Before the Great
Sundering, many battles were fought in the lands of Airthai. At the beginning
of the world, after the Shadow – the first of the Lewjan Lords – turned against
the Light, the first great battle was fought between the Lewjan and the Airus. The
Airus won and banished the Lewjan Lords into darkness. But in their dark
dwellings they planned and schemed and released many beasts into the world.
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| Airthai before the Great Sundering |
These slithering
wyrm-like creatures crept from the deepest, darkest caverns across the Great
Continent[1]
to slay those following the Light or turn them to their masters. They crept
along the ground on many legs, pulling their scaly bodies along the ground.
Their tails ended in a sharp sting dripping poison which could kill animal and
human alike and burnt the vegetation it came into contact with.
But the Light
saw everything and was ready for the Lewjan’s onslaught. The dragons of Airthai
were smaller than the Lewjan’s beasts, but were more in number and were nimble
enough to attack the beasts. The poison also did not hurt them as much as they
were protected by their scales. But many still died as they fought, though they
did not fight alone. The men of Airthai stood by the dragons and healed those
they could. They formed a great bond with the dragons and they were gifted the
means to communicate with them and could even control them with the right words.
But some of the dragons became wilder and their actions turned to malice as
they – and some of the men – fell under the spell of the Lewjan. These men,
instead of using their gift to keep the dragons and themselves safe, commanded
their dragons to kill, maim and plunder. But those who stayed true to the Light
refused to use the dragons like this and even made an oath along with the
dragons to the Creator to this end. Because they did this of their own, they
kept the gift of the dragon tongue while the others lost this gift and the
language turned to meaningless sounds in their mouths.
One by one the
beasts of the Lewjan fell. At last only two were left – one in the northern
part of the Western Lands and one to the south – close to where Marglóthborg
would one day be situated. Here there was a great battle between the shadow
dragons, the Lewjan’s beast, the fallen men and those men and dragons following
the light.
For four days
the fighting continued and blood drenched the ground while fires from dragon
tears left the ground under a layer of ash and smoke choked the air. Then, at
last, one of the men - Ardeo - came close enough to the beast to deal it its
death blow. But the death of the beast came at a great price, for Ardeo died
along with two more dragons; struck down in its death throes.
Those following
the Shadow fled if they were able to. The dead were buried on the plain and
even the dragons were given a hero’s farewell. Those who survived this day were
to become the Dragon Guardians.
The dragons
whose bodies remained on the plain, however, turned to stone and many tears
were shed which were buried with them; for at this time there were yet no way
to use a dragon’s heart for dark arts and it was not necessary to destroy a
dragon’s body.
During the
centuries which followed, the battle was remembered in stories, but the
battleground forgotten. Then, during the Sundering, the buried dragon tears
were found once more. Not knowing the power these stones held (as the Dragon
Guardians kept the secret well), they were mined simply as precious stones and
sold and traded. These stones had to be very carefully removed from the
surrounding rock and it was extremely time-consuming. The tears glowed in the
little light available in the tunnels, forever bathing the miners in strange
blue light. Some were said to go mad in the strange darkness and soon the mines
– which were held by only a few families – became a last resort to people who
had no other way of earning a living.
Other precious
stones and metals were also discovered in the vicinity and Marglóthborg became
a very rich city over the next few centuries, at last laying claim to the lands
from the Dragon Cliffs to the ridge beyond Black Harbour. It was a dry land,
but with their riches, trade goods were bought and sold from across the length
and breadth of the Continent and the Western Isles.
The city of
Marglóthborg was first written of in the story “The City of Promise”, written
for NaShoStoMo 2011. It can be read here.
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| Map of Southern Lands showing Marglóthborg |
[1] Before the Sundering
most of the landmasses on Airthai was compacted into one continent. Only after
the Sundering were there two major landmasses – the Sundered Lands and the
Continent.
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