Age of Dragons

The Age of Dragons is only known due to a few scattered scrolls and fragments of books found in various libraries and sometimes contradictory tales in books written after the Age. The Age was likely three cycles of the Jewel before the current age, although that cannot be confirmed.

The Age of Dragons began after a previous Shattering during which a group of ancient dragons banded together to hold the Jewel together and repair it. While repairing the Jewel these dragons each took responsibility for a single point, working with the dragons around them to reinforce the facets. A consequence was that the dragons necessarily took on the aspect of the Virtues they were supporting.

At the beginning of the Age, the dragons carved a great city at the peak of the highest mountain on the Terrene, naming both the city and the mountain Caer Enval. The city was populated by the dragons and their favored servants, the Lacertan . The Lacertan were a race of tall, muscular humanoids with fine scales, horny crests, and prehensile tails. The Lacertan as a whole identified with the dragons and considered themselves above the other species of the Terrene.

The Council of Dragons took it upon themselves to gather the remnants of the Shattering under their rule, seeking to ensure the Jewel would be protected from future damage. As the population rebounded and humanoids began to spread across the world, the dragons decided it would be more efficient to spread apart and allow individual Dragon Lords to administer smaller districts. They would initially continue to meet to discuss matters of global importance, but these meetings became rare over time and the Dragon Lords stopped communicating.

Due to the Dragon Lords being tied to individual Truths they ran their districts following those Virtues. Eventually, the population grew enough that the various districts collided and competed for resources. This brought the various Virtues into conflict, with the dragons and their servants waging war in support of their Virtues. During these wars, several of the Dragon Lords experimented on or altered the Lacertans, creating the kobolds, draconians, dragonborn, tortles, and yuan-ti. These new species were pressed into fighting massive wars on behalf of the Dragon Lords.

These wars ravaged the lands, and when Dragon Lords came into direct conflict hundreds of thousands of lives were often lost as collateral damage. When Dragon Lords were killed, it weakened the Virtue they were supporting, leading to cracks forming in the Jewel. As the Jewel began to shatter, the facets manifested beings to replace the Dragon Lords in holding the Jewel together and the Dragon Lords were sealed away.

There are enough fragments of documents written during the Age of Dragons to establish the most basic parts of the story. The specifics come from books written in later ages, so are considered suspect.