Where the Windswept Plateau meets the Ashfall Waste, there is a cliff.
At the top of this cliff is a wide plain kept clean and bare by the vicious winds of the Twisting Crescendo. At its base there is a hot spring, a carefully cultivated and tended bamboo forest, and an immense obsidian standing stone. In the middle is a cave.
The walls of this cave are scorched utterly black, faint designs and swirls either etched into the rock or shaded in the soot. Phosphorescent mushrooms from the Twisted Wood grow in carefully carved niches in the walls, and a thick carpet of moss covers the floor.
Welcome to the home of the Wild Hunt.
Long ago, there was a Guardian by the name of Mistlinnor. She was old, even then, and had wandered for many years seeking her charge. She found it against a cliff, on the border of Wind and Fire. It was half-buried in the rock, the black sheen of obsidian flicking with remembered fire and ancient carvings from some lost world or people. The Standing Stone.
The stone was in territory belonging to a Mirror, a sly young fellow who was intrigued by the silver Guardian who had begun hunting on his territory. Briefly, they were mates. He and their hatchlings hunted and gathered while she remained near the Stone, chipping away at the cliff slowly in an attempt to excavate the monolith. One day, they never returned. Mistlinnor lived on the young beginnings of a bamboo forest for many months, alone, until she was found by a group of wanderers.
Shard was a wily young Tundra, intelligent and sharp. She had one of the keenest noses, even among Tundras, and was a surprisingly apt hunter. She was accompanied by Athair and Absolute, her self-appointed guards and advisers. There were many others with them, including a young Snapper named Tirith.
Tirith was kind, slow, and steady, filled with wanderlust and the greed for stories common to his species. He understood her need to stay close to home, although he did not share it. He had been the catalyst for the Clan, Shard having joined him first and readily taken the role of leading the band that began to form as they collected wanderers and outcasts from every possible Flight.
Tirith became Mistlinnor’s mate then, with many children who gladly increased the ranks of their growing Clan. It was Tirith who began the tradition of names for each family line, his and Mistlinnor’s children becoming the Standing Stones line. Each of the dragons who first had traveled with Shard created their own family name, and while some merged over time all were chronicled.
The clan helped Mistlinnor to uncover the Standing Stone for which her line was named, unearthing a clear spring and the entrance to a cave in the process. They continued to dig and excavate the land, widening the tunnels of the cave and creating for themselves a home. They cultivated the bamboo, growing it from a small patch to an immense forest which could easily sustain even the largest of clans, and as Shard took the reigns as Matriarch, the Clan of the Wild Hunt was born.
A few years passed without incident, the clan growing fat and happy, drawing members from other clans and other Flights and diversifying the cave with skills and art and customs that could likely only have meshed so well in a Wind clan. Then, as with all things, the ease ended.
The Talonok attacked them full-force, their oasis a bountiful lure. Many of the clan were lost that horrible day, and only thanks to perseverance and luck were they able to drive the flocks back. Many were wounded gravely, and to this day still bear scars both physical and mental. Since, the Wild Hunt have created traditions intended to strengthen their ranks. All those who join them, wanderers and hatchlings alike, must pass a test--sleep outside in the bamboo forest, unprotected, for a fortnight. Should they survive the creeping hunts of the beasts that dwell therein, they are welcomed gladly into the fold. If they do not, their bones are found and given to the sea.
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