Through the shadows of time we came. My greatest grandcestors, warlords of the Fallen Steppes, established their hold over what was to become our lands long ages past. The downs and fields, rivers and prairies, all fell before the fell might of my antecedents. Those who joined us prospered, those who opposed, fell.
We ruled Cymoria for an age of men, for almost longer than written memory could tell. You could ride a month in any direction and never leave our influence behind.
My grandfather, Hoelgreth von Karlstejn, built the greatest castle ever constructed in all the lands of men to honor both our ancestors and our own glory. Perhaps it was this that opened up the vulnerability that eventually claimed us. His pride was great – well founded, and great. Thirty years of his life, and twenty of my own sire’s, went into our ancestral home.
But while it was a bastion against all men, and served as a beacon of lordship over all our lands, darker things than men creep in the cavernous depths beneath the earth. I never really knew what dark magic was performed on us, though I have my suspicions. Regardless, it was three months after my campaign to pacify the city-state of Allmendstadt that it transpired.
I had returned to Karlstejn, the head of the Count of Allmendstadt (severed by my own hand with father’s gift to me, our family blade Maelderung) still wearing his crown of silver, upon the lance of my squire. His chief advisors and elven allies chained to my wagon train as gifts for my father, Gaereth. The last had been hoisted in his gibbet to bleed out over the waste-pits that very day. The sun set on the crimson rain, and our people could respect the order restored.
It never rose again.
Twenty miles from the castle in every direction, the land was untouched. But at that distance, a grey wall of mist arose, shaping a perfect dome over our much-reduced lands. Rivers still flowed, their source and their exit obscured. Air still cycled, though I know not from where. Even beneath the earth – I must assume to a matching depth of twenty miles – the misty border extended.
Impassable, inscrutable, unbearable.
The best sages – for they were the best, culled from all our lands to serve my Lord Gereth in his court, and one day to serve me – were consulted, oracles foretold, prisoners interrogated. The only answer that routinely came up was a frightening constant:
Exile. Consumption. Absorption.
Yet the barriers were not completely impenetrable. Strange beasts – stranger than those that ran in the unpatrolled forests of Halstatt – emerged from the mists, fell and wild. The reborn dead also found themselves stronger, more numerous, in our strange prison.
Ten years to the day of our forcible removal, I and my force of arms met with a pack of wights and ghouls that had beset a village of my Lord Gaereth’s subjects. In the battle, I was struck and cast into a chasm. Certain of my doom, I anticipated the end with some trepidation – for it is not, of course, a fall which kills you, but the rapid stop at its end – but even now, I have never landed. Swallowed by mist, I found myself stumbling through a haunted wood outside this very city, beckoned to its gate by the burning lanterns.
Now, I am not only exile, but lost of my own lands. The only one of my line to escape that exile (if this life can be called an escape), I live in this strange, dark city, eking out a living as a mercenary and soldier. I hire out to merchants, treasure-hunters, and anyone in need of my arm and my blade. Most often, I can be found in the Six Crowns with a pint of brew, playing dice or cards, or arm-wrestling the surly dwarves there. Most know my name, but few call me that.
I was Lord Draegan von Karlstejn, and one day shall be again.
Here, they call me the Drake.
General Appearance: The Drake is a tall human, standing 6’2” when at full height, with pale, clear skin. His eyes are deep black, pupils barely discernable, and his hair matches with the exception of a white streak over each ear. His smile extends to only one side of his face, and the other seems never to express much, positive or negative. His skin is equally lined with both scar and muscle carving, and it seems likely that he could as easily lift his arm-wrestling opponents from the table as he is able to force their hands into it.
He wears a patchwork armor of various scales and hides, each colored strangely – some iridescent, some pure black, others of various earthish hues, almost all spattered with dried ichor. A longsword of strange make hangs at his side, adorned with indecipherable writing and a hilt of deeply-scarred iron. At its pommel is set a single red stone.
