The Night of the Red Moons
Written by J-Haskell.
An ancient legend of the last True Mage and the events that led to the destruction of the Elder Drakes. Unlike most periods of Moonviper history following the event, there are no memory stones that tell exactly what occurred on the Night of the Red Moons.
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Centuries ago, the Realm was under the dominion of the terrible Elder Drakes. These immense, wingless overlords, the first and most wicked of necromancers, ruled the land with an iron fist. They took delight in the suffering they caused, for they were ever jealous of the flighted dragons they ruled over and took every opportunity to push them down, and viewed their human subjects as little more than amusing ants.
Few records remain of their rule or the unknown time before they came to conquer the Realm, for the Elder Drakes’ destruction was not merely limited to the lives of their subjects; they also readily and often destroyed records, and thus all we know of this period are legend and folk tales handed down through the generations that followed.
The end of the Elder Drakes’ thousand-year-empire came swift and was just as brutal as it was abrupt. A moonviper named Adeodatus, a blessed child of the moons, appeared before the last Elder Drake queen, Midas of Argyre, in the city of Urbs. “You and your kin must surrender your territory and leave the Realm evermore,” Adeodatus warned. “If you are still here by nightfall, I shall call down the wrath of the Moon Sisters upon you and you will be annihilated.”
Midas merely laughed in response. “What care I for the superstitions of little worms?” She sneered to the pale-scaled dragon standing before her. “You will fail and you will die, and by nightfall, I will have forgotten you.”
The Elder Drake queen attempted to crush the moonviper underfoot, but Adeodatus was swift and able to slip away without injury, vanishing into the wildlands surrounding the city. True to her word, Midas quickly put her strange guest out of mind, and by the time the sky began to darken overhead she had long forgotten Adeodatus.
That night, the moons rose full and red, like a trio of baleful eyes. Crimson light bathed the lands of the Realm and all of dragonkind, save for Adeodatus’ fellow moonvipers, fell under the Moon Sister’s curse, inflicting a violent frenzy upon them. Without regard for friend or foe, or even their own personal safety, the Elder Drakes clawed and bit and leaped at anything that moved, all their malevolent cunning failing them as the scaled titans clashed with tooth and claw alone.
Hours passed. With daybreak came an end to the carnage, the sun’s golden light bathing the Realm’s peoples and bringing clarity to their minds once more. Many lives were lost in the night, but dragonkind endured; the same could not be said for the Elder Drakes. Fallen to the claws of their kin or torn apart by their fury-stricken subjects, the golden tyrants were no more. The Realm was freed at last from their rule.
Adeodatus returned to the city of Urbs, observing the smoking rubble left from Midas’ rampage with little interest, and addressed her people. “I am the last True Mage,” she declared, “I have wrought this destruction and I have called down the Moon Sister’s fury. The Elder Drakes are gone, ruined by their own hands. I will lead us into a glorious future.”
And with that, the Night of the Red Moons was over. In the span of a mere few hours, the course of the Realm’s history had been changed forever. Adeodatus’ story continues beyond the events of that night… but that’s a tale for another time.