thority, giving rise to the first Dragon Kings Some even emerged from among those ranks of existing clergy, empowered by divine magic but driven to reject the ancient gods’ harsh demands for worldly obedience Operating in secret, the incipient Dragon Kings branched out in sorcerous mastery, cloaking their activities until they were of sufficient power to rival those gods themselves Though steeped in myth today, the classic accounting of the fall of two specific gods illustrates how mortals kindled the fires that burned away the gods of old in order to end their tyranny Anastus, a priest of Phatrash, the Bull God, bulwarked its vanity through fawning songs and mammoth monuments In secret, she conspired with the rival god Yazmiir against the Bull-God After years of subterfuge, Anastus manipulated both gods into a war against each other to banish them both from the known universe She also stole what energy she could from both during their conflict to build her own power as a burgeoning Dragon King These origins betray the kernel of truth behind many of the original Dragon Kings—they held mastery over two separate avenues to magical energy, one priestly and the other sorcerous The Migrations Khitus’s human tribes originated in the once-fertile regions of the distant south These tribes—the Attites, Makadon, Chindi, Prajalu, and Nordor—developed distinct cultures before they raced out of the south in epic migrations that churned the very earth beneath their wagons Tribal wars were the primary motivation for these massive journeys, as one group displaced another and so on until they pushed inexorably northward The Attites and Chindi followed similar paths to one another, reaching generally to the east and up toward the world’s The three moons of Khitus Luth, the White Moon, phases from full to new and back to full every 28 days Yaluth, the Red Moon, reputedly more impatient, does so every 14 days Chalor, the Slave Moon, circles Khitus differently from the other two, going around the poles every days, phasing completely just once per year ‘Paired Moons’ is a concept that varies by culture, meaning either two moons that actually appear to touch each other as they pass in the sky, which happens infrequently, or two moons that merely come close to each other, which happens comparatively often equator The Makadan tended not to go quite so far north, settling instead the more temperate region that would one day become the Old Countries, though some stretched further toward the equator to mingle with Prajalu who settled toward the equator and further west The Nordor went furthest from their original lands, trading the distant south for the frigid lands of the distant north Around the equatorial regions, the human tribes found they were not alone They encountered the Pachyaur, intelligent elephantine centaurs with their own civilization in the warmer realms At the time, though, the settled lands were scattered widely through a vast wilderness, and conflicts were few Other intelligent races had yet to emerge onto the world that seemed entirely fresh and new Dawn of the Dragon Kings No single force did more to forge Khitan cultures than the Dragon Kings They imposed a benign governing force that unified the intelligent races of the world for so long that it is difficult now to imagine just how diverse those creatures were, and how varied their stories and relationships with the peoples they watched over While a few nigh-immortal wizards claim to have walked with the Dragon Kings, there are none alive today who can describe the touch of their gentle hands guiding the affairs of the world, much less describe their emergence when the forests grew green and tall and Khitus’s planetary neighbors wandered among the night’s stars like youngsters romping freely in the meadows Contrary to modern perceptions, the Dragon Kings were not all imposing sovereigns ruling over nations of men and other creatures Neither were the Dragon Kings equals in origin, powers, or attitudes Indeed, they were not all even dragons, though most took forms of the world’s most formidable creatures to reflect their own power and magnificence Most Dragon Kings, despite the title, were mortal men and women; Tharcluun, during his days, told many of his origins as a soldier who rose to be a Makadan philosopher-king before scaling the summits of magical mastery Others cloaked their origins in mystery: Bhayan allegedly came from beyond the moons, while many said Mai-Rong was a god fallen to mortality, albeit with near-divine power By later reckoning, most Dragon Kings were humans, and all were masters of tremendous magical powers While each one sought the heights of magical mastery for his own reasons, once attained they collectively found themselves the most powerful living beings upon the world, and the eyes of the new young nations turned to them for guidance As several had already assumed the physical form of the world’s powerful daragkon—wild dragons—the masses dubbed them the Dragon Kings