>>5710809Your father-in-law and adoptive father perish. Your brother-in-law moves against you. Your ‘aunt’ and enemy are driven away, and depart for lands unknown. Your brother escapes, and rises into his full glory. Your kingdom grows, and so does your childhood beloved’s heart. ..
And you are unaware of any of it. You are the DRAGONBORN ANTIPALADIN, Dark Prophet of the Coming Age, Prince of Love and Prince of Hawksong, Champion of the Master Race, Knight Ascendant of the Dark God of Glorious Bloodshed, Copper Dragon King of Bloodrise. Some call you ‘Theral’, while others ‘Long Wang’.
(Your one wife calls you many choice names, sometimes in public, but she cannot help it and you love her anyway)
These last few months, you have been in Blackpine, a barony apart from the world, lost in a sea of trees. Oh, news finds its way in and out, sometimes—you have no doubt your own spectacular entrance has been heard of AT LEAST as far as Sunset Lake and Redwell, for how do you keep such a thing a secret?
In a towering <Dragonshape>, resplendent with the searing, blistering radiance of a long-dead sun and the glory of the Winged Serpent God who devoured it, words carrying the weight of the <Voice of the Metatron>, you entered the halls of Baron Brunus of Blackpine. Trailing behind you were a parade of horrors—or surely it must seem such, to mere men. There was Olu the Archer, Degenerate half-human Infiltrator with his south-dark skin, and beautiful-but-deadly Azonia the Drow Duelist, with skin even blacker, hair as white as snow, and her purple eyes ablaze with excitement to draw her dual swords. There were your Reptilians-all now in their true forms, following your own lead: the Occultist with her dragon-red hide and proud draconic chin; the Translator, tall and lithe yet strong, like the musculature of a snake, and bristling with dark magic; the Thief, Silkscale Infiltrator, wearing his enchanted Mask of Face-changing but presently wearing his nature unhidden and proudly on display. Holding your hand: your bride, Ekaterine of Hawksong, unmistakable daughter of Paladin King Archos, forcing her chin high, trying not to bow to your Fearsome Presence or to her twinges of shame—shame you can feel, though you can only guess at the full source and scope of. At your other side: Natvodosk the Unknowable, a trailing and scuttling horror on too many legs, with the head of a dragon, the four unblinking insect-eyes of his Worm Queen mother, and the fiery-red mane of his father.
