Post by Ashurr on May 14, 2011 0:49:35 GMT -5
–10,000,000 YK
A World of Fiends:
Ten million years ago, Khyber’s fiendish offspring—the rakshashas,
night hags, demons, devils and their )a-Vakhti or “Overlords”—the rajahs of the rakshasas—burst forth from the deep darkness of the Dragon Below and overran the surface world, creating a hellish environment where rakshasas and night hags ruled supreme.3 The seas of Eberron were little better,
having become the domain of the alien aboleths. The aboleths were also children of Khyber, having arrived on Eberron from Xoriat, the Far Realm. Just as the fiends built hellish kingdoms of nightmare over most of Eberron’s surface, the aboleths established their own bizaree and incomprehensible
dwellings in every major ocean and sea of the young world.
–1,500,000 YK
The Great Dragon-Fiend War Begins:
After millions of years of oppression at the hands of
the fiends, the dragons of Argonessen, through the combined efforts of the blue dragon Ourelonastrix and the couatl Hezcalipa, rediscovered the draconic Prophecy and rose from their primitive state to oppose the fiendish Overlords, allying with the other draconic species descended from Siberys,
including the couatls. The common humanoid races of titans, humans, dwarves, halflings, orcs and goblins, all still in primitive states on their respective home continents, hid from the god-like combatants and found a way to survive the great conflict.
–100,000 YK
The Sacrifice of the Couatls:
After over a million years of war between dragonkind and the
fiends, the couatls sacrificed most of their race’s number in an unimaginably powerful ritual that banished the mightiest of the demon Overlords and the majority of the fiends back to Khyber, where they were trapped for eternity by the combined divine force of the couatl race, which became known
much later to the people of Khorvaire as the Silver Flame. Many night hags, foreseeing the coming doom of the fiendish races, fled instead to Thelanis where they soon became a major scourge of the fey peoples. Those aboleths who could not escape back to Xoriat fled into the deepest depths of the
underground seas of Khyber, there to wait the day the Silver Flame guttered out and they could seek their own revenge with the fiends against the great wyrms. The dragons retreated to Argonnessen to further contemplate the Prophecy, ignoring the “lesser races.”
The Blood of Khyber
untold millennia, the dragons were the sole lords of Eberron during the Age of Dragons. Then a new threat emerged some ten million years before the founding of the Kingdom of Galifar. Khyber was bound in the depths of Eberron, but this did not eliminate the dark Progenitor’s power. In
time, a host of horrors spawned in the depths. Rakshasas, night hags, and other demonic terrors emerged to lay claim to the world above. The greatest were the )a-Vakhti, the Overlords of Khyber, who were fiends of such power that they possessed strength easily equivalent to that of minor gods.
At this time, the dragons of Argonessen were organized into simple clans called flights, which fought with one another as often as not. Scattered and wild, they were no match for the sudden onslaught of the Overlords of Khyber and their legions of flying, crawling and shrieking fiends.
The Draconic Prophecy
After the mighty fiends consolidated their hold on the surface world, they ruled over a nightmare kingdom for millions of years. The once-proud dragons were forced into slavery and servitude. The fiendish dominion might have continued until the end of time, if not for the couatl Hezcalipa and a blue dragon named Ourelonastrix.
Working together over the course of centuries, these two visionaries studied the sky and stars, and compared their findings with mysterious patterns that appeared on the surface of the world. They became convinced that such study could reveal a map of the future, an outline of the myriad paths
history might follow. Ourelonastrix believed it to be the wisdom of the Progenitors, a blueprint for the shape of reality. He called it the draconic Prophecy, authored by Eberron and Siberys themselves in the form of the raw Prophecy marks that appeared in the bedrock of the world.
The Great War Between Dragons and Fiends
The draconic Prophecy gave Ourelonastrix insights into the weaknesses of the fiendish Overlords. Even more, it gave the dragon and his kin a sense of hope, the belief that dragons were part of something greater and grander than their own petty interests and problems. Following the path of the Prophecy, Ourelonastrix and Hezcalipa rallied their peoples against the children of Khyber, setting in motion a war that would continue for thousands of years. Despite their raw power—or perhaps, because of it—the Overlords and their followers were scattered and overconfident. This allowed the combined might of the dragon–couatl alliance to defeat them one by one.
Despite this advantage, the war against the fiends seemed hopeless. The Overlords were truly immortal. The defeat of an Overlord was only temporary at best since their forms were reborn in less than a day after their destruction in the depths of Khyber and no simple spell could bind them. The
fiends also had access to powerful weapons that could be used to devastating effect against the dragons. The most powerful of the Overlords, Tiamat, the Daughter of Khyber, created the Orbs of Dragonkind, artifacts that allowed the user to channel Tiamat’s infernal power to bind dragons to his will. Whatever the truth of this legend, these artifacts are both despised and desperately prized by the dragons of Argonnessen, who are determined to keep them out of the hands of mortal and fiend alike. It is believed that seven of the Orbs are currently held in the hoards of the mightiest elder wyrms of
Argonnessen; the remaining are currently unaccounted for. Several other Orbs are known to have been created by other races, perhaps with fiendish aid. The giants of Xen’drik, for example, are known to have fashioned two Orbs of Dragonkind before their own conflict with the dragons.
Then the couatl Hezcalipa’s studies uncovered a path to victory. Indeed, the outcome appeared foreordained in the Prophecy. Still, the cost was terrible. Led by Hezcalipa, the couatls sacrificed almost their entire race, using a powerful magical ritual to forge their immortal essence into a pure divine force for righteous good later called the Silver Flame. Once unleashed, this divine force could hold the Overlords and their dire followers within arcane prisons in the depths of the Dragon Below. Some fiends escaped this imprisonment and fled to the Demon Wastes on the northwestern corner of the continent of Khorvaire. There they formed an organization known as the
Lords of Dust dedicated to restoring the rule of the fiends over the world, but the war was won.
Although the dragons fought fiercely, some scholars believe that they abandoned the couatls at the end, refusing to share the cost of the final sacrifice of binding the fiends in the darkness of Khyber. It is possible that this abandonment was a matter of fear, although that seems unlikely in a
race as powerful as that of the dragons. It might be that, being mortal, the dragons simply did not have the same spiritual energy required to bind the fiends as did the couatls. The feathered serpents had been born from the more pure essence of Siberys and thus were immortal celestial creatures just
as the children of Khyber were fiends born from the dark essence of the Dragon Below. Perhaps the dragons’ survival was a calculated decision. Whatever the truth, the self-sacrifice of the couatls removed both celestials and fiends from the day-to-day life of Eberron, leaving the dragons as masters of the Prophecy and the most powerful beings in the world.
Draconic Expansion and Withdrawal
The Great War against the fiends united the dragons as never before. It forced them to set aside their petty rivalries and to master the arcane powers that had long lain dormant within them. The surviving dragons were more powerful than ever before, but their population had been devastated
by the long battle. Following the defeat of the Overlords, most of the surviving dragons retreated to the sanctuary of Argonnessen. The elder wyrms gathered in the first great Draconic Conclave of Argonessen and laid the foundation of draconic culture that remains in place to this day. The survivors spent tens of thousands of years nursing their wounds, rebuilding their flights, identifying
and studying the signs of the Prophecy and honing the magical gifts they had developed during the war. In time, some began to look beyond Argonnessen, and to explore the lands they rediscovered.
Sixty thousand years ago, the dragons began spreading across Eberron again. They found dozens of growing humanoid civilizations—kingdoms of giants and their titan forebears in Xen’drik, primitive clans of dwarves on the arctic continent of the Frostfell north of Khorvaire, nomadic groups of shifters and humans in Sarlona, and the nascent goblin and orc races in Khorvaire. Some merely wished to study the lesser creatures. A few came as mentors, foremost among them the descendants of Ourelonastrix. These dragons shared the secrets of arcane magic with the giants, curious to see what innovations these promising creatures might develop. But the bulk of the dragons chose the path
of conquest. Flights of dragons carved out new dominions across the world.
For most of the dragons, it began as a game—one with a high cost in life among nondragons. In time, however, the struggle turned dragon against dragon. Friendly rivalries became bitter. The blood of dragons flowed. And as the troubles spread, the Daughter of Khyber stirred in the Pit of Five Sorrows. Hundreds of dragons fell under her sway, and the spawn of Tiamat rose from tainted broods. Given time to spread, this infernal corruption could have destroyed Argonnessen.
Fortunately for the dragons, the watchful Eyes of Chronepsis, the draconic guardians of the law, were able to identify the tainted dragons, and the militant Light of Siberys, the dragons’ military force, brought an end to the corruption. The Conclave gathered at a massive natural aerie in the heart of Argonnessen. There the students of the draconic Prophecy presented their findings. To this day, the records of this gathering remain privileged information even within Argonnessen, shared only with the most respected and powerful elder wyrms. Most dragons believe that the seers linked Tiamat’s rising power to the spread of draconic activity across the globe—opining that the influence of the dragon lords in turn empowered the Daughter of Khyber and weakened her prison. One fact is known: Following the council, the Conclave called on the scattered dragons to return to Argonnessen. the age of draconic expansion across Eberron was at an end. Outside of Argonessen, the world would now be inherited by the “lesser races.”
3 The Overlords were also known as “Primordials” since they were the oldest and most powerful of the children of Khyber. )a-Vakhti was an expression in the Abyssal and Primordial tongues that means “Overlord.” Abyssal was a
corruption of Primodial, the language spoken by most of the Overlords. Today, these entities are more commonly called the rakshasa rajahs, since they are the entities that the rakshasas of Eberron serve, but these beings are in no way
rakshasas themselves. The term “fiendish Overlord” is far more accurate and will be used here.
A World of Fiends:
Ten million years ago, Khyber’s fiendish offspring—the rakshashas,
night hags, demons, devils and their )a-Vakhti or “Overlords”—the rajahs of the rakshasas—burst forth from the deep darkness of the Dragon Below and overran the surface world, creating a hellish environment where rakshasas and night hags ruled supreme.3 The seas of Eberron were little better,
having become the domain of the alien aboleths. The aboleths were also children of Khyber, having arrived on Eberron from Xoriat, the Far Realm. Just as the fiends built hellish kingdoms of nightmare over most of Eberron’s surface, the aboleths established their own bizaree and incomprehensible
dwellings in every major ocean and sea of the young world.
–1,500,000 YK
The Great Dragon-Fiend War Begins:
After millions of years of oppression at the hands of
the fiends, the dragons of Argonessen, through the combined efforts of the blue dragon Ourelonastrix and the couatl Hezcalipa, rediscovered the draconic Prophecy and rose from their primitive state to oppose the fiendish Overlords, allying with the other draconic species descended from Siberys,
including the couatls. The common humanoid races of titans, humans, dwarves, halflings, orcs and goblins, all still in primitive states on their respective home continents, hid from the god-like combatants and found a way to survive the great conflict.
–100,000 YK
The Sacrifice of the Couatls:
After over a million years of war between dragonkind and the
fiends, the couatls sacrificed most of their race’s number in an unimaginably powerful ritual that banished the mightiest of the demon Overlords and the majority of the fiends back to Khyber, where they were trapped for eternity by the combined divine force of the couatl race, which became known
much later to the people of Khorvaire as the Silver Flame. Many night hags, foreseeing the coming doom of the fiendish races, fled instead to Thelanis where they soon became a major scourge of the fey peoples. Those aboleths who could not escape back to Xoriat fled into the deepest depths of the
underground seas of Khyber, there to wait the day the Silver Flame guttered out and they could seek their own revenge with the fiends against the great wyrms. The dragons retreated to Argonnessen to further contemplate the Prophecy, ignoring the “lesser races.”
The Blood of Khyber
untold millennia, the dragons were the sole lords of Eberron during the Age of Dragons. Then a new threat emerged some ten million years before the founding of the Kingdom of Galifar. Khyber was bound in the depths of Eberron, but this did not eliminate the dark Progenitor’s power. In
time, a host of horrors spawned in the depths. Rakshasas, night hags, and other demonic terrors emerged to lay claim to the world above. The greatest were the )a-Vakhti, the Overlords of Khyber, who were fiends of such power that they possessed strength easily equivalent to that of minor gods.
At this time, the dragons of Argonessen were organized into simple clans called flights, which fought with one another as often as not. Scattered and wild, they were no match for the sudden onslaught of the Overlords of Khyber and their legions of flying, crawling and shrieking fiends.
The Draconic Prophecy
After the mighty fiends consolidated their hold on the surface world, they ruled over a nightmare kingdom for millions of years. The once-proud dragons were forced into slavery and servitude. The fiendish dominion might have continued until the end of time, if not for the couatl Hezcalipa and a blue dragon named Ourelonastrix.
Working together over the course of centuries, these two visionaries studied the sky and stars, and compared their findings with mysterious patterns that appeared on the surface of the world. They became convinced that such study could reveal a map of the future, an outline of the myriad paths
history might follow. Ourelonastrix believed it to be the wisdom of the Progenitors, a blueprint for the shape of reality. He called it the draconic Prophecy, authored by Eberron and Siberys themselves in the form of the raw Prophecy marks that appeared in the bedrock of the world.
The Great War Between Dragons and Fiends
The draconic Prophecy gave Ourelonastrix insights into the weaknesses of the fiendish Overlords. Even more, it gave the dragon and his kin a sense of hope, the belief that dragons were part of something greater and grander than their own petty interests and problems. Following the path of the Prophecy, Ourelonastrix and Hezcalipa rallied their peoples against the children of Khyber, setting in motion a war that would continue for thousands of years. Despite their raw power—or perhaps, because of it—the Overlords and their followers were scattered and overconfident. This allowed the combined might of the dragon–couatl alliance to defeat them one by one.
Despite this advantage, the war against the fiends seemed hopeless. The Overlords were truly immortal. The defeat of an Overlord was only temporary at best since their forms were reborn in less than a day after their destruction in the depths of Khyber and no simple spell could bind them. The
fiends also had access to powerful weapons that could be used to devastating effect against the dragons. The most powerful of the Overlords, Tiamat, the Daughter of Khyber, created the Orbs of Dragonkind, artifacts that allowed the user to channel Tiamat’s infernal power to bind dragons to his will. Whatever the truth of this legend, these artifacts are both despised and desperately prized by the dragons of Argonnessen, who are determined to keep them out of the hands of mortal and fiend alike. It is believed that seven of the Orbs are currently held in the hoards of the mightiest elder wyrms of
Argonnessen; the remaining are currently unaccounted for. Several other Orbs are known to have been created by other races, perhaps with fiendish aid. The giants of Xen’drik, for example, are known to have fashioned two Orbs of Dragonkind before their own conflict with the dragons.
Then the couatl Hezcalipa’s studies uncovered a path to victory. Indeed, the outcome appeared foreordained in the Prophecy. Still, the cost was terrible. Led by Hezcalipa, the couatls sacrificed almost their entire race, using a powerful magical ritual to forge their immortal essence into a pure divine force for righteous good later called the Silver Flame. Once unleashed, this divine force could hold the Overlords and their dire followers within arcane prisons in the depths of the Dragon Below. Some fiends escaped this imprisonment and fled to the Demon Wastes on the northwestern corner of the continent of Khorvaire. There they formed an organization known as the
Lords of Dust dedicated to restoring the rule of the fiends over the world, but the war was won.
Although the dragons fought fiercely, some scholars believe that they abandoned the couatls at the end, refusing to share the cost of the final sacrifice of binding the fiends in the darkness of Khyber. It is possible that this abandonment was a matter of fear, although that seems unlikely in a
race as powerful as that of the dragons. It might be that, being mortal, the dragons simply did not have the same spiritual energy required to bind the fiends as did the couatls. The feathered serpents had been born from the more pure essence of Siberys and thus were immortal celestial creatures just
as the children of Khyber were fiends born from the dark essence of the Dragon Below. Perhaps the dragons’ survival was a calculated decision. Whatever the truth, the self-sacrifice of the couatls removed both celestials and fiends from the day-to-day life of Eberron, leaving the dragons as masters of the Prophecy and the most powerful beings in the world.
Draconic Expansion and Withdrawal
The Great War against the fiends united the dragons as never before. It forced them to set aside their petty rivalries and to master the arcane powers that had long lain dormant within them. The surviving dragons were more powerful than ever before, but their population had been devastated
by the long battle. Following the defeat of the Overlords, most of the surviving dragons retreated to the sanctuary of Argonnessen. The elder wyrms gathered in the first great Draconic Conclave of Argonessen and laid the foundation of draconic culture that remains in place to this day. The survivors spent tens of thousands of years nursing their wounds, rebuilding their flights, identifying
and studying the signs of the Prophecy and honing the magical gifts they had developed during the war. In time, some began to look beyond Argonnessen, and to explore the lands they rediscovered.
Sixty thousand years ago, the dragons began spreading across Eberron again. They found dozens of growing humanoid civilizations—kingdoms of giants and their titan forebears in Xen’drik, primitive clans of dwarves on the arctic continent of the Frostfell north of Khorvaire, nomadic groups of shifters and humans in Sarlona, and the nascent goblin and orc races in Khorvaire. Some merely wished to study the lesser creatures. A few came as mentors, foremost among them the descendants of Ourelonastrix. These dragons shared the secrets of arcane magic with the giants, curious to see what innovations these promising creatures might develop. But the bulk of the dragons chose the path
of conquest. Flights of dragons carved out new dominions across the world.
For most of the dragons, it began as a game—one with a high cost in life among nondragons. In time, however, the struggle turned dragon against dragon. Friendly rivalries became bitter. The blood of dragons flowed. And as the troubles spread, the Daughter of Khyber stirred in the Pit of Five Sorrows. Hundreds of dragons fell under her sway, and the spawn of Tiamat rose from tainted broods. Given time to spread, this infernal corruption could have destroyed Argonnessen.
Fortunately for the dragons, the watchful Eyes of Chronepsis, the draconic guardians of the law, were able to identify the tainted dragons, and the militant Light of Siberys, the dragons’ military force, brought an end to the corruption. The Conclave gathered at a massive natural aerie in the heart of Argonnessen. There the students of the draconic Prophecy presented their findings. To this day, the records of this gathering remain privileged information even within Argonnessen, shared only with the most respected and powerful elder wyrms. Most dragons believe that the seers linked Tiamat’s rising power to the spread of draconic activity across the globe—opining that the influence of the dragon lords in turn empowered the Daughter of Khyber and weakened her prison. One fact is known: Following the council, the Conclave called on the scattered dragons to return to Argonnessen. the age of draconic expansion across Eberron was at an end. Outside of Argonessen, the world would now be inherited by the “lesser races.”
3 The Overlords were also known as “Primordials” since they were the oldest and most powerful of the children of Khyber. )a-Vakhti was an expression in the Abyssal and Primordial tongues that means “Overlord.” Abyssal was a
corruption of Primodial, the language spoken by most of the Overlords. Today, these entities are more commonly called the rakshasa rajahs, since they are the entities that the rakshasas of Eberron serve, but these beings are in no way
rakshasas themselves. The term “fiendish Overlord” is far more accurate and will be used here.