Eon: Dragoneye Reborn

FROM THE PRIMER SCROLLS OF JION TZU

No one knows how the first Dragoneyes made their dangerous bargain with the twelve energy dragons of good fortune. The few scrolls and poems that have survived the centuries start the story well after the deal was struck between man and spirit beast to protect our land. It is rumoured, however, that a black book still exists that tells of the violent beginning, and predicts a catastrophic end of the ancient alliance.

The dragons are elemental beings, able to manipulate Hua — the natural energy that exists in all things. Each dragon is aligned with one of the heavenly animals in the twelve-year cycle of power that has run in the same sequence since the beginning of time: Rat, Ox, Tiger, Rabbit, Dragon, Snake, Horse, Goat, Monkey, Rooster, Dog and Pig. Each dragon is also the guardian of one of the twelve celestial directions, and a keeper of one of the Greater Virtues.

Every New Year's Day the cycle turns, the next animal year begins, and its dragon becomes ascendant, his power doubling for that twelve months. On that turn of the cycle, the ascending dragon also unites with a new apprentice to be trained in the dragon magic. As this boy steps up to his new life, the old apprentice is finally promoted to Dragoneye and into his full power.

He replaces his master, the old Dragoneye, who retires exhausted and fatally debilitated by his twenty-four-year union with the dragon. It is a brutal bargain that gives a Dragoneye enormous power — enough to move monsoons, redirect rivers and stop earthshakes. In return for such control over nature, the Dragoneye slowly gives up his Hua to his dragon.

Only those boys who can see an energy dragon can hope to be a Dragoneye candidate. It is a rare gift to be able to see the dragon of your birth year, and even rarer to see any of the other energy dragons. Every New Year, twelve boys, born twelve years before, face the ascending dragon and pray that their gift is enough for the beast. One of them is chosen, and in that moment of union — and only for that moment — all men can see the dragon in all his glory Women have no place in the world of the dragon magic. It is said they bring corruption to the art, and do not have the physical strength or depth of character needed to commune with an energy dragon. It is also thought that the female eye, too practised in gazing at itself, cannot see the truth of the energy world.