Medders

We are all borne of the Wyrm, the great serpent who encompasses the world, whose breath draws the life unto us, and whose words are the words of binding, most primal of that which man calls sorcery. For she is nature, known to some as Gaia, Messah to others, Dondinia to yet others though she is older still than that name; she was the beginning and will be the end.

Before the great Kings of Men, before the Elvenkind, before the laws of the Virtues there was only the Wyrm. Not good or evil, she is the purest heart of the world, loving as a doe to her fawn, cruel as a winter?s storm. Life and death are just part of a cycle to her, all her issue return to her eventually.

In the first of days, she cast her breath across the face of the world, and to the fore came her children, the Dragons. From the most ancient of the wyrms, through the varying colours of dragons, to the drakes and wyverns, they held court over the world, and all fell beneath their diamond eyes.

And so the world turned, unchanging for millennia. New races came into being, at one with the Wyrm and her children. The oldest were the Elvenkin, borne unto the green woods of the world and granted the tomes of the Wyrm?s knowledge. Here followed the Khazad, the Smiths, who dwelt below the mountains in Annwn, where they crafted artefacts and pursued the science of the world.

But then a new age came, and a race grew in knowledge and power. Where the Wyrm was innocent in nature, the new borne were cunning and manipulative. The Elvenkin, those who had been entrusted with the Wyrm?s knowledge, found that even with their long lives the knowledge given unto them had faded; so a new race was brought forward; short in years, measured in the passing of a hand full of seasons, and unto them she entrusted her knowledge, that the quick turn of generations would keep this lore fresh, and at the forefront of their minds.

But this new race, this race of men saw those who had come before, and grew jealous that they should only have a short span on this earth. That jealousy blackened their hearts, some struck out at those they envied, and great wars were fought between the Elves and Men. Even the Dragonkin, mighty though they were, were hunted by those that would live on in history as heroes. Soon unto them the knowledge was lost in favour of the sciences of war craft.

Others though coveted this knowledge in a hope of unlocking the secrets to long life; these men became twisted sorcerers, whose long life wrought a terrible price on their health and sanity, they preyed on their own kind to restore their health, and loathed themselves so much that the hid from the sun, lest they should glimpse a reflection of their corrupted image.

The Wyrm saw what had happened among her children and wept in despair, and her tears formed the great oceans of the world. But still she wept, and a great flood consumed the world. She drew unto her the first borne, those great Dragons that the Ancient Wyrms of today are all but a crude shadow of, and she lifted up her Elven children, and gave them the White Ships to sail forth on.

Of the race of men, she drew unto her those that had stayed true to her, and within them she placed her breath, and the Ancients were borne, of which I, Merddyn, am one of that line.

As her tears stopped, and the waters drew back from the land, she looked out on what was left of her fourth borne children. Their civilisation destroyed, some had taken to the mountains and found homes in caves there. These she left, and they would one day become the founders of the peoples of this world. Of the heroes, the High Men, some too had survived, and from these the race of High Kings, the Pendragons of the land came forth, and she entrusted their guidance to the Ancients, that they would uphold her Codes and Laws, and defend her earth.

This done, and the knowledge that had corrupted the land all but forgotten, she slept, curling herself around the world, and left her earth to the Pendragons and Ancients, the children of the Great Dragons and the Elvenkind, now returned from the seas.

But little did she know that some of the Nightbreed also survived, and wrought upon the earth monstrous creations to do their bidding.

And so it falls to the line of Pendragon to defend the peoples of this world from these evils, counselled by the Ancients, and each in turn calling forth Knights to ride the land and act upon the Old Codes. And so we follow our path, generation through generations.

But I fear in my time, though I see the greatest of the Pendragons before me, and his Knights a reflection of the heroes of yore, the darkness grows more powerful, and the line of Kings will fall when they are needed most. I shall leave what knowledge I can before I fade back to the Wyrms embrace, and I call upon the favours of the Elven Master Smiths, that we leave the means to combat this darkness with reach of those who would choose the hardest Road, even if it takes them through the mists and into the lands beyond?

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