I think I mentioned in the last posting that I'd be telling about the Great War and the events that led to this. Just a little refresher, Red Chasm dragons and Rolling Thunder dragons hate each other with a passion, and this plays a big part in the events that led to the war. I can't remember exactly why these two clans hated each other, but they did.

I lived about 50,000 years ago. I place my souls' age at roughly 52,691 years, give or take a few centuries, etc. The events I will describe occurred during this first lifetime. When I was born, Humans had not yet entered the earth in the form they now wear. There were other sentient creatures, the 'mythological' creatures like griffins, elves, wyverns (who were a distant cousin of dragons, as well as drakes), unicorns, etc. As a note, these creatures were all formed of magical energy that had been given mass, and as such, when they died, their energies returned to the earth in the form of magical deposits. They did not leave skeletons. The closest to a skeleton you could find from these creatures would be large deposits of precious or semi-precious materials in unlikely geographical locations. Often they would just 'dissapear' after being dead for a certain amount of time. As a further note, these creatures' souls for the most part, were eventually re-encarnated into humans. After humans became widespread, these creatures lost their physical forms and existed for the most part on the spirit and astral planes, where they still live now.

This part of my treatise deals a little with my life and with the life of my mate, who was then known as Mahari. Mahari was a prince of the Rolling Thunder clan, ("Mahari" meaning literally "storm prince") and a fairly typical dragon of that clan. I was known then as Tathaenhi, (literal translation, ta meaning cloud, thane meaning mountain, nhi being an honorific for lady, thus "Lady of the Mountain's Clouds") and I was a minor Lady of the White Mountain clan, belonging to an offshoot branch of the White Mountain royalty. (which is inconsequential because nearly everyone in every clan belonged to offshoot branches of clan royalty) Mahari and I met quite by accident, though it was bound to happen, considering the closeness of White Mountain and Rolling Thunder territory (both clans preferred to live in mountainous and forested areas). It was sort of a case of love at first sight, and I won't go too much into it as it is very personal. Anyhow it was soon discovered that Mahari and I shared a bond known as Soulmating, indeed we were CounterParts, which is a type of Soulmating that is extremely close.

The Elders and the Rulers of both clans considered this a good omen and a sign, and the clans were allied. This is a very fortunate thing, considering that the territories of both clans were so close together, which could have led to wars if there was not an alliance of some sort in existance. From that point, White Mountain was bound to defend and protect Rolling Thunder, and vice~versa.

There were minor skirmishes between the united clans of Rolling Thunder/White Mountain and the now mutual enemy Red Chasm. Tension increased over time, but always remained below the mark of all out war.

Then something happened. The Creatrix, whom we worshipped as a twin God and Goddess, much in the manner of many of the nowadays Pagan religions, introduced a new species on the earth, Humans. The Age of Magic was beginning to end and many of the magical creatures agreed to let themselves decline on the physical realm, with the promise of re-encarnation as humans given to them. Dragons were no exception to this. We were told that one day Humanity would surpass even us dragons (yes we were very vain about ourselves) in potential and greatness. Most of the dragons acceeded gracefully to this new way, White Mountain and Rolling Thunder being some of the most enthusiastic about this new idea. I don't know what it is, if it was perversity and hatred for these two, or just an unwillingness to relinquish the hard-fought-for power they held, but not all of Red Chasm clan liked this idea. Some did, the majority though, including the Red Chasm royalty, loathed the idea.

War was declared on the other dragons, on the dragons who would 'tamely roll over and die on command'. Red Chasm dragons were of the concensus that this was an extremely stupid and cowardly thing to do. So we fought. (a note: Ocean Deeps stayed secluded from this for quite some time. It wasn't until near the end of the war that they joined the fight, and then they took the part of the dragons who wished to be re-encarnated as humans. another note, there were members of all clans who didn't like the idea, and those joined sides with the others of like mind, just as there were members of all clans who did like the idea. Thus there were occasional Red Chasm dragons fighting beside Rolling Thunder and White Mountain, and there were White Mountain and Rolling Thunder dragons fighting side by side with Red Chasm royalty.) The battle lasted a little over half a millennia. It was the most terrible time in dragons' history, never before had the whole race gone to all out full scale war with itself. Many non-dragon sentients found themselves caught in the middle of battles, and a great many innocents were killed this way.

Eventually nearly all the dragons had been killed, or had fled to other places. A faction of White Mountain/Rolling Thunder cross-breds fled to the far East, where they lived quite safely for a long time, adopting new forms and different ways of doing things. Some Ocean Deeps and a few Red Chasms who were fighting for humans joined them as well.

The dragons who were left in the traditional homes (which later became parts of Europe, Africa, and Americana) grew very solitary. There was no unifying clans and society was sporadic. Gradually they died out, the last known dragons dying in the Dark Ages when little men in tin cans came and battled them as 'demons' and 'spawn of satan'. As the dragons' physical forms died, their souls were transferred, as I said, to the spiritual and astral planes. There they retain the society they once had on this plane of Earth, though there is less infighting and vioilence both inside and between clans. Occasionally Red Chasm and Rolling Thunder dragons will be seen fighting on these planes, but it's not as deadly or violent as it once was. If there are any dragons left physically 'alive', I have yet to learn of their presences, if they are, they would have to be quite ancient, for as time went on, and the types of Magic that were around when dragons were more populous faded, they lost their ability to reproduce physically. (beleive me their quite active on the other Planes. I've been stuck with several sets of young from randy familiars. I was 'babysitting' a pair of twins for about half a year, then Wai Loong and Kai Lin adopted humans of their own.)

Because of this war, you may find that older red dragons you encounter on other Planes are not always friendly towards humans. Usually they become a little more polite if they discover a dragon past in you, sometimes they'll just ignore you and refuse to have anything to do with you. The young ones, particularly the ones born in the last 500 years, are usually more friendly.

Well this concludes the second part of my treatise. Next time I plan to go into dragon physiology in all its myriad forms, some of the magics and 'powers' we had, our infamous vanity, and some other facts and tidbits that I remember. (including those notorious breath-weapons.. beleive it or not they did exist, but not quite how D&D and role-playing games would have us think.)