Bres, Misrule, and the Return of Nuada

When Nuada, king of the Tuatha De Danann, lost his hand in the First Battle of Mag Tuired against the Fir Bolg, the law of the Tuatha De Danann barred a physically blemished man from kingship, and Bres, son of a Tuatha De Danann woman and a Fomorian father, was chosen to rule in his place as a gesture of reconciliation between the two peoples. Bres proved a disastrous king: tradition remembers him for withholding the hospitality owed to poets and nobles, imposing tribute on the Tuatha De Danann on behalf of his Fomorian kin, and reducing chieftains to menial labor, until the satirist Cairbre composed a verse of ridicule against him so effective that Bres's face broke out in blemishes of its own, disqualifying him under the same rule that had once excluded Nuada.

Deposed, Bres fled to his father's people, the Fomorians, and sought their help to retake the kingship by force, gathering an army under the sea god Indech and the giant Balor of the Evil Eye. Meanwhile Nuada, now fitted with a working arm of silver made by the physician Dian Cecht, and restored further afterward by Dian Cecht's son Miach, was eligible to rule again, and stepped aside a second time when a young warrior named Lugh arrived at the Tuatha De Danann's court and proved himself master of every skill demanded of him, taking command in preparation for the coming battle.