The Red Queen

At the outbreak of the Avatar War, Princess Athelia, daughter of the Dragon Emperor, Nordrage, assumed the Avatar of Tiamat, Dragon Goddess of Lust, Greed and Subversion.  As one of the nine ArchDevils of Hell, Tiamat also held a place amongst the Avandorian Pantheon.  As one of the Creator Gods of one of the ancient, forgotten races, She stood as Arch Enemy of the dead God Marduk.  But Athelia failed.  Even though she assumed God-like power, all she really managed to do was piss off Gryphon Amin-Ra, Pharaoh of the Symballan Empire and Avatar of Ra, and his wife, Nahlima Fallahin, Queen of the Symballan Empire and Avatar of the Phoenix.  Their battle brought destruction to the Iron Hills and gave the other Avatars of the Iniad and Olympus the excuse they’d been waiting for to fight to the death.

But fate would not have it so.  Their battle was stopped when the demi-God daughter of Ares, Kuritha Rose, High Demonhunter of Athena, battled the Avatar of her father, Prince Pentellikon of Thraxus, and sent Ares tumbling back into His own prison in Tarterus.  The Avatars called a truce just in time to prevent a moon sized asteroid sent hurtling at Arrallon by The Shadows from completely destroying the planet.  The Avatar War was over, and the Shadow War had begun.

But the vast majority of Arrallon was completely clueless about the Shadow War.  The devastated Iron Hills would soon become the Symballan Sea.  The time bubble created by the Ashiri to contain the devastation allowed the years of the Shadow War to pass unnoticed by anyone outside the huge crater.  When it was done, the crater was flooded and the Sea was formed.  The time bubble faded, but the damage had been done.  Time vortexes, alternate realities, and mysterious appearances and disappearances would plague the Symballan Sea for centuries to come.  It was just those quantum fractures that allowed alternate realities to eventually leak through and creatures from those worlds to enter Arrallon prime.

In the aftermath of The Three Wars, Emperor Nordrage was condemned to Hell, dragged alive into the fiery pit to serve as one of the twelve concubines of Tiamat.  Tiamat, however, had been damaged severely, reduced in the Hellish hierarchy to little more than a guard dog for the Gates of Baator.  What had been Princess Athelia was utterly destroyed by the Phoenix.  A new Dragon Emperor was chosen, but the Council of Dragon Kings had already been fractured.  The throne at ChiaKhan was abandoned and the Council dissolved.  Several Dragon Clans were dishonored and even outlawed for their connections with The Shadows’ plot to destroy Arrallon.  The once infamous Duke Gorrax, last noble of rank amongst the Red Dragon Clan, claimed his right as the new King, but his claim was not without challenge.

The Red Clan had been much reduced from its former glory.  The days of the Symballan Revolution, when the Red Dragon Clan fought beside the Pharaoh Shalud’s armies and General Satta-Amon’s Red Dragon Archers, the heydays of the Drow Red Dragon Riders of Beotharn, and the once alliance of the Githyanki and the Red Dragon Clan, were all long past.  The glories of their past began to fade, and with them, the clan itself.  There was little Gorrax could do to reclaim that lofty state.

Into this state of despair and ennui, a new Red Dragon Queen emerged.  Like many nobles and most females of the Dragon races, her shapeshifting abilities were amazing.  None knew how old she was, but no sign of age appeared in her humanoid forms.  There was clearly a modicum of Erotic magic within her spellcasting, and she always surrounded herself with the most beautiful women and herms to tantalize the eye.  It wasn’t long before many of the failing Red Dragon Clan began to flock to her banner and accept her claim of sovereignty.  The question then arose, how long before Queen Kishara Amunat and King Gorrax would meet?  Would they agree to share power, or battle to the death?  Or would some other outcome be the future of the beleaguered clan?