The Claws of Veeshan

One nation

In the early ages all dragons were one society, Veeshan’s favoured children ruling the world she had claimed, and all of them lived on Velious. In the early Age of Scale, Tarinax was the first dragon named handler of the drakota, charged with hunting down and punishing renegade dragons, a post most recently held by Darathar.

Then two

Then their ideals diverged. A dragon in the Temple of Veeshan remembers that some came to believe the newly made mortals could be controlled and made to serve them. The exiles tell it their own way: they wanted free will for each dragon and refused to condemn mating between dragons of different elements. The nation split in two. The Ring of Scale fled to Kunark under Jaled Dar, Trakanon among them, while the Claws of Veeshan, the original order and wurm council, stayed on Velious.

The prismatic son

Eons ago a forbidden union of elemental dragons hatched the first prismatic dragon. Kildrukaun, Arch Priest of Veeshan and a member of the Council of Elders, condemned the parents to death and made himself custodian of their son, Kerafyrm.

Furious about the schism, Kildrukaun prophesied that Kerafyrm would lead the Claws in a civil war against the Ring of Scale and reunite dragonkind as Veeshan willed. Some doubted his visions; others doubted only his rather self-serving reading of them. The Council dismissed the prophecy, fearing that a war would leave them open to the giants of Kael Drakkel.

A general too terrible to keep

So Kerafyrm sharpened his teeth and his tactics on the frozen battlefields of Velious instead, rising to general, as shrewd as he was merciless. But no battle could satisfy his hunger for destruction and chaos, and in the end the Council of Elders ordered him imprisoned.

The four warders

His supporters, Kildrukaun among them, were badly outnumbered by those loyal to the elder council. The prismatic dragon was locked in “a prison of indefinite slumber,” guarded by four immensely powerful dragons: Tukaark, Nazata, Ventani and Hraashna. Kildrukaun and the surviving traitors fled Velious to wait for their saviour’s return. The narrator of The Loss in Western Wastes sees the outcome as fixed all along: everything they did to prevent it was “destined” to fail.

Crusaders and watchers

The Claws endured in Skyshrine. There Jortreva, the Crusader of Veeshan, calls himself “the ear to the whispers upon the shadows,” and tells mortals that the dragons hold “neither gratitude nor contempt” for them. Not every dragon cared about the politics at all. Wuoshi, set to guard a stone ring in the Wakening Lands in Veeshan’s service, told Tunare that he cared little for the Claws or the Ring. The forest was simply his home.