Dragon Communion
You wish to hear of the... Communion? Ah, the folly of short-lived mortals. I, who was soaring when the first sapling of the Erdtree was but a seed, will tell you of this twisted practice, as viewed from the eternal sky.
The history of Dragon Communion is not one of reverence, but of covetousness and a desperate grasp for our primordial might.
In the age before the Erdtree's dominion, when my kind, the Ancient Dragons with our scales of stone and our gold-tinged lightning, reigned alongside the Dragonlord Placidusax, there was a peace—a terrifying peace, but a natural one. Then, a great fracture occurred, and the practice of Communion was birthed, not by greedy mortals, but by my own kind, in a time of strife.
The Original Intent: Weapon Against Betrayal
The truest origin, the one the little cultists have long forgotten, was a dark measure against Bayle the Dread and his brood. Bayle, a creature of treachery and savage fire, turned against the Dragonlord, causing a wound that still weeps through time.
The Dragonlord, in his boundless age, allowed some among our followers to develop a counter-measure. A practice where warriors—human, Troll, it mattered not—would hunt the Drakes, the lesser, devolved kin who followed Bayle, and consume their very hearts.
It was a lure: A promise of primal power, channeled through the Arcane, to turn mortal champions into efficient hunters of traitors. Our priestess, Florissax, even cast aside her own magnificent form to guide those mortals, to ensure they turned their savage hunger upon the correct prey.
The Original Feast: They did not always consume the fleshy hearts of Drakes. In the oldest, most dangerous form, some mortals were allowed to consume a Stone Heart—a sacrifice by one of our own, transforming the warrior into a true Ancient Dragon. This was the ultimate devotion, the deepest Communion, granted to the most potent allies. This was a gift—a terrible one, but a gift nonetheless.
The Fall: From Weapon to Curse
Yet, mortals are ever driven by greed, and our plan turned upon itself.
The Power's Price: The act of devouring a dragon's heart—flesh or stone—carries a terrible curse. The dragon's own feral will, the raw power of the Outer God that governs our very existence, begins to consume the mortal's self. They gain our strength, our breath, our claws—but they lose their humanity.
The Magma Wyrms: Behold the Magma Wyrms! They are not my true kin. They are the cautionary tales, the greedy heroes and trolls who gorged themselves too deeply on the hearts, losing all but a crawling, molten savagery. Cursed to forever drag their broken bodies across the earth, chasing a heat they can never truly grasp.
The Cult's Decay: What you see now at the forgotten churches is the dregs of this old conflict. A morbid cult that believes the path to greatness is paved with the hearts of any dragon they can fell. They are ignorant of the true conflict, mistaking the weapon we forged for a path to glory. They feast upon the bodies of the common Drakes and lesser dragons, claiming to honor us while committing an act of utter savagery that degrades our very essence.
The Dragon Cult, led by the late Godwyn and my beloved sister Lansseax, was a noble attempt to find true peace and reverence under the Erdtree—a sharing of our light and strength. But the Dragon Communion?
It is merely a scar. A perpetual, festering wound born of a desperate war, kept alive by the blind ambition of short-sighted mortals who mistake a feast of scraps for true transcendence. They seek to become us, but only become a miserable, half-made mockery, forever bound to the earth they once wished to transcend.
Remember this, little one, when you hold a pulsing heart in your hand: You are not inheriting power, you are inheriting a curse, and you are fulfilling a very old, very terrible purpose.