Chronicles of Valdoria

Zathroth sought allies among the younger powers. He admired Fafnar not for the beauty of her light, but for its ability to burn. From their union came Brog, a being of furious strength whose restless fire seemed too great for his own body to contain.

Tormented by that heat, Brog cast part of it away. The burning force took shape and rose as Garsharak, the first great dragon. The skies gained a new terror: a creature that needed no throne to proclaim itself master, and whose descendants would remember the taste of flame long after kingdoms had forgotten their founders.

Brog continued his work, fashioning mighty cyclopes who could lift stone as other creatures lifted branches. They discovered metal hidden in the mountains and learned the beauty of the forge. Their towers and halls were built for enormous hands, and the sound of their hammers rolled across the valleys.

To Zathroth, craft and patience were wasted gifts. He demanded creatures that would spread disorder more eagerly. Trolls followed, quarrelsome and numerous; then orcs, whose fierce tribes could turn a peaceful boundary into a battlefield before the sun had reached its height.

Yet the world was not entrusted to cruelty alone. Other divine powers gave rise to living beings that belonged to wood, river, burrow and meadow. They had little desire for conquest. Some learned to hide, others to roam in herds, and others still to defend their young with teeth, claw or cunning.

For a brief while, creation resembled an enormous unfinished tapestry: brilliant threads beside dark ones, little patterns of kindness beside terrible hunger. Fardos believed the design might yet be saved; Uman looked for laws that could keep its parts from destroying one another.

But the hungry multiplied, the proud demanded territory, and the strong discovered that strength could be used to take what another had grown. The gods had given the world creatures. They had not taught those creatures how to live together.