The Glaennyn

            The great dragons sat at the edge of the Maelstrom and watched. A rent in the fabric of existence was their window, their destruction abated as they sheltered under the protective wings of their king, their leader and their god. His was a power beyond the random turmoil where they now sat. Their journey had brought them here…to Grayhawk.

“It will be our final resting place,” He said.

But the world was new. So new that the forming of the seas and the creation of Time itself had not occurred. But in the chaos there was a presence. The dragon god sensed it…feared it…loathed it. From the chaos the presence brought order, structure and balance with the interminable slowness that a progenitor needs to give life to a plane. The dragon god knew even then there would be no place in this new universe for the Glaennyn. As quickly as the progenitor brought things to life he would extinguish them to start afresh or to modify an existing creation.

“What must we do?” the dragons asked their god.

“We must wait…with the patience only dragonkind can muster we must wait the coming of Time and Order. When that occurs we will slip quietly into this new world and make preparation for our ascendancy.”

And so the Glaennyn waited.

As the universe grew so the progenitor created helpers, gods to work on the details, races to inhabit his world and lands in which to build ecosystems and climate. The new races waxed and waned until the natural selection of the universe brought man to the fore. A hardy race, easily bred man was tenacious and cunning. Intelligent enough to understand his surroundings but not so that he could challenge the hierarchy of the universe.

It was then that the Glaennyn emerged.

But their ascendancy was not the success they had thought. For whilst man was no match for the mighty dragons they had not counted on man’s greatest weapon…belief. Man believed in a Higher Being – gods that many of them would never see. This was an alien concept to the Glaennyn. Their god was their leader. They did not so much worship as serve.

The gods of men took a stand against the Glaennyn. The Old gods such as Ishtar and Killashandra, Mormegon and Kas. The battle was brutal. Many dragons perished and the Glaennyn found themselves scattered to the four corners of Grayhawk, unable to gather or muster themselves the gods picked them off. But the dragon god knew that the Old Gods had a weakness. Their power came from the universe around it and was therefore finite. The Glaennyn took their power directly from themselves…as they progressed so they became stronger…more deadly.

A last stand loomed.

The Old Gods had cornered the Glaennyn in a remote valley hidden on the edge of Grayhawk. The Glaennyn realised that they had to leave a legacy or their race would die. The dragon god sent four of his most trusted servants and bid them assume the form of man and go amongst the people to procreate. The four wandering Glaennyn went about their task with relish.

The resultant children spawned creatures such as dragons, wyverns, dragon riders and dragon lords. Strangely though the resultant spawn of the Glaennyn were not empowered with the inner power of their fathers. All Glaennyn children born into the universe had to follow the Laws of Nature and so had the restrictions of the magical layers imparted upon them.

The Old Gods fought a last battle and managed to imprison the dragons in a hidden valley. It was the dragon god himself that created the legacy of the rings of Sharyr…keys that could one day open the prison and liberate the power of the Glaennyn.

The study of the Glaennyn did not end with the success of the Old Gods. Kas, the Bringer of Balance, took the young son of the dragon god to Limbo to study the its power and to unravel the secrets of the Glaennyn’s extraordinary potency.

The Old Gods succumbed eventually to the brothers Cedron and Kiruk but not before Kas imparted his study onto his most trusted priests. One of those priest made a record of the discovery and it is from that manuscript that the only recorded study of the Glaennyn comes.

The priest wrote:

“…the shell of the magical layers stretches out invisibly like a rainbow around the plane. Those skilled enough can reach to the edge, the arch mages the high priests and the like whilst those less skilled can touch only the closest layers. What is astonishing is the Glaennyn ability to cast from within…to be their own source of power.

“A wizard friend of the religion placed the dragon within a shell of no-magic so that we could study the effects of this on it. To our astonishment the creature was able to cast, to affect it’s magical potential without hindrance…a feat the wizard declared impossible. Further study revealed the nature of the dragon’s power. Only the death of the dragon god’s son brought to life the secret of the Glaennyn.

“At the very core of their being lies a black gemstone. It sits atop the mighty heart and is fuelled by the constant drumbeat of their pulse. It resonates no magic yet when handled it becomes clear it is a vessel of unique ability. The very facets vibrate with the stored power and all attempts to even mark it failed miserably. It is the toughest substance I have ever seen.

“It was the wizard that harnessed the power of the gemstone. He fashioned a clumsy staff and focussed a spell through it. On one shoe of the staff he sat the dragons heart and we were amazed by the results. The effects of the spell were augmented many times and the wizard cooed with delight. The next spell was more difficult but the effects were the same. Confident and perhaps a little careless the wizard tried to cast his most difficult spell, drawing from the black heart all the power he could muster. His own heart melted and he died in agony, his blood turned to pure red flame.

“Needless to say the study of the black heart continued with caution. The augmentation of spells was only the tip of what the gem could achieve. All the while I felt the power grow, as if it was slowly stealing the energy from the layers of magic, using the Laws of the Universe to fuel it’s own power. Ever growing, never sated it grew and grew in power until only Kas himself could contain it.

“The Bringer of Balance took the heart back to Grayhawk to fashion a weapon from it. The other gods became jealous and ordered Kas to destroy it. He refused and continued it’s usage for many years…it sat on the pommel of his sword where it grew until the war with Cedron and Kiruk began…”

The fate of the black gemstone was never made clear. Cedron cut the Bringer of Balance to pieces on top of the god’s citadel and Cedron destroyed the sword, casting a thousand shards of the blade down amongst the god’s dying priests.