#nerdconstories2016

When they returned to the land, they arrived as strangers, treading across legendary ground where long-dead ancestors had been burnt on pyres and become the land itself. None of them were old enough to remember the time when their people had fled or how long ago that was. But they remembered the stories.

They settled in village of low walls and peat roofs, almost like hand-made hills, on the western coast, and set out to rediscover the land.

They found deep woods hugging the feet of highlands, rising toward impassable mountains. A deep, cold lake teemed with life in those highlands. Pioneers strove to settle those lands, to turn the highland’s peat and lake into whisky, and to live in peace with the people they called “the Axe-hands.” Many of those early settlers vanished—some of them into smoke, for they say a dragon snaked through the air in those days.

For years, the Firekeepers explored the land and expanded their maps. They found treasures from forgotten peoples and earlier times. They raised up walls that would be considered a castle in its day, and called it the Castle of Radiance.

They forged a Treaty of Friendship with the Axe-hands ... and saw that treaty betrayed.

Their war against the Axe-hands became a war against the fearsome peoples who drove the Axe-hands against them. To the Firekeepers, these terrifying clans were known as Skullkeepers. They saw everyone as either one of their own or as a skull for the taking, for the building of their gruesome temples and ossuaries. Yet fiery visions and a broken sword discovered in the southern swamps suggested to the chieftains of the age that war was not the answer. They raised up a statue made of broken swords to inspire the people not to battle, but to build.

Thus the Firekeepers chose not to eradicate the Skullkeepers but, by proving their ferocity to those macabre foes, found a way to live in a world that would always be dangerous.

Peace, however, came at a cost. The strains of war exposed cracks in the identity of the Firekeepers. Their people became a fire split in twain, and civil war threatened to destroy who they were. For years, they battled amongst themselves.

Hope came in visions brought on by revelry, piety, and study. The Firekeepers expanded their knowledge of architecture and engineering to undertake an endeavor unlike any the land had yet seen. They would stand stones in spirals and curves to harness the firelight of the sun into a calendar, a compass, and a monument to their people—one that could weather millennia.

They called it the Rose. It took generations of work to design and build. It was conceived in war and born in peace, for the Firekeepers had chosen to melt their old crowns and make new laws for a new future.

Those who drew the plans for the Rose never saw it completed. Those who saw it complete would never know a world without it. The Rose was a hymn in firelight ... and a memorial in stone.

For it was then—almost 400 years after the Firekeepers had returned to the land—that the dragon awakened again. It devoured cattle by the dozens and unhinged its jaw to swallow wooden silos whole. Bold scouts among the Firekeepers discovered its lair and plucked a treasure from its hoard: a helmet of fine metal, crafted to resemble serpents and flames. More than one would-be dragon-slayer went forth to that lair. And while their kin raised new walls at the Castle of Radiance, dragon-slayers confronted the beast with swords, with wisdom, and with fires of their own. It was not enough.

The dragon followed its foes back to the coast. The dragon snaked through the sky, its belly aglow with fire. The dragon coiled in the air above castle and home, then bellowed and breathed out flames that blackened stones and melted glass. The fire-wyrm dined on ashes that night, as was its way.

Those who survived—who fled the land again by sea—say they followed a warrior known for the helmet she wore, stolen from the dragon’s lair, adorned by scales of gold. 

And though we do not know what shores they settled on next, or what name they took for themselves thereafter, we know the stones they raised and we remember the tales they told as Firekeepers.