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“Foreword”
The Draic Kin are known by many names throughout the Twin Worlds. In Alltongue they are often referred to as Drachkin. In some variations of Low Tongue, Drechyn. In the Southlands, the word D’ragych refers specifically to the winged, lizard shape traditionally associated with the Kin. In Irhad, the eternal Spirits of the Kin are called simply Drac, regardless of their current shape. In Stark, most cultures refer to the Kin as Dragon (Drage, Drache, Dragone), though this usually refers only to the winged lizard-like shape and not to the Spirit inhabiting this shape. In fact, while in Arcady, the Kin are respected and revered as eternal Spirits with great significance in the Balance and the All, in Stark the Kin are mostly creatures of mythology and fairytales. However, in some Stark legends and scriptures (notably the Christian Bible), the name “Dragon” is associated with the forces of evil and thus the religious connotations do seem to have carried over in a somewhat distorted form.
“Who, or What, are the Draic Kin?”
Why not ask Who is the Creator? Or, What is the All? Questions thus asked will remain, in perpetuity unanswered, for they are in truth unanswerable. To condense all knowledge of the Creator into one answer is futile as is any attempt to define the All without describing every single element that makes up the All.
So also with the Draic Kin. We cannot answer. Who is the Kin or What is the Kin. But we can provide some answers to the simpler questions, the questions that deal with what we see and hear and feel, and what we have been told by the Kin themselves. Answers that, together, may give us, if only the faintest hint of the whole truth, that at least some indication of Who or What the Draic Kin are.
“Born of the emptiness between the Stars”, reads the Eleventh Scripture of the Balance, the Scripture of Time, “shaped in unison with the All, part of the All, yet outside the All. Dreys’chyn (note the ancient High Tongue variation of Draic Kin).
Why so many variations and interpretations of the Draic Kin from culture to culture? The Kin have always been shrouded in mystery and from mystery rises legend and myth. The Kin seem content to be seen as nothing but tall tales and figments of a bard’s fertile imagination.
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