Asshai by the shadow was a place of evil, darkness radiated throughout the ancient city creating a great syphon. Life, light, even magic itself was pulled in and died. There was a murderous lust here, the echo of a memory of a hunger that silk like tendrils flowed from the porous gaps between worlds. Reaching and clawing as a reflexive shade of a thing that was, a thing that devoured. And devoured it had, it descended from the stars in many shapes, most of which were mere interpretations the mortal mind conjured to prevent itself from ceasing to be. The empire of the Dawn, the ancient primordial Dragon Riders who were not quite mortal man, not quite God but something in between and they died and died and died, until only three remnants of their being were left. She killed it then, taking the form of a spirit of pure fire and inhabiting the blade of her lover she struck it down and its bones came crashing down onto Asshai and the neighboring cities. Making a ruin of the capitol of the center of all things good. The old ones from their trees and her brothers and sisters, seven in all fought their own battles and won, even the mad one who drowned beneath the waves laid low the unfathomable evil of this realm. Driving back their elemental proxies and teaching the remnants of the Dawn men to erect fortresses and walls and to channel magic from volcanoes through fire and blood.
And in their victory, content that they had hewn a diamond out of coal through valiant pressure and righteous might they had abandoned their incarnated forms, shed their mortal bodies and ventured back to their celestial strongholds, with only the elder paying a scant attention. It was that attention that sounded the alarm, for when they again turned their eyes towards the great song, the melody had been corrupted and tainted. What fools even the Gods could be! Woe, unto their own vanity for failing to consider that though the artificers of eldritch destruction were vanquished that their noxious cadavers would not belch force a miasma that robbed life of light. The song was meant for mortal men to fashion for themselves realms of beauty and wonder, where iron men do deeds of steel and luminous maidens shaped the world through their fairer courage. They set a theme with elemental notes, primal and life giving as it was sublime and benevolent. It had been twisted, magic was dying, and the great boons left to the last descendants of the men of the dawn were squandered.
The Gods looked upon the fruits of their labors and saw that it was not as they expected.
And the benevolent Gods grew wroth.
They resolved to harmonize the song, they resolved to restore the powers sublime that men called magic, they resolved to give life a chance, they resolved to keep a closer eye on their stolen realm.
A dragon lord lost driven from his home, he and five thousand ships, his people, retinue, his treasures, his wealth, his followers. And Dragons…They would to the continent where the final battle for the Dawn was decided to occur. They would go and tame the western coast of the frozen North, but not to rule as kings but serve as great Lords, enriching and empowering the Kings of Winter.
Fire would come to the West, fire and blood…Red and Black.
For ice alone could not turn back the night.
Nor could fire alone safeguard the light.
It was a song of Ice and Fire…
In Asshai where the shadows lie
In Asshai where the light came to die.
The Gods decided.
They would help man set it right.