Chapter 385: Dragon Strategy 1

"Ah, I see what you wish to accomplish," said Medula. "You plan on activating the Dragonsong in my prison realm, drawing the mad host of dragons there to wreak havoc on enemy forces. Provided, of course, that the dragons still exist and have not been annihilated by the presumed end of our realm."

"Whether or not your realm is fully gone or not doesn't matter here," said Aldrich. "Because the dragons I want to call definitely do exist. They're right there in my fourth trial quest."

The fourth trial quest involved guiding a NPC called Renara to the top of an icy mountain where one half of the Dragonsong lay encased in a tomb of ice. The ascent to the mountain was filled with ice based threats and, most relevant, frost wyrms, drakes, and wyverns.

After passing by all the threats, she would take the Dragonsong, a family heirloom of hers, and become a permanent party member to call upon whenever needed.

The backstory behind the Dragonsong was that originally, it was gifted to a human hero as a sign of friendship.

The hero, known as Rendyr the Unbroken, earned the Dragonsong after he helped the dragons in sealing Kryos, Archdragon of Eternal Winter.

Kryos was pretty much the premiere villain for the dragons. An ancient millennial dragon far, far older than even the Death Lord. In fact, considering the fact that she was a powerful frost dragon herself, it was very likely she was descended from Kryos.

Kryos came from the Primal Age - a long, vast stretch of time where intelligent civilizations were nonexistent, the mortal races living in primitive tribes in fear of monsters and beasts.

In the Primal Age, dragons, not gods, were the stewards of the planet, with Archdragons being in charge of fundamental aspects of nature like the major elements.

Kryos himself was Archdragon of Frost and Decay, but he was not content with what he had. He wanted to create a new ice age, ushering in an age of dominance over all other dragon clans at the cost of a mass extinction event across the entire world of Elduin.

The other Archdragons, each representing their own element and leaders of clans themselves, worked together to defeat Kryos.

Kryos, however, had fortified himself with a spell known as [Beyond Claw and Eternity] which prevented any immortal or monster from killing or sealing him.

This rendered Kryos effectively impossible to defeat via draconic or godly hands. And no pathetic mortal tribesman came remotely close to even scratching Kryos's hide.

As a desperate last resort, the dragons created a test to take a worthy mortal champion. They lived atop Elantis, the highest mountain in Elduin, so high that it reached past the clouds and into the void of the stars itself.

They challenged mortals from all their races to send a worthy challenger to climb Elantis to commune with the dragons.

Many mortal tribes, ancient dwarves and elves and giants and so many others, sent the best of their best.

But in the end, it was a human that scaled the mountain.

Not because he was tougher or bigger or faster or smarter than any of them. But because he would not give up.

That hero was called Rendyr, later to be immortalized in history as Rendyr the Unbroken.

All the Archdragons gave Rendyr their elemental strength, temporarily making him the most powerful mortal of the time. Arguably to have ever existed across all of Elduin history.

Rendyr managed to defeat Kryos, though he lacked the strength to kill the ancient dragon. Instead, Kryos was sealed deep within the earth.

Afterwards, the dragons, depleted of their strength and numbers, returned to their own realm in a mass exodus called the Dragonfall, and ever since then, proper dragons were seen in far fewer numbers.

After the Dragonfall, Rendyr used the Dragonsong and his heroic status to found Elumia, the first and greatest kingdom of man whose denizens, in honor of the great mountain Elantis, named themselves Elumen.

This all took place roughly twenty thousand years before the actual start of the game. Over time, the Dragonsong passed hands many, many times, during which time Elumia crumbled apart into many different kingdoms of man that came and went.

Eventually, the Dragonsong was lost until three thousand years before the game, when a man called Rengar, blessed with faint traces of the original blood of Rendyr, found the mighty artifact and decided it to wield it with lofty ambitions of empire.

Rengar, with the aid of Carnassus, demon god of war, corrupted the divine artifact so that he could enslave all dragon type monsters he encountered to forcibly create a new Elumia. He subjugated kingdom after kingdom, melting the crowns of their monarchs and adding it to his own.

He took so many crowns that he eventually created an entire elaborate headpiece that went down from high above his head to his shoulders, earning him the title of 'Crowntaker'.

It was, however, secondary to Rengar's other title. The 'Lord of Slaughter'.

His conquests were bloody and fueled by Carnassus's endless desire for blood and carnage. Eventually, Carnassus completely corrupted Rengar, and it was evident that he would not stop his conquests until the entire world flowed red in the name of the war demon.

A coalition of gods led by Amara, the lady of light and life, killed Rengar and put an end to his ceaseless wars. The Dragonsong was lost again afterwards, not showing up until the player helped Renara reclaim the horn.

Or, to be more specific to the trial quest, one half of the horn.

The horn and its history was important because it tied in later. In the eighth trial quest, the player character completed the full Dragonsong. In the eleventh trial quest, right before the twelfth that involved the player necromancer defeating the Death Lord, they faced Kryos.

By the time of the eleventh quest, the player necromancer would have progressed the game's plotline enough to reach the end stages, when the Ceaseless Chaos, the final boss, unsealed Kryos and many other ancient threats.

The idea was that depending on the player class, you faced a different ancient threat for the eleventh trial quest. For warriors, it was Carnassus, the demon war god.

For mages, it was a corrupted resurrection of the Arcane Emperor, progenitor of the entire magic system.

And so on and so forth.

In the lore, Kryos actually broke free of the Chaos's control, massively weakening him, but even after the nerf, he was still a mighty level 100 boss that had dragonscales so ancient and tough that he was still essentially invulnerable to the player.

It took blowing the complete Dragonsong to weaken Kryos. The archdragon was too powerful for the Dragonsong to control, but the artifact still stripped him of his strength, weakening his scales to the point he could be reliably damaged.

It also removed his [Beyond Claw and Eternity] buff which Aldrich sorely needed to happen now.

In the game, Aldrich was a mortal necromancer, capable of slaying Kryos. But he was an immortal lich now. As long as he stayed a lich, he would never be able to kill Kryos.