Legends of Athas (DK)

:Chapter from Dragon Kings
﻿Athas has no gods, but despite this-or perhaps because of it-it has legends and myths aplenty. Every village, oasis, and city-state neighborhood spawns its collection of tales. Most carry valuable lessons for survival, such as ways to survive with little water or avoid predators. Some, propagated by the templars, give instruction in polite conduct. Many more, whispered in secret, tell how a hero gained revenge against a templar or sorcerer-king.
A few legends are even funny, for when not struggling to survive, every Athasian enjoys laughter. The humor, though, is almost always cruel, a jest at the expense of some detested rival race or class. Some typical legends follow.
==The Drunken Half-Giant==
In a village south of Raam lived a half-giant named Junnai, a youth of great size whose sole love was ale. His fellows knew him as a drunkard. But the pleasant half-giant pulled his weight in a fight, so no one bothered him about his constant inebriation no one but his brother, Trundai.
"Stop your drunken ways, brother," Trundai said.
But Junnai replied, "I drink two tankards of ale at the inn every evening, brother. And I shall do so until the inn runs dry!"
"Then at least cut down, dear brother, and drink but one this evening," Trundai suggested. Out of love for his brother, Junnai agreed. That evening he drank just one tankard of his beloved ale before heading home.
But when an elven runner found Junnai sitting, sobbing along the road back to his village, he stopped briefly to enquire. "Normally I can find my way by taking the middle road of the three blurry roads I see," Junnai said. "But this evening I drank but one tankard of ale, so I see only two fuzzy roads before me."
"I see," said the elf. "I can help you see the third road, friend. Here, drink this." The elf handed Junnai a bottle of brew. The half-giant quickly and gratefully downed the elf's gift, squinted along his path, and continued home.
The next morning, Trundai searched for the missing Junnai. He found him face down on the road, poisoned, his possessions stolen, the tracks of an elf all around.
==Drake and Maiden==
Outside Makla village stands a temple ruin, burned during one of many elven attacks. All that remains is the charred statue of the small sect's founder. Worshippers abandoned the temple, all save one, an old man of great wisdom. When he died, his daughter continued to visit the temple daily out of respect for her father.
One day, as she visited the temple, a great sandstorm blew up. Hating to see the statue damaged further, she wrapped her own shawl around it while waiting out the storm. A drake happened by, and (as this was back in the days when drakes were quite intelligent and polite) he stopped to observe.
When the storm let up, he inquired of the daughter, "Damsel, why do you give your own robes to the image, an image of simple stone, that cannot feel the sting of airborne sands?"
The daughter was startled but composed herself before replying. "If it were but stone, mighty drake, then how could it answer my prayers and those of my fat her?"
Never had the drake heard such wisdom, not even from the spirits that counseled it. The drake returned often to visit the daughter on her daily trips, and in time came to love her. So taken was he that he sought out a wizard to alter his form. Then he went to visit the daughter as a human.
The daughter shared his love, and the two founded a village of their own beyond the mountains. Their offspring, it is said, share the wisdom of their mother and the ferocious strength of their father. To this day, any child who displays both attributes is ﻿often termed a "drake's child."
==Arkhold's Devastation==
The dwarves of Balic say the ruins of Arkhold were once a farming village. Its troubles started in a Year of Priest's Vengeance, when Thorlin, a ruler of uncommon power and cruelty, claimed to hear "the high voices from the moons." He said the two moons, Rul and Guthay, commanded him to visit them and receive their wisdom.
Thorlin flew into the sky with a magical device of some kind-variously, a jozhal-drawn chariot, a net carried by air elementals, or (one of the most bizarre touches in Athasian mythology) a spoon. He returned a year later with "a wild and burning eye."
Thorlin urged the villagers to burn their crops in great bonfires, then sacrifice all livestock. This, he said, would bring prosperity to the village. So it was done.
After the devastating famine that followed, survivors left for all parts of Athas. Nothing remains of the village of Arkhold except ruins. So say the dwarves.
==Uncle Tontor: A Wyrm's Tale==
Elf merchants around the Lost Oasis believe (or claim to believe) that no one has ever seen young or small silk wyrms. No one, they say, has ever seen them breed or reproduce, despite repeated (usually fatal) attempts. The mystery has prompted many tales. One concerns Old Uncle Tontor, a mythical old human known for nosiness about other people's affairs. As the elves tell it, Tontor grew curious to learn how silk wyrms reproduce. None too bright, he tried to disguise himself as one, dyeing his skin green and wearing limp cloth wings. Then he crept out to "a fearsome deep cavern" where wyrms roosted.
Uncle Tontor entered the cavern, trying as far as possible to look and sound like a wyrm. His bumbling attempts attracted the attention of "King Snakewing" (in village folklore, monarch of the wyrms). Ordinarily the wyrms would have killed the old man on the spot. But King Snakewing had recently fed well on a hundred humans and was feeling tolerant. He ordered his minions to carry the old man away into the sky.
Despite the human's whining protests, "a hundred silken snakes" lifted Uncle Tontor and carried him to the moon Guthay. There Uncle Tontor saw that the moon was really a colossal egg, from which all the silk wyrms hatched, fully-grown.
Then the wyrms deposited Uncle Tontor unceremoniously on the underside of Athas. (Elven folklore once held that Athas is flat.) He had to swing hand-over-hand to the edge of the world, crawl up over the side, and walk all the way home; this journey lasted a whole king's age, 77 years. When Tontor arrived back in the village, even older and more irascible than before, his descendants did not recognize him. Always nosy, Uncle Tontor asked them, "What happened to your renowned ancestor, the great Tontor?"
They replied, "What, that old coot? Our grandparents said he went mad and thought he'd turned into a snake. He slithered into the hills, and nobody ever saw him again."