Eleint - The Fading. First day of the third tenday. Autumn Equinox. 1500 DR - Year of the Sea's Secrets Revealed.
Flamefiend frightens Vale folk.
FIREFALL VALE - Vale folk have fled to Firefall Keep after a dragon was sighted among the clouds over Mount Glendaborr. Lord and Lady Summerstar have sent riders to all corners of the upper and lower Vale to encourage folk to retreat to the castle for the remainder of the tenday.
The Summerstar house mage and Wizard of War Lethreene Hawkspike was quick to remind Vale-folk of the presence of the red dragon Thraxata, “The Flamefiend,” who resides a short flight (for dragons) away inside the smooth, blackened form of The Bloodhorn, a mountain nigh the Thunder Gap. While Thraxata is known to be a descendant of one of the dragons slain by Glothgam Summerstar1, folk have yet to identify the dragon sighted over the Vale. At Lord Summerstar’s request, Lethreene sent a magical warning to her counterparts in the Houses of Yellander and Indesm (both families have holdings nearest to the Vale) and to the senior Wizard of War resident in the nearby town of Immerford.
Those Who Harp count Lady Summerstar a close friend, and have quietly informed her it was indeed Thraxata that flew so close to the Vale (the Lady has chosen to keep this information to herself, for now). The Harpers advised Lady Summerstar that the dragon alighted at the base of Mount Glendaborr and spent the better part of a day digging out a rockfall. Thraxata left with something clutched to her breast, though the Harper scouts could not see what it was. They did see the dragon cast a series of intricate spells before her departure, and warned Lady Summerstar that more than one spell trap awaits anyone who tries to search the remains of the rockfall.2
The exact day when Glothgam Summerstar, founder of his proud House, wielded the Sword of Summer Winds to drive off a flight of dragons that challenged him for control of the Vale has been lost to time, though their living descendants never fail to ride the clouds over the Vale each year as a reminder of the doom promised to all who might dare to expand the Vale’s borders beyond its traditional boundaries.
The spell traps are linked. Setting off one triggers the rest, and culminates in the shearing off of another portion of the cliff that borders the southeastern face of Mount Glendaborr, thereby burying anyone standing among the remnants of the first rockfall. Thraxata could just as easily have shorn away more rock and buried whatever it was she wants hidden, but her nature is always to leave a trap or danger lurking where another dragon might choose to hide its tracks.