Tools of the Ancients

Two lives lost because of the detritus of a pointless war long ago.  

But the weapons deployed by humans pale beside the cunning devices wielded by the Ancients in the war that ultimately led to the end of the First Age of Earth civilizations. Our "Great War" was a pillow fight in comparison, if translations of the few Progenitor tablets thus far found can be trusted.  What strange things were left hidden in the Precambrian muck, buried under kilometers of sediment, and only now working their way back to the surface as we delve ever more deeply?

Would we understand how such things work?
Would we be able to defuse them, or even contain the forces unleashed?

Would we even recognise them as weapons?

And what happens when someone inadvertently triggers one?

Or wakes it...

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Sources: 
http://io9.com/the-first-world-war-claims-two-more-victims-1548135450
http://aphilosopher.wordpress.com/2008/02/25/pre-human-civilizations/
http://www.amazon.com/Before-Atlantis-Million-Pre-Human-Cultures/dp/1591431573
http://www.kuro5hin.org/story/2002/6/5/7320/94554

The Diamond Edda

Imagine an alternate history in which the first European settlers of Iceland and Greenland were Vikings.

Standard fare, sure, but how about this:

At first these Vikings went about things in typically Viking fashion, complete with Althings, expeditions to Vinland, and grand tales of daring do by warriors set on feasting in Valhalla with the gods.

In their expeditions across the Arctic, through Hudson’s Bay and beyond in search of furs, ivory and trinkets traded up from the South (Aztec gold, perhaps? Lapis lazuli amulets? Strings of gem-like shells?) they ultimately begin exploring the west coast of the continent – eventually coming into contact with the Chinese colonies there.

And so, rather than converting to Christianity these New World Vikings converted to Buddhism.

True to the transcendental traditions of their own Wiccan, these alter-Vikings adopted an esoteric approach to Buddhism, something like Shingon or Tangmi/Mizong – with their practice founded on the idea of Odin as their own boddhisatva, and ultimately developing a tradition of warrior mystics who seek enlightenment through development of their bodies in the fighting arts and various ascetic techniques and mortifications. 

In the end, the religious text "The Diamond Edda" would be the foundation of this tradition, and berserk a manifestation of transcendental Zen as the masters of this tradition release attachment to the self and thought and immerse themselves in the moment of battle.

Sun darkened, half-clothed warriors - shaggy in the fashion of the Indian ascetics - would necessarily wander the frozen steppes of the Arctic circle, the crunch of their fur-wrapped feet on the snow nearly drowned by the rhythmic "jingle...jingle...jingle..." as their belled staves strike the ground.

Naturally, their robes would be blood red, their furs white.

And the infidel would weep with terror in the night.