Hear the sage as his song descends like heaven's rain or tears,

and washes the years, the dust of the

many stories

from the High Tale of the Dragonlance.

For in ages deep, past memory and word,

in the first blush of the world

when the three moons rose from the

lap of the forest,

dragons, terrible and great,

made war on this world of Krynn.

Yet out of the darkness of dragons,

out of our cries for light

in the blank face of the black moon soaring,

a banked light flared in Solamnia,

a knight of truth and of power,

who called down the gods themselves

and forged the mighty Dragonlance,

piercing the soul

of dragonkind, driving the shade of

their wings

from the brightening shores of Krynn.

Thus Huma, Knight of Solamnia,

Lightbringer, First Lancer,

followed his light to the foot of the

Khalkist Mountains,

to the stone feet of the gods,

to the crouched silence of their temple.

He called down the Lancemakers, he took on

their unspeakable power to crush the

unspeakable evil,

to thrust the coiling darkness

back down the tunnel of the

dragon's throat.

Paladine, the Great God of Good,

shone at the side of Huma,

strengthening the lance of his strong right arm,

and Huma, ablaze in a thousand moons,

banished the Queen of Darkness,

banished the swarm of her shrieking hosts

back to the senseless kingdom of

death, where their curses

swooped upon nothing and nothing

deep below the brightening land.

Thus ended in thunder the Age of Dreams

and began the Age of Might,

When Istar, kingdom of light and

truth, arose in the east,

where minarets of white and gold

spired to the sun and to the sun's glory,

announcing the passing of evil,

and Istar, who mothered and cradled

the long summers of good,

shone like a meteor

in the white skies of the just.

Yet in the fullness of sunlight

the Kingpriest of Istar saw shadows:

At night he saw the trees as things

with daggers, the streams

blackened and thickened under the

silent moon.

He searched books for the paths of Huma,

for scrolls, signs, and spells

so that he, too, might summon the

gods, might find

their aid in his holy aims,

might purge the world of sin.

Then came the time of dark and death

as the gods turned from the world.

A mountain of fire crashed like a

comet through Istar,

the city split like a skull in the flames,

mountains burst from once-fertile valleys,

seas poured into the graves of mountains,

the deserts sighed on abandoned

floors of the seas,

the highways of Krynn erupted

and became the paths of the dead.

Thus began the Age of Despair.

The roads were tangled.

The winds and the sandstorms dwelt

in the husks of cities,

The plains and mountains became our home.

As the old gods lost their power,

we called to the blank sky

into the cold, dividing gray to the ears

of new gods.

The sky is calm, silent, unmoving.

We have yet to hear their answer.