A Brief Essay on the History of the World with a Focus on Dragon Culture

In the Beginning

Dragons are, for lack of a better word, immortal. Their lifespans seem to have no limit, though injury and disease have cut most of them down at this point. This being the case, you would think we would know more about the early days of their history, but there are some things that we can only guess about.

The question of how Bahamut came into being is a deeply controversial one, and so we will leave it for now. Most records of his life are those of his worshippers. Less biased, perhaps, are those stories told about him by his children. But even they cannot bear witness to how the Wyrms came to exist, and to sleep under the earth for so many years.

Bahamut’s children were the first true dragons. Among them were Velius and Tiamut, the two oldest, who had featherless wings; Bashomayi, with no wings; and the two youngest, Tezcatlipoca and Topiltzin, who have feathered wings. Bahamut is said to have had dozens of children, but these five are the most often mentioned.

Catinae is also an important child of Bahamut in many records, but the existence of a separate cult in her name confuses the issue. She is worshipped as the mother of written language and protector of scholars. Her status as a daughter of Bahamut may have been developed as a concession to pressure from the church of Bahamut to acknowledge their god’s supremacy.

The Wyrms

Velius is best known for his role in beginning the war with the Wyrms. His own writings on that period of time have come down to us, and though they seem quite consistent and reliable, there is no way to be sure how much they may have changed. On one point they are perfectly clear: Velius found and woke the Wyrms completely by accident. Some believe this insistence is suspicious in itself, and especially when combined with the lack of information about the journey that led him to that remote place in what would become Antarctica.

The dragon population at this point had reached a few million, but that would quickly be changed. The Wyrms were savage, mindless, and much larger than true dragons. The dragons had not yet had to defend themselves in battle, and were only used to using their claws for hunting the small, soft-skinned creatures that they ate. Thousands of them died before they learned to fight the Wyrms effectively.

Velius proved to have a gift for this new role as a warrior. He stood beside Bahamut in leading the other dragons into battle. He personally killed the largest Wyrm, who had become their leader. That was the turning point of the war. Velius harvested the tooth of that Wyrm as a trophy of his victory.

Bahamut himself was not as lucky. He died protecting his descendants from the Wyrms. When Bahamut died, his status seems to have changed from legendary patriarchal figure to deity.

The Landscape Changes

Dragons are cold-blooded, and so their survival during the great ice ages depended on their intelligence, resourcefulness, and their legendary affinity for fire. That they breathed it is now thought to have been a common form of magic, and not any kind of physically innate ability. The spells developed during this period increased dragonkind’s knowledge of the potential of fire magic immensely.

Of course, during this time mammals were gaining a dominant position in the ecology of the world. At first they were very small, which meant that dragons didn’t give them much thought. When they did, it was as a new kind of animal to hunt for food. When communities of humans, apparently intelligent, were discovered in Africa, it came as something of a shock.

Still, most dragons saw this as an opportunity to share their own knowledge and traditions with this new intelligent race that had joined them on Earth. Bashomayi seems to have been in a high position of power during this time, and she is often cited by her modern-day followers as saying that peace between intelligent races is sacred and must be maintained at all costs.

Human civilization flourished under the care of dragons. Together the two races built great cities, and explored the possibilities of magic and technology.

Velius resurfaced around this time, claiming to have found (or perhaps remembered) something that his father Bahamut had said during the Wyrm wars. Its main message was sometimes translated as “Your lot will always be war, as long as you remain true dragons. But the future sons of earth may yet overcome you.” There are a thousand other interpretations, but Velius believed it heralded the destruction of dragonkind, unless they separated themselves from humans.

Bashomayi, Tiamut and most of the other dragons in power decided there was no reason to act on this possible warning. Velius’s oldest living son, Nash, took his father’s fears to heart, but interpreted the message as a warning that humans were not to be trusted. Nash, along with Tezcatlipoca, who also mistrusted the humans, began forming a group of dragons who thought as they did, and began gradually enslaving humans to ensure that they remained under control, and would not become a threat to the draconian empire.

The two dragons trained their human slaves as an army. They sent their slaves on secret raids against their fellow dragons, in order to convince Bashomayi and her followers of the humans’ savagery.

The First Civil War

Bashomayi stood firm in her position that humans were to be cherished and guarded, even at the cost of Draconic lives. She believed that humans had been created by a divine being for an important purpose. Most of her descendants and those of Bahamut’s other wingless children stood by her, as well as Topiltzin, who was finally convinced that his twin brother was insane. They stood against the winged dragons, led by Nash, who in the heat of argument once went so far as to say that humans were in fact not intelligent – that if dragons had not taught them, they would have still been squatting in the dirt like any other animal. Nash’s followers called themselves Moverekt, the Draconic word for “defiant.”

Exactly how the war started is unclear. They say that history is written by the victors, but no one triumphed in this first of the great dragon civil wars.

Bashomayi and her followers rushed to protect the center of human civilization, the city of Atlantis. Tezcatlipoca had perfected the destructive use of fire magic, and while the humans and their protectors were all together, he unleashed it on the city. Bashomayi tried to protect the city with her own water magic, but when the blast hit she died, and the water under the command of her spell was released, and flooded the city. Both humans and dragons were forced to flee.

Bashomayi’s followers, somewhat discouraged after her death, wondered whether continuing to fight was in the best interests of humanity and themselves. They discovered a spell which allowed them to appear in a humanoid form, which they used to hide from the Moverekt and help many of the humans to flee to the east, away from the worst of the destruction. Topiltzin also took a small group to the Americas.

During their time in hiding, Bashomayi’s followers inevitably discovered that humans and dragons could interbreed using this spell. These half-dragons had a much lower gestation time than dragons, but had nearly all of their physical strengths. They also had both the draconic talent for magic and the human talent for craftsmanship and technology. Bashomayi’s followers began calling themselves Vulcanians, a corruption of the Draconic word for craftsman. With training, the young halfbloods were quite helpful in defending the newly-claimed Vulcanian lands.

Shocked by this new development, the Moverekt withdrew in order to plan and study. Human civilization in Europe began to recover, eventually remembering dragons only as mythical evil beasts.

This was reinforced by rumors of maidens being kidnapped, which were actually part of the Moverekt’s experiments in interbreeding. They found that a dragon female cannot carry a half-dragon to term, as her system is meant for egg-laying, and so the female must be a human. The fruits of these experiments were treated as slaves by the Moverekt purebloods. The Moverekt had no knowledge of the disguise spell which the Vulcanians had developed.

The Vulcanians organized themselves into five clans, each with their own hidden settlement in Asia, where young half-dragons would train in their chosen clan’s specialty. The Silver Horn clan, as the warrior clan, was the largest, and the farthest west. The Iron Scale clan settled on the coast of China, where craftsmen and artisans were trained. The Golden Scroll clan, in charge of keeping Bahamut’s writings alive, established themselves in India. The Cobalt Scroll clan kept records, and the Copper Eye clan studied science, medicine and magic.

The Second Draconic Civil War

By the medieval era, the fighting between the two groups had fully resumed, but took place mainly between half-dragons. The humans living in Europe at the time were no longer aware of the Moverekt culture in their midst, but only of war, chaos and the occasional dragon attack. Most of the humans of Asia knew only that heroes and spirits protected them.

Through spying the Moverekt eventually learned the disguise spell, but Nash kept the knowledge secret for fear that it would dilute the Moverekt bloodlines as it had the Vulcanian. Nash became obsessed with the purity of the dragon race, and began to pursue the young pureblood Myara Guivre as a mate. He continued the war in the hope of taking control of the Vulcanian population and preserving their remaining true dragon bloodlines.

Tezcatlipoca began teaching his destructive magic to a few of the Moverekt half-dragon soldiers. For some reason completely unforeseen by either Tezcatlipoca or Nash, the spells are much more powerful in the hands of half-dragons. The ensuing campaign was so chaotic and destructive that not only were huge numbers of Vulcanians wiped out, but also many of the Moverekt soldiers, including some of their fullblood generals who were watching from a distance.

Tezcatlipoca feared punishment for his catastrophic failure, and so he fled to the Americas, where it is believed that he met his twin brother Topiltzin. Neither of them were seen again.

One of the results of this campaign was the Battle of the Red Glade, which is a mystery to this day. The destruction of the valley was thought to be fairly comprehensive, but most of the dragons and half-dragons walked away mysteriously unharmed, including a young Moverekt half-blood slave named Isis. That day she decided to separate from the Moverekt and form her own organization, devoted to life above all else and the pursuit of medical knowledge. This was the origin of the Red Glade clan.

In the aftermath of this battle, Nash found his father Velius’s body, one of the few casualties of the massively destructive magic that was used.

Many of the people who survived the battle decided to join Isis’s Red Glade clan, including Velius’s son Meronteth, one of the few remaining pureblood dragons. He and Isis married soon after, which Nash took as a mortal insult. Meronteth had originally agreed with his brother Nash that maintaining the pureblood dragon bloodlines was a priority.

The Truce

The overall death toll of this second war, in both dragons and humans, caused both sides to consider a truce. Nash knew the Moverekt could not afford to lose any more pureblood dragons. The terms eventually agreed upon were:

1.Both sides will be under a permanent form of the disguise spell, and will hide their presence from humans.

2.No dragon will kill a human.

3.No Moverekt will kill a Vulcanian, or any Vulcanian a Moverekt.

4.No destructive magic will be allowed.

In fact, magic outside of that necessary to hide themselves was frowned upon after the possible danger was revealed. Only the Red Glade clan still used and researched magic.

Three of the Vulcanian settlements had been destroyed in the war, and rather than rebuild, the three displaced clans decided to withdraw to the remaining settlements in China and India until they knew where they would be most needed.

With the truce and the newly reinforced disguise spell, the Moverekt were forced to find their place in human culture. Nash and Myara married and settled in Italy, and Nash began building his criminal empire.

As this new Moverekt organization spread over the world, Vulcanian settlements were built to keep an eye on their activities. When Nash moved to Philadelphia in the 1700’s, plans began to move the warrior clan Silver Horn’s base there.

A group of humans calling themselves the “Pale Knights” emerged as the enemy of all dragons, declaring that they would kill off all of Bahamut’s descendants, leaving the earth safe for humans. The Pale Knights were made an exception to the “no kill” rule, but the Vulcanians still thought of it as a sin, and agreed only grudgingly. Moverekt, on the other hand, thought of hunting Pale Knights as a kind of sport, and killed many more of the Knights than the Knights killed dragons.

Nash’s Moverekt organization in America grew along with the population. Nash’s oldest daughter Lilanq went missing for several years, and there are rumors that she and Nash were estranged for some reason. But in 1845 Lilanq appeared in California during the gold rush. After establishing a place for hereself in the criminal activity there, she resumed a business relationship with her father Nash. This expanded the Moverekt’s range of influence considerably. Lilanq moved her main office to Las Vegas in the 1930’s, where she remains to this day.

The Cobalt Scroll and Copper Eye clans rebuilt their compounds in the Pacific Northwest. The Copper Eye clan’s focus has been much more on science since the last war and the restrictions put on the use of magic.

As human weapons technology became more advanced, the Pale Knights became a real danger to dragons. In the 1980’s Nash’s wife Myara was killed by a Pale Knight sniper, shortly after the birth of their third child. There are some signs that this was a turning point for Nash’s leadership of the Moverekt, and that he may be planning to break the treaty and assert more control over humans.

These rumors may have reached the Red Glade. Shortly after Myara’s murder, Meronteth left Isis and their child, hoping the information gained about the Vulcanians during his time with the Red Glade Clan would prove valuable to Nash. Things must not have gone as planned, since Meronteth never left his brother’s office alive.

Today the Vulcanian population consists only of a few thousand half-dragons. None of the pureblood dragons who helped create their society survived the last war. The Red Glade clan is also made up entirely of half-dragons. Their numbers are difficult to calculate since they have no fixed settlements, and are often spread across the world.

Nash and his three children are the only known surviving pureblood dragons. The other Moverekt houses are led by those halfbloods who can claim the purest draconic heritage, although the proportions of human and dragon blood don’t seem to make a difference biologically. Any blend of human and dragon ancestors seems to create a person with the same characteristics as the original half-dragons.

The actual number of Moverekt halfbloods in Nash’s organization is also unknown.



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Dragon's Fall is Copyright William Righetti and Irene Pitcairn 2008-2011. Dragon's Fall is hosted on ComicGenesis, a free webhosting and site automation service for webcomics.