DM Disclaimer: All material in the Player Guide portion of this blog is copied directly from the War of the Burning Sky Player's Guide, which is freely distributed and available for public download at EN World. I take no credit for any of the text or images found in posts tagged with the "player guide" label.
We stand at a crossroad of destiny. Our future is defined by the lessons of the past and the course of our present. Two nations stand ready to take our hope from us and battle to this very minute with us — even though we are not at war.
Scoff if you will, but we are in a battle. It’s not fought with sword and bow, but with ideas; the idea that we are only happy when we are equal; the idea that we must be neighborly to those in need at the expense of our own; the idea that the needs of the many outweigh the one. What good is a collective destiny if yours is destroyed? What benefit does giving one penny to the poor give? What peace do we secure if we trade and barter with the Shahalesti and the Ragesians… None! Remember! Remember the lessons of forty years ago. Strength is saintly! Resist and thrive!
— Helda Claearcall, Sermon to the faithful in Stronghold, temple to the god of Strength
Gate Pass has the distinction of being the only city to successfully drive out occupation by the Ragesian Empire. Forty years ago, Emperor Coaltongue defeated the city’s army, set up a military government, and erected a 90-foot-tall statue of himself in the grand square on Summer’s Bluff before moving on to his next conquest. For two years, citizens waged an insurgency against the occupying army, until finally Coaltongue decided the city wasn’t worth the loss of men.
Shahalesti and Ragesia, once allies, were approaching open war, and Coaltongue declared that he would withdraw from Gate Pass if the Lord of Shahalesti agreed to leave the city as a neutral buffer between their two nations. The elves agreed, the city celebrated its victory, and profit from trade between the two nations began to flow.
The city still sports numerous indications of the occupation, and many citizens purchase busts or paintings of the aged emperor, as if both to mock the Ragesians for their failure and to respect Coaltongue’s wisdom in deciding to leave their city alone. Even the emperor’s statue remains; it is decorated and painted gaudily on various holidays.
Because of his name, Drakus Coaltongue is often associated with a myth that is native to Gate Pass and Ragesia, that of the Dragon and the Eagle. A series of myths tell of an ancient time when the lands that are now Ragesia and its neighbors were the domain of four elemental spirits — the Tidereaver Kraken, the Worldshaper Worm, the Flamebringer Dragon, and the Stormchaser Eagle, and these four beings are common motifs in the art and architecture of Gate Pass (as well as in Ragesia).
Selected Regional Myths
The Wavering Maiden
This myth tells how the Tidereaver Kraken sought to explore the land by making a human body for itself out of the surface of the seas. In the form of a beautiful young woman with rolling black hair, the Kraken explored the world. However, because the tide is not constant, sometimes her fake form would pull away, and the Kraken would be forced to spend an evening in a lake or river in its true form. The myth is a series of comic events based around numerous suitors who fall in love with the Kraken in its woman form, and who often seek to destroy it in its Kraken form.
The Trilling Stone
“The Trilling Stone” tells of how the Worldshaper Worm sought to prove its superiority to the Stormchaser Eagle by creating a song more powerful than the Eagle’s thunder. The myth explains the various monsters that live in the depths of the world, saying that they were lured by the Worm’s eerie, whistling song, only to be trapped when the arrogant Worm decided to sing even louder, causing an earthquake. This, it is said, is why the bodies of the dead are filled with worms when they are found in the ground.
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| Stormseeker Eagle |
This myth is a morality tale about the dangers of both pride and power. The Flamebringer Dragon had never, after many years of chase, been able to catch the Stormseeker Eagle, so it preyed instead on the Eagle’s pride, bragging that the Eagle was too weak and cowardly to ever chase the Dragon. The angered Eagle pursued the Dragon, and did not realize until too late that it had been tricked into flying down a tunnel into the depths of the world, where the Eagle did not have enough room to maneuver.
The Dragon bit the Eagle’s throat and began to drink its blood for its power, when the Worldshaper Worm came upon the scene. The Worm was blind, but the Dragon knew that it could feel the beating hearts of both the Dragon and the Eagle. To avoid its treachery being discovered, the Dragon tore out the Eagle’s still-beating heart and hid it in a place from where it would never be tempted to retrieve it.
The myth of the Aquiline Heart explains how dragons became the strongest creatures in the world and teaches that those with too much power risk being turned upon by those around them.
