Jason Andresen (order #1578489) - Jump page for Jubei

sand years the western mainland has lived with the dragon’s covetous
eye upon them, yet the dragon’s patience outlasts the lives
of men. He appears only to grow stronger with each century,
twisting the islands into a nightmare by his very presence.
Indeed, my visit to Cryx revealed a warped and barren scene.
This was Toruk’s territory, and nature had given way as if made
ill by the influence of the Father of Dragons. In many places the
soil was black as burnt cinders, rivers were cold and dark, tree
trunks coiled like petrified serpents, and brambles choked everything
within their thorny clutches. Even where the squalid inhabitants
managed to erect farmsteads, the crops were withered and
unpleasant to behold, the corn had strange colors and bloated
kernels, and the wheat carried apurple hue like a bruise. Even
the wildlife is twisted and sickly, and the closer we traversed to
the dragon’s obsidian fortress on the black mountain, the worse
everything became. It is said the smugglers of Blackwater pay
well for food from the mainland. Now I can see why.
The blight is not always easily detected. In fact, most of
the inhabitants of its dark cities pass for normal, at least
in the physical sense. Still, the blight seems to have seeped
into their minds, for the denizens of these cities are often
twisted and cruel and prone to malice, and they all—each
and every one—speak as terrified yet awestruck fanatics
in reverence of their deity and master, the
black-scaled Lord Toruk.
Aside from the blighted and beyond that
twisted island and its corrupted populace, other
terrible creatures, tainted by the influence of
the dragon, roam Immoren. It is rumored minions
are created from the dragon’s very blood,
and these “dragonspawn” follow the bidding of
their master without question. Indeed, records
of a dragon’s territory encroaching upon the
borders of Cygnar tell of sightings of draconic
servitors. The militia of the west is known
for employing bands of spawn-hunters, and
these specialists venture into the dragonblight,
attacking and exterminating the spawn and
the blighted. The muddled journal of such a
spawn-hunter, one Baingrave Bowmantle—an
obviously semi-literate and blustery bravo—
tells of not one dragon but two in the far-flung
north roughly two centuries past. As best I can
translate, these dragons clashed in a territorial
dispute in the mountains that are now both
Khador and Rhul, and the skirmishes of the
beasts and their spawn laid to waste many civilized
areas over the years. Bowmantle repeatedly
boasts about his affluence and good fortune
during this time, yet the journal ends rather
abruptly for whatever reason, leaving me to
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Dragons
ponder why the dragons ceased their recurring battles and withdrew
to their individual lairs.
The dwarves of Rhul call the dragon of their region
Scylfangen (known as Scaefang to others), a black-scaled monster
that has, fortunately, not been seen or heard from in well
over a century. The people of Khador have legends of the
“female” dragon Halfaug. To be exact, I should say this is a
likely misnomer, for dragons are sexless and spawn asexually—a
topic explored later in this passage. The winter elves called the
Nyss refer to the same beast as Glyssingfor. Whatever her name,
she is recorded as a massive silvery terror that eventually turned
her attentions upon the inhabitants of those frozen mountains.
Blood was shed by the winter elves in the thousands, and entire
tribes were lost to the dragon’s ferociousness and guile. It was
not until a great coalition of men and Nyss—the first and only
of its sort—campaigned into Halfaug’s lair that she was sent
fleeing northward into the icy floes of the Windless Waste. To
this day, the mirror-scaled terror has not been seen, but lately
there have been whispers of a dark and winged shape looming
over those hoary peaks north of the towering timberland called
the Scarfells. Many fear the worst: either Halfaug has returned
to claim the north, or Scaefang, Lord of the Black, has emerged
from some deep, dark lair. Either would be grave news indeed.
Lord Toruk
Jason Andresen (order #1578489) 9