Season 1: New Beginnings

The peoples of Kaelthara did not begin in ruin. Settlements grew, trade routes formed, and cultures took root over generations. The elves of the deep forests built homes in living canopies old enough to predate written history. Scholars gathered in places like the Collegium Arcana to study and preserve magical knowledge. Cities rose. Life, by most measures, was moving forward. 

Few alive today were there for the beginning, and those who were don't always agree on how it started. What history records is this: the chromatic dragons went to war — and the mortal world was simply in the way. Dragonfire does not distinguish between an army and a village. Freezing breath does not spare the innocent. 

Cities were destroyed. Forests burned to nothing. Entire communities vanished in a single night. Most peoples of Kaelthara had no army capable of matching what flew above them. Survival became the only goal, pursued however it could be — by sea, by hiding underground, by holding high ground with ballistae and sheer stubbornness, by burying everything worth saving and waiting. 

What remained was a broken land and the people who had survived it. Saltmere Harbor was built in the weeks immediately following — constructed from wreckage, by survivors, for survivors. Kinallen rose from the remains of the Collegium Arcana, scholars salvaging what knowledge hadn't burned. Settlements that had hidden or fled began the slow work of rebuilding.

The victory had been won, but the threat behind it was not gone. Tiamat had been turned back, not destroyed. The only lasting answer was a covenant: mortals and metallic dragons, bound together in genuine partnership, standing permanent watch.