There is only sourcestone. That which does not touch sourcestone, is not. Only sourcestone shapes the shapeless, materializes the immaterial, expresses elemental energy as tangible places and things.
At a nexus of the elemental planes, the gods found a great mass of sourcestone, which they shaped into a world and named Telara. As a blacksmith hammers steel upon an anvil, the gods shaped elemental energy against the sourcestone. They made the mountains and the seas, the teeming woods, the birds wheeling in the sky, and the death that creeps after all that is.
The gods breathed life into Telara’s peoples, the races following the gods as divine nature spoke to mortal. For Tavril, we guarded the wild. For Bahralt, the Dwarves delved deep, seeking to build a city as elegant as a hammer and anvil. The humans in the north were righteous and just, like Thedeor. In the south, the nomads bowed before no single god.
All was peace and plenty. Telara long lay like a field, the worst strife no more than a wind whipping the tall grass. Yet this field was far too fertile to go unclaimed for long. So rich with sourcestone, so set between the planes, so young, Telara was nearly consumed.
A sailor might see a shark feed, and say he has seen hunger, or through a shark’s black eyes he might understand hunger and go mad. This is the difference between the true nature of the Blood Storm, and the dragon forms they take upon Telara.
The Blood Storm roamed the cosmos, cracking worlds for their sourcestone like marrow from living bones. Their trail of annihilation led them to Telara, and in the forms of vast dragons, the Blood Storm fell upon our world in a frenzy of greed.The dread gods unleashed disasters and monstrosities of every sort. Wayward mortals even joined the dragons’ cause, willing to unmake the world for power and a place under those great leathery wings. Telara trembled on oblivion’s brink, before the Blood Storm splintered, driven apart by their awful natures.
Each of the five lesser dragons saw in Telara the image of their own dreams and lusts, but Regulos, the mightiest, would not hear of leaving even a single world intact in his quest to devour all creation. The other dragons of the Blood Storm fell upon him, and as their battle tore the sky, Telara’s people rallied.
The Dwarves unbarred their doors of stone and marched out into the sun to fight. The human tribes of the north and south took up arms. Shamed by their courage, we set aside our mistrust and left the woods, bringing the light of magic to our new brethren, the sting of our arrows to the invaders.
The pack of wolves that bring the buck to bay should not squabble over the choicest flesh till the prey is dead, or it might gore them each to death. The people of Telara caught the Blood Storm off guard. The Age of Dragons lasted centuries, yet the dragons were too embittered to join forces. One after another, great heroes imprisoned the dragons, and at last, banished dread Regulos to the planes.
As the harsh winter drives a starving family to huddle together for warmth, so the Blood Storm, for all their destruction, drove Telara’s people together, making them unified and strong. The gods joined together in the Vigil, and aided mortal masters of the arcane in constructing the Ward, an impenetrable barrier to shield Telara from planar fury.
The Dwarves returned to their mountain homes, yet kept the doors wide to receive guests. The men of the south, the Eth, had used technomagical machines during the wars, and expanded their use to build an empire of glittering city-states. When the Eth Empire abruptly ended, the Mathosians of the north took up a mighty chant that filled all the spaces, sea to sea.
And we the Elves, we sundered. Our schism was the first chip in a crystal vase that will one day stretch to a crack. Of Telara’s ruin we were, if not the cause, then the first symptom.
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