Black Dragons

The Black Dragons of the Dark Domains are one of the strongest of the forces controlled by the Ancient and Glorious. They are intelligent and malicious in nature, or strictly we should say that the ones found on Magicians' End behave in this fashion since they are thought to be only representatives of a much wider multi-realm culture far distant from the local Discontinuum where matters may be different.   In any case, these dragons do the bidding of the Ancient and Glorious, whether by choice or force. They roost in a mountainous region in the north west of the continent of Novanoir, where they have been granted limited autonomy by their masters and they are permitted to hunt wherever they can fly, all over the continent. No prey is denied to them, save only the Ancient and Glorious themselves, and even the Verdarian must be ever wary of them.   Black Dragons raise large broods which would be unsustainable given the relatively small size of the continent they are confined to, being locked behind the Hylacon Gates, but rather than restrict their population through any form of birth control, the dragons have come to an agreement. Lacking natural predators, they have become their own predators in two forms of ritualised cull which both eliminate their weaker specimens.   A brood of Black Dragons is subjected to two survival tests. The first one pits them against their elders, who hunt them down in a ceremony lasting five days and nights and known as the thinning of the flock. Half are killed this way when they have been flying for five years and before they develop their adult fire glands. If they are not to be consumed they must use cunning, guile and luck. The second ritual is known as the test of the brood. The remaining siblings in a brood group (who will now, after the thinning, typically number between six and ten individuals) must fight to the death until only two remain to progress into full adulthood. With these brutal self selection mechanisms in place, the Dark Domains can sustain a population of the apex predator at replacement rates that do not exhaust the prey available.   In the image at the head of the article we see a brood of black dragons preparing for the signal that will begin the test of the brood.  

---

  In the few short years after the Planar Conformation and before the final act in the Fall of the Old Pale Empire Black Dragons were often in the vanguard of the attacks launched against the human settled native continents, including this example pictured below from the Burning of Oroth in 3 APC.     Later during the darkest days of the Breach Wars, they inflicted terrible casualties on the residual, relatively disorganised and scattered forces left after the end of the Old Pale Empire and for this they are greatly feared to this day, even though they have been pinned back and confined to the Dark Domains for millennia.   The illustration below shows the confounding of a great Black Dragon at the moment of the closing of the Hylacon Gates which imprisoned most of them at the end of the Breach Wars.     The hunting and destruction of the few free flying dragons was a job for the Flame Kingdoms. In 77 APC an event known as " Mt. Defiance Erupts in Anger " demonstrated one way to achieve this goal.     No dragons have been seen outside the confines of the Dark Domains since the age of the Flame Kingdoms but they are certainly still there. They played a role in both The Dark Domain Frenzy at the end of the Time of Terrors and The Dark Scream at the end of the Age of Shadows, helping to conjure the forces that might have broken the Hylacon Gates, were it not for a considerable slice of good fortune. Even today, when the Trans-Oceanic Empire exercises a wary and somewhat patchy watching brief over the Orothonian Ocean, Black Dragons can be seen flying above the escarpment where False Land ends as Pannelle bears witness to on her dangerous journey into the Dark Domains.