I have served the Empress since she was a girl hiding behind her mother's skirts, playing with her dragon dolls.\n\nI cannot serve the Empress through this. If Taiying ever leaves Aeternum, if Corruption ever gets off of this island, the whole world will be forfeit, not just Shang Wu's forces.\n\nShe wields supernatural power over the minds and bodies of her followers as if they were her childhood dolls. I shudder to think how she views her own people, as mere fodder for her smoldering revenge.\n\nNow that we are on Aeternum, I see there is no going back home. Now, I must help cage the dragon that has been born here.\n\n-ZL\n\n

Ebonscale's Dollies

Dragons at Her Command

The shrines that the Empress ordered to be built around Ebonscale Reach each correspond to a different element important in dragon lore.\n\nIt is said by our people that the Old World was shaped by dragons. Long serpents lay down to form the rivers, while mountains were made by great leviathans hunkering down to rest. Even the air we breathe in was first breathed out by the dragons. Their gift of fire is the most obvious elemental connection of all. Dragons are all around us; one only has to know where to look.\n\nIt seems the great Taiying Empress' desire to see dragons allows her to conjure them with this strange new power she has acquired. Does she shape the power or does the power shape her?\n\n-ZL

Ebonscale's Shrines

Dragons of All Elements

The Old World was ordered, and this strange new land of Aeternum is anything but. The five elements (wood, metal, fire, water, earth) are present here in Aeternum, but their numbers have bloated. Here we have plants made of spirit or air motes, or even more curiously, of life and death. Air replaces the principles of metal and wood in the four shrines we have constructed thus far. \n\nI know the heavenly force that ordained my once-beloved Taiying Empress, but there are so many other forces at play on this island that I often lose sight of what I once knew. The crimson of Corruption is the most frightening of all, and in my chambers, I could hear the Empress weeping, lamenting her bargain with this most unnatural of powers.\n\nI wonder even now if she still has doubts about the deal she made, and if there is any way to extract her from it that does not destroy her as well.\n\nZL\n

Aeternum Disrupts

The Ordering of the Earth

Heaven and Hell are natural consequences of life on earth. Or, perhaps they were once, before Aeternum. Heaven is the divine ruler of the skies who gifts their eminence to the royal bloodline. Hell, in its ten courts, is the darkness pervading the earthly prison it traps human souls in.\n\nBut there are no courts or judges here, only untamed and uncaring wilderness. This cannot be Hell, it is far too disorganized in its tortures. Seeing Taiying take on the mantle of Corruption is far worse than any Hell of iron beds or oil cauldrons.  \n\nI heard her weeping again, for herself or for her people I could not say.\n\nZL\n

The Ordering of the Heavens and Hells

Named for the black fungus that grows within, the ruins of Chinese settlers lay amidst lush wetlands, majestic waterfalls, and towering cliffs

Dragon Fascination Chapter - NWGuide Database of Lore

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