World Overview
The world is dying beneath dragonfire.
Not quickly. Not gloriously. Slowly.
Cities vanish in single nights beneath storms of flame. Entire kingdoms disappear beneath oceans disturbed by colossal wings. Mountains split open from creatures sleeping beneath them. The skies themselves burn red at dusk, and every year the winters grow shorter while the heat grows worse.
Humanity believes dragons are the cause of the apocalypse.
Humanity is wrong.
Dragons are not invaders. They are fragments.
Every dragon in existence is a splintered piece of a single ancient being known only as The First Flame, an entity imprisoned beneath the world long before recorded history. No one knows exactly what it is. Some believe it was a god. Others claim it was the first dragon ever born. Some ancient records describe it as a living sun that fell from the heavens and tried to consume the world itself.
The gods—or whatever powers existed before civilization—could not destroy it. Instead, they buried it deep beneath the earth and chained its body inside a prison of mountains, oceans, and magic.
But the prison was imperfect.
The First Flame could not escape physically, so it fractured its own soul into countless lesser forms. Those fragments became dragons.
Every dragon alive is connected to the First Flame like organs connected to a body. They are extensions of its will, even if they do not fully understand their own purpose.
And when dragons die, their essence returns to the source.
The First Flame grows stronger.
Humanity discovered dragons centuries ago and naturally began hunting them. Dragon slayers became heroes. Kingdoms rose around dragon hunting guilds. Entire economies and technologies were built upon harvesting dragon corpses.
No one realized they were feeding the apocalypse.
Now the First Flame stirs beneath the world.
Earthquakes spread across entire continents. Ancient volcanoes erupt without warning. Dragon sightings increase yearly. Magic grows unstable. The dead whisper near dragon remains. Some mountains bleed molten rock from cracks that were not there before.
The world is approaching another age of fire.