The Drake Eyrie

Originally built as an aviary for messenger drakes and emissary mounts, the Eyrie has become a war-training citadel for battle drakes and lesser dragons loyal to the Embergarde crown. Its current function is both military and experimental: a testing ground for psionic conditioning, with the intent to create perfectly obedient draconic units.

The Eyrie’s structure spirals skyward like a volcanic helix — nine towers of black basalt, bridged by open-air terraces and circled by molten vents that release updrafts for flight training.
Each tower hums faintly with psychic vibration, the residue of the resonant chambers built within.
Bas-reliefs of dragons adorn the walls, their eyes inlaid with runestones that flicker in time with unseen pulses.

At the apex stands the Crown Perch, an open platform used for high-altitude drills and psionic synchronizations.

• Primary Access: A spiral stair from the royal armory that ends in a runed iron gate.
• Secondary Access: Skybridges accessible only to flight-capable mounts or teleportation sigils.
• Restricted Chambers: The Resonance Sanctum, where monks conduct psychic conditioning, sealed behind psionic barriers keyed to mental signatures.

The air vibrates with invisible hums — psionic tones audible only to the magically or mentally attuned.
A constant mingling of sulfur, heated metal, and ozone lingers.
From the terraces, the low growl of dragons echoes between the towers, interrupted by sudden bursts of mental static — the sound of minds being forcibly linked and severed.
Faint motes of light shimmer along the basalt walls like embers in a dream.

• Psychonic Monks: Ascetic operatives trained in mental warfare and telepathic discipline. They claim to “harmonize” dragons, but their influence often borders on domination.
• Battle Drakes: Young dragons and drake breeds bred for war. Many exhibit dulled personalities and hollow obedience from psychic exposure.
• Commander Thornmane’s Brood: A dwindling number of dragons still loyal to their ancestral keeper, immune or resistant to psychic manipulation.
• Emberguard Handlers: Armored soldiers responsible for maintaining physical discipline and assisting with the conditioning process.

• Feeding troughs filled with charred volcanic meats infused with minor enchantments.
• Psionic braziers burning with cold violet fire that maintain the harmonic frequency in training chambers.
• Resonant mirrors that amplify mental energy — each capable of transmitting commands to bonded drakes miles away.
• Basalt perches reinforced with runic stabilizers and iron-bound chains inscribed with obedience seals.

• Mindshock Wards: Emit a psychic backlash that can stun or paralyze intruders not mentally shielded.
• Flamefall Protocol: A defensive mechanism that collapses parts of the terraces in molten fire if the Eyrie is compromised.
• Residual Resonance: The psychic energy lingers even when inactive — prolonged exposure can cause hallucinations or emotional bleedthrough from the drakes’ minds.

• The Eyrie’s rune network amplifies psionic power, forming a resonance field that connects every dragon within its radius.
• This network allows synchronized flight formations — or mass coercion under the Psychonic Order’s control.
• Commander Thornmane’s dragons project a counter-frequency that resists domination, but prolonged exposure to the field risks mental corrosion.

~150 years ago, the Eyrie was expanded during the reign of Ignis I, incorporating flameglass arches and resonance chambers designed by the monk-engineers of the Psychonic Order.
The oldest section — Thornmane’s Spire — remains untouched and heavily warded against psychic interference, serving as a living monument to the older bond between dragon and rider.

Emberforge verticality dominates: obsidian flame motifs, molten seams of magma running like veins through the stone, and heavy reinforcement to withstand dragon landings.
Runic arrays embedded in every wall pulse faintly when the resonance field is active.

• Psychic alarm network linked to the palace mindward.
• Elite Emberguard sharpshooters on parapets.
• Drakes conditioned for immediate aggression against foreign mental signatures.
• Commander Thornmane’s dragons act as wildcards — unpredictable, but fiercely protective of their matriarch’s territory.

The Drake Eyrie was once a sanctuary of kinship between dragonkind and the royal house.
After the Emberwood conflict, the Psychonic Order rose under the crown’s sanction, reshaping the Eyrie into a laboratory for mental subjugation.
Many dragons perished during the early “harmonization” experiments; those who survived became eerily silent.
Commander Thornmane has spent years quietly opposing these practices, preserving what remains of the true bond between rider and wyrm.