Wander's Meeting

Written by IsaacsLaughing

My enemy did cast me into Hell! Into a trap that sealed me with nary enough space to flick my tail or stretch my jaw! May Tiamat spurn him and Bahamut devour his bones!


There was one... One who sought to release me. A tiefling warlock beholden to my kin did know of my plight. Many times, she plied her magics in futility to break the barriers that imprisoned me. Alas, my time ran out. The Phasing came and spirited me away. Free am I from all binding of the flesh, yet forever I am bound to carry this rage!


Deeply do I desire a balm for this fire. To be the patron of your people may be just the thing. Go, tell them of the spirit that lingers here, the wraith of the once-proud and good Harelecorniss. I would have their company, their vitality, the pleasure of their wit. Keep for me a record of history. Know the world in my stead and instruct me in the happenings of this new place.


~ The Wraith of the Silver Dragon Harelecorniss to Wander Ebrahim, First Monastic Empress of Wend, at Their Meeting in the Post-Phasing Year 735

HISTORY

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Wander's Meeting stands out among the soaring young mountains of the vast Mesni range only by virtue of not standing out. Its peaks and crags have been rasped down to gentle slopes by the winds that rush through the valley where Wander's people settled in the fateful year of their meeting the dragon's shade.

For generations, the people had sought refuge from alien beasts transported to the world, like the people themselves once had been, as a consequence of the Phasing, the event of planar rifts tearing apart a planet of the Negative Plane, Tershe, as the plane collapsed and shifting the world piece by piece into the Prime Material. Parts of the planet would remain trapped within a pocket plane, forever phasing across dozens of worlds and consuming pieces of them, mineral and organic, that would reform in the Prime Material, reshaping and populating the broken planet.

Many sentient races who had lived in comfortable societies found all their attempts at settling thwarted by the world's rapidly shifting landscape and ecology. Some gathered into nomadic bands, ever watchful and swift to capture food or flee. Wander Ebrahim was a human girl born in the Earth city of Johannesburg, a new refugee phased into Tershe along with her father and welcomed into a nomadic clan. She met the silver dragon wraith when she fell through a sinkhole in the mountain while foraging. Though the floor of the cavern lay miles below, magical barriers slowed her fall and at their center was the wraith, whose form shimmered and smoked as Wander's sudden appearance roused the spirit. Wander's people found the hole within hours and rescued her with a rope that never ended. When she told of her encounter, the band made camp and mined through the passages of the mountain to descend and speak with the shade themselves.

Harelecorniss swore to support the clan in exchange for friendship, knowledge, and entertainment. She instructed them in construction and engineering first, then in law, politics, myriad sciences and combat. The fledgling nation of Wend raised a city within a year, with Wander at its seat, keeping the promised record of her people's history, scheduling between the shade's time and the people's need. In years to come, Wander would establish a monastic university, a school where the people of Wend would dedicate their lives to the discovery of knowledge for the favor of their patron and the good of the country. The head of this institution would also continue the liaison with the wraith and act as the curator ans preserver of Wend's culture. And even for centuries after Wander's death, the citizens cut and shaped the mountain, carving the cavern where their's patron's shade remained imprisoned into a glittering temple and an amphitheater to hear the dragon's wraith speak.

Three thousand years later, all this is forgotten. The citizens succumbed to fear of the world outside the protection of their sturdy cities. They sent out fewer researchers and thus reports back to Harelecorniss slowly came to an end. They began to favor brute strength in their bloodlines, magically hybridizing with animals and monsters that lived in the harsh surroundings. The cavern under Wander's Meeting, its prisoner and its wondrous rooms were buried under rockslides as the winds continued to eat away the mountainside. The dragon's patronage faded into mythology and in its place rose a religion that devolved Harelecorniss's memory into a mythology of an ancestral goddess named Orniss. Festivals are held on the mountain at the summer solstice, with feasts and contests of strength. Every year, at twilight, in the searing light of a bonfire, a wizened storyteller will be cheerfully wheedled into telling haunting tales of ragged howls echoing through cracks in the mountainside. Under their feet, the lonely spirit wails in despair and curses the living.

Type: Temple ruins, modest mountain
Location: Below the city of Wender's Fall