The Legend of Spyro: The Eternal Night (Promo Shorts)

The Legend of Spyro: The Eternal Night Promotional Shorts are short movies based on the beginning events of the The Eternal Night in The Legend of Spyro series. They are divided into three chapters, all of which were developed by Renkewitz Studios and published by Sierra Entertainment.
==Story==
===Chapter 1===
In the dark region of the Mountain of Malefor, a thunder storm crackled loudly and ominously as a ray of light was emitting from the core of the mountain. Within the mountain, a group of Apes are chanting the name of their Ape King, Gaul, as he stepped into the chamber from the shadows. Gaul silences the Apes as he began to make his announcement, but was interrupted by objects falling loudly to the floor. The Ape King's attention turns to an Ape Leader nearby, who had accidentally knocked over a few weapons and quickly apologized for his actions (this was Gaul's only comedic moment). Gaul then turns back to his Ape army and announces that their enemies, the Dragons, are prepared to defend their temple. In anticipation of this, the Apes resume their chanting of Gaul's name.
Gaul then lowers his staff towards the Apes and commands them to look at it as magical energy began to swirling around the gem resting at the top of the staff. The Apes silence their chanting and gaze upon the staff in awe, as Gaul's staff began showing them a scene using its magic...
At the entrance to the Dojo, Cynder eagerly guides Spyro and Sparx to the center of the room to help Spyro regain his elemental powers. Although Spyro feels uneasy about the training, Cynder reassures him and explained how the training they were about to do will be fun. All Spyro has to do is stand outside the circle on the floor, and whatever he thinks of will appear within the circle. Cynder shows an example by making a dummy appear within the circle of the Dojo by using her thoughts, then encourages Spyro to try using his elemental powers on the dummy.
Spyro gives in and attempts to breathe fire on the training dummy, but all that came out were puffs of smoke. After another try, which left him gasping for breath, Sparx flies to Spyro's side and laughs at his attempts. Cynder encourages Spyro again, and after a few more tries, the purple dragon managed to breathe a fire blast on the dummy, successfully burning it to ashes. This surprises Spyro, believing that he has regained his Fire element at last.
Cynder walks over to Spyro and happily remarks that the return of Spyro's fire breath was only a matter of time. The young purple dragon urges Cynder to give him something more challenging, to which Sparx agrees. Cynder playfully tells Spyro to try the next thing she thinks of, closing her eyes to think of it. A shimmer of light emitted from the center of the room, followed by a sinister laughter, which causes Cynder to look upon the figure she thought about. The hulking form of Gaul appeared, growling Cynder's name menacingly as he raised his sword in the air, prompting Cynder to scurry away.
Gaul turns his attention to Spyro and raises his sword, slashing for him, but the young dragon quickly jumps out of the way of the sword's blade. As Gaul turned back to Cynder and stepped towards her, Spyro immediately stood in front of Cynder protectively, urging her to end the training simulation to make Gaul go away. However to Cynder's horror, she discovers that she couldn't. Spyro opened his mouth to blast fire on the Ape King, but nothing came out, making Spyro realize in horror that his Fire element hadn't fully returned. Gaul then hits Spyro away with his sword towards the other side of the room, knocking him senseless. The Ape King growls Cynder's name again as he turns his head back towards the dragoness, with Cynder running for her life.
Sparx desperately calls out to Spyro to do something and that he was running out of time to save Cynder. Spyro quickly regains consciousness only to see Gaul attacking a fleeing Cynder by slamming his sword, barely missing her as the black dragoness lost her footing by the force of the sword. The purple dragon stared at the scene quietly, seeing Cynder lift herself up and look over to Spyro. As Gaul raised his sword upwards to kill Cynder, a flash of light caught his attention and he turned back to Spyro, seeing him hover in the air, gaining a mysterious power. Using this power, Spyro flew over to Gaul and attacked him using his melee combat abilities, which was enough to make the Gaul imitation disappear, and Spyro fell to the ground.
Cynder walks over to Spyro, astonished by his power. As Spyro stands back up and turns to Cynder, the black dragoness wondered how did that attack that saved them both, which leaves Spyro confused by what she meant...
At the Mountain of Malefor, the magic of Gaul's staff dissipates, and the Ape King shakes his head furiously as if he had felt the blows Spyro delivered upon his training imitation. He then declares that they must attack the Dragon Temple. An armored Ape, along with a purple Dreadwing, enters the room and announces his support in Gaul's plans ("The Masked Assassin never fails!"), but his speech was incomprehensible due to his helmet. His eyes gleamed a menacing red as the Apes resumed chanting Gaul's name...
===Chapter 2: The Calm & The Storm===
The movie starts by showing brief flashbacks of the events that occurred in the previous part: Gaul plotting his attack on the Dragon Temple, the Dragon Dojo incident involving Gaul's training imitation against Spyro and Cynder, and the Assassin making his appearance...
The scene switches to the night sky where Spyro is seen flying for his life through the skies while being pursued by a large swarm of Dreadwings. One of the Dreadwings was catching up to Spyro and made a lunge for him, but the young purple dragon dodges the strike and quickly dodges another. He retaliates by breathing blasts of fire at the surrounding Dreadwings, but finds himself greatly outnumbered. Just as two Dreadwings made a final lunge for him, a familiar voice wakes up Spyro from his nightmare, asking him if he was okay. Spyro finds himself back at the Dragon Temple as Sparx, revealing to be the one who woke him up, asks Spyro if he was having another nightmare.
Spyro stands up, facing the entrance to the chamber he was in with the setting sun in view. He tells Sparx that something is coming, and quickly flies out of the chamber to warn the other Guardians with the yellow dragonfly trailing after him. At the balcony of the main Temple, Ignitus, Cyril, Terrador, and Volteer are seen standing in the center of the balcony. Spyro calls out to Ignitus as he arrives, urgently telling him  that he had another vision. Before Spyro can explain further, Ignitus calmly interrupts him by telling Spyro to turn around, slowly. Spyro did so, only to get into battle stance as he and Sparx noticed that a large horde of Dreadwings had just arrived at the Dragon Temple to begin their attack.
A pair of Dreadwings stepped aside to allow the Assassin, the leader of the Dreadwing army, to approach the Dragons and tell them to prepare to meet their doom, but his words are greatly muffled by his helmet, making him hard to hear. Spyro asks the Assassin what he said, and when the Assassin repeated his words, the purple dragon and the Guardians still couldn't understand him. Fustrated, the Assassin turns to his army and orders them to attack the temple, but the Ape Soldiers didn't understand what he was saying either, despite the Assassin repeating his words as slowly as possible. Annoyed, Sparx speaks out that he thinks the Assassin said 'to attack the temple', and the Ape Soldiers finally understand. By the Assassin's command, the army of Dreadwings began their assault.
Ignitus commands the other Guardians and Spyro to defend the Temple, and the dragons began to counter the advancing Dreadwings using their respective elements. However, there were too many Dreadwings, and the Dragons were being overwhelmed. Spyro tells Sparx that they both need to draw the Dreadwings away from the Temple, and the two take flight into the air away from the balcony. Sparx catches the Dreadwings' attention by calling them oversized chickens, causing the winged beasts to fly over to Spyro's direction in retaliation. Spyro attacks the attacking Dreadwings using various elemental moves, defeating them with relative ease.  Suddenly, two Dreadwings appear behind Sparx menacingly and the yellow dragonfly fearfully tries to reason with them that he isn't the main course. As the yellow dragonfly flees into the direction of the Swamp, the Dreadwings chase after him.
After defeating the Dreadwings, Spyro calls out to Sparx, wanting both of them to give the Assassin something to mumble about, but noticed that Sparx wasn't around. Spyro calls out his brother's name, asking him where he was, before flying off in a desperate attempt to find him...
===Chapter Three: Deep Into The Forest===
Within the dark depths of a forest, Spyro is scouring the area, flying inches above the soil to cover more ground in his search for Sparx. After a few moments of searching, he comes to a stop near a log, where Sparx had been hiding from the squadron of Dreadwings. After a change of dialogue, both companions began making their journey out of the woods. 
After a while of wandering, Spyro and Sparx comes across a large lump of wood. However, Spyro notices something odd about the wood. As if on cue, the lump of wood came to life and stood up high, turning around to glare down at Spyro and Sparx and revealing itself to be the tree sentinel, Arborick. Arborick's awakening startles a swarm of bat-like creatures, and Spyro, knowing that they are danger, immediately urges Sparx to go on ahead as they both flew in between the legs of Arborick while being pursued by a large horde of bats. The purple dragon turns around and breathes fire on the approaching bats, succeeding in incinerating most of them but more of them still came. Spyro then guided Sparx to another direction as they flew through the crannies of the woods where lava lit the caverns in an orange glow.
As they flew around with the bats hot on their tail, Spyro instructed Sparx to keep going so that he can hold off the bats, and Sparx hovers nearby out of harm's way. The purple dragon leads the bats away into a nearby area and proceeds to attack them using various elemental moves, defeating them all. Suddenly, the sound of Sparx muffling caught his attention and Spyro flew over to where Sparx went, only to see him in the clutches of the Assassin.
The Assassin tells Spyro that his time has come, but Spyro didn't understand his words due to his helmet, and Sparx thinks that the Assassin said that he 'finally found a plum'. Spyro blasted an electricity discharge at the Assassin, electrocuting him into releasing Sparx, who had felt the aftershock of the electrical attack as he was freed. The Assassin furiously told Spyro that this confrontation will go no further, but Spyro didn't hear him clearly and asks if he said he 'was his father', to which the Assassin groans in aggravation. The armored Ape then lunges at Spyro, and the purple dragon leaps out of the way and fires another electrical discharge at the Assassin, sending him crashing against a nearby wall.
Recovering from the blow, the Assassin slowly gets up and whistles for his Dreadwing, who immediately comes to his side. The armored Ape climbs aboard his mount and declares to Spyro that he hasn't heard the last of him, to which Spyro responds with a ferocious snarl as the Assassin flees. The scene dissolves into a chamber of the Well of Souls as the magic of Gaul's staff dissipates; the Ape King having watched the whole scenario using his staff's power. He glares over at the screen and roars angrily at it with fury...
==Video Chapters==
File:The_Legend_of_Spyro_Chapter_1
File:The_Legend_of_Spyro_Chapter_2
File:The_Legend_of_Spyro_Chapter_3
==Gallery==
Spyro_pg03_001.jpg|Storyboard panel by Phil Campbell of Gaul the Ape King
Spyro_pg05_001.jpg|A storyboard piece of the Dragon Temple Statue
Spyro_pg06_001.jpg
SPYRO2-1.jpg|Spyro and Cynder in a storyboard piece for the first chapter
Sparx Captured Storyboard.jpg
SPYRO2-5.jpg|Storyboard piece by Phil Campbell for the third chapter
Sparx with Spyro during training.jpg|Sparx 'encouraging' Spyro in his training
Cynder with Sparx.jpg|Cynder about to give Spyro something 'more challenging' in his training
Spyro awake from his nightmare.jpg|Spyro looks at the setting sun upon awaking from his nightmare
Spyro and Ignitus.jpg|Spyro about to tell Ignitus about his vision
Spyro attacking bat-like creatures.jpg|Spyro attacking the aggressive bat-like enemies
Spyro vs. the Assassin.jpg|Spyro faces the Assassin once more
==External links==
*Renkewitz Studio Portfolios
*Phil Campbell's official blog containing storyboard images of The Eternal Night videos
*Phil Campbell's official blog entry
Category:Media
Category:The Legend of Spyro
Category:The Legend of Spyro: The Eternal Night