in his wake, he drifts off to cope in his own way— by becoming a mercenary and leaving a trail of bodies in his wake. It’s as if Baram’s dying breath carved a wound into Shadow’s psyche so deep that seeking death became his only comfort.
After the world ends, we must gather our friends from the far corners of a blasted realm. We find Shadow fighting in the Collessium; with one foot in the grave and existing in the half-life between states, he is, as ever, a chronic loner and a battle addict.
This isn’t like the Annwyn visited by Pwyll, Prince of Dyfed.
The Otherworld Shadow belongs to sounds closer to hell. Shadow is a shadow of himself: he has become de-personalized, and his entire life is a disguise.
It is never revealed who Shadow is running from— Baram was absolutely terrified of something, someone…
What is Shadow running from?
What is it he says to us when we meet him outside the Old Man’s house on the Veldt…?
The weight of the symbolism surrounding Shadow suggests that the Hound of Annwyn is indeed the Hound of Hell, at least in Yoshitaka Amano’s estimation. Extrapolating, Shadow becomes the grim hunter who rules in the dark of Hades.
It turns out the Celtic Otherworld is closely linked to ideas of the afterlife. This is an association the Mabinogi wears on its sleeve, but it’s easy to miss without some additional context.
Deeper Into Annwyn: Ambrose, Vortigern, and the Dragons of Dinas Emrys
The collected Mabinogi exists in whole form in only two manuscripts:
The White Book of Rhydderch (Llyfr Gwyn Rhydderch) dating from about 1350, and
The Red Book of Hergest (Llyfr Coch Hergest) dating from about 1382–1410.
(Red and white again…)
The material preserved in the Mabinogi is older than either manuscript. Exactly how old is a matter of ongoing debate— the earliest scholarly estimates reach back to the 1100s— but we can trace the red and white animals of the Welsh Otherworld at least as far back as the Historia Brittonum.
Attributed to an unknown scribe called Ninnias, who may or may not have existed, Historia Brittonum is a fascinating work that synthesizes fact and legend to lay down the early history of the settlement of Britain.
Its contents date to about 828, making it several hundred years older than our copies of the Mabinogi as well as the earliest book to mention the exploits of a leader named Arthur. Rather than being a king, Arthur in the Historia Brittonum is portrayed as an influential soldier.
Historia Brittonum is also the first work to describe the Dragons of Dinas Emrys, another staple feature of Arthurian myth— but rather than being the great dragons made canonical by sir Geoffrey of Monmoth, the dragons of Ninnias are not dragons at all— rather, they are ordinary serpents.
Here is the story according to Ninnias:
King Vortigern brings Saxon warlords exiled from their homelands into his confidence, exchanging the kingdom of Kent for one of their daughters—though without the knowledge of the Lord of Kent. Vortigern then fathers a child on his own daughter. The bishop St. Germanicus comes to chastise Vortigern for his uncleanliness, and the king is humiliated.
Taking council, Vortigern is advised to retreat to some remote providence and build a citadel to defend himself; both from the wily Saxons and the Britons he has alienated. A suitable location for Vortigern’s stronghold is scouted in the mountains of Hemerus, but construction is halted by an uncanny happening- the walls keep falling down.
Vortigern turns again to his wise men. They say a child with no father must be sacrificed, his blood sprinkled on this spot. When such a child is found and taken up to the construction site of Vortigern’s Mountain Fortress, the child humiliates Vortigerns councelors:
"I desire to question your wise men, and wish them to disclose to you what is hidden under this pavement:"
they acknowledged their ignorance.
"there is," said he, "a pool; come and dig:" they did so, and found the pool.
"Now," continued he, "tell me what is in it;" but they were ashamed, and made no reply.
"I," said the boy, "can discover it to you. there are two vases in the pool;" they examined, and found it so.:
Continuing his questions,
"What is in the vases?" they were silent: "there is a tent in them," said the boy. "separate them, and you shall find it so;"
This being done by the king's command, there was found in them a folded tent.
The boy, going on with his questions, asked the wise men what was in it?
But they not knowing what to reply, "There are," said he, "two serpents, one white and the other red. unfold the tent;"
they obeyed, and two sleeping serpents were discovered; "consider attentively," said the boy, "what they are doing."
The serpents began to struggle with each other; and the white one, raising himself up, threw down the other into the middle of the tent, and sometimes drove him to the edge of it. and this was repeated thrice.
At length the red one, apparently the weaker of the two, recovering his strength, expelled the white one from the tent; and the latter being pursued through the pool by the red one, disappeared.
Then the boy, asking the wise men what was signified by this wonderful omen, and they expressing their ignorance,he said to the king, "I will now unfold to you the meaning of this mystery. The pool is the emblem of this world, and the tent that of your kingdom: the two serpents are two dragons; the red serpent is your dragon, but the white serpent is the dragon of the people who occupy several provinces and districts of Britain, even almost from sea to sea: at length, however, our people shall rise and drive away the Saxon race from beyond the sea…
The child then claims the spot as his own, sending Vortigern away. Amazed, Vortigern asks the child’s name. Hint: it isn’t Merlin.
The boy says that he is Ambrose, the son of a Roman Consul.
Perhaps Ambrose was scrying the fate of England in a hibernacula of European vipers. These animals winter in frost-free locations, often underground, and their mating could be construed as a kind of wrestling match.
What’s more, these animals can be found in northwestern Wales and in the region of Gwynedd, where Vortigern tried to build his citadel.
European vipers exhibit sexual dimorphism— Males are often white, and females are often red:
With the wrestling serpents of Dinas Emrys, the braiding of red and white emerges once again as an emblem of contact with another realm.
Nennias’ story of Ambrose and Vortigern connects the red and white of the Otherworld to the subterranean realm and the art of prophecy, demonstrating that Greco-Roman ideas of the underworld (think Odysseus sacrificing lambs at the mouth of the Underworld to evoke the spirit of the prophet Tiresias) may have hybridized with the Welsh notion of the Otherworld with the merging of Greco-Roman and Celtic tradition under the banner of Christianity.
But there are clues that these ideas had always been there, long before the Latin scribes came to England bearing copies of Virgil’s Aeneid.
In the Mabinogi material, prehistoric tumulus burial mounds routinely act as bridges between the mundane realm and Annwyn.
The Mound of Arberth
The prehistoric Welsh, Irish, Scottish, and Britonic Celts interned their dead in burial mounds. Several of these mounds are famous tourist sites, such as Bryn Celli Ddu on the Welsh island of Anglesey, or the Grey Cairns at Camster.
This burial tradition continued into the Anglo-Saxon era, and these ancient burial mounds remain a prominent feature of the English countryside. They are even referenced in the barrow downs of J.R.R. Tolkien’s Lord of The Rings trilogy; Indeed, no mythology of the region would be complete without their inclusion.
The mound called Gorsedd Arberth plays a prominent role in the unfolding of the Mabinogi poems: it acts repeatedly as a gateway to the Otherworld.
Atop Gorsedd Arberth is where Pwyll meets his future wife Rhiannon (yes, that Rhiannon), the living avatar of the continental horse goddess Epona, in the first branch of the Mabinogi.
Pwyll dies after a long and full life at the end of the first branch, and Pwyll’s son Pyderi takes center stage in the second one.
The second branch deals with a war of attrition between the Irish. All but two people in Ireland are destroyed, with only seven of the Welshmen returning home.
Before returning to Wales, though, our heroes have an eighty-seven-year layover in the Otherworld.
The dying warrior Bedigeidfran instructs his friends to decapitate his body and bury his head on the White Mound of London, facing south. Somehow this deed permits the seven returned Welshmen access to a seven-year feast of unending plenty at Harlech where they are treated to the finest bird-songs, and an eighty-year stay in Pembroke where they all entered Paradise while still in the body:
‘ of all the grief they had witnessed and experienced, they had no memory of it or of any sorrow in the world. And there they spent eighty years; they were not aware of spending a more pleasurable nor lovelier time than that ever. None could tell by the others that any time had passed since they came, nor was the presence of the head any less comfort to them than when Benigeidfran had been living with them.’
This sounds a lot like the Greek Elysium; the realm of the blessed where virtuous souls congregate after death.
Inexplicably, our heroes return to their kingdom after almost a century and find that their realm is still in tact. Pyderi’s rulership is still respected, and no one so much as mentions how strange it is that his mother Rhiannon is still alive.
In fact, the third branch opens with Pyderi negotiating a marriage between Mandawyn and Rhiannon.
This accomplished, Pyderi and his wife Cigfa ascend the Gosedd Arberth with the newly-weds to enjoy a royal picnic. An uncanny mist settles over them, and when the shroud of fog begins to clear the two couples find they are the only people left in all of Wales.
It turns out that an Emissary of the Otherworld, Llwyd son of Cil Coed, has lain this enchantment.
Once again the primacy of the Otherworld is shown; its denizens have the power to contravene the most fundamental laws of the world we know.
Because the mounds from which the Welsh heroes most frequently interacted with the Otherworld were grave sites, there is an implicit link between the Welsh Otherworld and the afterlife.
Officially, no one knows where the Mound of Arberth is located, if it ever really existed.
Greg Hill at Rigatona.net (Rigatona is another name for the Horse Goddess symbolized by Rhiannon) gives two possible locations:
Crug Mawr near the river Teifi or, more likely, Camp Hill near the Welsh hamlet of Narberth.
The mound on Camp Hill is on private property with no public access, but here’s a lovely picture of the mound at Crug Mawr:
Bonus Level: The River Clyde
I lured you here with nerd lore about everyone’s favorite ninja and then dropped you face-first into a niche body of medieval literature that even hardened mythologists have a hard time giving a shit about (Tolkien himself described the mythology of England as ‘very poor’).
If you made it this far and are wondering how it all fits together, welcome to the Dungeon— I don’t call it a labyrinth for nothing! Sometimes we hit dead ends; but how’s this for an interesting coincidence?
The name ‘Clyde’ occurs in the Mabinogi, albeit in an ancient dialect.
A certain ‘Kingdom of Gwawl Fub Clud’ is mentioned in the first branch.
From www.nantlle.com,
‘‘Gwawl”, according to the University of Wales Dictionary means:
1. The Vallum (Roman wall) between the Firth of Forth and the Firth of Clyde - the Antonine Wall, not Hadrian’s Wall
2.Man
3.Light
But Gwawl's last name [Clud] more than likely refers to the River Clyde in Scotland.
There is an Otherworld in Final Fantasy Six:
the Realm of the Espers.
The Realm of Espers is magical world that exists astride the mundane one, concealed in a sort of tumulus burial mound— one that looks an awful lot like the Allt Clud on the River Clyde in Scotland—
Is Clyde a Scotsman? A Welsh Briton of the Old North?
For a human to possess inherent magical abilities in the Final Fantasy VI universe, they must be genetically related to the espers.
All of the magic-users in Thamassa are descended from human-esper pairings, including Shadows daughter.
Because Clyde is an outsider, Relm’s esper heritage comes from her mother.
Is this not like the avatar of Rigatona (Epona, Goddess of Horses) mating with Pwyell to produce Prince Pyderi in the Mabinogi?
Pyderi’s origins are couched in tragedy, much like Relm’s; both children were raised as fosterlings, ignorant of their true parentage.
Did you know?
It makes makes your research look more respectable when you include citations!!
http://www.nantlle.com/mabinogi-saesneg-places-mentioned-in-the-first-branch.htm
http://mistshadows.blogspot.com/2018/01/red-and-white-otherworld-animals-in.html
https://gorsedd-arberth.blogspot.com/2014/07/crug-mawr.html
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historia_Brittonum
Gorsedd Arberth
The Long Barrow Mystery
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