Dragons

Powerful creatures of almost pure magic, dragons were once one of two dominant species across the world. Ruling over the wilds, creating powerful kin, the dragons one day nonetheless felt threatened by growing populations of mortals. This perceived threat led them to attempt the mass destruction of the other sentient species of the world. Known today as the Dragonscourge, the war resulted in the apparent destruction of all dragonkind, the scattering of the Elves, and the mortal Humans left behind to rebuild civilization from the rubble.

Ancient History

The origins of the dragons can be found within the ancient civilization of the Giants. Having coalesced from elemental chaos through manifested intellect of magic, the Titans were the first race to walk the world. As they built a civilization out of the chaos, the giants would eventually find the need for additional hands to assist their efforts. Through their magic, the giants created a number of intelligent species. These inherently magical creatures were created to fit certain roles. Where the Elves were built for labor and building, the dragons were created to protect the titans' realm against incursion of wild elementals and other forces of chaos.
It was the nature of this role that imbued the dragons with their most well-known attributes. They were created to be immensely strong, with the power of flight, and they were gifted with elemental powers and resistances of their own. These elemental abilities contributed much to the dragons' appearances and eventually even their personalities.

The Rise of Dragonkind

As documented elsewhere, the giants' civilization would eventually collapse. A catastrophic destruction of the magics they used to fend off the primordial elemental chaos resulted in an enormous volcanic eruption among other apocalyptic effects. The end result was the utter extinction of the giants from the surface of the world. Subsequently, an enormous series of elemental storms washed across the world. The two most magically-powerful creations of the giants, the dragons and Elves, were able to barely maintain existence - the dragons through their elemental resistances. While they suffered significant losses, there were enough remaining dragons that after a few thousand years - when the elemental storms began finally to subside - they were able to begin carving out their own dominions.
In what historians term the "Age of High Magic", the dragons and elves each established civilization across the world. Where the elves would gather in small settlements which in time grew to become floating, magic-imbued cities, the dragons were more scattered. Living mostly solitary lives, dragons sought out individual lairs from which they would directly rule over land within their reach. Communication between fellow dragons was rare but not unheard of, and dragons of similar interests would sometimes agree to work together on a conquest or project. For the most part, however, each given dragon was content to be the undisputed lord of a domain.

The Lords of Dragonkind

Not all dragons would settle to merely rule over a single plot of land, no matter how large. The most powerful dragons, themselves scions of the original batch of dragons created by the titans, sought dominion even over others of their kind. Early in the Age of High Magic, a number of these elder dragons fought among themselves for control of the dragon species - seven would become acknowledged as those with the most strength, cunning, and sheer power, and would become elevated to be considered Lords of Dragonkind.
Over the Age, these seven dragonlords would accumulate significant devotion from the rest of the dragons - but even more from the lesser creatures that the dragons would create to serve them. The Seven would take on an almost mythic quality among younger dragons as well as the wyverns, half-dragons, and others. It was this devotion that allowed the Seven to lead the entirety of dragonkind into the war that brought their ruin.
The mythical aura that surrounded these seven dragons extended to how they were referred to by other dragonkin. Their actual names are lost to time; instead only the titles by which they were called are known today.

• The Void: the most power dragon in all of existence, this elder Shadow Dragon counted all dragonkind within its domain
• The Sun and The Moon: rare among dragons, the Sun and the Moon were a Golden and Silver dragon who chose to exist as partners, sharing in their rule. Their powers extended far into the magical realm, it was these two who would inspire the creation of Sorcerers
• The Circle: Four elder dragons who were considered to have domain over the elements, these four were among those created to defend the titans' borders. Their titles are The Storm (a blue dragon), The Sea (a bronze dragon), The Earth (a green dragon), and The Flame (a red dragon)

The Dragonborn

Selfish creatures for the most part, dragons did not generally feel a need or a drive to propagate their species. However, most dragons did feel a compulsion towards lordship. As such, dragons would sometimes consider the creation of offspring to create a family over which they could rule and direct the growth of. Inherently-magical creatures, dragons do not reproduce biologically. Being extremely solitary in nature, most dragons do not consider creating new life with partners - such as the Elves do. Instead, a dragon wishing to give life to an offspring would imbue an enormous gemstone with which they had affinity with a spark of their own magical existence. This gemstone would carry within it the manifesting form of a new dragon; as this form grew, it would consume the inside of the gemstone, incorporating its crystalline structure into its own body. Eventually the dragon hatchling would became large enough - and the remaining skin of the gem thin enough - for the newly born dragon to crack through into the world.
In addition to creating offspring over which they could rule as parents, many dragons would also experiment with the creation of "lesser" species that they could rule more directly. By imbuing different gemstones with their magic (though with much less than that given to create a true dragon) smaller drakes and wyverns could be created. Through capturing elves, and imbuing their form with magic - the elf's body being similarly consumed from the inside, making this a process only the cruelest of dragons considered - half-dragons were created. None of these creations were gifted with the dragons' inherently magical nature, however - all of these new species were mortal, subject to more natural constraints upon their existence including lifespans and biological reproduction.

Sorcerers

The dragons' most insidious creation would come late in the Age of High Magic, however. In the latter centuries of the age, other mortal beings had begun to appear within the world. One of these new species were Humans. Determining that this aggressive, short-lived but fast-breeding species might become a power in the world (a correct determination it turned out), the dragons sought to infiltrate this rising force with their own agents.
Through a process similar to that of the creation of half-dragons, humans were kidnapped and imbued with the dragons' magic. However instead of being devoured from the inside by a growing creature, the humans would instead become enthralled to the dragon. In addition, as the human's body changed to incorporate the magic filling them, they would gain powerful elemental powers akin to those of the wizards that the Elves were known for at this time.
These enthralled humans would, after some time and teaching, be returned where they could infiltrate into the burgeoning human settlements. Over generations, the sorcerers' blood would spread through family trees, creating small but potent cells of dragon-enthralled humans across the lands. This would be used to great effect in the war to come.

The Dragonscourge and Fall

Main Article The rise of the humans as a power came to a head with the formation of the Empire on Lasair. The rise of a significant human nation demonstrated the threat that this young race would present to dragonkind. While the Elves would mostly coexist peacefully with the humans - their floating cities literally stayed above it all - the dragons' nature saw the humans as encroaching upon their domains. In addition, the vast numbers that human populations could potentially reach, if unchecked, could eventually overcome the ancient power of the dragons and cast them down.
With these thoughts in mind, the Lords of Dragonkind called all of their subjects, every single dragon and dragonkin, and waged a brutal war against the mortals and the elves. Sorcerers awoke within human cities and burned them down. Dragons swooped across the skies and attacked the floating elven cities. Armies of half-dragons trooped across plains and farmland and stormed human nations across the world.
Humans, strong in numbers and bolstered by the magic of the elves, weathered the storm. Both sides saw significant losses. For twenty five years - a blink of an eye for immortal species like the dragons and elves - the war raged. As the dragons had feared, though, the greater numbers of humans would indeed be the deciding factor. Drawn down through attrition of dragonkind, the Dragonlords saw the end of the war approaching. Then three truly cataclysmic events (documented here) occurred which brought the war to a final, apocalyptic conclusion.
In the end, the dragons were destroyed. Their Lords had fallen, and all true dragons were eventually hunted and destroyed. The armies of dragonkin were crushed. The sorcerers were weeded out and executed. The war was not without extreme cost for the rest of the world, though. The elves were utterly broken as a civilization and scattered to enclaves across the world. Human nations were wiped from the land, none more completely than the empire on Lasair. The world itself was shattered and cracked , with areas of magical scars ripping across the land. It would take a century for humans to even begin gathering in large enough numbers to build cities again.
But the dragons were extinct.

Today

Today, dragonkind as a whole does not exist. There are no dragons alive in the world. But their legacy still lives on across the world nearly a thousand years after the war.
Sorcerers still exist, though not in thrall to dragonkind. The bloodlines that were once established through the spread of sleeper cells still live on within human lands. Instead of being brought up knowing of their power, though, when an individual is born with enough connection to the magic within their blood, they find themselves subject to strange manifestations. Lucky ones are able to identify and control their powers, and then hide them from a fearful populace. Others are found out and executed on sight.
The magical scars of the Dragonscourge litter the land in many ways, some large and others small. One of the little-known consequences of magical warfare was the creation of "chronobubbles" - attempts by wizards to "lock away" foes within time. Many of these bubbles are beginning to weaken. Depending on the nature of what occurred within these bubbles, it is possible that some small number of ancient dragons - locked away for a millennia - could be unleashed upon the world.
Finally, the nature of dragons' reproduction means that there could be caches of their gemstone-eggs littered across the world. The time for a new dragon (or dragonkin) to be birthed from a gem is variable, as it required a slow and steady addition of magic into the process by the parent. An egg without a parent would lay dormant. It could be possible, though, for stray magic (or magic from an ignorant magical inquiry into the nature of one of these gem-eggs) to provide enough energy to complete the birth cycle of whatever creature slumbers inside.

Game Information: Dragons and Their Types

Dragons of most types found within the various sourcebooks may be used to represent dragons (and half-dragons and wyverns and others). They largely exist as described within, though if you are using alignments they will generally be Evil - at least by the standards of mortals. Dragonborn (the player race) can be considered a type of half-dragon.