A History of Drakengrad

Beyond the seat of Nagash’s power lies the oft-forgotten region of Drakengrad. Once a paradise maintained for the worshippers of great and terrible draconic godbeasts, The Age of Chaos saw a scouring of the beasts and their people. What few remained rebuilt themselves amongst the giant skeletons of the creatures they once hailed as gods. Hiding their culture and their faces, the surviving peoples of Drakengrad maintained their faith in the godbeasts, even as the rise of Chaos and Nagash’s influence over the Realm of Death altered their beliefs towards the apocalyptic.

With the breaking of Sigmar’s Tempest, came efforts to resettle Drakengrad. As seen by Sigmarite surveyors, the land had recovered enough to establish a Free City in its northwestern reaches, set away from the forests of towering bone which defined most of the region. This city became known as Drakheim. With the return of mortals to the region en force came the rediscovery of long-lost lineages and the culture of the dead of Drakengrad.

Tasked with protecting the newly-established Free City were the Stormcast of The Children of The End Times Vanguard-Auxiliary Chamber, made up of the children of heroes of Drakengrad’s cataclysms. Beyond simply fighting off incursions of roving Chaos warbands and dread hordes of undead, the Chamber made great efforts to record the genealogy of their own members as well as the citizens they defended, and facilitating relationships between the city’s dead and its living inhabitants. These efforts proved invaluable during the aftershocks of the Necroquake, where the departed of Drakheim rose to fight their maddened counterparts.

To those hidden peoples of Drakengrad, the Necroquake created a newfound sense of urgency to restore their slain godbeasts. Beyond simply plaguing their lands with violent spirits, the Hidden People noticing their lands being affected by a sort of miasma as the protections they believed in place on the bones of their godbeasts were ablated by the necrotic wave of the Necroquake’s aftershocks. In this dire period, a new religious order rose to power amongst the Hidden People, stating they must seek the resurrection of their fallen gods in order to cleanse the region of its maladies. They fixated primarily on The Fell Dragon, believed to be the only of their gods powerful enough to destroy all of the Hidden People’s enemies. This was the birth of The Cult of The Fell Dragon.

Drakheim would not be exempt from The Fell Dragon’s judgement upon its resurrection, but the Hidden People knew that within the Free City might lie the knowledge to reveal a path towards restoring their slain gods. Throughout the Soul Wars, citizens of the Free City, as well as its defenders, became acquainted with The Cult of The Fell Dragon, as libraries, temples, and crypts were continuously burglarized by cult members seeking pathways to their gods’ resurrection. While seen largely as a pest at the time, those in Drakheim would soon learn the true threat they posed…

Though Alarielle’s Rite of Life did much to halt the ascendency of Death, the course of The Cult of The Fell Dragon was set. While the creeping miasma was cured, one scar continued to mark the land—Drakheim. Animosity towards the Free City had fomented over the course of the Soul Wars until concerns about the land itself had faded from the Hidden People’s minds. Drakheim was a scourge, man’s attempts to claim ascendency over the dragons whom should rightly rule, and the Hidden People would not be satisfied until the city was destroyed, wiped away by The Fell Dragon’s ruinous breath.

The Children of The End Times did not lie idle during this period, however. They’d begun to learn of their of their enemy, though understanding between the two could never truly be established. As the ferocity of The Cult’s antipathy increased, so too did the defensive efforts of the Stormcast. Within the legends told by the dead of Drakheim, a blessed, blinding blade of light lie within the Realms, capable of sealing, or perhaps even slaying, the great godbeast that stood poised to ruin the city. The Children of The End Times immediately began their search for the relic, treading even into The Realm of Beasts to investigate a rumor of such a weapon upon The Hungering Steppe.

But the Stormcast were pursued here. While campaigning in defense of the local aelvish diaspora, Fell Dragon Cultists acquired great masses of Ghurish realmstone and absconded back to Drakengrad, with the full intention of using this resource to manifest an avatar of The Fell Dragon.

Now balanced on the precipice of fate, armies from beyond are drawn into Drakengrad, the choice of whether to spare or raze the land, lying in their hands…