Prologue: The Rise of Dragons

There weren't always dragons in the valley.

In fact, the valley itself was the birthplace of dragons. But it was not a conventional birthing spurred by evolution - at least not entirely.

Dragons were made.

It all started with a reclusive necromancer and the curiosity they held surrounding their power over the dead. While many believed the original Dragon Maker to be a man, rumors persisted that it had been, in fact, a woman who called forth such power to raise the mighty beasts. The identity was lost to the ages, however, leaving only the barest hints as to how the feat was managed. This fact was unquestionably odd to all who sought to answer the riddle of the Dragon Master's identity, because...

...Dragons were created from fossils.

The story goes that the reclusive necromancer grew curious as to the limits of their power. First, they found ways to increase their own longevity, long outliving any other such necromancers that came before. Then, with their extended lifespan, they began experimenting with trying to raise older and older remains.

Eventually, they succeeded in something no other had done before; they brought fossils back to life.

But, complete fossils have always been a rarity...

It wasn't enough to reanimate bits and pieces - the necromancer took their studies further, creating mismatched beasts from the scattered remains of many ancient creatures, long gone from the world. From this, the first dragons were made.

And they were monstrous.

Born back into the world, forged from so many broken bits with shreds of thousands of moments and memories...

...all they knew was anger.

The first dragons were raging monsters of tremendous proportions. Mountains quaked as the ones that returned to the soil after their reanimation crawled beneath. Volcanoes spewed their molten guts as those who called their innards home displaced the roiling magma. Ice encroached ever further as cold-resistant dragons sought more and more territories to hunt in. Those gifted with wings took flight inside of hurricanes, riding the storms inland as they fed off of the chaos.

The necromancer who spawned them disappeared.

Whether they vanished into obscurity, ashamed of what they brought into the world, or whether they were consumed by the very beasts they created, once dragons lay claim to the Earth, the Dragon Master was nowhere to be found...

Ages passed, and the rage of the dragons began to cease. Many began to understand life as their new, strange amalgamations of animals, quelling the worst of their anger. They began to breed and multiply, and with this change came the next generation of dragons; much more natural and intelligent than their elders.

It wasn't long before a particular clutch began searching for the lost Dragon Master.

The clutch belonged to the last dragon made by the necromancer; the one who inherited the valley. It is her clutch that rules it now; the ones who search for the lost Dragon Master.

Only the Dragon Master can restore to them the one thing they seek now; their mother, deceased at the rueful claws of the first dragon raised.

None know who the Dragon Master is, or even if they still exist all these centuries later...

...but the whelps of the first dragon hope to find them.

Certainly, if the necromancer had already figured out how to extend their own life, they could still be doing so.

But where could they be hiding now?

As the rest of the clutch seeks out the necromancer across the planet to raise their dead mother, one whelp seeks the Dragon Master for another purpose entirely; to become the first dragon to learn necromancy.

And they don't want to learn just to raise their mother from the grave.