The Aldarian Empire

The Aldarian Empire is the one-world governing body of the dragons. Established some 20,000 years ago by the Tyrant King Balthalazar, its formation brought an end to the warring clans and national sovereignty periods of drakan history. Its goal was to create a lasting peace between the dragons regardless of clan, origin, or subspecies, and to unite the race in the face of the threat posed by the rapidly advancing human species. In spite of its bloody beginnings, the Aldarian Empire has proven to be an unparalleled success in the history of the dragons, having accomplished Balthalazar's goal of a lasting peace and unifying the drakan race in ways it had never been before.
While it is in form and function an empire, and is referred to as such when spoken about as a whole, when Balthalazar assumed a ruling position over his new world order, he preferred to refer to himself as King as opposed to Emperor, and its capital city in which he resided was named the Kingdom of Aldaron in response. Initially, the empire was to be ruled by a monarchy established by Balthalazar's bloodline, but as Balthalazar never had any known hatchlings prior his assassination, this was ultimately replaced by an electoral monarchical system in which all clans had an equal opportunity of assuming the role of monarch through a lengthy election process.
In its history, the monarchy of the empire has changed hands a great number of times, with some clans favored more than others. For example, the current ruling clan, the Albions, have held the throne for an unprecedented 5,000 years without interruption, speaking to either their popularity with their kin or the flaws of the electoral system. Nevertheless, many humans look at the Aldarian Empire with awe and aspire to create a peace between man as permanent as what the dragons have accomplished. While there have been attempts to peaceably bring the world together under one governing body since the end of the last great human-dragon war, they have never borne any fruit, and humans remain highly divided and nationalistic to this day. Nevertheless, many look to their sibling species as an example of what they could one day accomplish.

History

The Ancient Proto-Empire and The Enemy at the Gates (50,000 BC)

The Aldarian Empire is not the first time the dragons have come together as one people - there are stories in their distant past of a time they came together out of necessity in order to conquer a common foe. Very little is known about this era, as surviving historical records are hard to find, and what little has been found is fairly vague. To this day, the enemy of the dragons is only ever referred to as "The Enemy", and the only thing that is known about them is that they were technologically advanced, and they posed a legitimate extinction-level threat to the dragons.
Theories as to the identity of The Enemy have ranged from everything from a third sentient lifeform on planet Earth aside from dragons and humans, to a rogue faction of the dragons' gods, to an extraterrestrial invasion, to a somehow corrupted sect of dragons, to nothing at all, with "The Enemy" being a euphemism for their society's ills or simply a work of fiction. This last option is the most highly contested, however, as some legitimate pieces of Enemy technology - while exceedingly rare today - have indeed been unearthed by dragons throughout history.
It is said the threat The Enemy posed to the dragons was so great, the gods themselves deigned to interfere and fight alongside them. The gods of the dragons have always been described as capricious, distant beings who mettle only when invoked or provoked, or who preferred to let the dragons evolve as they would with minimal interference. But whatever rules it was they abode by, they discarded them for the sake of this threat, and were integral to the ultimate defeat of The Enemy, whoever it may have been.
The unification and peace of this era was relatively short lived however, and did not last long after The Enemy was completely defeated, and dragons quickly returned to their individual nations and warring with one another.

Pre-Empire Era and Origins (25,000-20,000 BC)

In the era immediately preceding the establishment of the empire, the dragons lived much like humans do today, fractured and fighting proxy wars amongst themselves over territory with four great nations across the globe. Each nation was ruled by an alliance of clans, with each clan being given a piece of that great nation's territory to lord over as local monarch. While civil wars between allied clans were not unheard of, most conflict in the 5000 year period immediately preceding Balthalazar was between these nations themselves, and their respective alliances versus one another.
Fearing how dangerous an army of what were essentially living, breathing magical nukes could do to the planet, and with horror stories in their ancient past of what a full-scale magic war could look like, most wars during this time period were proxy wars. While dragon versus dragon battles did occur quite often, typically between high ranking members of two or more clans, dragons never gathered into armies like the humans would come to do. Instead, when armies came into the equation, they were comprised of powerful chimeras created by the dragons through a blending of science and magic. Many, if not all, of the mythical beasts and monsters and chimeras of human legend have their origins in this 5000 year pre-empire period, where scores of mindless beasts fought one another to settle the disputes of their dragon creators.
When Balthalazar was hatched in around 21,500 BC, he was born into a world in turmoil. The proxy wars fought by chimeras were beginning to lose their sway over political tensions, and battles between multiple dragons of multiple clans were becoming more and more commonplace. Having seemingly forgotten what a full-scale war between dragons could look like, in Balthalazar's time, there were talks of proper armies forming and of nations completely wiping one another off the map. The conflicts between the dragons were multitudinous in nature, stemming from inter-clan politics to a struggle for resources to racial prejudices between subspecies to the longstanding conflicts between the mages and the scientists to just about anything else you could think of, anything a human might find familiar.
Born a mutant, Balthalazar was to the dragons what neo humans are to ordinary man, and as he grew into his power, he began to realize that not only was he uncontested in his might, but with that might he may actually have an opportunity to change the world. Chimeras were child's play, but no dragon who challenged him could ever prevail against him, and as words of his deeds and triumphs began to spread across the lands, even the gods of the dragons took interest in this mutant mortal, challenging him to sparring sessions he occasionally won. Not beast nor dragon nor god could stand before him. Balthalazar felt unstoppable, and grew emboldened, and with the blessings of the gods and the gift of their orichalcum, he went on to create the sword which would later become known as his Lament.
As a warlord, Balthalazar was an unstoppable force with no clan and no nation behind him. He was completely rogue, a true, rare individual example in a species that centered around community. He was unique. He was alone. And he was power. Before long, Balthalazar had quelled the embers of war by slaughtering all who opposed him and all who sought violence as a means to achieve peace. This, he believed, was something only he alone, as the dragon chosen by the gods, could accomplish. In the span of a couple centuries, he decimated the four great nations and laid waste to any city that opposed him, until all that remained were his sympathizers. From the ashes of this old world, Balthalazar crafted what would ultimately become known as the Aldarian Empire.

The Human Treatise (19,972 BC)

At Balthalazar's insistence, The Human Treatise was drafted and signed by the heads of all dragon clans big and small, its purpose being to vow an oath of non-interference with the then developing human race. While humans had been hunted like any other prey before this era, it was becoming clear to the dragons that there was something special about these hairless apes, and that they may have been just as sapient as the dragons themselves were. They were clever, communal, they fashioned rudimentary tools and had their own proto-languages, they had a wide range of emotional depth. There were even stories some of them had begun their own civilization, though in this time period they did not last very long, largely due to dragon interference.
With the Human Treatise, the official position of the empire - and therefore, the official position of all dragons - was to be that humans were no longer to be hunted or interfered with, and if they were to organize into a civilization again, that they should leave them be and not mess with their development. This Treatise would ultimately go on to be the greatest boon any dragon had ever bestowed upon the human race, and our continued evolution likely would not have happened without it.
While it is unknown what specifically prompted Balthalazar to adopt this position, drakan legend says that the first great human sorcerer, The Great Wizard Aleron - a veritable boogeyman for the dragons and a stand-in for all humanity - had befriended him and convinced him through his companionship to give the human race a chance to develop. However, as there is no evidence that such a sorcerer ever existed, and stories of him persisted all throughout drakan history both before and after this time period, this is considered to be highly unlikely.

The Wars of Succession (19,667-17,000 BC)

In the year 19,667, Balthalazar was assassinated by one of those closest to him. While he was an indomitable force in battle, he was as prone as any mortal when caught by surprise, and this was the only real way of deposing the Tyrant King. Following his death, his young empire descended into chaos. His wife seemed poised to take the throne in his stead, but she was killed by rebels not long after her announcement to carry on as Queen of the empire. And these were not the only assassinations in this time period - for a stretch of over 1300 years, many dragons ruled for brief periods, only to be deposed by rebels and assassins and those with their own eyes on the throne. These countless assassinations and civil wars became known as the Wars of Succession, with nobody quite sure who should - or even could - replace Balthalazar as monarch.
It wasn't until the year 18,995 that things began to stabilize, as the elders of the most prominent clans came together to formulate the electoral process that is still used to this day. In this process, every clan regardless of size or status would have a say in who gets to be monarch, and whose clan gets to become the next royal family. The first elected monarch was a representative of the mighty Albion clan, a bloodline who sympathized with many of Balthalazar's political stances, though not his brutality. They had for the last several centuries been local dukes and governors, demonstrating a penchant for leadership even in the midst of such chaotic times, with their territories being largely sheltered from the turmoil of the empire at large. They would continue to return to the throne now and again over the ensuing millennia, eventually staking a 5,000 year uninterrupted claim on the throne which continues to this day.

The War for the Lament and the Departure of the Gods (15,000 BC)

Around 15,000 BC, another period of instability had begun within the empire as various clans vied for the honor of wielding Balthalazar's Lament, the mighty sword of the Tyrant King forged of orichalcum that had won him his war. It had been missing for thousands of years by this point, before turning up in a hidden bunker that once served as Balthalazar's secret armory. Many powerful magical relics and items were to be found in this armory and ultimately end up lost to history, but the Lament was by far the most powerful. The civil wars that were waged between clans over the right to wield the Lament were to be the final true wars between dragons, settled by their warrior god, Esaniel, who challenged the heads of the most prominent clans to duels he ultimately won over the ownership of the Lament. The blade then went on to become a part of his collection, and disappeared from the historical record shortly thereafter.
After the Lament had been reclaimed by the gods who had created it, the dragons' deities decided it was time to leave the mortals to their own devices, and returned to the land from which they came, a strange world known as Elysium. Their departure was gradual, with some gods lingering longer than others, but in time all indeed departed our world, feeling as though - with the Aldarian Empire formed and the Lament secured - the dragons were ready to rule without their assistance. In the end, only one was left behind, Esaniel, whose task was to defend the world from divine threats both of Elysium and elsewhere, threats that the dragons alone could not ordinarily handle. Following the departure of the rest of the gods, the empire entered into an era of peace and stability that would stand uninterrupted for more than 6000 years.

The Age of Man and the Birth of Aheperael (9000 BC)

Around the time of 9000 BC, tensions between humans and dragons were high. By this point, man had tried and failed to establish civilization multiple times, with scattered instances all throughout the drakan historical record that ultimately fell to war and unrest or natural disaster. But around 10,000 BC, it looked as though the humans had finally figured it out, and it was going to stick. As they began building towns, villages, even small cities, and they learned the basics of agriculture and their tools developed further, they began encroaching on drakan territory, and this had begun to test the Human Treatise for a number of dragons.
One of the things dragons found most inspiring, but also most frustrating, about the young human race was their sheer confidence and force of will. They saw every mountain as something to climb, every obstacle as a challenge to overcome. They created their own gods then deigned to reach their divine heights, reaching for the sky in any way they could. So it should've come as no surprise that the humans hardly feared the dragons. They were powerful, yes. More advanced than them by tens of thousands of years. But humans were indomitable, they just saw the dragons as another challenge to overcome, and they tested their borders more and more with each passing century.
In time, the first fleeting human-dragon wars had begun, skirmishes over territory that the humans knew to be fertile land but the dragons had laid claim to for uncountably many years. The humans built all manner of weapons and machinery in order to combat the dragons, discovering metals for the first time and, on rare occasions, cutting through the dragons' scales with brute physical force alone. But they weren't taken as anything more than a minor nuisance until rumors started spreading of rare, uniquely powerful humans with supernatural powers. Powers that were not magical in nature, but something else entirely - something unique to the human race alone.
Though neo humans had been known since the age of Balthalazar, they had always been exceptionally rare. But as the human species grew more and more populace, fears began to mount as to what could happen to the drakan species should these neo humans become more common. The Human Treatise prevented the Empire from taking any direct action against the humans, and public opinion was generally split, but all of that changed when a neo human killed a dragon in a territorial dispute, in a fight that was by all accounts one-sided in the favor of the neo human. The thought of such primitive creatures wielding such mighty powers was too much for a certain sect within the Aldarian government, and a plan was hatched to curb the human population before things got too out of hand.
Using forbidden dark magic and the blood of a god, these dragons went on to birth the false god Aheperaeal, the Deity of Decay. More than man, dragon, or even god, at the time of its creation, Aheperael was the single most powerful being on Earth. With its power to decay all things, the dragons sought to point Aheperael's wrath squarely at the human race and do away with them for good, but they underestimated the malice of the force they had created. Aheperael had a thirst for destruction unlike anything before it, and killed its creators upon its birth and anything it drew near to. It was as a force of nature, beyond control or comprehension, with no goal other than to destroy all that existed. Left unchecked, it would reduce the planet Earth itself to dust.
Once news of Aheperael made it to the empire, the dragons threw their best mages at the abomination to no avail. Sorcery had no effect on Aheperael, and none could draw within a hundred feet of it without decaying away into dust. It didn't take long for the dragons to realize they had created something they had no means of stopping or controlling. So, the decision was made to seek out the reclusive warrior god Esaniel, and ask him to rally the other gods to clean up the mess they had made.
When they finally reached Esaniel's temple deep in the heart of the antarctic, the god was in great distress. He could sense Aheperael's birth as it happened, but he had no clue the degree to which it threatened the world he'd come to love. What's worse, he was the god who had donated his blood for its creation, having been convinced the dragons sought to do good with his power. Trusting of the species he'd come to love, when the dragons found him and told him what had happened, he forsook his dragon form and took a human one in its stead, his faith in their species having been shattered. He agreed to rally the gods, and a holy war was waged against Aheperael that raged for the better part of a year.
In the end, the manifestation of death proved to be impossible to kill, so the decision was made to split its power and seal it away instead. To this end, the gods of light, Ilael and Ixael, surrendered chunks of their being to create a living seal to keep Aheperael's power in check. Its soul was removed from its body and taken to the world of the gods, while the shell that was left behind was left to Esaniel to defend on Earth. No one knew how long these seals would last, or what might happen should both halves of Aheperael remain in one world. In dividing it between worlds, they reasoned it should be impossible for it to ever regain its full power again.
Esaniel, guilty for his role in Aheperael's creation, accepted the role the chief god Ikarot had bestowed upon him and continues to stand guard over Aheperael's shell to this day.

The 10,000 Year Peace (9000 BC - 467 AD)

Following the defeat of Aheperael and the second departure of the gods, the dragons took a new approach to dealing with humanity, serving as - instead of a rival species - something of a wise older sibling to guide them along their growth. While this went against the Human Treatise's non-interference clause, it was becoming clear as skirmishes between man and dragon increased that they couldn't remain neutral forever. With the rise in human population and neo humans alongside it, dragons feared what a humanity left to its own devices might do to the dragons or the planet, so the decision was made by some to become sages and leaders of men.
Some dragons took on the role of deities to the humans, while some were known as great wizards. In their magically induced human forms, the dragons sought to show man how to live and respect their environment and the life around them. During this time period, battles between man and dragon became less frequent, and the human species gradually developed into a proper, civilized species. Great cities were built, technology advanced, politics advanced - while the dragons as their gods provided gentle nudges in the right directions, most of these achievements were in fact mankind's own. Once the seed had been planted, man was left to tend to what sprung forth from it, and they nurtured it into a promising young civilization that just might coexist peacefully with the dragons.
This era of almost 10,000 years of peace between man and dragon, with no further incidence of civil war between the dragons themselves, came to be known simply as The 10,000 Year Peace. But while the dragons had achieved Balthalazar's goal, mankind was far from doing the same. While wars between man and dragon became rare, wars between man and their fellow man were alarmingly common. The species appeared to have a violence and bloodlust built into them that reminded the dragons of their own origins, and went to show just how far apart developmentally the two races still were, regardless of what man had achieved.
Following the fall of Rome, the human civilization descended into chaos, and the dragons were forced to retreat from human settlements as mankind turned on their 'gods' in holy wars. A new era of violence between man and dragon had begun, and it would last for the better part of a thousand years, with the humans taking increasingly more drakan territory as their own.

The Decimation (467-1497 AD)

The Decimation was the empire's darkest period, a thousand year stretch of gradual decline in territory, quality of life, and population. As humans grew more and more advanced and populous and waged more and more wars with dragons, more and more dragons were called out to fight. The beasts of burden they'd made in chimeras were excellent foot soldiers in ordinary chimera vs. chimera conflicts, but pitted against a foe every bit as clever as the dragons and as powerful as the slayers - a derogatory drakan term for neo humans - they did not tend to last long. The only hope of stopping the human advance was direct combat, dragon vs. man, but after a nearly ten thousand year stretch of peace, the dragons were woefully ill prepared for direct combat.
There were not many warriors left amongst their kind, and their mages were more scholars in the black arts than they were practitioners, so as the humans encroached further and further into Aldarian territory, the fights tended to be fairly one-sided. Humans were battle hardened and bloodthirsty, war was all they knew, and they leapt at any chance to dehumanize their fellow man and subjugate or destroy them. They seemed purpose bred for war, whereas the dragons had to relearn the game quickly lest they end up completely exterminated. It was becoming clearer and clearer to the governors and the monarchs that the humans wanted nothing less than to be Earth's sole sentient species, and to drive the drakan race to extinction.
The first century of The Decimation was among the worst periods in its thousand year span. The dragons never stood a chance against the warlike humans, and the humans spared no brutality. Just as they would in wars with one another, the humans sought nothing less than total annihilation. They pillaged and burned every drakan settlement they conquered, killing all who inhabited it, young or old, and razing it to the ground to create fertile land for human construction. There was no mercy, and seemingly, no hope.
But in time, the dragons rekindled their flame for war, and the battle became much more even. They spent that first century studying, training, rediscovering, putting together a formal army of legitimate soldiers to take on the human threat. The following 900 years of bloodshed were every bit as brutal and chaotic as the century of extermination that preceded it, and the dragons - naturally fewer in number than the humans and with slow reproduction cycles - were accumulating losses at an unsustainable rate. 500 years into The Decimation, it was becoming clear that this was a losing battle, and that if they continued to throw dragon bodies at the humans, they would only be hastening the demise of their species.
But, the dragons were proud, stubborn, ancient, they fought on regardless for their right to persist in this world, what was once their world. But humans reproduced too quickly, the slayers' abilities were too different from their magic, mankind had found a way to attain magehood by consuming dragon blood - the more they fought, the more loss they experienced, until, near the end of the 15th century, the species teetered on the edge of extinction. The war had been effectively lost. There was no chance they were going to survive if they continued to fight, so a new strategy had to be formed. The dragons would have to surrender their pride.

The Great Hiding and The Era of Silence (1500-1984 AD)

Following the loss of the last great human-dragon war of human antiquity, the Aldarian Empire, now either fearful of or routinely antagonistic toward the humans, teetered on the edge of collapse. Their once global empire had been reduced to a scattered smattering of settlements in the far corners of the world, their population had been reduced to a nearly irrecoverable point, and the Human Treatise had all but been abandoned. As it became clear that no amount of fighting was going to solve the human problem, the Empire decided the only option left to ensure the future of the species was to withdraw and live in hiding, right beneath the humans' noses. And so, that was what they chose to do.
The dragons disappeared from human eye roughly a century before the humans' Era of Silence began. Today, many human and drakan scholars alike wonder if this may actually have been the triggering event to the beginning of the Era of Silence, as the disappearance of the dragons as a threat to the species meant there was less need to rely on magic and neo humans to defend them. Whatever the case may have been, after the Era of Silence officially began, humans gradually forgot about the existence of the dragons in their entirety, relegating stories of them and their clashes with them to being little more than fairy tales, with stories of superhuman heroes and powerful mages suffering much the same fate.
During their retreat, the Aldarian Empire abandoned many of its remaining great cities around the world in favor of smaller locations hidden in the most remote, difficult, treacherous, inhospitable places on the planet. While dragons could live comfortably in any extreme, humans could not, so most drakan settlements during the Era of Silence became small villages or cities cloaked by magic in places the average man could not reach. One notable exception to this, however, was the capital city of Aldaron. Whereas most drakan settlements were in areas far removed from or sparsely populated by humans, the Kingdom of Aldaron had stood for more than ten thousand years deep in the heart of Germany's Black Forest, and no dragon wanted to see it moved given the long, colorful history attached to what had become a symbol of power and unity to the entirety of the species.
So, while most settlements remained small and far removed from the humans, Aldaron was left to be surrounded on all sides by human settlements and protected by the dragons' magic alone. As a result, throughout the Era of Silence, the Black Forest became legendary amongst the humans for being a place from which the lost and adventurous never returned, where technology ceased to function as it should and planes could fall out of the sky, a land rife with cryptids and mythical beasts with stories going back thousands of years. This ultimately led to the architects of the Era of Silence to pass countless laws and legislation protecting the Black Forest from deforestation efforts or human settlement going all the way back to the early 1500s, not out of respect for the dragons, but fear, as a cornered dragon was a terrifying foe to an ordinary man, and to minimize loss in this new society the humans sought to create free from supernatural control. These laws would persist all the way until the late 20th century, with D'aagor's declaration of war in 1984.

The Transformation (1500 AD)

Sometime prior to the establishment of the Era of Silence, roughly concurrent with the Empire's withdrawal from most of the world, the dragons underwent a period of forced evolution they know today as simply 'The Transformation'. The Transformation was a combined magical and scientific alteration to the dragons very nature on a genetic and spiritual level, allowing all who took part and all of their descendants to freely live two lives as either dragon or human. Prior to The Transformation, the only way for a dragon to take on a human form was through magic, but now, the species of shapeshifters could alter their form to a greater extent than ever before, appearing as perfectly human as they wished to appear without the need for any magical experience. It became an in-born trait of the species, with each affected dragon and their lineage having essentially two separate bodies inside of them.
While roughly half of all remaining dragons chose to live in the Empire's safely established colonies in remote regions around the world, a good portion of the rest chose instead to live in hiding amongst the humans, with some even going on to marry and interbreed with them. Before The Transformation, dragon-human hybrids known as halflings were exceedingly rare, conscious creations of mages and alchemists - but now, any dragon who had undergone The Transformation could interbreed with humans as though they were human themselves. And, in many ways, they were. This led to an explosion of halflings among dragons who chose to live amongst the humans, which only increased exponentially following the end of the Era of Silence and Daagor's War in 1987. Unfortunately, the citizenship of halflings within the Aldarian Empire has proven to be a controversial topic amongst the dragons, just as their inclusion among the ranks of the neo humans has been. To dragons, all halflings are more human than dragon, and therefore not a part of the Empire of their parentage, whereas to humans, halflings are more dragon than they are human, leaving them with little place to exist comfortably in either world.

The 1768 Coup (1768 AD)

Following the death of King Severus Albion, his son, Sirus, was elected to the throne, much to the dismay of the empire's champion and his contender for the crown, D'aagor Ilias T'silth. D'aagor was many things to many dragons, but most of all, he was a symbol of power and the pinnacle of strength. He was the greatest warrior their race had ever produced, surpassed only by the Tyrant King Balthalazar, and just as the fictitious figure Aleron prided humans above all other life forms, D'aagor prided the dragons. He was strong, proud, and he had survived the end of The Decimation in his youth. He was also one of the dragons too proud of what he was to undergo The Transformation following The Great Hiding.
It was no secret the elders preferred D'aagor to Sirus - Sirus was younger, more inexperienced, and dangerously, too trusting of the humans. He had been little more than a hatchling during the end of The Decimation, and hadn't lived through the turmoil his species had come to know. He was naive and hopeful, and believed a lasting peace could one day be brokered between man and dragon. But to D'aagor and the elders, this idea was as outrageous as it was dangerous. The long, bloody history between man and dragon was well established, and the brutality of man was no longer in question. The concept of peace seemed completely impossible. So, D'aagor took it upon himself to rally his supporters within the military and Royal Guard, and to stage a coup to depose the newly crowned King Sirus before he led to the complete extinction of the dragons.
Whether or not this coup was funded and supported by some or all elders is a highly contentious point of interest even to this day. Though no conclusive proof could ever be found linking the elders to D'aagor's coup, it was remarkably well funded and prepared for the civil war it instigated. D'aagor and his husband Namur led the charge, aiming to take out Sirus alone and then challenge his Queen's claim to the throne politically, but the bid was ultimately unsuccessful. Without the support of D'aagor's pupil, Li'alie Ninoke, there remained a dragon strong enough to challenge the empire's champion and defend the King. D'aagor's coup was ultimately short lived and unsuccessful, and while Queen Nilah rallied for execution as D'aagor was now a traitor to the empire and the monarchy, King Sirus steadfastly refused and sentenced him and his husband to exile, instead. His Queen warned this was a decision that may one day come back to haunt him, but Sirus, ever the optimist, wanted to see the best in D'aagor and give him a second chance to live his life away from the empire.

The Great War (1984-1987 AD)

D'aagor spent the next couple centuries living peacefully with his husband under constant watch by soldiers of the empire. He knew he could've taken them down, and they knew they stood no chance should he try to break free, but D'aagor's pride prevented him from making such a move. At the end of the day, the King had spared his life and given him the opportunity to live in peace with his love as opposed to executing one or even both of them, so for that, D'aagor owed the young monarch his word. Whether he agreed with him or not, he now had a debt to Sirus, and the proud warrior that he was would not let it go unpaid. In this period of peace, D'aagor had a daughter, Amara, and he was, exiled or not, content with his life.
Then, it happened. All of D'aagor's worst fears came to life. In the dark of the night, an unknown neo human killed his guards and then his husband. He had no doubt the intruder would've killed his daughter as well had he not woken up to his husband's dying scream, and at the sight of the human D'aagor went berserk. Before he could engage the slayer in battle, however, he heard the intruder chuckle, then disappear into thin air with a simple wave of his hand, taunting him. If D'aagor didn't hate humanity before, he truly loathed them now, as they had taken any hope for a peaceful life away with the life of his love. D'aagor broke down in despair, broken in the arms of his grieving daughter. On that night, he swore he would have his revenge.
Following his coup, many of D'aagor's co-conspirators were captured and imprisoned, but not all of them. Breaking out only the most important of those he had lost to the empire, D'aagor regrouped with his comrades and prepared them for war. He had decided he was going to do what his predecessors couldn't and exterminate the human threat once and for all, and he knew exactly how he was going to do it. Because of the Era of Silence, the humans had become weak. Slayers were rarer than ever before, and mankind as a whole seemed to have forgotten of the existence of dragons and magic, leaving them vulnerable. Knowing none of their technological creations could harm them save for a nuclear warhead, D'aagor rallied his troops for what was going to be the greatest moment in the history of the dragons.
Around this time, King Sirus had come to a conclusion. The Era of Silence had created an opening. Mankind had forgotten about the dragons, and with them, their prejudices against them. If they chose to reveal themselves now, on their own terms, peacefully, there may be an opportunity to bridge a gap between the two species and broker a lasting peace. It was gamble - a big one - and he knew it, but he'd rallied just enough support within his court to see it through. As the decision was made, somebody in the know passed the information on to D'aagor, along with a date. With this information now in mind, he had a date by which he would instigate his genocide of the human race. Until that day came, all he would do would be eat, breathe, and train.
When the day came, D'aagor beat Sirus to the punch and announced the existence of the dragons by decimating Washington DC. He appeared suddenly and without warning, a lone dragon who singlehandedly overturned the human nation's capital in the span of a couple hours. Simultaneously, attacks were staged against other nations' capitals around the world by his daughter and compatriots, leaving all the world's great superpowers crippled and instigating the war he had long dreamed of carrying out.
With his hopes for peace dashed, King Sirus was forced to take a different approach, and surrender himself and his convoy to the humans in hopes of brokering a deal. He meant them no harm, and had intended to open up negotiations for a peaceful coexistence, but D'aagor had had other plans. On explaining this to them, he offered himself and his men, members of his Royal Guard, to fight as soldiers against D'aagor on behalf of the humans and his hopes for peace. While the humans were understandably concerned, a neo human scientist by the name of Stan Lewis spoke up on behalf of the King, convincing his fellow man to give them a chance, as only a dragon may be capable of taking down a dragon.
What remained of the world's governments agreed, but on one condition - they would be creating a task force of human and neo human soldiers to do the bulk of the fighting, with Sirus and his dragons only ever called in as a last resort. Simultaneously, this task force would be tasked with watching Sirus and his men, and charged with taking him down should he turn out to also be an enemy. Dr. Lewis agreed, and he was made co-head of this task force alongside a human soldier of the governments' choice. With D'aagor's declaration, the Era of Silence had come to an end, and Dr. Lewis was sent out to recruit the neo humans the world governments felt were best suited to the task of taking down a dragon.
The war would rage on for over three years, before ending in the heart of the antarctic, mere feet from D'aagor's true goal: Aheperael's shell. By fusing the false god's shell with the body of a hybrid created specifically for this purpose, D'aagor sought to control the Deity of Decay's power to wipe out the human race in one fell swoop. All the battles leading up to this were simply to stall for time until D'aagor could defeat Esaniel, slip past his temple's defenses, and break the seal around Aheperael. The final battle saw all members of Dr. Lewis' task force and King Sirus and all his men versus what remained of D'aagor's army, and the long, bloody battle to decide the fate of man was fought. Ultimately, D'aagor would be killed by a human by the name of Peter Marx, Aheperael's shell would be subdued and re-sealed, and the warrior god Esaniel would aide the First Heroes, as they came to be known, in taking down D'aagor's forces. That day, the three year war was brought to a conclusive end.

Modern Day (1987 AD - Present)

Following the end of the war, the Empire entered into a new era of peace and prosperity, and Sirus' dream of peace between man and dragon had at last been realized. With Aldaron entering the humans' newly revamped United Nations, and the war hero Li'alie Ninoke selected to act as their representative, the world changed fundamentally for man and dragon alike. For the first time in centuries, dragons and halflings could live openly in human civilization, and the secrecy and subjugation of the Era of Silence had finally come to an end for both species. Once again, the dragons were helping influence human civilization for the better, but this time not as gods, but as allies and siblings of the Earth.
Since the end of The Great War, there have been no major battles to be fought within or without the Empire, and with the establishment of the hero industry, the future of the world at large seemed bright. Though there were whispers of revolutionaries bubbling beneath the surface, with man and dragon together as allies, there wasn't a threat the inhabitants of Earth wouldn't be able to face. Or, so they hoped.

Type

Geopolitical, Empire