From Dragon Kings Hardbound, Legends of Athas Pgs 5-6
Uncle Tontor: A Wyrm’s Tale
Elf merchants around the Lost Oasis believe (or claim to believe) that no one has ever seen young or
small silk wyrms. No one, they say, has ever seen them breed or reproduce, despite repeated (usually
fatal) attempts. The mystery has prompted many tales. One concerns Old Uncle Tontor, a mythical
old human known for nosiness about other people’s affairs. As the elves tell it, Tontor grew curious to
learn how silk wyrms reproduce. None too bright, he tried to disguise himself as one, dyeing his skin
green and wearing limp cloth wings. Then he crept out to a fearsome deep cavern where wyrms
roosted.
Uncle Tontor entered the cavern, trying as far as possible to look and sound like a wyrm. His bumbling attempts attracted the attention of King Snakewing (in village folklore, monarch of the wyrms). Ordinarily the wyrms would have killed the old man on the spot. But King Snakewing had recently fed well on a hundred humans and was feeling tolerant. He ordered his minions to carry the old man away into the sky.
Despite the human’s whining protests, a hundred silken snakes lifted Uncle Tontor and carried him to the moon Guthay. There Uncle Tontor saw that the moon was really a colossal egg, from which all the silk wyrms hatched, fully-grown.
Then the wyrms deposited Uncle Tontor unceremoniously on the underside of Athas. (Elven folklore once held that Athas is flat.) He had to swing hand-over-hand to the edge of the world, crawl up over the side, and walk all the way home; this journey lasted a whole king’s age, 77 years. When Tontor arrived back in the village, even older and more irascible than before, his descendants did not recognize him. Always nosy, Uncle Tontor asked them, What happened to your renowned ancestor, the
great Tontor?
They replied, What, that old coot? Our grandparents said he went mad and thought he’d turned into a snake. He slithered into the hills, and nobody ever saw him again.