Ur-Draxa [Dragon]
Posted by flip
almost 4 years ago
Dragon Magazine brings us an article on Ur-Draxa by Travis Stout and Rodney Thompson.
Filling the heart of an island whose name has been lost to time, the Valley of Dust and Fire sits like a festering wound. Volcanic ash chokes the air, and an ever-present storm of silt scours anyone foolish enough to try to reach the island’s surface. Sightings from a distance have spawned both tales of wonder and tales of horror, because depending on which bard you believe, within the valley lies a city that is either the last refuge of Athas’s verdant past, a land of ease and plenty, or a twisted nightmare citadel, the birthplace of the death of the world.
Given the bleak, harsh nature of Athas, it is no surprise that the latter legend is far closer to the truth. Two millennia ago, Ur Draxa, the capital of the island nation of Ebe, was a paradise. The draconic ascension of Borys of Ebe reduced the island to a blasted waste that was haunted by strange elemental spirits. Ur Draxa has become a city of the unquiet dead, her citizens’ lives snuffed out to feed the grotesque sorceries that transformed Borys into the Dragon.
Next month, an article on the Cerulean Storm that destroys the dragon's city! (Well, if history is any precedent....)
This is a companion discussion topic for the original entry at http://athas.org/news/215