Of Silver and Scales

Of Silver and Scales is a love story as old as the dragons of Lyardia. The story has many variations, but there is one that is considered to be the first. The tale concerns one Lady Emilia of House Stormsong, the ruling family of the former kingdom of Lapses, and an element-born dragon named Frayrsir the Keen of the house of Sterling.

Summary

The Dragon and the Lady met whilst Lady Emilia was on a holiday in the northern Boundary Mountains, and they fell in love. Because of their differing races, they worked out a system where Fraysir would appear in a human avatar as a noble from the kingdom of Tempesum to visit her during the winter, and Lady Emilia would visit him in the mountains during the summer. Lady Emilia confided only in her brother, Lord Argentain, and her coach driver. Lord Argentain kept the secret safe, but her coach driver eventually became a victim of the Retaking of the Pantheon, targeted for his 'blasphemous' beliefs in a one true god. He told her secret to his inquisitor, and Lady Emilia was persecuted for her betrayal, and she fled to the Boundaries to be with her lover. Though a great hunt ensued, no knight nor bounty hunter could find the pair.
Years later, villagers would claim to see a lady in a dress of silver dragon's scales. Their folktales became the well-known story Of Silver and Scales. The descendants of the original House Stormsong and House Sterling are supposedly cursed to repeat the events of the story until the heirs of both silver and scales are reunited, and until they do so, the humans and dragons will never be truly at peace. The descendants of House Cryic have intermarried into the houses from kingdoms across Lyardia, while the descendants of House Sterling became House Silverback, though they were wiped out during the Conquest.

Variations

Several variations of this myth can be found across the World of Light and Darkness, most of which have a similar plot of a lady falling for a beast or otherwise unsuitable partner. In the southern Solar Desert, a story known as The Lady of the Lost Dunes tells of a woman who was lured away from her home by the avatar of a great Roc bird (which are now known to be extinct), while in the Evergreen Islands the well-known folktale Love of the Lost Isle recounts a tragic story of love lost between a wayward merman and a lady of the City of Flickering Lights.