Client : VerSache the Barbarian comic book ( in association with Ian Versace.)
Medium : Pen Sketch (on Cartridge) 40cm by 56cm :
Page layout : Scanned, coloured and enhanced in Adobe Photoshop 2004 a.d
Design Notes : VerSache the Barbarian and his Crew often made the journey to the artic circle to to stock up on the enormous stellar sea cows and to surf and snowboard the icebergs and surrounding waters. The intro page above echos a chronologically earlier story regarding an extremely large variety of Predatory Rabbit, as well as introducing the distinctive look of his ship. Just off the ice caps a green mist appears, flickering as a stormcloud would...
Soundtrack (music to draw Surfing Scottish Barbarians to) : (Film Score)

Notes on the life and times of VerSache the Barbarian : ( the remainder of the document may seem incredibly boring and anal to the majority of you so I won't be offended if you loose interest now, to those that find gaelic history fascinating read on, bearing in mind minor alterations in the 'excepted view' of history will be there)

Ex libris necessarius VerSache obscurus barbarus : This extraordinary collection offers striking insight into the historical VerSache the Barbarian. Compiled, Photographed, Edited, Rebound and Translated by Marjorie Chillblaine : Today the most ancient of the original documents exist beginning with 600 leaves (or folios) made from hemp, Some folios are of single sheets, most are twice the width, then folded to accommodate 2 pages of text, The decorated pages often occurred on single sheets. The folios had lines drawn for the text, sometimes on both sides. Prick marks and guide lines can still be seen on some pages. The hemp is of high quality, although the folios have an uneven thickness, with some being almost leather, while others are so thin as to be almost translucent. Food, beer and coffee stains abound throughout ... Beyond the north wind, if the stories are to be believed, there is a joyful nation called the Hyperboreans, among whom men live to a great age; fabulous marvels are told about them. I t is said that the hinges of the world are there and that the stars reach the ends of their orbit there...There is only one sunrise a year at the summer solstice, and one sunset at the winter solstice. the land is very open , balmy in climate and free from harmful breezes. The inhabitants live in forests and sacred wood; worship of the gods is conducted by some special menand by the people as a whole. Discord is unknown, so to are all diseases. Thee men die only when they have had enough of life; after a meal , after the pleasures of the last hours of old age, they jump into the sea from a particular rock. They see that as the most pleasant form of burial ...We must assume that this nation does exist since so many writers have described their custom sending the first harvests... Pliny (Hist.Nat IV,26.) Long before the Romans actually set foot upon North Britain, the country was not wholly unknown by report. Albion, the ancient name for Great Britain in its entirety, appears to go back to Himilco the Carthaginian, who explored the coasts of the North Sea about 500 BC( that's B.C ='before christ', fuck that 'before common era' right off ).

Nearly two hundred years later (320 BC) came the famous expedition of Pytheas, organized by the traders of Massilia, to the same parts, and though Pytheas' own account of his voyages is lost, fragments of it have been preserved. Pytheas had mentioned Thule. It was six days' sail north of Britain, near the frozen sea, and the region about it was neither firm land nor sea nor air, but a mixture of all three resembling a jellyfish in consistency. Strabo, referring to this description, calls Pytheas an utter liar ; as for himself, he does not know whether Thule is an island or whether the region near it is habitable. Orcas, first mentioned by Diodorus as one of the three chief capes of Britain, is also from Pytheas; the other capes are Belerion and Cantion, Land's End and South Foreland. The Roman geographer Mela (fl. A.D. 45) places Thule off the coast of the Belcae, ' a Scythian tribe.' He is the first to mention the Orcades< which, he says, number thirty, all close together; and as the number of inhabited islands in the group is now twenty-nine, it would appear that Mela wrote on good authority.

The poet Lucan and his contemporaries (A.D. 39-65) have heard of the Caledonian Britons. Pliny (A.D. 23-79) names as sources of his information Pytheas, Timaeus (C. 352-256 B.C. ), and Isidorus of Charax, who was probably an elder contemporary of his own; there were others also whom he does not name. He states that there are forty Orcades, thirty Hebudes, seven Acmodae. He also mentions Mona, now Anglesey, between Britannia and Hibernia; Monapia, now Man; Riginia, equated with Rechrann or Rathlin; Vectis, the Isle of Wight; Silumnus; Andros or Adros, perhaps Ireland's Eye; Dumna, the Long Island; and he has heard of Caledonia Silva, the Caledonian Forest. Such are the indications of the knowledge of North Britain possessed by the Romans before Agricola's campaigns (A.D. 80-85). It relates chiefly to islands, and it is just the sort of information that might be got from seafarers who knew little about the interior. Probably most of it is referable ultimately to Pytheas. Agricola's campaigns form a distinct epoch, and it is unfortunate for us that Tacitus, his son-in-law and biographer, did not include in his Life of Agricola a systematic account of the country and tribes among which his father-in-law operated, as he might so easily have done.

From Tacitus we hear for the first time of the rivers Clota, the Clyde, Bodotria, the Forth, Tanaus or Taus, the Tay. The part north of Forth and Clyde is Caledonia ; its inhabitants are Britanni. He names only one tribe, the Boresti, but he implies the existence of other tribes, and gives the important information that they joined together under one leader to make common cause against the Romans. The champion of liberty - the first native of Scotland whose name appears on record-was Calgacus, 'Swordsman,' the most distinguished among all the chiefs for courage and for lineage. Historians have done him scant justice; he was of the type and race of Vercingetorix, the hero of Alesia, and, one might add, of Wallace; but though they are both commemorated by statues, he is not. The position of Mons Graupius, where he gave battle to the invaders, is still uncertain. Agricola showed his desire for further knowledge of the North by ordering his fleet to sail round the north coast. Three results of this cruise are claimed by Tacitus : Britain was proved to be an island; the Orcades, hitherto unknown, were discovered and subdued; the mysterious Thule, their northmost goal, was seen in the distance. The first of these results would be attained by rounding the north coast and sailing southward along the west coast to a point already known, such as the Firth of Clyde. As to the Orkneys, they were known by report, as we have seen, long before Agricola's time, as Tacitus was doubtless well aware. What he meant was, we may suppose, that the Romans had now for the first time direct and accurate knowledge of these islands. By Thule he means Shetland. The position of the Trucculensis Portus, the port from which the fleet set out and to which it returned, cannot be settled ; but it must have been Montrose or some place either on the Firth of Forth or on the Firth of Tay.

There can be no doubt that the voyage brought much new information about the North and West. In the first half of the second century the famous mathematician, astronomer, and geographer, Claudius Ptolemy of Alexandria, embodied in his great Introduction to Geography the facts relating to North Britain as known in his time. He fixes his places by latitude and longitude, and following Marinus of Tyre, his older contemporary, he takes as his furthest north fixed point Thule, whose position had been fixed by Agricola's survey. Ptolemy's measurements of latitude and longitude show that he turned all Britain north of Solway and Tyne through a right angle : his furthest north point is the Mull of Galloway ; he makes the west coast face north, the north coast face east, and the east coast face south. Apart from this extraordinary error, which I am quite incompetent to discuss and which really does not concern our present purpose, the outline of the map constructed from the data which Ptolemy supplies is very creditable, and we shall see reason to believe that his names of tribes and places deserve great respect. He records and locates in what is now Scotland 16 or 18 tribes, 17 rivers, 16 towns, 10 islands, 7 capes, 3 bays, and 4 other names. Here is a great advance in method and in knowledge of detail. When, however, it comes to fixing the position of these on a modern map, the matter is one of much difficulty. The difficulty is least in the case of names that still survive, and greatest in the case of inhabited sites or 'towns.' Latin and Greek writers after Ptolemy's time give little topographical information bearing on our subject.

Dio Cassius' contemporary account of the doings of the Emperor Severus in Scotland in the beginning of the third century is lost; but from the epitome of his history by Xiphilinus we learn that the two leading tribes then were the Caledonii and the Maeatae, and that the names of the others had practically been absorbed in these. 'The Maeatae dwell close by the wall that divides the island into two parts, the Caledonii beyond them.' . The reference here is probably to Hadrian's Wall, between Tyne and Solway; this would put the Maeatae south of Forth, between the Walls.

The orator Eumenius in A.D. 297 speaks of the Britons of the province as accustomed to Picti and Hiberni (Picts and Irish) as enemies. In A.D. 310 another orator says: 'I do not mention the woods and marshes of the Caledonians, the Picts, and others,' or, according to another reading, 'of the Caledonians and other Picts.' In or about A.D. 364, the Picts divided into two tribes (gentes), the Dicalydones and the Verturiones, and also the Atecotti, a warlike nation, and the Scotti, ranged far and wide (in the Roman province) and made great ravaging.' The Scotti were, of course, the Irish ; the Atecotti are styled by Jerome 'a British tribe ' (gentem Britannicam [This does not exclude the possibility of the Atecotti having been Irish. Professor John MacNeill says, 'The names Scotti and Atecotti ... are probably of a general application, not designative of special groups.'Early Irish Population Groups, § 3.]), - but nothing certain is known as to their position. It is important to observe that in the fourth century the Caledonians have come to be a division of the Picts, and are not heard of subsequently. The inference is that that powerful tribe, which held the hegemony at Mons Graupius and after whom the North was called Caledonia, had for some reason lost their position of leadership, and that the Picts, who are first mentioned in A.D. 297, had taken their place. Thereafter the North came to be called Pictland (Pictavia), till the hegemony passed from them to the Scots. Thus we have the succession - Caledonia, Pictavia, Scotland. --William J. Watson (The History of the Celtic Place-Names of Scotland)

Historically, the Britons (sometimes Brythons or British) were the indigenous peoples inhabiting the island of Britain who can be described as Celts, before their language and culture was largely replaced by invading Anglo-Saxons. They were speakers of the Brythonic languages and shared common cultural traditions. In terms of language and culture, much of north western Europe was mainly Celtic during this period, although only the island of Britain and Brittany were inhabited by Brythonic Celts. The inhabitants of Ireland, the Isle of Man and Dál Riata were Gaels or Gaelic Celts who spoke Goidelic languages. It is not known whether the Picts of northern Britain were a Brythonic-speaking people. A number of scholars argue that the unknown Pictish language was Brythonic, but in Sub-Roman Britain the Picts were distinguished as a separate group, as were the Gaels of Dál Riata. Therefore, the term "Briton" or "Brython" traditionally refers to the inhabitants of ancient Britain excluding the Picts, because many Pictish cultural traits (for example their sculpture, pottery and monuments) differ from those of the Britons. The Britons are also referred to as the ancient, native, indigenous and ethnic Britons, or alternatively the British or Brythonic tribes.