Maelforge Lore

Maelforge

Rough earth grips me, scraping my scales. Jagged teeth of stone transfix my wings, wings that once fanned flame across eternity. They have entombed me, dull gray rock for miles before my eyes. Their crude magic drains my heat, dragging it far above, to ooze from the mountain whose weight has crushed me through millennia.

These Telarans. They have forced sleep and stillness on me. How I hate them.

In long-gone eons I blazed from star to star, far ahead of my sisters and brothers, the void screaming, scorching in my wake. I would tear the cores from living worlds and gulp them down like beating hearts.

And as the molten juice ran down my chin, warrior gods would come give me battle for the ashes of their dying creations. We would clash in the sky and the spaces between the planes. I slew them with great relish, and my triumphal roar blasted their brittle remains across the heavens.

Some fought so fiercely I bade them “RISE AND FIGHT AGAIN,” but Regulos, my eldest brother, held death absolute, and snatched them for his own, forever.

We came at last to this world. I had heard of Telara’s mighty god of war, and yearned to paint his death in glorious relief against a smoldering sky. But Thedeor heeded his cowardly fellow gods and hid from me as they forced us to fight worthless mortals.

The frustration! One snort of flame and armies shriveled like ants, and they could not even challenge me anew before Regulos claimed them all.

Then Crucia whispered to us, “Why not turn on Regulos?” Ahh, now this would be battle! But when we fell upon his bloated form, sly Crucia hung back, as if to direct us like some upstart general. I scoured her with flame, and then turned upon the rest of them, and together we clashed through the planes.

Slaughter, agony, bright red ruin! Glorious! I lost myself amid the wreckage of kingdoms.

And then—somehow—faced with a handful of paltry mortals, I fell. They drained my heat and sunk me in the earth. Held so still that even anger seemed futile. Shameful, slothful slumber was mine through the ages.

Now, their sky breaks. My children rush from the rifts and kill. As I feel their burning steps upon my mountain, my rage returns. With rage comes heat. The stone softens around me. Heat melts earth.

I am coming, Telarans. To fight you, and your gods, and all my brothers and sisters. And when I alone am the Blood Storm, you will burn and rise and burn again. How I will revel. Glorious.