Dear Friends:
Fate and defiance.
Truth and mystery.
Order and chaos.
Varenox, God of Dragons, is a god of contradictions—the crackle of lightning in the darkest storm. He is the most powerful and present of the gods…and yet the least understood.
Paradox and fate are built into his name, a contracted form of the Ancient Kazian sentence “He who mightily builds, sustains, and destroys,” like the three fates of Greek Mythology in one ferocious body.
He does not offer comfort…he offers challenge.
Varenox shapes the fate of mortals, but he does not demand submission to it. The weak accept his will. The strong defy it—and in doing so, may transcend it. He is a god of deeds, not asceticism. His Chosen become excellent, whether as warrior, artisan, scholar, or trader. His Called aspire to it and receive his blessings.
When their time in the Mortal Realms is done, his most beloved seek a final rite: The Ritual of Ascension. Of their own free will, chained to a high peak on a stormy night, his finest pray for lightning to take their mortal form, spiriting them to an exalted place at his side.
But the god of storms and lightning is, like those, mercurial. He gives few signs before he strikes—but when he does, it is swift and terrible. He despises betrayal, weakness of spirit, and idolatry. Sometimes he allows them to crumble under their own sin. Other times, he sends dragons to strike them. Or lightning from the sky to ash them, sending them to the Netherworld rather than his side.
In the days of the Ancients, the gods birthed paragons with mortal women—chosen children reflecting their virtues. None greater than his last, Anton Kazirian.
He forged the Empire Kazia, which he called the Jewel of Eternity, and created a golden age. His people lived in harmony with dragonkind; he counted dragons among his closest friends and advisors.
But prosperity bred forgetfulness and idolatry. Anton, in all his power and wisdom, could not overcome it. Despairing, he approached his divine father, but Varenox did not forgive. In silence, he allowed the depths of the Netherworld to pour into the Mortal Realms.
Man and dragon burned.
Dragons rightly blamed man—even Anton—and retreated into the mountains.
And Anton disappeared into history.
After some years, broken, grieving, but still faithful—sought the Ritual of Ascension.
But Varenox did not grant him release.
Instead, he cursed him. Trapped his spirit beneath the Ancient City, sealed away from both life and death.
To him, the Scourge was a betrayal. He now seeks not only to reclaim his empire, but to force his father’s hand—to acknowledge and exalt him. To raise him above his station.
He wishes nothing more than to spite his god.
To Agni, Varenox is less personal—but no less real.
Once fated to die, Agni feels the god’s presence like a storm cloud. He does not worship, but duels with him. He feels unease—since Anton’s call, he feels an oppressive air in the temple. He breaks into a sweat, and as a child, would scream and run in terror. Yet he believes more fiercely than the priests who chant his name.
The citizens of Azectrai accept his fate and his lessons. Prosperity and poverty, birth and death, are his will. Only a few, like Agni, transcend it. But his greatest lesson lies over the bridge to the east.
To the West, the Dragon God is a distant force—their lords honor him out of habit, not fear. Many do not believe he exists—that he is a metaphor for the land, the Scourge a myth to frighten small folk into accepting their fate, that when their days end, they simply cease to exist. But though they do not see him, he sees them. He shapes their fate as closely as the Kazirian. For to the gods, a man’s lifetime is the blink of an eye.
None know Varenox’s designs.
But the wise fear them.