The Progenitor Wyrms

Era beginning/end

The beginning

The wisest dragons of the present age contend that the world of Eberron was born in battle. According to myth, the unformed emptiness before Creation was the domain of three mighty divine spirits who took the shape of great dragon siblings. Golden Siberys was the source of all arcane and divine magic. Gentle Eberron was the primal fountain of the natural energies of life itself. Cruel Khyber was the master of secret knowledge and of the foul, destructive powers that always lurk in the darkness. Together, the Progenitors held dominion over the fate of all, and they pondered the proper shape of the cosmos.   In the beginning, the Progenitors worked together harmoniously. They began their great work by first separating the fundamental planes of the Astral Sea and the Elemental Chaos from each other and then by crafting the thirteen astral dominions and elemental realms within each of these planes that made up the larger multiverse. But as the Progenitors molded reality, ethical rifts began to form between them. Dark Khyber grew greedy and selfish, and noble Siberys responded by becoming more forceful; each sought greater influence in the work of Creation. The planes of Daanvi, Fernia, and Irian today bear the prevailing mark of Siberys. Kythri, Mabar, and Xoriat show the dominant touch of Khyber. Eberron sought to mediate between her siblings, which left a more balanced stamp on the remaining planes of existence, but she could not bridge the basic philosophical and moral divide between her counterparts. The result of Eberron’s mediation was the birth of the mirror worlds of Thelanis, the Feywild, and Dolurhh, the Shadowfell. Eberron joined with Siberys to craft Thelanis, a world where Siberys’ arcane energies could flow through every rock and forested glade. Khyber’smalignant power corrupted her joint creation with Eberron of Dolurrh, a gloomy world where the necromantic energies of shadow ran riot, later calling out with a siren call to the spirits of the dead. When it came time to create the final, central, world around which all the others would circle the Astral Sea and the Elemental Chaos, the ideological tensions between bright Siberys and foul Khyber could not be contained. The three Progenitors had fashioned a round sphere of rock from the chaotic matter of the Elemental Chaos that they sat spinning in the void, circling a sun created by forging a link with the fiery Plane of Fernia. In turn, this world was orbited by thirteen moons, one each to serve as a physical gateway between the planet and the other thirteen planes of the cosmos. But no life stirred on the barren sphere and Siberys and Khyber began to argue furiously once moreover the destiny of their final creation.    At last, the brewing storm between the two Progenitors could not be contained and the dark one unexpectedly tore into her brilliant sibling, mortally wounding the golden dragon and scattering his scales across the new world’s sky. Although not powerful enough to defeat her foul sister, Eberron knew that Khyber could not be allowed to benefit from her nefarious deeds. The gentle Progenitor refused to fight Khyber with claw and tooth as her brother had done. Instead, Eberron embraced her, trapping Khyber within her smothering coils as she merged their dual essence with the spinning sphere the Progenitors had created at the heart of the cosmos. Eberron called on her innate connection to the primal power of all life and creation, giving birth to the new world’s fertile soil, trees, animals, and oceans. In this way, Eberron transformed herself into a living prison that Khybercould never escape.    Thus Eberron became the world on which all life grew and changed. To this day, she nurtures and sustains all living things. Siberys’ divine remains became the pale yellow ring of golden dragonshards that circles the world at the equator; his scattered scales became the stars. Khyberremains trapped within the heart of the planet—the Dragon Below, the Mother of Monsters, the source of all darkness, fear, and pain—forever struggling to once more break free and bring an end to all Creation so that she may begin the process anew—and alone.   Soon after she merged with the world, Eberron also began to manifest marks of the draconic Prophecy on her body, which meant the appearance of dragon-shaped runic marks on the bedrock of the planet itself. Each mark provided a clue to the interpretation of the broader Prophecy and the destiny of the world and its inhabitants—for those who knew how to interpret them.   In the wake of the battle of the Progenitors, life slowly emerged on the new world over many millions of years. Siberys had fallen in battle to his dark-hearted sibling, but power remained within his spattered divine blood. Filled with the purest essence of arcane magic, that blood fell on Eberron, merging the primal forces of life and arcane magic to eventually produce new creatures with the strength of both Progenitors: dragons. According to draconic myths, where the blood of Siberys struck the clouds, silver dragons were born. It fell on the cold peaks and white dragons rose from the ice. It struck the swamps, and black dragons emerged from the dark depths. In a similar way, according to this myth, were all the families and subraces of the dragons first born on the continent of Argonessen. The dragons were mighty, numerous, and proud, possessing the innate arcane power of Siberys and the vibrant, primal force of Eberron. The dragons venerated the Progenitor wyrms as the architects of Creation, but they also took up the religious faith known in Draconic as Thir, which in addition to the Progenitors, worshipped a pantheon of eleven draconic deities who were held to be lesser divine spirits who had aided the three Progenitor wyrms in their shaping of the cosmos. It was after these deities that the first dragons named the constellations that circled the world.   Thus Eberron, figuratively and literally, is a world divided into three parts. Mythology suggests that the three parts correspond to the three great Progenitor wyrms of legendary times— Siberys, the Dragon Above; Khyber, the Dragon Below; and Eberron, the Dragon Between. This figurative interpretation makes its way into the religion, philosophy, and folklore of every intelligent race of the world. Every culture of Eberron has a version of the legend of the Progenitor dragons explained above. Whether this mythology is literally true or is a symbolic explanation for physical and magical processes that took place over vast stretches of time is for the scholars to debate.   In literal terms, the Dragon Above corresponds to the ring of golden dragonshards that encircles the world of Eberron high above its equator. The Ring of Siberys can be seen in the southern sky, appearing as a luminescent band of golden specks that begins at the time of the winter equinox as a narrow and intense band and becomes wider and more diffuse as the year progresses. It can be seen best at night but is visible during the day as well.   Khyber, the Dragon Below, comprises the Underdark of the world, the labyrinthine caverns that snake beneath the world’s crust and fill the depths of the planet. Khyber consists of twisting tunnels that open on cavernous vaults of varying shapes and sizes. This subterranean expanse mirrors the world above, a dark reflection of underground rivers, still lakes, and fiery streams of molten lava.   Between the Dragon Above and the Dragon Below, the surface of Eberron stretches from horizon to horizon, a patchwork of fields and forests, oceans and mountains, deserts, swamps, jungles, tundra, and more. Beneath a yellow sun, Eberron’s varied environments give way one to another across each continent. Mountains rise, valleys fall, and water surrounds the land.   Few of the intelligent beings of the current age existed at the dawn of time. The titans ofXen’drik were in their infancy, possessed of great potential power but lacking the knowledge required to use it. The lesser races of humanoids had not yet been born; the dark creatures like the fiends native to Eberron had not yet been vomited forth from Khyber’s depths. So it was that wild flights of dragons soared above the world, reveling in their might.   The dragons’ only true match at the dawn of Creation among the other races were the couatls, the feathered serpents who first emerged on the continent of Sarlona. For all their power, dragons are still mortal creatures. They reproduce, they grow old, and in time they die. The couatls stood outside the cycle of life; legends say that the couatls were formed from the pure blood of Siberys before it struck Eberron, and that, as a result, they were truly immortal, celestial beings, the counterparts of Khyber’s fiends and equal to the angels. They were reborn only after death so that their numbers always remained constant. Though powerful, the couatls kept to their home in Sarlona, leaving the dragons to explore the world.