Common Knowledge
Dragons
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- Everyone knows Dragons exist, and that they are powerful creatures
- Nobody ever expects to meet a dragon
- The idea of dragons secretly manipulating humanity is a conspiracy theory on par with our world’s idea that many world leaders are secretly reptilian aliens; there are certainly people who believe it, but sensible people don’t take it seriously. (For more information on this entirely preposterous theory that has absolutely no basis in reality you can look art Chapter 15 of CoE)
- Stories of dragons are plentiful and anyone from Thrane knows of the Bane of Thrane, the Dragon who killed Prince Thrane.
- Everyone knows that Argonnessen is a land of Dragon, but know nothing more that “here be dragons”
Circular transclusion detected: Harks-Eberron/Common-Knowledge
Details
During the Age of Giants, scholars describe how …
- Giant nations in Xen’drik unlocked secrets of arcane magic still unmatched in the modern age.
- The giants fought the inhabitants of Dal Quor, ending the conflict by destroying a moon and thereby breaking Dal Quor’s link to Eberron.
- The giants threatened to crush an elvish rebellion with dangerous epic magics, prompting the dragons to step in, utterly destroying Xen’drik and cursing the land.
In the wake of the Age of Demons, the dragons were the most powerful force in Eberron. Some dragons helped guide lesser creatures, including the giants of Xen’drik, in their mastery of arcane magic. As the dragons’ increasing dominion caused a surge in the Daughter of Khyber’s power (see chapter 3), the dragons were forced to withdraw to isolation in Argonnessen. They remain there to this day, in hopes of preventing her power from increasing further.
Multiple nations of giants arose on Xen’drik. The Sulat League specialized in elemental binding and magebreeding. They created the drow as living weapons to deal with rebellious elves, and it’s thought that fire giants are remnants of the Sulat. The Group of Eleven was an alliance of eleven city-states, each led by a powerful empyrean mage. Their diverse culture valued internal and external competition, believing it drove evolution. The Cul’sir Dominion was ruled by mighty empyreans and sought to dominate all reality. They explored the planes as well as the world; it’s not known whether the Cul’sir attacked Dal Quor or whether the quori of the time sought to invade Eberron, but the two powers fought an extended war. The giants ended the conflict by destroying one of the moons of Eberron with cataclysmic magic, damaging the planar connection between Dal Quor and the world. Since then, the quori have been unable to physically travel to Eberron, and there are no longer any manifest zones to Dal Quor.
These actions had devastating repercussions for giant civilization. In the upheaval, many Cul’sir subjects used the opportunity to rebel, but the largest uprising was that of the elves—both those oppressed by the Cul’sir, and warrior elves who had never been conquered by the giants. When the Cul’sir threatened to draw on their most dangerous magics once more to destroy the elves, the dragons emerged in force from Argonnessen. They utterly devastated the civilizations of Xen’drik, giant and otherwise, then laid curses on the land that are beyond the comprehension of the modern age. To this day, the scourge of the land prevents any advanced civilization from rising again. The Traveler’s Curse warps space and makes travel in Xen’drik unreliable. The curse known as the Du’rashka Tul—“the madness of crowds”—causes civilizations that become too advanced or widespread to collapse into madness. Draconic curses are believed the reason the giants devolved from mighty titans into hill giants and the other giants known today. The full extent of these draconic curses is unknown, but the impact is unmistakable.