The Richelanoidea, roughly translated as the ‘people and family of Richelan’, is developed around one minor character appearing in Beyond Middle Earth. It is set in lands south of those in Beyond Middle Earth, and in its latter half the story takes on a significant maritime setting.

Briefly, the story line follows the Southern Amgarn (led by Richelan), an exiled people driven from their own ancestral homeland. These enter the diminished realm of Nalsarn in Southern Middle Earth. Unwittingly the Amgarn have encountered Nalsarn in its dying years for Nalsarn is struck by a centuries-old civil war, its lands and civilization dismembered, its splendour and knowledge increasingly lost, house turned against house, sister against brother, its people driven by despair and enmity. The Amgarn, through their eventual occupation of some of Nalsarn’s lost fiefs and intermarriage with its people, come to inherit much of Nalsarn’s knowledge and wisdom. Yet they too are doomed to replay the very acts that once brought war and misery to the lands they now occupy.

The later parts of The Richelanoidea deal with Nalsarn’s fate following the ending of the kin-war. Unbeknown to the Amgarn and the surviving Nalsarnen, a further power has arisen to contest their new-found peace. Remnants of Nalsarn’s population and noble houses, that long ago had fled the civil war, have grown in strength (forming the realm of Ishgaflin in what was western Nalsarn), and thinking Nalsarn long fallen and ensnared by evil, are set upon its recapture. Thus, unknowingly, friend is arrayed against friend and both appear set irrevocably on a path to ultimate destruction; for ‘Ishgaflin had been driven by a lie, and had been built upon it. It was its reasoning and its foundation…  .’

And as with all sagas, whether they be contrived by contemporary writers or have historical foundation (e.g., Iliad, Ramayana and Gilgamesh epics), the plot development follows the journey of an exiled people and heroic individuals through a diversity of realms and conflicts, with consequent evolution of events, character interactions and climax outcomes. The actions and interplay of characterization and historical allusions progressively build in substance and moment, the story line becoming more intricate as the manuscript proceeds.

Because of this intricacy, The Richelanoidea anticipates the need for a Glossary of characters, places and events. But within the Glossary opportunity is taken to expand the significance of each name; and so it gives greater historical and cultural depth to the narrative.