Fantasy
Republic
“There weren’t always dragons in the valley. The valley was once beautiful and full of life. The birds sang in the trees. All are dead now. Your greed and your wish to be independent doomed all of your blood lines. In your arrogance you rebelled. You believed that God was on your side; that the capital in all its decadent glory had no taste for blood. That your kin, my ancestors, were weak and more interested in making money than praying to the one true God. You where wrong. Your rebellion sparked two decades of war. The horsemen of the dead South burnt the capital to the ground. The republic lost the wheat fields of the North and the centre provinces starved, but all of this was temporary. We rebuilt the capital and sent expeditions into the South to slaughter all they found. A thousand heads were used to line the walls of the capital. The northern provinces and more were brought into the fold of the Republic and then and only then did the Republic’s wrathful eye turn back to our little breakaway state that had started all the problems. Our armies surrounded you and gave you one last chance for redemption. The patriarch gave you a list of 562 names to be executed and their heads added to the wall of the capital. Your great leader laughed in our faces and told us that we would run out of room to bury our dead. My ancestors laughed to themselves. We had already run out of land to bury our dead. A week later the Republic marched into your lands and crushed your armies and then slaughtered your people. They burned every city and town to ground, they salted the land and carried away your cattle. All of this suffering did not satisfy the Republic. My ancestors brought five dragons into your valley and released them, telling you that you would only be forgiven once the dragons were dead. Until then your people must work as slaves to the Republic and now your time is running out as all can see the Republic’s institutions are dying. The Republic is an Empire in all but name and the legal scholars all agree that if the Republic ceases to exist your people can never be free again and will be slaves for ever.”
By matthew o,neal4 years ago in Fiction
In Laude Draconum
Prologue There weren’t always Dragons in the Valley. Just like there weren’t always sewer-elves in Pasadena. Or gangs of street goblins camped out all around the tar pits on La Brea. The truth is, the San Fernando Valley was a totally dragon-free zone until just 50 years ago. That, of course, is when a stealthy little squad of pixie-mages surprised everyone by conjuring up a giant frostjette long enough for the creature to punch a hole in the Mulholland Dam up in the Hollywood Hills. The resulting flood submerged everything from Los Feliz to Beverly Hills. And the Dragons, their cozy basement office-lairs in the Financial District now marinating under ten feet of water, winged it north to the Valley, where they’ve been contentedly conducting their money laundering, extortion and related grifting enterprises ever since.
By Christian Schoon4 years ago in Fiction
Wysterra: Origins
There were’nt always dragons in the Valley. They were pushed there, fleeing near extinction. Forced to hide in the darkness of the underground caves beneath the fertile ground of the Kingdom of Eadid above, the dragons of Eadid chose survival over thriving. It was prophecized that these dragons that hid in the darkness would travel to the Wyrm islands of the Ethereal World one day. There, they would find their sole purpose: to protect the spark of imagination born from the souls lost in the battle for control of Wysterra and all that is of the Physical and Ethereal Worlds. But that was what was to come, and this was now.
By T.A. Killen4 years ago in Fiction
The Drakin Guardian
Chapter 1 - Birth There weren’t always dragons in the valley. But the bone chilling winds, which swept over the jagged, white peaks of the Fangmounts, were shifting and changing. This wind, the Breath of Izestrom, swept over the great snow cornice—a dangerous, overhanging ledge—of the tallest peak, The Ancients’ Throne, where it was said that The Ancients, the first eight dragons, greatest among their kind, had held council in the distant past.
By Vijay Klassen4 years ago in Fiction
Awakened
“There weren’t always dragons in the Valley. For a long time, there weren’t dragons anywhere. They had died off, their numbers dwindling until everyone was sure that they were extinct. For a while there were people continuing to search for them, but they never found a living one. Years later, people began to spread rumors, claiming that they saw them circling this mountain, or attacking that castle, but none of them were true. Decades passed, then centuries, and gradually dragons faded into the hazy memory of society, becoming more myth than history. Five millennia have passed since the last dragon died, and the world is very different than it once was. But soon, myth, history, and the modern age will all collide. But that’s the end of the story. Let us return to the beginning. Everything that happened has been documented, so we know precisely how the tale began. It began with a walk.”
By Justin Elliott4 years ago in Fiction
The Destruction of Irori
There weren’t always dragons in the valley. Long before their arrival, even before the coming of men to that fair place, the valley knew only the summer song of the cicadas, and the autumnal scurrying of the squirrels over dead leaves. Destruction, decay, death; these things meant winter, nothing more. Life then was the new growth of spring. Ages slipped by without measure, for there were none who cared to count the days. Time was reckoned by shadow and light, by the height and the width of oak and elm, and while things were not always peaceful, ever was there balance in the valley.
By Greg Garcia4 years ago in Fiction
