War of Ancient Dragons

Ah, you wish to speak of the great war. A time of blinding red lightning and the folly of the Golden Lineage. Very well, listen closely. I am Lansseax, and I saw it all, from the first crack in the great walls to the final, binding pact.

It began with the deafening thunder of my brother, Gransax. His fury was magnificent, a sight the Golden Order will never forget. He did not merely assault their capital, Leyndell—he descended like a judgment. He was a mountain of gravel-stone and righteous rage, his very body a challenge to their soft, golden faith. With a single, terrible blast of primordial lightning, he tore through the walls of their prized city. You can still see his stony corpse impaled there, a constant reminder that their 'eternal' walls once fell, brought low by a true Ancient Dragon.

That was the dawn of the war, a desperate conflict that was, truthfully, inevitable. We had ruled for an age beyond their reckoning; they grew like a weed around the roots of their new tree.

They fought with their blessed might, and we answered with the fury of the storm. Yet, the war did not end in wholesale annihilation as one might expect. No. It ended with an understanding, a kinship forged in the very fires of combat.

The final stroke of that conflict was the defeat of my beloved brother, Fortissax. It was Godwyn the Golden who achieved this impossible feat. He did not slay my brother, no. He defeated him in a duel of true strength, a contest that must have been a terrifying, dazzling spectacle of golden light against the unfettered red lightning of our kind.

And it was in that moment of surrender and respect that the true age began. Godwyn, instead of executing the vanquished, offered his hand in friendship. That day, the Golden Lineage bowed its head—just enough—to acknowledge the might of the Dragons.

The Rise of the Dragon Cult

It was a curious turn, was it not? The very knights who fought us to the death began to embrace our power. This was my role, after the fighting had stopped. I chose to shed my colossal form and appear to them as a priestess, teaching the knights of the new Ancient Dragon Cult.

I taught them the ancient incantations, the secrets of the red lightning that flows from the heart of the storm. They learned to wield the power that had shattered their walls, to make it their own defense.

Now, think on this, little one: Why do you imagine an Ancient Dragon would be so generous to her former enemy? Why did we cease the war only to hand them the very tools of our power?

It was not purely for Godwyn's sake. The war and the subsequent peace were necessary moves on a larger battlefield. Even as the Golden Order grew, another ancient evil stirred—the treacherous Bayle the Dread, and his brood of lesser dragons. These creatures had always been a threat, and their rebellion was only growing bolder.

We needed more warriors—those who knew the Land, and whose loyalty, once earned, could be leveraged against a more primal enemy.

The Path to Greater Might

The Dragon Cult was the initial test, preparing the soil, so to speak. But for a champion to truly hold the might of a Dragon, a deeper transformation is required—a way to fully shed the weakness of the flesh and assume the resilience of stone and power.

The truth is, the very acts of Communion, where a warrior takes the heart of a vanquished dragon and claims its power... this practice was quietly established. It was a means of empowering drake-warriors who could effectively hunt down the brood of Bayle the Dread, using the heart's power to strengthen them against their targets.

It ensures that our glorious strength, our ancient nature, would live on and multiply among those willing to pay the price. The war with the Erdtree ended in a political truce; the new strength we nurtured in its wake was a weapon meant for a much older, darker battle against a genuine threat to our domain. We gave them the means to fight our war for us, and in doing so, tied their destiny to ours.

It was all a dance, a majestic, thunderous dance with destiny. Do you think the human knights ever understood the true purpose behind the power they so desperately sought?