In the youth of the world, when the princes of Caledor rode dragons to war and the mountains echoed with the beating of vast wings, their smiths forged the Dragon Crown of Caledor. Into its gold they bound something of the dragon's own imperious nature, so that the crowned head wears not merely an ornament but a mantle of command that neither man nor beast easily refuses.
The crown's power is the power of will made manifest. Its bearer speaks and is obeyed; wavering allies steady, quarrelling captains fall silent, and even the proud and slumbering drakes of Caledor stir at the summons of the one who wears it. The High Elf Realms hold it among the regalia of their oldest houses, a relic of the days when their dominion over the great wyrms was absolute rather than a fading memory.
Yet the dragons sleep deeper with every passing age, and the crown's summons reaches ever further into their dreams for ever fainter answer. Its bearers feel this waning keenly, for to wear the Dragon Crown is to command with the authority of a golden age that is slipping, year by year, beyond recall — a voice grown loud precisely because the world has begun to stop listening.
The reliquary continues
