Excerpt from "An Oral History of Ondra's Remorse"
Part I: Dragonkin
To tell the story of Ondra's Curse is to tell the story of Mylanta, the first of the mortal made divine, and Ondra, the last. Untold eons ago, Mylanta’s radiant beauty bewitched Asmodeus, the spiteful, and Ondra’s twin brother, our father Trithereon the righteous. Even after Mylanta gracefully deflected their advances, the two rivals declared war.
With the material realm fully embroiled in the conflict, the other gods were pressed to take sides. Ondra and Mylanta chose to remain neutral. Three cycles passed with neither side gaining ground and hundreds of millions of mortal lives lost to Kord's embrace.
Eager to break the stalemate, Trithereon created two secret weapons to crush Asmodeus’ forces in a decisive blow: one to be deployed through the skies, the other to batter the enemy lines on land. This is how my cousins and I were born.
Asmodeus caught wind of this, and seething with envy and rage at the possibility of being outsmarted, responded with his own twisted reflections of Trithereon’s creations, birthing our misguided, many-colored cousins.
On hearing this, one of the neutral gods, Kord, herald of death, the equalizer, suggested striking both sides at once with cataclysmic, but equal force that would inflict losses so heavy that Asmodeus and Trithereon would have no choice but to end hostilities.
Mylanta was vigorously opposed to the idea, and insisted there was a better way. Ondra wasn’t so sure. Though deeply disturbed at the thought of ending tens of millions of lives, she shuddered at the thought of the centuries of bloodshed that had already taken place, and the wasted lifetimes that were sure to follow. Now that her brother had long since abandoned any rational notion of compromise, Ondra determined her path to be the lesser of two evils
There are some who call what happened next “Ondra’s Remorse”, for what it did to Ondra and her legacy. Many call it “Ondra’s Gift”, for what it did for the so-called "civilized" races of Mystara.
For what it did to Dragonkin, we call it “Ondra’s Curse”.
Along the eastern shores, the Battle of Dragons raged for no less than 100 days, if my cousins are to be believed. For hundreds of miles, one could see brutal hand-to-hand combat with every martial weapon and fighting style in existence, wizards lobbing balls of fire, sorcerers calling on the undead to wreak havoc behind enemy lines, and our cousins, the size of mountains raining fire, ice, lightening, and acid indiscriminately upon the battlefield while we, the Dragonborn, spearheaded the assault.
Telling no one, Ondra, caretaker of the moon and ocean, summoned an infernal leviathan from the darkest depths of the sea and gave it the command to destroy both armies. The creature opened its maw and decimated the entire coast with its many angled teeth and turned Dragonkin into children's tales.
As Kord had predicted, Asmodeus and Trithereon deescalated their conflict, and the races of man made peace. Overwhelmed with guilt and shame, Ondra vanished into the ocean and has remained silent ever since, even to her most faithful disciples.
It is for this reason, and the tantalizing mystery of her leviathan’s appearance and origins, that she is known to Mystara as the goddess of secrets and loss--The Silent Goddess.
To us, she remains a curse.
Type
Manuscript, Historical
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