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Drykonnor’s undead armies would chant his name in their hundreds of thousands, as they burned crops and slaughtered their way across the Winterlands. That is why in our language, the name Drykonnor means to practise necromancy. While Drakonsh implies death is at hand. Drykonnsi, a noun, means tyrant.

Life was measurably cheaper back then. Slaves murdered each other in staged contests so that wealthy aristocrats could gamble away small fortunes while rich merchants would entertain and cultivate new business clientele. The ritual murder of slaves was a staged, social entertainment in most empires. If that was the attitude of the prevailing aristocracy, Drykonnor perhaps thought very little of murdering whole societies for sport of a more political kind.

Historians from that time generally agree that Drykonnor’s mother was an ambitious witch of growing powers and rare ugliness. Her enormous desire for greater powers is reckoned to have cost her the respect of her peers. It was said that feeling ousted by her own coven, his mother stole a spell book from the reserve collection of the coven’s deeply buried secrets library. She then summoned a sworn representative of the powerful demon Kalikerano and agreed to become Kalikerano’s fiancee in exchange for a meeting. She slipped through the gateways of hell, into the cage of demons and made a foolish marriage pact with Kalikerano. Her name was Mantanashi Genoa.

This is why in Articon, our magical jargon, a Genoani is any hasty treaty made with demons and it is also why in common everyday language Genana signifies any marriage performed for the purposes of evil, corruption or selfishness. While Geninoa means literally tool of the incubus, but in the vernacular it implies the mother of doom.

Mantala means ambition mixed with cunning, while Manta’shi means of course, any ugly and evil old hag. Her entire name, in our native language of today, describes her physical appearance, her nature and her entire role in this history. She was, in some sense, the unwitting architect of all that was to follow.

For her pitifully small request - control over her coven and a fairly modest increase in her powers – the highly powerful demon Kalikerano decreed that Mantanashi would bear him a child, a boy. The witch agreed willingly, thinking herself fortunate – she would certainly have viewed bearing the child of a demon as a step up the enchanted ladder of mystical power. And indeed it was a step up, a giant and unfathomably great step, yet a step she herself would never take.

The child sorcerer Drykonnor was believed to be already three thousand years old when he was born only four months later. His mother died as he left her womb, his large, writhing body and kicking feet had ruptured vital organs and broken both her pelvic bones. His birth was the most bloody and violent spectacle ever seen or recorded by Margella Soren, the Bludshawkt in attendance.

Margella’s graphic and unflattering diary records the birth and first three weeks of Drykonnor’s life in a wealth of fearful prose. Since it details a forensic study of Mantanashi’s remains and the early development of the infant sorcerer, Margella’s diary is commonly called the marat’chi d’konnorsu, the journal of the beast. It survives to this day in the world famous science museum of Aranta.

After the death of his mother, the child slept for another seven days without taking in any food or fluids. Margella wrote, ‘weights and measures confirm the child is growing at an unprecedented rate. In only a few days of deep sleeping, he has nearly doubled in mass. I was so astonsihed to find a newborn gaining weight so fast, that I accused all the attending juniors of feeding it without my permission. It was only when I had reduced all three witchlings to tears that I realised that the child truly was gaining weight of its own accord, without any food or water. There were many other signs that the child was strongly magical, but I was reluctant to face the glaringly obvious. Now that it has doubled in size in only three days, it is almost impossible to avoid the worst conclusion. The child is finding its own nourishment, possibly from a dark source.’

When he finally awoke from his after-birth slumber, Margella’s worst fears were confirmed. At the age of only a few days, Drykonnor was able to walk. Margella also records that after taking his first five or six wobbling steps, the infant sorcerer was so astonished to find himself incarnated in the body of a staggering child that he stopped walking and started talking. Not just talking, but complaining incessently about ‘…this useless jellybag of a body.’ The complaints were apparently given up in what Margella called ‘…some of the most obscene and vivid language I have ever blocked my ears to.’

It’s widely believed that Drykonnor raised himself. One rumour, often repeated, has it that he lived for four hundred years on a mountain in central Kanesh, learning the secrets of the gods before rejoining the society which had unwittingly unleashed him. He certainly was influential in Corani-An-Hir, the old capital of Mari Kanesh, by the year 20,302 since that is the date of the oldest statue of him found there.

Enshrined as a mage of power and steadiness for centuries, he was uniformly and fearfully respected by aristocrats and royals. Every day some new herd of religious pilgrims would walk miles up Serillio hill to watch him from a distance as he tended to his lush herb garden. For many centuries Drykonnor was the very incarnation of the benvolent sorcerer. Libraries were named after him. Hundreds of statues bore his name. Songs, even entire operas were written to celebrate his life.

Two key events are thought to have turned Drykonnor mad: firstly there was a fateful meeting with his father, the demon Kalikerano, which gave him the will to turn against his own teachings. And secondly the mysteriously early death of King Belisario Brodor in the key Mari Kanesh city of Kuranch, which gave him the opportunity. The time, place and duration of the meeting with his demon father is hotly debated. All that is certain is that at some stage Drykonnor spoke with his gaoled demon father. And it seems most likely that the sorcerer’s reverence for peace was completely smashed and destroyed during that one conversation.

Meanwhile, the premature death of the middle-aged king enabled the rise of his young, shallow, vain and greedy son, Jenassair Brodor. The foolish young royal quickly worked for the respect of the famous mystic from the provinces. Jenassair made the extraordinary effort to come from his new capital, Verano City, with three hundred entourage in tow, to visit Drykonnor’s small villa on Serillio hill. Three hundred camped there for two weeks of celebrations, while the determined young sovereign regaled Drykonnor with tales of the sorcerer’s widespread fame and greatness. Tales which Drykonnor surely knew far better than Jenassair. He shamelessly peppered Drykonnor with expensive gifts, spoke tirelessly of Drykonnor’s greatness and how that greatness had been underestimated, neglected and misused by former rulers.

Drykonnor’s response to the crawling king was, either way, as unexpected as it was decisive. They quickly forged an alliance. And so the once beloved mystic, who had protected the people from the stupidities and vanities of hordes of idiot kings, now joined with the most stupid and murderous king in ten successions. So it is that the taboo word, norazi, means a high traitor to the people. While konsari, means an enraged soul, it implies a spirit trapped by a deep hate for the world. Konnar’ xhu means cannibal, while the root word konn means evil.

The Gura Fornal was a treaty, a manifesto made of dark magic, sweat and ink. The sorcerer’s famous pact with the king was signed in their own blood, the scroll itself was said to have been made of the skin of a slave. With the legitimate empire of Mari Kanesh now willing to sanction the illegal use of his vast summoning powers, Drykonnor called for the winters to come and feed on the desert plains of Kanesh for ten thousand years. In return for his Winterland empire, the sorcerer’s gift to King Jenassair was something close to immortality. So long as the winter clouds cast a shadow over Kanesh, the king would not age. Drykonnor gave birth to the 10,000 winters in the year of darkness, 20,495.

It was said that in order to complete the spell the sorcerer had to cut off a piece of his own heart and feed it to a crystal murderstone. He then dropped the powerful stone creature into a small vat of the magically potent embalming fluid, whiteoil. Drykonnor then hid his illegal spell inside a dark and secure tomb, deep underneath Jenassair’s magical palace.

For hundreds of years Drykonnor’s winters formed a frostbitten scar on the world. Yet as the winters neither spread nor dissipated, it seemed to many learned political scholars of the time, that with the Winterlands small and remote, with Drykonnor outnumbered by a great and esteemed league of powerful mages, with the Kaneshi economy in constant decline, that after 700 years of ruination, Drykonnor’s empire was no threat to anyone.

There was an historical cause for that particular theory. For centuries people had been saying it and it had held largely true. So strange though it may seem to us now, even though the most powerful sorcerer in history was completely mad and in control of a minor puppet state, he appeared contained, almost harmless. Politically and economically isolated. Too mad to summon nice weather, too feeble to take on the world in a holy war, he was believed to be pathetic, old and weak. The popular impression that the child of Kalikerano was a coward and a political fool, lasted until the year 21,095.

Drykonnor sat in his private parlour one night, dining well on chunky vegetable soups dosed with fast acting opiates. Having already guzzled large volumes of alcohol, not too surprisingly perhaps, he suffered a violent physical convulsion and a torrid, hallucinogenic nightmare. What emerged from that twisting of drugs and consciousness was a vision of a birth, a fateline made of blood, the scent of magical flesh, a taste of an ancient prophecy.

This child sorcerer was a most horrifying inconvenience to Drykonnor’s military ambitions, but at the same time its birth presented him with the greatest political opportunity of his life. The arrival of another summoner meant a battle would inevitably follow. As day follows night, two gods would always battle each other for annointed blood, eternal glory and bold, new magical powers.

Drykonnor was always gaining in summoning strength with age and could draw on ever vaster magical currents. Yet here was a clear and distinct prophecy of his own defeat: He knew the child was a great and ancient source. A timeless demigod caged in a prone, newborn’s body. Possibly a hundred thousand years old. A natural summoner who would, left unchecked, grow powerful enough to overthrow the winterspell, reach into Mari Kanesh and murder Drykonnor.

Terrified of his own defeat and haunted by his recurring visions, he eventually told the vain and self-serving king of his fears. Jenassair, seeing the mystic’s eyes uncharacteristically drained of confidence, believed every word.

The sorcerer closed his deadly eyes and spoke to his foolish king slowly, like a roll of thunder, ‘they will seek to take the crown of Mari Kanesh for themselves and sever the bond which unites us. When the sorcerer takes your crown, Jenassair, and parts the clouds, time will find you and crush you with 700 years. Your death will be horrifying, agonising as centuries storm through your bones and draw your skin into the dust.’

The king, very upset, asked when the child would become a serious danger. Drykonnor’s reply was a sturdy remark, which became an entrenched part of legend, ‘even unborn the tiny beast is like a dagger probing at your heart. You know what must be done.’

Jenassair, young in appearance, sat down upon the ground defeated, his lean body battered by the strong winds. He looked up to the cloudy night, pale, weak and terrified, ‘can we not, by any means, turn the child to our favour? You might make a powerful mentor to such a promising magical force.’

‘I would mentor your death. The brat was born to a fate, as has been foretold for thousands of years. It cannot be turned to our favour and so it has to die,’ the necromancer’s heavy, deep voice was a crawling tremor which started in Jenassair’s gut and moved up his spine.

‘What difference can it make… a fateliner is coming who already hungers for your crown. It is taking form as we speak, growing in soul. At the moment it is like a seed. Soon it will be a god,’ the sorcerer grinned broadly, exposing his rotten teeth, ‘it is still within my reach to kill it young, before it matures to full height. This much I know.’

‘It is in Kanesh already?’ the king was terrified of the answer either way.

Drykonnor smiled, ‘yes, or very nearby. You know, good king, what must be done.’

The king nodded, ‘we burn the villages. Slaughter the children of Kanesh until the child of the prophecy is dead.’

Drykonnor’s lands were ancient permafrost graveyards, snowy catacombs littered with the bodies of millions who had lived and died in his bleak world. Drykonnor was weak for two days, but the dead were raised, an army formed. Those buried deeper were left to slumber, but the hundreds of thousands who were placed in shallow, snowy graves now arose fleshy, bloody and preserved.

t Bludshawk, 1) a witch midwife. 2) Shawk, a scholarly witch

Child

Of ThE

A true Prophecy is a dangerous, sickening thing.

~ Arch Mage Balrano Feralli ~