Dranik and the Dragorn

The Great Father

Dranik, the Great Father, was “the largest and most powerful dragon of all the skies in all the universes,” and an unfathomable force that meant to end dragonkind attacked him. As he lay bleeding into the barren lands of Kuua, nature flourished as it never had: dust turned to green and trees, and creatures rose from the ground where his blood fell. So the dragorn’s own scripture begins.

Born of a dying dragon

Before he died he defied that power one last time. He commanded his weakened body to become one with the earth of Kuua, then raised his claw and tore his own flesh to create the dragorn in his image. His claw gouged the earth and made Dranik’s Scar, the birthplace of the dragorn.

That is why the dragorn gather their bloodmagic from the ground: Dranik’s blood fell there. As their primer puts it, they rely on the Great Father even though his body is dead, because his blood’s will lives on in the earth and in them.

Discord’s poison

Then the poison of Discord darkened their minds, and brother turned against brother. The noble Yemall recorded his failed attempts to cure it in the Duskfall Chronicles. Many dragorn were exiled to the Scar.

When the skies darkened

The dragorn remember what came before. Once Kuua’s skies were blue with wisps of light cloud; then they filled with ash, and “the dragorns’ minds darkened first, then the skies did the same.” Yemall sensed the sickness on the air before the fighting began, “like a rippling wave of dark magic” that could not be felt or touched. A spy notes that Noble Jimal was ill for the first time in his life and Noble Mikuv grew paranoid. An architect who spent two years planning a new city quarter, hoping it would give the warring dragorn a shared purpose, watched the council abandon it. The fields where Yuvarr saw his father and brother slain are called the Bloodfields now; they were once the Greenfields.

The Muramite invasion

The Muramites poured through a tear near the Fortress of Serenity, which became the Wall of Slaughter. The High Council of Eight fell. Overlook Tower, a monument as well as a lookout, built where legend says Dranik laid his head to rest, was renamed Harbinger’s Spire, and Mata Muram uses it as a beacon for news of his domain; his captains carry infused crystal shards to send signals from it.

A people at war with itself

The survivors carry the cost. Jurrock in the City of Dranik has seen his brothers and friends fight each other and his city fall to a conqueror. At the Wall of Slaughter the chaplain Korshawn buried every member of his unit one by one, until only he was left. In Dranik’s Scar a soldier going by Shorvock admits he is really Durhosk, a captain under Rurof the Negotiator, who survived only because he was patrolling the southern flank when Rurof and the rest of their company died in the explosion at Dranik.

Call to arms

The exiles answered with a “Call to Arms” to march on Dranik. That is where Omens of War placed its players in 2005: allied with the exiled dragorn against Mata Muram’s armies.