When you come across a Fomorian, it’s usually in a fantasy setting, like the Fomorians in Dungeons and Dragons, the fantasy roleplaying game. D&D depicts Fomorians as hideous giants covered in warts, who live in caves, torture people for fun, and then eat them. One such class is the Fomorian butcher.
In Dungeons and Dragons: The Forgotten Realms, the Fomorians work for Frost Giants, Hill Giants, or Ogres, which is an interesting twist because Frost Giants, Hill Giants, and Fire Giants exist in Norse mythology, which includes the gods Odin and Thor.
What most people don’t know is that the Fomorians were an actual race of giants who lived in ancient Ireland around 1500 BC, during the Bronze Age. Their territory included Ireland, the Inner and Outer Hebrides islands, the Shetland islands, Orkney islands, Pomorania/Pomerania, and Scandinavia, in regions that overlap with the Norse gods. Historically their realm was called Lochlann.
They weren’t warty or hideous, but you could definitely class them as butchers. They towered over everyone else, and spent most of their time on ships as pirates. On land, they sacrificed Humans to their pagan god Moloch/Molech at the festivals of Samhain and Beltane. One of them sat on the throne of Ireland for awhile, though historians don’t agree on whether Bress/Bres/Breas was a full-blooded Fomorian. He was described as handsome.
Another Fomorian was a giant named Conand/Conann of Tory Island, and the fictional character Conan The Barbarian isn’t a half bad depiction of the Fomorians of legend. Author Robert E. Howard also wrote The Frost Giant’s Daughter.
The most notable Fomorian in Celtic mythology was Balor of the Evil Eye, sometimes listed as the father of Bress, other times not. Either way, he was the most wicked and feared Fomorian of them all, with an evil eye in the middle of his forehead that could strike you down with a glance.
The Irish Fomorians were obliterated by a race known as the Tuatha Dé Danann, who ancient astronaut theorists believe came down from the stars, as depicted in Ancient Aliens and the Lost Islands. If so, the Tuatha Dé Danann correlate to the Nordic aliens visiting Earth today. The Fomorians may also have come down from the stars, as virtually every depiction of giants in the Old World suggests that they were extraterrestrial.
The book Fomorian Earth: Star Borne: 1 presents Fomorians as a star-borne race living on Earth, battling another star-borne race, the Tirnogians, which are patterned after the Tuatha Dé Danann. Fomorian Earth draws from ancient legends to give you a true account of how these giants lived on Earth, and Balor’s evil eye is presented as a laser weapon, which it probably was.
The online role-playing game Mabinogi also incorporates the Fomorians, or Fomors of ancient Ireland, as one of its main races, drawing from pre-historic legends. The Mabinogi game draws from ancient texts, mentioning King Cichol of the Fomorians, and Balor of the Evil Eye. Their enemies are depicted as the Partholons, the Tuatha Dé Danann, and the Milletians, which historically were the Milesians.
Follow the Fomorians in their spaceships, and on Earth, in the book Fomorian Earth. Get a glimpse of what life for Humans was like when giants ruled the world.
