The Age of Silence

Before there were kingdoms, there was silence.

Before there were dragons, there was only possibility.

Aereth was born, changed, and endured through ages beyond reckoning. Unlike Earth, no great extinction swept away its ancient giants. Megafauna endured beside their smaller descendants, and from the oldest draconic lineages arose two destinies: the reptilian Wyvernis and the warm-blooded Ddraig, sole survivors of the family Draconidae.

Long before humanity raised its first cities, the Ddraig became guardians of Aereth's living balance. They understood a truth every generation would later rediscover:

To wound the balance of the world is to wound oneself.

Thus began the Age of Dragons.

The Age of Dragons

The oldest dragonsongs do not reckon time as mortals do. They remember mountains before their names, seas before their shores, and the slow brightening and darkening of the Ley across countless Turns.

As the ages passed, the great terrestrial dragons grew in intellect as well as size. They gathered in volcanic highlands, where the heat of the earth warmed their nests, and their scattered aeries became the first great sieges. They possessed the wit to devise written language yet chose instead to preserve memory in dragonsong: histories carried from one generation to the next in voice, image, emotion, and living remembrance.

The Ddraig also learned to read the rhythms of Gwydion's luminous rings. When the Ley brightened, life flourished and the influence of the Light strengthened. When the rings darkened, creatures of the Shadow became bolder and the boundaries between worlds seemed less certain.

Thus, the eldest people of Aereth became more than hunters and rulers of the sky. They became watchers. In time, they became guardians.