Background/Intro/Teaser to the Adventure: Reign of Ruin

[GreyWolfVT]

Teaser

Beware the blackener of bright waters, for she is come again.....
Rumors of death move like a plague through the Crannogtowns of the great swamp or great ranger patrols mysteriously disappearing on routine scouting missions, of a winged a winged shadow that blots out the midday sun, and of entire villages slaughtered, their homes left burning and the victims' flesh melted from their bones. All evidence gathered from the sites of these massacres points to the heart of the great swamp, where an ancient and primitive tribe of lizardmen have ruled from an abandoned human temple for centuries on end. The Crannogtowns' protectors, the Stormhammer Rangers, warn that horrid half-dragon monstrosities still stalk the bogs and travellers would do well to stay away from the inner swamp. Yet the killing and the carnage continue, and the people of the Crannogs plead for heroes to aid them now as they did in days long forgotten. Are you up for the challenge?

Background
Once a sprawling nation of agrarian hunter-gatherers spread across a vast wilderness of forests and plains, the country of Greenacre prospered beneath the rule of its high druid and his acolytes. However, Greenacre fell to draconic rule and eon ago by human reconing, and few generations have passed since that point even by a dragon's marking of time. The fearsome dragon queen of Greenacre was Nyrionaxys, a female black wyrm who organized several tribes of lizardfolk from a distant land into a conquering army. This frenzied horde of lizardfolk, the Ixtupi, believed the great black wyrm to be a herald of the evil water deity Tlaloc, come to lead them to dominance over the warmbloods.

Under the great wyrm's leadership, the lizards grew braver and more bloodthirsty, and their great numbers easily conquered the peaceful human denizens of Greenacre. One by one, Nyrionaxys slew the other ingenious dragons of Greenacre, then slaughtered the guardian druids of the ancient human temple at the forest's heart. Devoid of its former masters, she converted the temple into her lair, where the lizardfolk of the Ixtupi tribe served at her command as slaves and enforcers. She then twisted the woods and fields of Greenacre with her foul magicks, causing fertile farmlands and rivers to become fallow salt marshes and swamps. Greenacre was no more all that remained of that proud civilization were Crannonfolk, a broken people who built settlements of thatch and reed across the befouled waters of the Great Swamp.

The remaining humans who survived the desolation of their lands retreated to the outskirts of the swamp that now devoured their once-pristine hills and forests, offering tribute to the great dragon and suffering unspeakable cruelties at the hands of her saurian sentries. Overcome with fear of the lizardfolk, they spoke even of their old temple only in terrified whispers as a place of death and despair. A foul creature of unfathomable lust and greed, Nyrionaxys also bred with numerous beasts within her domain, yielding enduring bloodlines of horrid half-dragon hybrids that served as guardians of her lands and proxies of her will.

It was not until many years later, at the prompting of several outside agents and emissaries of the great dragon’s enemies, that Nyrionaxys’ Crannogfolk subjects began to revolt against their lizardfolk masters. The Ixtupi were caught unaware as several settlements near the swamps dispatched their draconic overlords and quietly prepared for war, and several of the dragon’s mightiest spawn were dispatched by the rebels in rapid succession. Panicked, Nyrionaxys pleaded with the god Tlaloc for aid against her enemies. Tlaloc bid Nyrionaxys to retreat into the depths of the temple to hibernate with her precious clutch of unhatched pure-blooded children. There she would slumber, while her lizard slaves brought her sustenance and her enemies eliminated one another in the world outside her lair. Tlaloc assured Nyrionaxys that he would awaken her when the time was right, and she could then reclaim her lands without fear of reprisals from meddlesome foreigners. The great black dragon heeded her master’s advice and prepared for a long slumber. Prior to her sleep, Nyrionaxys instructed her followers to wait for Tlaloc’s call—a time when all beings with the blood of dragons coursing through their veins, including her foul half-dragon progeny, would feel compelled to strike out at their hated warmblood foes.

In the end, though, Nyrionaxys underestimated the perseverance of the warmbloods in their crusade for independence from the draconic tyrants. An elite party of Crannogfolk freedom fighters, aided by warriors from neighboring lands, stormed the Great Swamp and cut through the lizardfolk hordes. The heroes hunted down the sleeping Nyrionaxys in the lair beneath the Temple of Ixtupi and slew her as she dreamt of her triumphant re-emergence, crushing her entire clutch of eggs in the process (or so they thought). They severed the great wyrm’s head and paraded it back to the Crannog Towns, leaving her massive body behind to rot and decay deep beneath the earth.

The people of the Crannogs had, perhaps, won their independence a bit too easily. With the great black wyrm gone, the lizardfolk were quickly cowed by the coalition formed between the foreign heroes and the indigenous Crannogfolk, although the Temple of Ixtupi and surrounding lands were never fully reclaimed from the lizards. The two human nations who planned the rebellion brokered an agreement stating that the Crannogfolk would hand over a large percentage of their able-bodied citizens, and all children born for the next year, to be trained by the foreigners as conscripts in their army. In return, the Crannogs would keep their independence, remaining free to govern themselves as they wished. These simple people chose the path which governs least, for better or for worse, allowing each town bordering the Great Swamp to function independently.

In the interceding years, the humans worked to tame the swamps and marshes that Nyrionaxys’ enchantments had begat across the land, beating back the lizard hordes and slowly clearing hard-won safe passages through the swamps. In time, they also profited from breeding domestic buffalo for labor and meat, in addition to farming rice, wheat, and barley. What was once a savage and desolate frontier around the wetlands eventually became a thriving network of independent towns and villages, policed by the Stormhammers, a group of rangers founded from the first generation of the Crannogfolk to return from their service to the foreigners after repaying their debt with their servitude, bringing with them both the military training and the culture engrained in them by their masters. Yet the land around the Temple of Ixtupi remains as cursed as it ever was, and even today no sane traveler dares to wander within even a league of the temple grounds.

Another faction also emerged during this time: a splinter clan of the Ixtupi tribe that did not believe the propaganda of their holy men. If Nyrionaxys truly cared for the lizards, they argued, she would have stayed to fight by their side instead of falling into torpor. Her retreat from the world, and subsequent death at the hands of the warmbloods, was the bitter fruit of the dragon’s cowardice and
a blight on the lizards’ faith in Tlaloc. These heretic lizardfolk carved out their own small territory in the western reaches of the Great Swamp, and swore their allegiance to Qucumatz, the Rainbow Serpent. These lizardfolk call themselves the Tsiikil. The Tsiikil are highly reclusive and do not have much contact with outsiders. They fight a constant war against the Ixtupi just to survive, and they doubt that the dracophobic humans of the Crannogs would trust them enough to consider an alliance against their common enemy.

Today, the Ixtupi lizardfolk stir once again near the temple grounds, for their priests guard a great secret: not all of Nyrionaxys’ purebred spawn were destroyed by the warmbloods during that raid so long ago. A single egg survived the invaders’ wrath, overlooked in their rush to claim shares of the wyrm’s treasure. Hatched a few decades after her mother’s death, the Ixtupi raised the hatchling as the final vestige of their mistress’s legacy. This young adult wyrm has been taught from birth that she is the reincarnation of her mighty mother, and she is convinced that her progenitor’s lost queendom is her birthright. This one surviving offspring has even taken the name of Nyrionaxys, both in zealous observance of her bloodline’s destiny and as a means of striking fear into the warmbloods’ hearts when she rises to heed the call of Tlaloc. Like her mother before her, the young Nyrionaxys II is a highly superstitious dragon and hopes to lure a group of virtuous heroes back to her lair to feed upon both their bodies and their souls as part of a blasphemous ritual an act which, Tlaloc has assured her, will bind her dead brethren to her spirit and strengthen her for the coming war against the warmbloods.