[Abilities/Traits/Perks] >Indomitable, Rank 1: Ignore the penalties imposed by Blood Loss. Does not negate health loss. >Atelier of Death: Craft your own Bombs and Poisons >Nimble Fingers: +30 to non-attack actions involving your hands (lockpicking, pickpocketing, etc.). >Specter’s Dream: A technique to allow one to rest while remaining aware of one’s surroundings. (4/8/12 hour intervals each with their own bonuses) >Knowledge: Nobility (Aderaveth): Take a flat 50 to Knowledge rolls concerning this subject. >Knowledge: Underworld (Aderaveth): Take a flat 50 to Knowledge rolls concerning this subject.
“They descended upon the land, blocking out sun, moon and stars with the shrouds of their wings. And with a single breath, they set the world as we knew it ablaze with the flames of destruction. Gods and countries, friends and loved ones, everything burned on that cataclysmic night. Hundreds of years of human progress little more than smoldering ash.
“Drathil the Elder Fang. Oldest of the beasts, her scales had long since bleached over the centuries to where no man can recount their original shade. Harder than skyiron and as pale as pearls, nothing short of the most powerful attacks could ever hope to pierce her adamantine raiment. Stoic and prideful, unyielding and proud, her cunning intellect was sharper than rows of jagged tooth and claw.
“Vizhorek the Calamitous Heart. His very existence was anathema to the living, the very air he exhaled a miasma that drained the vitality from all it came to touch. Swathes of barren land still remain to this day, where the fiend had taken roost. The only thing more toxic than his breath was his cruelty, his malice and a desire to watch all mortals suffer.
“And Mallifax, the dark wyvern whom they called the Shroud of Shadows. The last of the Dragon Kings, it was he who brought the world to calamity and ruin, the herald of an Age of Fire. With a heart as cold and black as his scales, he led the hordes towards the old kingdoms of Man, commanded them to let the continent burn with dragonfire.
“I curse them and all the rest of their kind. I curse them with every breath I take, with every second I continue to live where they have fallen into the maggot-filled earth. And when my soul shall depart from this world to join the halls of my fathers, it will be with my dying breath that I curse their fell names.”
-Excerpt from the Chronicles of Baldir Urakest, the Dragonsbane and Last Warrior-King of Old Suthyae, -367 CR
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Of all the magical beasts to roam the lands of the known world, it is almost unanimous that there is none to match that of the dragon. Commanding both the fear and respect of lesser species, they have dominated the planet’s ecosystem with tooth and claw, magic and fire, for hundreds of years. Of course, this is no doubt due to their longevity, with the current record at nine hundred years, superior intellect, and the absence of a proper threat.
While they do share some commonalities in diet and other physical attributes, one would be hard-pressed to find two dragons who behave similarly. There are those who are little more than primal beasts, smashing and blasting their way to their goals with little consideration for thought or safety. And then there are those who are masters of cutthroat diplomacy, who favor cunning and guile in lieu of brutal strength. Yet even more dangerous are those that employ both silvered tongue and brute strength to achieve their ends meet.
(cont.)
Benjamin Reyes
A fact that we must first dispense with before we continue any further is the origins of these species. I speak not of the scaled, stone-like eggs from which they incubate and hatch, but their very creation in the grand scheme of the world. Doubtless you have heard of them: evil gods cursed by the Divines of the High Faith to take the forms of their inner selves, vessels of Aether that gained sentience by observing the Elder Pantheon. As of this edition, the Oratory suggests that they are creations who rejected the authority of the God of Light.
Now, I must tell you to cast your curiosity to the side, for there exists no concrete answer to that question. Seek not and speak not of the origins of the dragons, for it is a fruitless endeavor, a cause that great men and magisters have wasted their lives on.
Tragically, we can gain no further knowledge, as all that remains of the mighty beasts are bone and ash. And what little manuscripts that survived the tumultuous Age of Fire are scant to offer any details. Yet, the beasts are not so easily forgotten, as they continue to regale the tales, legends and history of the people of Kaithe. Perhaps that is something we can take a small, if not regretful, solace in. What I would pay to see the dragons once more above the skies of Kaithe...
-Introduction to the 3rd Edition of the Lexicon of Dragonkind, written by Magister Anvino, 14 CR
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There is little information regarding the Dragon-King Mallifax prior to the Long Night of Fire. Other than the names of his progenitors, Inoith and Praagdrix, we know little of the history of the Shroud of Shadows before his arrival to Kaithe. Yet, physical evidence suggests that at the time of his death, Mallifax was at least four centuries, old enough to challenge his sire for the mantle of the Horned Crown and the right to rule over the Dragons.
(cont.)
Josiah Johnson
Yiss caught up and get to catch one live
Adam Lewis
I've missed this quest so much T~T
Brayden Collins
The absence of any further knowledge is more than likely caused by the Exodus from the Old Continent, when the Vethics took to the sea to escape a barren continent and the monsters that inhabited it. Oral accounts now safely inscribed onto sheets of vellum can trace genealogies of the beasts for the last thousand years before our ancestors made the treacherous journey across the Nemelhiem Ocean. This suggests that Mallifax was born after their flight, further supported by the four-hundred year Golden Age that the Vethics experienced when they landed on the Eastern Seaboard of modern-day Kaithe.
Yet it would not last. For all their cities and settlements, alliances with the native Ingulans and Eridians of the Western Continent, all of that progress became undone when the dragons landed upon Kaithe. The Vethics were quick to forget of their troubles, and within ten generations, the fear of wyverns had faded from their minds. Perhaps this is why the Long Night of Fire was so devastating to all of the continent.
Mallifax was not so quick to forget the lesser species that had tainted what he believed to be a world solely for the purpose of dragons. Where others held indifference, and at the worst, a desire to turn mankind into a servitor race, the Shroud of Shadows held only fire and death in his black heart. At the pinnacle of his power, the Dragon-King gathered his forces and crossed the Nemelheim Ocean, braving salt and storm to reach the object of his search.
A prominent theory of their general search is survivors, left behind, tortured to reveal where their luckier kin had fled. It is unknown how long their journey was or how many perished along the way. Yet, on the fateful night of the Feast of the Arrival, a time of joyous celebration and unity among the three peoples, there were enough of the wyverns to blot out the sky.
(cont.)
Angel Bailey
Merriment quickly gave way to despair when Mallifax’s wings blocked out the overhead moon. And despair gave way to panic when the dragon commanded his legions to bathe the land in dragonfire. Stone and masonry ran like hot butter, castles and fortifications collapsing under the magical flames. Flesh sloughed off of bone, eyes boiled in their sockets, and knights cooked alive in their armor as the heat scoured through the inhabitants of the city of Karthmire. And it was only the beginning, the first of many boroughs to suffer the wrath of the dragons.
One by one, the dragons razed stronghold and sanctuary, burning their way slowly from the Eastern sides of Kaithe. With command of two thirds of his legions given to his trusted lieutenants, Drathil, the Elder Fang, and Vizhorek the Calamitous Heart, Mallifax would see the wide-spread annihilation of the human race.
To the north, Drathil took her forces to cleanse the northern mountains and plains of the Ingulans. Vizhorek laid waste to the Southlands, letting his corruption seep into the earth and soil. For his part, the Shroud of Shadows was content to let his arrival spread among the Western kingdoms. The better to strike fear into their hearts, drive refugees into their walls, the easier to kill them with little effort.
It is often romanticized in ballads and poems of how the three races worked together to stop the dragons’ advance before the rest of them fell. Do not believe the tales of tavern bards and troubadours, for it is all balderdash. Everyone was quick to point fingers and lay blame upon each other, alliances crumbling to ever-mounting hostility. The Ingulans blamed the Vethics for bringing “A Plague of Darkness” upon the land and fulfilling a cataclysmic prophecy; the Vethics cursed the Eridians for not protecting the Seas as they should have; they in turn blamed the Ingulans for not warning of the prophecy and quickly decamping at the first sign of trouble.
