The Dragon Isles

The Prophecy

Sunlight streamed over the aquamarine ocean, reflecting from the whitecaps and filling the air with dazzling color, as the Dragon Isles rose majestically from the sea.

Wreathed in fire, they came, but quickly cooled. In an instant, green life took root and covered them to all but the highest, cloudcapped peaks. Fish surrounded them and animals swarmed to their fertile shores. Soon the isles teemed with life.

The azure sky flashed like lightning. A thousand brilliant stars hung in the heavens-silver, orange, yellow, red, golden. No, not stars… metallic dragons.

They swarmed over the isles, changing the shape and nature of the land. They pushed up mountains, felled forests, and altered the course of rivers. They built mighty edifices and founded settlements. The good peoples of the world swarmed to their shores.

The people shaped the land now as well. With the help of the dragons, settlements became towns, and towns became cities. Metallic dragons soared the skies, and noble ships plied the crystal blue ocean.

Temples sprang up-some dedicated to lost gods, others to the glory of the isles themselves. Treasure flowed into the temples and the towns and the cities, and the Dragon Isles became wealthy.

To protect the isles, a mighty enchantment was raised: the Veil. A special treasure-filled temple was built for the spell at the top of a volcano in a remote corner of the archipelago. The fires in the belly of the isle and the plumes of ash rising to the heavens connected the enchantment to the world below and the sky above: earth, air, and fire, surrounded by water.

At the sacred mountain’s base, a second, devotionary temple rose up beneath the waves of the placid sea. The dragons and the free peoples of the isles gave their sweat, money, and magic to the effort. A great, bejeweled key in four pieces was made to seal the pact-one piece for each element: diamond for earth, emerald for water, opal for air, and ruby for fire. The dragons set a monstrous blue-white diamond at the upper temple’s summit-above a hoard of treasure-to commemorate the deed.

Stone guardians, each in the shape of dragons with glittering diamond eyes, rose from the sea bedrock. The Veil arced up between them, suffusing earth, sky, and sea. The spell set the isles apart from the world-only those who knew its secret, dragons and favored mortals, could pass its defenses.