PureNES: Years of Excelsior

Water, water all around, but not a drop to drink. Living in a (mostly) poisonous marsh had hardened the People over time, but they liked to think that was for a good reason. After all, they came into the marshes to atone for past sins. Once upon a time, The People had constructed towering structures of shining diamond, stretching from deep below the surface, in the womb of Mother Wyrm, to the sky, the home of Father Wyvern. The People had sinned, however, turning from the Mother and the Father, and worshipping the God of a prophet from the very marshes they now inhabited. The First Prophet of the Leviathan had come forth to preach the word of a new “God”, Leviathan the Great, a creator and a destroyer, and had been very successful, until a brutal civil war had torn The People asunder, and left his followers decimated. Subsequently, the followers of The Truth had exiled themselves into the Leviathan’s Marsh, and had stayed there ever since, in punishment for their foolishness. Or at least, that was what The Chronicles, the great tomes that documented events since time immemorial, before and after the Exile began. According to The Chronicles, writing only began after The People entered the Marsh, but it was the closest thing to a first-hand account of their history that The People had.

According to the Chronicles, once there had been a thousand nations, with a thousand different rulers, but The People had united them in an Empire that lasted four thousand years. The only thing that remained was a crown, a crown which, coincidentally, was also the only place that The People ever saw jewels and precious stones. Gold and diamond were in abundance on the crown, and the people had never seen such things in any other place for millennia. To them, the gold shone almost as brightly as the highly polished decorative scales that men were presented each year after their 16th birthday, a sign of manhood. To them, that made it something special, a further representation of the pact that the Dragons and their Kin had made with The People. A blood-pact, and an alliance, a pledge to protect and be protected, and The People saw nothing more important than that pact. The Pact was what defined The People. The Pact and The Exile were all there was in terms of purpose, all there would ever be. Yet the people were content, or they had been, until He came. He was from a foreign group, from further north in the Marshes, and he had entered The People’s lands from the west, from outside the Marsh, with tales of the outside world, of a Great City rebuilt by the Leviathan, as a gift to any who would return to him. A small part of the population had left with him, in search of it, and he was the Second Prophet of the Leviathan. The Tempting, as this time was called, lasted a little over 23 years, and when they set out, the Prophet was old. However, The People had resisted the Leviathan once again, and were rewarded. Father Wyvern and Mother Wyrm sent a vision to one of the Elders, a vision that a new leader would be coming soon to the People, a leader who was, in part, Dragonkin, and a leader whose progeny would one day lead the People out of Exile. Not long after, a young man entered the Marsh, followed by approximately 80 heavily armed men, and declared himself King of those lands. The People welcomed him, assimilated him and his soldiers and, after another vision was sent to the Elders, named him leader of the People, and gave him the title of Drake, a grand honour among the People, for the Drakes are among the Dragonkin. His name is lost, for the Chronicles called him only “The Leader” and then “Drake” or “The Drake”. Since then, his descendants, male or female, have lead The People, over the course of 5 generations, each taking the name of Drake when they ascend to the leadership. So, currently, The Sixth Drake or Drake VI leads The People. It was only 3 years after he ascended to the leadership that he experienced his first vision. In it, Angius, one of the Dragonkin, came to him on a great plain, and said to him “This is where you shall rebuild. It is here, Drake, that you shall found the Great Empire. The People have served the Mother and the Father faithfully, and now you are freed from your Exile. Return them to their homes, Foreigner, and teach them the ways of war. It is for you to rebuild what once was, and to ensure that all is well.”

After this vision, The People were restructured and galvanised into action. Used to the Marsh environment, the Drake started there, sending parties out to bring nearby villages under his control as vassals and to colonise unsettled parts of the Marsh. Soon, he was a King, not merely the Drake, not merely leader of a sect. The time of the people had come, and they would at long last achieve that which the Chronicles said they had once had. The Age of the Dragon was beginning.