Batterion
Summary
Long before the human era, fledgling versions of the flights known today battled for dominance amongst themselves and each other, with many flights facing extinction, and many being borne from the bloodshed. Powerful wyrms rose and fell like clockwork, wars raged and quelled, and time passed as it always did, shaping the land, drying and swelling the seas. A great wyrm, Batterion, outstripped the local flights in their size and power, threatening to devour all if not given proper respect as the greatest dragon to live. Batterion demanded of the local flights their leaders pay them in their hunts, their profits and prey to first be subject to the might wyrm's whims and hunger.
Batterion only grew larger, feasting on the fear and dominance they held over the flights themselves. Those that resisted quickly found the dragon's wings blotted out the sun, the moon, the stars, the sky itself whenever they took flight, and would easily feast upon defiant wyrms themselves. Batterion continued to grow, more and more flights under their wings. Mammoth and great sloths were naught but snacks, entire forests but a salad, every beast and soon the entire world to be a small meal for the beast. Soon Batterion flew across entire continents, entire kingdoms, devouring all for nothing was enough.
Our of fear that their kin were to be consumed, any act of living seen as defiance, the flights banded together and created a feast in secret. Braised cats, charred sloth, the rhinos and land-birds skinned plucked and stuffed, buried in a great pit and cooked by lava to draw the wyrm's attention to the scent. The corpses of the great hunt held secrets, laced with poisons most foul, masked with spices and blood liquors. The Wyrm feasted for three days, each meal shoveled into their maw with more poison for than the last, growing sluggish, tired, larger and yet more dead until naught but a corpse themself. In celebration, the smaller flights, now free, stuffed their corpse with hot stones and braised their body with the blood of the fallen until their flesh turned to a black char, the poisons seeping from their flesh across the land like lava, foul smelling and noxious, a last act of harm, finally buried by time.
Historical Basis
If there is any historical basis to the myth, it is likely that the dragon Batterion has been attributed to many acts by powerful flight leaders of the past. Details are certainly exaggerated, but many records tell tale of large and powerful wyrms subjugating multiple smaller flights and absorbing them under their influence and demanding tribute. Many believe that the myth is used to explain deposits of basalt across much of Asia from powerful basalt flood eruptions, the rock deposits claimed to be represented in the myth as Batterion's poisoned blood.
In the modern day, there is a holiday surrounding the myth of Batterion, called the Batterion Feast.
Date of Setting
Pre-humanity
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