Prologue

From the Archives of Nightlund, Volume XIX
Penned by the Red Robe Pelander

My dreams grow more vivid every night. I wake cold and damp with sweat while darkness still rules the sky and the moons ride high. The moons sing to me while I sleep, for they have seen much in their new time looking down upon Krynn. They know this world better than any man, elf or dragon could. They see all.

There has been talk, particularly in the glory days at the ends of the Third and Fourth Ages, of lands beyond this continent of Ansalon—lands that know not of Solamnic Knights, nor Highlords, nor the War of Souls. Lands of fire and death, of bloodthirsty barbarians and shattered ruins. Lands where man, elf, dwarf, and minotaur have forged empires that no one on Ansalon has seen with his own eyes.

Scholars have long debated the existence of such places, most vigorously when my mentor, Bezok of Austas, proclaimed not only that such lands existed but that, with good enough ships and brave enough men, an expedition could actually reach them. I regret that the Second Cataclysm and the subsequent (and thankfully temporary) loss of magic in the world stopped the fulfillment of his ambition—just as the First Cataclysm aborted the ambitions of those explorers who hoped to set forth for lands far from poor, doomed Istar. Since Bezok's unfortunate disappearance some seventeen winters ago, talk of these far lands has been silenced.

Let the silence now end. For I now share Bezok's dream. I have seen the far lands, borne to me upon the song of the moons. I have seen the shores on Krynn's far side, where all is different and lore and language are strange. I have walked among its people, invisible, and seen their troubles and trials. And this is no mere phantasm as many—within my Order and without—will be wont to claim. For the land is much changed since Bezok first wrote of it, and changes still.

I speak, and dream, of Taladas.

The tale that follows is of this land, but before we begin, you should know something of the place and its people. For while it is much the same as Ansalon, it is also as different as the red moon from the silver. Or the black.

Consider Krynn—an orb of blue, a sapphire globe, set upon black velvet. See Ansalon, resting upon its southern half. Now take it in your hand and turn, turn, until the lands you know face away. See the markings of green and brown—and burning red—in the north? This is Taladas. Here, just as Istar once ruled over Ansalon, a great empire once held the continent in its grip. Its name was Aurim, a realm of great sorcery ruled by emperor-mages, not all of them kind. But like Istar, Aurim is no more. Its glory ended on the same day—or rather, night, as it was on the world's far side when the First Cataclysm struck. This the folk of Taladas call the Great Destruction, and it did even worse to their lands than the burning mountain did to ours. They have names for many things that seem strange. The moons are Solis, Lunis, Nuvis; the Age of Mortals is known as the Godless Night; and the Summer of Chaos is called the Dread Winter. Even the gods themselves go by different names, their aspects hidden by forms alien to us.

In the Great Destruction, a great hail of fire fell upon Aurim, smashing the empire and splitting the earth itself wide open. Rather than sinking beneath the sea, the Old Empire was swallowed by molten rock from below in a great cauldron of flame more than a hundred leagues across. The heat of this fire burned the lands around it to ash and shining glass, and spewed poisonous steam that killed men and dragons alike by the thousands.

Yet some endured. On the far-flung Rainward Isles, refugees of the Destruction built new kingdoms away from the ruins of Aurim. In the southern jungles of Neron and the northern snow-fields of Panak, tribes of savages dwell side by side with unspeakable creatures, the names of which I do not know: tentacled horrors and dead but still moving monsters the likes of which I know only from nightmare. Tinker-gnomes—the scourge that no part of Krynn seems able to escape—ply the Burning Sea in ships of steel and dwell on its shores beneath great columns of black stone.

The tale I must tell may visit these places before it is done, but it does not begin there. It starts in the great realms of Hosk, home to the nations on Taladas' more peaceable western shores. Here, in the south of Hosk, is Thenol: a dark kingdom ruled by priests of fell gods. Here they raise the dead to serve them and to fight their wars. Such a war is ending, even now, in defeat for the Thenolites. Their great temple burns, their mad bishop lies slain, and the conquering armies are marching back north, following grim tidings home.

These armies are of men and minotaurs, fighting side by side for the glory of the Imperial League. The only true empire Taladas has known since the death of Aurim, the Imperial League has covered all the inhabitable parts of Southern Hosk, save for battered, bleeding Thenol and the forbidden woods of Armach, where the elves dwell. Ruled by minotaurs, the League has even spread its influence into the savage lands to the north, across the dangerous Tiderun Strait. But something terrible has now stricken this empire's heart, and the coming months may bring civil war.

Look now across the Tiderun, to the plains known as the Tamire—seas of grassland and steppe, where tribes of men and elves ride wild for league upon league, and where barbarians follow herds of goat and antelope with the changing of the seasons. Here live many peoples, but none so strong as the Uigan, a nation of many horse-riding clans under a great prince, a Boyla, who leads them in war against their rival tribes. The man who rules them now is called Krogan, and he is old and wise, but his reign will soon fail. Winds are blowing upon the grasslands and they, too, speak of war.

I can wait no longer. Already, my dreams begin to fade. I must set them down on this paper, lest they vanish from my mind forever. And that would be a terrible thing—for Taladas has few histories of its own and much that has happened has been lost to the ages already.

This tale begins in the League, at night, in a quiet village known as Blood Eye. A ship now stands in her harbor… .