Dragon Lore

First came Tiamat and Bahamut, the mother and father of dragons, respectively. Tiamat, a great
powerful warrior queen with a mind in chaos and constant turmoil; and Bahamut, a wise and peaceful
mage king who lives his life according to order and balance. Tiamat was born a titan of Krakarii and
Kord, and Bahamut was a titan born of Tyr and Mystra

Bahamut worked very closely with his mother to engineer new arcane formulae and practices. He was
overjoyed to marry Tiamat, and loved her with all his immortal heart. He did everything he could to
make her happy, conjuring beautiful shows of lights and forces, enchanting her the strongest armour
and weapons (which are rumoured to still exist in the world, but scattered and lost to time), and
coming up with tales and stories to entertain her. And for an age, they lived happily together, sharing
in each other’s lives, sufferings, and victories. They decided to raise a child, and after a short while,
Tiamat became pregnant.

While Tiamat bore her child, she and her army of loyal soldiers marched on a force of Khyldar, believing
it to be a small force of fiends. Unknown to them, Khyldar himself was leading the charge, and went
head-to-head with Tiamat. She was easily outmatched by him, but instead of killing her outright,
Khyldar flooded her mind with the same chaos that corrupts him. Her mind shattered into six pieces,
and the child within her became six also. The madness took effect quickly, and Tiamat rapidly decayed
to a husk of her former, righteous self.

Ecstatic at the prospect of raising a child, Bahamut began working on the construction of a grand
citadel, where both he and his wife, and eventually their family could live together in peace and safety.
He used every thread of magic at his disposal to make their home beautiful, strong, and perfect. It was
near completion, when one of his apprentices informed him that Tiamat had returned from battle sick.
Bahamut did everything he could to help her, but no progress was made, and poor Bahamut feared
that death would follow. But before he could discuss this with her, Tiamat had vanished, leaving no
trace.

Bahamut, distraught and desperate, concentrated all of his efforts into finding her, and bringing her
home to him. For months and months he searched, turning over every stone on material plane,
venturing deep into the planes of element, hiking through the realm of the fey, and practically tearing
the celestial plane apart to find her, but he could not. On their child’s due date, Bahamut finally gave
in, recognising how hopeless it was. Some of the planes were infinite, and as titans, they could travel
anywhere, and appear as anything. Tiamat’s condition was already cause for concern enough, and who
knows what she might have become in her isolation.

After months of loneliness, and the new voices in her head, she had descended to a level of darkness
similar to Khyldar’s own forces. She birthed her children in secret, and released them into the world,
the first dragons. After delivering her offspring, Tiamat became completely feral, and tore her body
apart, to try and give her new minds their own space. She took a new form, similar to her children,
sprouting 3 pairs of wings, a tail that forked into six tips, and six new heads, each bearing the reptilian
faces of her dragon children. One red for fire dragons, one blue for water dragons, one white for ice
dragons, one yellow for lightning dragons, one brown for earth dragons, and one grey for the air
dragons.

On his journey home from the elemental plane of air, Bahamut encountered a strange creature he had
never seen before. It appeared as a gigantic, silver-grey lizard, with a long neck, and enormous bat-like
wings stretching from its shoulders. Bahamut, ever curious, even in his despair and depression, asked
the creature what it was, and the creature replied:

“I am Alharranon, the first of the air dragons, and the third child of my mother, the Great Mad One,
Tiamat.”

At this, Bahamut was astounded. “Tiamat is my wife! Where is she, for I have searched for her for many
months now, and could not bear knowing she is out there alone, loving her more than life itself as I
do.”

Alharranon replied, “How am I to trust you are who you say you are?”

To which Bahamut presented his very memories into the mind of his son, memories of Tiamat laughing
and dancing to a song that Bahamut played on a strange arcane device, memories of Tiamat carrying
him through the mountains of the celestial realm as they hiked, memories of him telling her stories,
helping her fall asleep after the horrors of war, and memories of their wedding day, where they shared
the most beautiful vows, and confessed their undying love for one another.

So overcome with emotion and understanding, tears began falling from Alharranon’s eyes, and as he
looked to Bahamut, he said “Truly, you are my father, the noble man my mother spoke of even as she
suffered. I pledge myself to you, and together, may we find her, as well as my siblings.”

And together they travelled, finding Maristolloses, the second child of Tiamat, and first of the water
dragons, and Terrasus, fifth child of Tiamat, and the first of the earth dragons. The four of them
managed to locate the secret hiding place Tiamat had found for herself, in a dark cave formed between
the borders of the planes, in the immaterial nothingness that separates the hells from the material.
There they saw her, the Incarnation of Madness, the Titan Mother of Dragons, the Anguishing Fury,
Tiamat.

Bahamut was instantly overcome with grief and terror, seeing his wife, now a colossal beast of
destruction and anguish, six heads fighting amongst themselves, all weeping sorrowfully for the loss
of her perfect life, the children who abandoned her, and her husband, who lacked the will or drive to
find her. Tiamat was overcome with anger and hatred. So confused in this new state, she turned to her
husband, and the three children he had brought back to her, and cried out in her many voices:

“Now do you see me my love? See what your shortcomings created? See what you, in your failure
could not protect me from? Do you come to atone, or come to mock me? I care not. The mere sight of
you sickens me to my core, more than the sight of my own reflection in the surface of water. More
than the stench of my own breath as I breathe it through my many nostrils. More than the sound of
my many voices arguing together. You failed me, and so I hate you with every piece of my blackened
heart.”

Bahamut responded, “My dear, I have come because I thought you to be dead, but our third born child,
Alharranon, gave me hope, and guided me to you. I have not come to enjoy your suffering, no, I have
come to help if I can. Will you let me help you?”

“I will not, traitor! In fact, I now swear to rid the world of all that you love, so that you will know the
pain I have felt for these months, totally alone with just my thoughts. You will know the suffering of
having nothing left, of knowing nobody is out there to come to your aid, of knowing you will never see
your beloved in the same way ever again.”

And with that, she attacked, bearing down upon her once husband, tearing into his form with six pairs
of jaws, clawing at him with six sets of talons, and breathing a combined torrent of her six elemental
breaths. Bahamut fell, nearing death, and the children he had found on his journey scattered, fearing
their vengeful mother.

Tiamat now fled, setting off to fulfil her vow, and destroy everything her husband loved, leaving him
bleeding out his golden ichor on the floor of the cavern.

Many days passed, and eventually, the first dragons of air, earth, and water returned to their father,
believing it to now be safe. They nursed him to health, and brought him news of their mother’s plight
on the mortal planes. The first dragons of fire, ice, and lightning had joined with her, and waged their
own wars, taking ownership of the scraps of land Tiamat left in her wake. This caused the sorrow and
grief within Bahamut to grow into a grim determination. The gods no longer stepped onto the mortal
realm. There was nobody left to face his wife, except maybe himself. He looked at his children, the
good ones who had devoted themselves to him. He saw their scales, thick like armour. He saw their
wings, that allowed the quickest flight. He saw their teeth and claws, as sharp as scimitars and spears.
He saw their minds, capable of amazing creativity, genius deduction, and possibly spellcraft. And he
saw their hearts, full of passion, and love, and desire. His children were perfect in his eyes. Powerful
forms that could protect, or destroy.

Bahamut bolstered his strength and courage, and began changing. He became like his children, but
larger, mightier, stronger. He became a powerful beast, capable of shifting the very mountains where
they stand. He became Bahamut, the Platinum Dragon. He became Tiamat’s worthy adversary. And he
hunted her. It broke him to do so. It shattered his heart within his metallic chest, but he saw no other
way to protect the world from the woman he once loved. And after a long, gruelling battle, he managed
to imprison her, trapped within the very cave she once hid in, writhing in agony and rage.

It cost Bahamut his strength, for a time, and for years, it was all he could do to maintain the prison that
held his tortured wife. He could not change himself back to his humanoid form, and so his new draconic
appearance became permanent. As permanent as his wife’s. Eventually he was strong enough to
practice magic again, and over the years, began visiting Tiamat, telling her stories again, and trying to
develop a way to repair her. But after decades of weekly visits, eventually Tiamat had had enough. She
forbade him from ever seeing her again, and out of sorrowful respect for the woman he loved, and
failed to help, Bahamut agreed. To this day, he has never again looked upon his wife. To this day, she
has never recovered from her insanity, and longs only to escape her prison, to seek vengeance upon
the man who wronged her.

Over the centuries, the first dragons bore new children, and the story of the mother and father of
dragons passed into legend. New breeds of dragon emerged, and the intelligence they inherited from
Bahamut became largely lost. The wild feral nature of Tiamat became more prevalent, and many of
them became mere animals, living on and hunting the land as predators or monsters. But even with
varying degrees of sentience and understanding, every dragon who comes of age must choose to
devote themselves to their forefather, and pursue a life of honour, justice, and protection, or instead
their foremother, and pursue a life of greed, destruction, and conquest. Some breeds of dragon are
more inclined to lean one way or another, such as air dragons following the path of Alharranon, or fire
dragons following the path of Cindrakrastus, the first of Tiamat’s children, and the first of the fire
dragons.

Legend has it that the first six dragons still live on, lying dormant on their associated elemental planes,
as unimaginably massive greatwyrms. After eons of honing their abilities, growing in strength and size,
but keeping each other in check just enough to prevent catastrophe, both Bahamut and Tiamat have
become Emperor Titans; near godly in their capabilities.