Valley of the Ancients

There weren’t always dragons in the valley. Or at least that’s what I heard growing up; it was a way of saying there’s still hope. But it’s hard to have hope when you grow up listening to the stomping and grinding of the undead dragons in the valley below. I woke up every night to their haunting roars, not the grand rumbling belly roars that came from the divine dragons of old, but more of a strained, wailing, rattle from their decaying vocal cords as the ghastly screams of every spirit they consumed clamored for the chance to make their voices heard once more. That’s how the valley got its name, The Valley of Wailing Mist, but I need to start further back if you’re going to understand. You see, the valley used to be called something different.

My grandmother used to tell me stories of her childhood, about the time before the dragons haunted our valley with their ethereal cries of pain. It was a time when the valley was full of life and my people worked their crafts on the rich soils of the land, flourishing in a sprawling city nestled in the heart of the valley surrounded by farmland. The city was called Terralith, City of Life. There are many myths about how the dwarves came to be, but the most popular is that we were created by the ancient shepherds of the earth, dragons.

The way my grandmother told the story was like this: The shepherds of the earth awoke at the beginning of time; others say time began when the shepherds opened their eyes. As the dragons moved around, they created space then divided that space into the land, sea, and air. Once they explored the depths of the earth and sea and the infinite sky, they wished for new things to grow and created the day, and so the growing things might rest they also created night. Then the shepherds wished to pass on their knowledge and history, so they used the most fertile soils and the most beautiful stones, and bathed them in fire creating my people; the dwarves.

The ancient shepherds taught the dwarves everything they knew about working the earth and crafting stones and metals from the mountains. Together the dragons and dwarves built the city of Terralith using massive slabs of stone from the surrounding mountains to create colorful towers decorated with carvings of our history that bonded the fate of the dragons and the dwarves together for eternity. Though many of the dwarves revered the dragons as gods, the ancient shepherds were humble and wise, they did not require worship, but only friendship with their creation. It was through this cohabitation that dwarves learned to live nobly, but this grand age of peace was not meant to last.

Terralith was always bathed in mist from the sea as it rolled off the ocean into the valley every night, and the morning sun always burned off the mist. One day however, the mists brought more than sparkling dew and rich minerals from the sea; it brought an illness. The illness didn’t affect everyone in the valley. Much to the lament of the dwarven people the illness only struck down their beloved dragons. Over time the ancient shepherds simply wasted away; their eyes went blind, and their breath became foul, and the once glittering impenetrable scales of their bodies turned brittle and fell to the earth. Before long the city of Terralith mourned the loss of the last great dragon.

The greatest craftsman of the age all came together and cut massive tombs in the mountains surrounding the valleys for the ancient shepherds, each one being entombed in a stone of a different color. The entrances and tunnels leading to the dragon tombs were such an immense labor, they became small cities themselves. Even though the tomb-cities were created by dwarves, they were still beautifully wrought using the knowledge passed down from the dragons. Every dwarf, beast, and stone from the highest peaks of the mountains down to the deepest lakes of lava under the earth; mourned the passing of the ancient shepherds. Though the loss of the dragons was terrible, the trials of the dwarves were only just beginning.

This was the era my grandmother grew up in, the time of mourning, She was told tales of the great shepherds from her very infancy as was every other child of that time. This created a generation that felt they were denied a great treasure having never known the shepherds. Eventually a scholar and craftsman of skill, known as Grixilon, declared that he found a way to resurrect the ancient ones by using the marrow that lived inside their bones. Some saw it as a revelation while others declared it to be unnatural. Even though the passing of the dragons was the source of dwarven sadness, it was the natural course of life. Out of respect for the dead, the tombs were ordered to be left alone; while the dwarven people of Terralith lived, the dragons and their knowledge would always live too.

This was not an acceptable decision to Grixilon, nor to many who lived hearing of the ancient shepherds. They envied the previous generation who had the privilege to know the glory of the dragons firsthand. So Grixilon went against the wishes of the majority sneaking into one of the tombs and stealing some of the rich dragon marrow. Grixilon and his followers used the marrow to reignite the fire of life in recently dead animals and eventually dwarves. Some of Grixilon’s followers, in perverted devotion to their cause, took their own lives believing Grixilon would bring them back immediately and they would be living proof of the vitality of the dragon’s marrow, but the truth would be far harsher. By using the dragon’s marrow Grixilon was able to resurrect the dead, but the marrow was tainted with the mysterious illness that killed the ancient shepherds, also tainting those who were imbued with it.

Every animal and dwarf Grixilon resurrected was a perversion of their former self, still showing forms of decay and decaying further. Their minds were mere shells echoing the person they were in life, instead acting out the will of Grixilon. Once the rest of the valley discovered Grixilon’s experiments they destroyed them, and because Grixilon, the Dark Scholar, refused to see the desecration and horror his hands manufactured, he too was slain and entombed deep in the mountains. Grixilon’s grave was hidden so the dark scholar’s blasphemous teachings would never be found again.

While the dwarves tried to forget about Grixilon and mourned the loss of the dragons, they also pondered the cause of their deaths. Many theories were presented over the years following the death of the shepherds, when the answer finally came it didn’t come from the dwarves, but from the sea. Many years after the death of the dragons during a great festival meant to commemorate the divine shepherds, a massive fleet came to the beaches of the valley bringing a race of ruthless all-consuming giants, called the Bashkan. The Bashkan came from a land of plenty, so fertile it spawned giant trees, plant life, giant animals and everything to a massive scale that rivaled the might of the lost dragons. It is believed the Bashkan were born in the same fertile bed that spawned the dragons across the sea.

Unlike the benevolent dragons, the Bashkan possessed a deep hunger that drove them to consume and conquer, and it’s believed they felled every tree, slaughtered every animal, and dried up all soils from their birthplace making them set sail to other continents. It is also believed the Bashkan were roughly the size of the dragons, and they sent the illness in the mists to every shore on every continent. The illness only recognized beings of equal size to the Bashkan, thus killing the dragons, but leaving the dwarves unharmed.

The enormous Bashkan leapt onto the shores of the Shepard’s Valley from their massive warships causing tremors in the earth. They brought cages to scoop up and eat dwarves so they could take over the valley. The Bashkan only brought gifts of malice and destruction to the valley and the dwarves, without their ancient protectors to guide them, also became infected with the spirit of hate and war. Many of the dwarven cities were destroyed by the initial assault of the Bashkan, but the wisest of the dwarves retreated to the mountains. They hid in the halls and mines built by their forefathers and gathered all the old knowledge of crafting earth, stone, and metal pouring it into the molds of weapons and war engines. The dwarven people were new to war, but they learned quickly as the Bashkan were brutal teachers.

My grandmother was a warrior, among the first generation of those who learned war craft. She forged her own weapons and armor and went into the ruined valley to face the Bashkan. It didn’t take long for my dwarven ancestors to realize the greatest weapon they owned, was the knowledge the ancient dragons left them. Ironically, the mastery of shaping the earth and rock, which made the farms so productive, were also the source of the dwarves’ deadliest weapons. The most skilled in these deadly arts was named King Draggolith. His family was given this name to represent their strength and power of knowledge from the ancient shepherds. The Draggolith family commanded the earth in all its forms whether it was molten rock, hard crystal, or soft soil. The king shaped magma into hard stone and crystal weapons. To help sustain his people he also created rich soils from the lava that were fertile enough to grow food deep in the heart of the mountains.

King Draggolith had seventeen children from his many paramours and all of them also had the king’s abilities to manipulate the earth. But it was the king who led the fight against the indomitable Bashkan. As the evil race of giants walked, King Draggolith created fissures in the earth and trapped their legs. When the Bashkan fell they were slaughtered by the dwarven army. Great rockslides were conjured from the mountains surrounding the valley, they crashed with thunderous power, crushing even the mightiest of the Bashkan. It was Queen Draggolith that studied the formation of stone pylons giving them metal cores and pinnacles. She tethered lighting and conjured storms to lash and destroy the boats of the Bashkan. The King and Queen taught their crafts to their subjects encouraging a renaissance of magical earthly manipulation.

One of the dwarves’ finest achievements was the creation of golems to perform duties that were tedious or dangerous, but necessary to their survival. The first golems were simply crafted of fire hardened clay, they were animated with hearts made from magical gems in their chests whose power radiated to the rest of their clay bodies through dynamic mandalas that branched off into lesser patterns across the surface of the clay golems. Eventually more sophisticated golems were constructed of heartier materials, they could even reform after being crushed or broken. Before long, stone and metal golems with limbs made of sharp blades and axes were forged with living hearts of molten metal and gems bound by enchantment. These golems were crafted to be nearly as large as the giants serving as great weapons against the Bashkan.

The golems commanded by the Draggolith’s were formidable but, they required immense amounts of time, labor, and precious resources to create. Even as the golems were effective in destroying many of the Bashkan’s greatest warriors, they too were damaged, and some destroyed beyond repair. When the Bashkan were pushed back to the sea and many of their great vessels were destroyed, King Draggolith ordered every able-bodied scholar and craftsmen they had to help build a barrier, a chasm. It stretched across the valley with significant depth and width. The finest dwarven craftsmen and magicians worked together to condense the soil into dense, solid rock collapsing the space between the enormous stalagmites making a deep chasm filled with deadly spikes, each one tipped with metal to make the points sharp and durable. This enormous moat of spikes was impassable for the Bashkan. To King Draggolith’s credit he made the deadly chasm just wide enough for the giants to believe they could jump over it, causing them to leap to their deaths. After a few giants came to their painful end trying to leap across the canyon they soon gave up their efforts. Finally, for a time there was peace for the dwarves. Everyone celebrated the victory, whilst praising the might and courage of the Draggolith family. The Draggoliths’ were encouraged to rule from the ancestral towers of Terralith.

As the dwarven people emerged from their dwellings deep in the mountains, they saw that much of their history had been destroyed. In fact, most of Terralith’s beautiful towers were reduced to stumps by the giants. All that remained were the foundations and a stray standing structure. The colorful rubble from the different colored stone towers still had examples of the intricately carved design and history written into the buildings of the ancient city, but it would require years of scholarship and crafting to replicate what their ancestors built with the dragons help and guidance.

While King Draggolith was happy to lay down his arms to embrace a life of reconstruction and new prosperity. One of his daughters, Princess Jayde Draggolith, was not so easily swayed into a domestic life of comfort and security. Jayde didn’t believe the chasm of spikes would hold back the remaining giants, though their numbers were few, they were still driven by their insatiable need to conquer and consume. Jayde watched the giants on the beach from the mountain tops and saw their avarice grow as the king and the people continued to rebuild and flourish.

Using samples of rubble from Terralith, the dwarven people celebrated their victory over the invading giants by creating a new city that surpassed the splendor of Terralith. They named this city Neolith. Neolith was constructed of the same colorful stones that were used in the past, but the towers were capped with precious metals and carved crystals. The history of the dwarven people was once again carved on walls and towers throughout the magnificent city; every structure retold a part of the dwarven epic; from the creation of the dwarves to the death of the dragons, then the invasion and eventual defeat of the giants. Everyone marveled at the beautiful new structures and the population exploded following the great conflict.

Princess Jayde was not convinced the war was over and she wasn’t the only one. After all, the giants were still on the beach albeit blocked off by the defensive chasm. Jayde implored her father to assemble the army one more time to push the giants into the sea so they would drown in the waves and be gone forever, but the king had lost his taste for battle and glory. He thought his chasm to be terribly clever and assumed the Bashkan would simply starve or die trying to jump the chasm. King Draggolith was from the older generation that knew the dragons as they went into their final days and passed from the valley, because of this the old king still had the memories and comfort of the ancient shepherds in his heart. This may not seem significant, but simply having known dragons the king and everyone of his generation had an innate sense of comfort and satisfaction their children would never know.

You must understand that Jayde and many other dwarves her age were born after the death of the ancient shepherds, they never felt the love or security provided by their creators. They were the generation raised on fear and war with a strong survival instinct being forged from fear of the Bashkan. Since the earliest days of Jayde’s life, she could recall the threat of the giants, and it was impossible for her to think of a life without fear when the giants still maintained a physical presence in the valley. Jayde, indeed, many dwarves of her generation lived every day in fear as they entered what was a lifelong conflict. They only knew how to make war, and how to hate the Bashkan. Jayde’s childhood was spent listening to the sounds of the giants pounding against the sides of their mountain homes rattling the halls causing rubble to fall and crush her people. The princess grew up with tales of the dragons’ death and how it heralded the coming of the Bashkan.

Jayde’s adolescence was spent forging weapons and armor, learning incantations and strategy, but always while fearing the enemy. Jayde’s entire life was defined by fear and war to a degree the king and the older generation couldn’t comprehend, because they remembered the good years when they could bask in the warmth and protection of the ancient shepherds. The king’s generation desired rest and peace in their twilight years, even if it was a false peace. This was impossible for Jayde to accept, she thought it was madness, because for as long as the Bashkan still lived on the beach, the very threat that defined her life of turmoil was still present even if briefly pacified.

Jayde’s loyal soldiers attended her, patrolling the chasm and the peaks of the mountains surrounding the valley. They kept watch incase the giants should find a way to cross the chasm. Jayde reported everything she saw to her father, but the king simply said “Relax dear Jayde, the Bashkan have remained trapped for many years. Please my child, calm your mind and enjoy the splendor of Neolith and the fertile fruits of the valley gifted to us by the ancient shepherds.”.

Jayde continued to watch the Bashkan on the beach and she saw something that brought a new level of fear and anxiety to her young heart. Jayde watched in horror as the Bashkan dismantled the enormous planks of wood from their boats and bound them together. The princess readied her army sending word to her father, who laughed. “They intend to make plank bridges, ha! Such crude structures will splinter and fail under their weight atop the spikes of the chasm, you’ll see.” The king assured Jayde the golems would destroy or tip the bridge sending the remaining giants to their doom. Old King Draggolith saw this as his final victory, but his view of the danger was muddled by years of comfort and miles of distance from the beach. The king hadn’t looked upon the greedy faces of the Bashkan in years and didn’t feel the threat the way Jayde did.

Jayde saw the hunger and dangerous want in the Bashkan’s eyes. They desired everything and they intended to leave the valley in ruin. Jayde was frustrated and angered by her father who refused to take her warnings seriously. He dismissed her fears with wishful thoughts of a peaceful future. Jayde walked about the deepest chambers in the mountains looking for ways to re-enforce her defenses. While walking through the catacombs and mines of her ancestors she stumbled across one of the ancient dragon’s tombs. Jayde had seen them before, but this one was different. The colorful crystal of this ancient tomb was scratched and cracked as if someone had broken the seals.

It was forbidden to disturb the tombs of the ancient shepherds, so Jayde investigated further looking for answers. When Jayde opened the sarcophagus, she saw that some of the dragon’s bones were cracked open. As she studied the bone and sinew of the ancient one, she noticed whole pieces were missing. Jayde couldn’t fathom who would have done this or why, until she noticed the stone under the sarcophagus was scratched and old cracks were filled in with rock of a different hue. Jayde used the abilities that ran in her royal blood to command the stones to move and when the sarcophagus was pushed aside Jayde found another tomb.

Jayde was the first person to look upon the hidden tomb of the dark scholar, Grixilon whose story was chiseled into the lid of his sarcophagus. Once Jayde read the story, she saw the perfect solution. If her father refused to finish off the giants before they crossed the chasm to destroy Neolith, then she would conjure the strength to defeat them herself using the teachings of Grixilon. Jayde thought about all the suffering and death her people had to endure. She thought about all the knots of fear she was forced to swallow every day since her birth, yet her father was still content to sit on his throne and let the giants cross the chasm.

To one as fearful as Jayde, who was cursed with the impetuousness of youth and a mind carved from the horrors of a lifetime of war, she saw Grixilon and his teachings as a font of hope. What if Grixilon had been allowed to raise the dragons all those years ago? Would the giants have ever made it to shore? Would the dragons have bested them before they managed to storm the valley destroying Terralith and forcing her people into hiding? Jayde knew she couldn’t change the past, but she was determined to protect the future of her people. Even if the Bashkan’s bridge failed, who is to say more of the giants won’t sail to their shores some day in the future? In greater numbers or with more sophisticated weapons? It was unacceptable in Jayde’s mind, and only she had the strength of will to do what was necessary.

As Jayde studied and prepared the ritual, word of the Bashkan building a bridge to cross the chasm spread throughout the shimmering city of Neolith. Finally seeing the danger, King Draggolith raised the army bringing every golem and capable dwarven warrior to the edge of the chasm. No sooner had the royal army arrived than the Bashkan were sliding their makeshift bridge across the metal spikes of the chasm. The king began to feel a sense of urgency that perhaps he should’ve heeded his daughter’s warning a bit sooner, but he trusted in his own experience and readied the war machines.

Massive catapults and ballistae were wheeled to defend the chasm. As the fury of the dwarven war engines were unleashed upon the Bashkan, the king and many others felt a sense of pride and certain victory, but it was not so. The Bashkan were brutal and clever having created re-enforced tower shields that absorbed the brunt of the projectiles shot across the chasm. The king in a sudden wave of fearfulness ordered the remaining metal golems to destroy the bridge. The Bashkan expected this, and they bashed the golems off the side of the bridge into the sturdy spikes of the chasm. Though the golems weren’t destroyed, their limbs were tangled and locked into place preventing them from getting up. True panic set in on the side of the dwarves as their greatest weapons against the Bashkan were incapacitated.

The giants’ malevolent spirits were revitalized by the blow to the dwarves’ defenses, and they rushed across the bridge. Since the chasm was made just wide enough to trick the giants into jumping to their doom on the spikes below, the Bashkan only needed to get about halfway across the bridge before they easily leapt to the other side. The giants landed amongst the ranks of the dwarves swinging their cruel weapons. The slaughter began in earnest then and it seemed as if all hope was lost as the seeds of the king’s apathy finally came to the deadly bloom of his peoples’ destruction.

The dwarven ranks were broken and they were in full rout, until the winds changed, and the overcast sky became thick and dark, swirling around the queen’s old pylons used for channeling lightning. Jagged tendrils of electricity exploded from the heavy sky connecting with the pylons filling the air with tremendous thunder. The thunder echoed back and forth against the walls of the valley causing both Bashkan and dwarves alike to cover their ears. Parts of the mountains surrounding the valley gave way to the concussive force of the thunder, crumbling into deadly rockslides, further exacerbating the earsplitting sounds bouncing off the valley walls. Neon green runes encircled the pylons atop the mountain ridges spiraling into a blur of the potent magic. A voice echoed from on high and the sound of stone cracking erupted from the halls of the mountains as the princess, Jayde Draggolith used Grixilon’s forbidden magic to consume the ancient energy inside the dragons’ marrow fueling the reanimation spell. This sudden burst of energy woke the ancient shepherds from their tombs. Their bones and sinew was forged together and strengthened by the corrupt magic causing the dragons to burst forth from their resting places deep in the mountains.

The rolling thunder and deafening sound of stone breaking eventually ceased, leaving the valley in a profound silence. Both dwarves and Bashkan alike stood amongst one another in confusion and awe. Looking around the valley for the source of the ear-splitting noise the giants briefly forgot about their conquest. The dwarves who were old enough, like King Draggolith, forgot about the doom of his people by the giants and were gripped by a new fear. The king was there so many years ago when the dark scholar, Grixilon was caught weaving his evil spells. He remembered the sickening neon green runes the corrupt dwarf used in his craft. They were burned into the king’s mind as the pinnacle of evil, the greatest possible sin and King Draggolith knew his daughter was to blame.

It started with a rumble, it grew to a rhythmic stomping, then a pause that sent a trickle of fear up the spines of everyone in the valley before the dragons came bursting out of the mountains. Their physical mass and strength were gone, but it was replaced by potent magic that energized their wretched corpses. The bodies of the ancient shepherds were wrapped in time worn cloth and tarnished, ill-fitting armor covering what little tendons and sinew remained lashed to their bones. Their chests burned with the green flame of necromancy and their eyes, once beautiful orbs reflecting the majesty of the world, were now hollow spaces with smoldering green dots of corrupt magic to light their way.

The perverse host of dragons looked across the valley, their similarity in movements and intentions were clearly controlled by a hive mind, a queen, terrible and fierce. Princess Jayde sat mounted on the back of the largest unholy dragon, her eyes blazing with the emerald fire of doom; she led the charge and smote the Bashkan with her vile host of skeletal minions. Projecting a cloud of fear, Jayde watched the giants mindlessly stumble over one another into the spikes of the chasm. Those with the strength of mind to stay and fight were withered away by Jayde’s consuming death magic. The rest of the Bashkan were simply mauled by the corrupt host of dragons without spoken word, ceremony, or mercy. The Bashkan were destroyed as if by a pack of rabid dogs.

The dwarves were safe from the Bashkan, but now they were exposed to the horrible effects of the corrupting magic conjured by Jayde. The breath of the shambling dragon host was corrosive, gnawing away at all living things forming a mist that decayed anything it touched. The princess saw herself as the hero who banished the giants from the Valley of the Ancients, but according to my grandmother, the rest of her people saw the princess as a corruptor. Jayde became the cardinal of sin that turned the divine beauty of the ancestral valley into a fetid wasteland. When Jayde Draggolith saw the fear and contempt in the eyes of her own people, she wept, becoming angry. In her fury Jayde lashed out and the once holy dragons, now perverted and tied to her will, also released their fury upon the very people she intended to protect. Specifically, the king was the focus of her rage. After that day the princess was known by the title of Queen Jayde Draggolich, Mother of Sin.

My parents were born and raised under the yoke of evil. After the slaying of the Bashkan, my grandmother and the other surviving dwarves fled to the mountain top villages to escape the queen’s wrath. Their whole lives my parents saw the valley as a pit filled with mist that drove any living thing mad, filled with the corrupt, prowling bodies of the ancient dragons. Queen Draggolich took the city of Neolith as her seat of power and commanded the legions of dead composed of both dwarves and giants. My parents were haunted by the chilling screams of the dead through the mist of the valley. They grew up in fear and despair only knowing evil, but not me, I won’t live in fear. I listened to the stories of the past from my grandmother when the ancient shepherds were beautiful, and the valley was full of life even after the dragons’ illness and death. I, Shala Sofstone, vow to destroy the evil queen and cleanse the valley of her corruption. I will end the ancient shepherds curse and make the valley free of dragons once more.