Creative Exercise: The Sovereign Dominion of Eyros

[Rystil Arden]

Nice idea, but I disagree.

The draconic legacy venerates dragons and sacred lizards as being linked to them.
The deceiver´s war was the beginning of recorded time 7500 years ago. The dragons appeared then, it cannot get more early than that. Its the point of origin of this religion. The celestial dragons came to aid mortals, evil dragons came to terroize them, they worshipped them both one out of reverance they others because of fear.

Quote about the draconic legacy:

The dominant and oldest religion has grown up around the worship of the reptiles which are common in the area. Called the Draconic Legacy, it reveres saurians of all types and the dragons of legend in particular. Dragons, though they feature prominently in fairy tales and children's bedtime stories, are suspicously absent from modern history. Locals believe that the large reptiles that roam the nearby wilderness are somehow linked to these dragons, which in turn represented divine forces. This is why the dominant religion focuses on reptiles.

End of Quote

The legacy is about the legendary dragons, so it should have some dragons besides one.
Mine was the earlier contribution about the dogma of the legacy, you cannot just wipe it away or reduce it to a minor role.

My apologies, I didn't mean the Deceiver's War, I meant the time of the Five Heroes (I thought they were the same thing, but you were right that they aren't). The entities that became the Messengers were born at the end of that war (As per a post on Alsixnivis that came before yours). Now, we then need to give the legends time to become inaccurate (as they clearly are about Alsixnivis), so by necessity, the earliest that the Messengers could have come to exist in the Draconic Legacy was the 4th-milennium BE (I would say 3200 BE is a good number). However, the Draconic Legacy was an ancient religion that speaks of an idyllic time long ago and predates Taufenacht's Dark Age (5200 BE is a good number). Thus, the Messengers would have only begun to form 2000 years after the Draconic Legacy all by posts that came before you.

It seems that I misunderstood your intention in creating the Messengers when I praised them way back in the thread. I thought that you were purposefully creating inaccurate apocrypha in an interesting twist to the basic religion, but the heavy-handedness of the wording of your last post and the use of terms like pantheon--from the Greek theos for god in the Messenger post make it clear that you were trying to eliminate the godless nature of Eyros even back then. Please accept my apologies for my misunderstanding there, and my greater apologies as I must now take back my earlier praise.

Remember: Taufenacht's Deceiver's War is the beginning of recorded history but not of myth. The Draconic Legacy Creation, Maia included, according to true believers, predates the Deceiver's War. It doesn't mean that they are right, but these events happened earlier according to them (I'd peg Draconic Legacy Creation as meant to be dated circa 10000 BE).



Finally, please do not take an accusatory tone here. We are all comrades working on this together. But because you mention which posts came first, please remember that yours is not the first but the *last* post on the Draconic Legacy. In truth, the Draconic Legacy actually worships the existant local lizards (because of their heritage) and NOT the fanciful fairytale dragons.

The dominant and oldest religion has grown up around the worship of the reptiles which are common in the area.

was Sado's post about DL, the very first post. Dragons are just forces of nature to the original religion (like the sun or the rain). They are not personlike or godlike entities to be worshipped themselves. Witness Mouse's post (the second ever):

Locals believe that the large reptiles that roam the nearby wilderness are somehow linked to these dragons, which in turn represented divine forces. This is why the dominant religion focuses on reptiles

So please excuse me if I am trying to hold to the text of the original while still keeping your posts relevant and useful (and it can be so great if you will just let it!), instead of simply ignoring the older material in favour of using your post verbatim. An example of when this happened in the past is when someone said Eyros had mild winters and someone mentioned escaping the harsh winters. And we were able to incorporate those together by changing around somewhat. That's what I was doing here, gently combining everything together.

Coincidentally, if anybody else thinks that I am the one overstepping my bounds here, please let me know by posting here, and I will change it. And if you support this, lend a word or two. I don't like being the bad cop who has to police the mythos all alone because I feel bad about it, and so I really appreciated the support on my last position.

 

[Rystil Arden]

Oh and if you are wondering why this came up now, two pages after the initial post, it is because I thought you agreed that this was apocryphal until just now (when you told me you think it isn't).

 

[Twiggly the Gnome]

Feel free to shoot this down, but I have an idea concerning the Draconic Legacy and the Messenger Dragons.

Part of Legacy dogma is the idea that righteous souls are reborn in the sacred lizards, and when the high holy one comes these souls will awaken. What if some were awakened early? The messenger dragons could be sacred lizards that were prematurely awakend by the forces of Celestia and the Abyss, and in the case of the evil dragons, corrupted by Taufenacht. When the high holy one comes all the sacred lizards will awaken and be transfigued in to true dragons.

An interesting campaign goal might be to free Alsixnivis from Taufenacht's corruption and return him to his noble roots. Can he be redeemed, or does the taint of evil run too deep?

 

[Rystil Arden]

Feel free to shoot this down, but I have an idea concerning the Draconic Legacy and the Messenger Dragons.

Part of Legacy dogma is the idea that righteous souls are reborn in the sacred lizards, and when the high holy one comes these souls will awaken. What if some were awakened early? The messenger dragons could be sacred lizards that were prematurely awakend by the forces of Celestia and the Abyss, and in the case of the evil dragons, corrupted by Taufenacht. When the high holy one comes all the sacred lizards will awaken and be transfigued in to true dragons.

An interesting campaign goal might be to free Alsixnivis from Taufenacht's corruption and return him to his noble roots. Can he be redeemed, or does the taint of evil run too deep?

I think that this is a good (and consistent) enough idea to not only be part of the dogma but also an actual truth of the campaign setting. After all, nobody has explained how Taufenacht created his dragons, and this answers that. Plus it fits the metallic/chromatic dischotomy of dragons such as Alsixnivis admirably. Excellent contribution!

 

[Sarellion]

Praise me again then. I want my aura back
I didn´t want to introduce an actual existing pantheon there. And as I said back then the legacy got the truth badly mixed up. The legacy would see them like the catholic church sees saints or angels in my opinion. I got the idea from the summary where it said that people venerate the dragons of legend. So the whole legacy does it. I just gave names to the dragons they venerate. Its just like Maia from your contribution.

My personal opinion about the truth behind the messengers: People just knew the names of some of the surviving dragons aka celestial/demonic combat machines who fought in the war or in the case of Alsixnivis appeared a little later and started to venerate them. People worship stuff like CT, Vil, family gods, their own legion standards and what else, so it shouldn´t be a problem with the setting. If some of the dragons are actually doing anything that has been prescribed to them is open for me and left for the DM to decide. I think that the surviving celestial dragons if there are any are enjoying their retirement in Celestia at the moment. I think that if a party of adventurers starts to head for Celestia to gain the aid of Aurilion I would probably place him there, sleeping near a pool and dreaming of draconic sheep.

The reason I got fed up is that it seems to me that you didn´t consider my post at all and then reduced the whole idea to a sidestream or sect of the faith. I see it in a different way and think that it is half part of the dogma. People venerate the dragons and the lizards, I contributed the part about the dragons. So you contributed the stuff about the lizards, contradicted some stuff of my post and I couldn´t find an explanation why. You said earlier that you were initially leery about the messengers and I got the feeling that you just told yourself, screw it, throw the whole stuff about the dragons out, doesn´t tie in with my vision anyways. And after my initial post that you forgotten to tie them in, your followup reduced my idea to a sect, considered by many people to be a crackpot idea and this wasn´t what I intended.

The whole stuff about what post came first was messed up, meant it differently, used the wrong english words.

 

[Rystil Arden]

People just knew the names of some of the surviving dragons aka celestial/demonic combat machines who fought in the war or in the case of Alsixnivis appeared a little later and started to venerate them. People worship stuff like CT, Vil, family gods, their own legion standards and what else, so it shouldn´t be a problem with the setting.

Bingo! This is exactly where I thought you were coming from. Of course, members of House Malarn would not worship Vajaros, hence, they are separate sects. And the civilised Eyrians would see the Falgyr who worship Vil to be misguided.

So since the Draconic Legacy predated the Messengers, the people who added in the Messengers created a popular sect, and of course there would be those who refused to follow it and wanted to stay "pure."

You made it a sect yourself, and doing so was a very good idea (there, praise back ^^).

As for why I didn't include the Messengers originally, its mostly because they were a later (both in Eyros and here) addition to the core dogma, and I didn't want to mess with your vision of the new sect and the scholars who introduced them later on by doing a forced rewrite (and I turned out to be correct because apparently when I did add them, it made you upset, for which I apologise). That and I couldn't remember their names, and I did all of the other stuff from memory. But I didn't contradict anything in your post, assuming it was a sect, rather working from our initial assumptions (importantly: The initial Draconic Legacy venerates the lizards for their connections to the dragons, but does not venerate the dragons themselves. This can be the "pure" Draconic Legacy). And remember, just because the other one calls itself "pure" doesn't mean the Messenger sect isn't almost as popular among the people of Eyros (Mouse's post #2 about DL says that worshipping the physical lizards and not the fanciful dragons is the dominant religion of Eyros, "the dominant religion focuses on reptiles.")

Now that we are all at an agreement (I sincerely hope), I think Twiggly has made a marvelous link that explains how everything comes together. Way to go Twiggly!

 

[Rystil Arden]

Oh just a random minor note: A previous post said that all known dragons from the War died, so there weren't any known surviving ones. Doesn't mean the scholars who made up the Messenger stuff didn't just

A) Make them up

B) Use ones that are actually dead

C) Use only the ones who were created at the end, like Alsixnivis

 

[Sarellion]

OK for me, aura is shining again

But may I politely suggest that there needn´t be a sect to include the messengers. We are talking about 7500 years, the bible doesn´t go back nearly as far as this and it incorporated parts about the history of Israel over a long time.

I would see it more like two different books like the book of Ruth and book of Hiob, part of the same bible, rather than the bible and the book of mormon that is recognized only by a minority.

I would think that the legacy as a whole would recognize the messengers but not everyone places emphasis on their worship.

I edited my original entry for the messengers and removed the word pantheon and explained what their position would be comparable to in real world mythology.

 

[Mouseferatu]

Hey, guys.

I'm glad things have gotten settled now, but I want to comment anyway on the last few pages.

Things have gotten just a bit heated at times. I understand that there's a lot of material here, and it's gotten really hard to keep track of. It's hard to tell what came first, or precisely what a certain poster meant. I think Arden's done a great job of trying to keep things consistent, especially since I haven't been able to participate as much I've wanted to, with the other things I've got going on. That doesn't mean he's always right, of course, but he seems to have a pretty good grasp of the whole shebang.

All that said, I'd like to impose a new restriction. This isn't a carved-in-stone rule (yet), just a preference on my part.

I think we've got more than enough material on the faiths/cosmology/myths of Eyros at this point. I understand they're some of the most fun stuff to come up with, but I think we should shift our focus away for a while. We've still got a large portion of the map, and aspects of the politics, to fill in. Also, while we've got large amounts of ancient history, we could really use some more recent history.

Okie?

Also, if anyone feels they're being unfairly shouted down, please feel free to e-mail me. I don't think it'll be a problem--we're all friends here--but it's better than filling up pages of the thread with debate.

 

[Rystil Arden]

This post eliminated as per Mouse's post above. Let's put our heads together on the next part guys! Good luck!
~Rystil