Godserpents, the Purespawn

"*What more can be said of Kin than this - you are children who believe you understand the world, playing at games you will never truly master. Do you believe yourselves the ultimate rulers of the world, when there are things far more ancient, things that will outlive them? You see me, your faces fall pale and your knees buckle, and you fall to your knees in reverence. And yet, in your stone hovels you call fortresses, you raise your spears and proclaim yourselves masters of the world, masters of one another, masters of the Gods. You believe you rule, when truly you do no more than pretend. Begone, raise your spear elsewhere, I tire of this.*"
— Ispadasker, 'Of-White-Scales', chastising Marcher-King Gristold, who fought his way to the Dracohorud to seek Ispadasker during the Decimation, and to put an end to him. These words come moments before Gristold is burned alive by dragonfire.
   In the skies of the world, dwelling atop the tallest peaks and in the deepest caves, dwell the mightiest creature to live upon the mortal plane. They are known as dragons, Godserpents, direct scions of Ator. They hold the honor of being the first of the thirdborn, while their progenitor, Ispadasker, was born alongside Puradas and Aenfirdas - making him one of the Secondborn. A God trapped to the mortal plane, Ispadasker dwelt among humanity and ruled as one would a King across the breadth of the world. He, with his innate ability to shape the world to his desires, made for himself a mate. This mate, her name never known to grace human ears, would birth the rest of the Godserpents. All of them would be Ispadasker's descendants, his sons and daughters, and so he beget a new race into the world through virtue of his own creation and desire for companionship.

Ispadasker, and by extension his family, ruled the world as their own little God-Kings, creating the first true religion to grace mankind - faith of the Dragons. They, with their unstoppable power and great might, were seen by the newly made Kin as little more than their creators and Gods, and so they lavished them with worship and built great temples in their honor. The first cities of mankind were built on rivers that lead past mountains, where their draconic overlords ruled from the tops of towering rock. But, when Ator showed Themself to the world, Ispadasker knelt and gave his crown to Her. And when Ator broke that crown, and gave mankind the right to rule themselves, chaos descended. Ispadasker bid his children to fall to their resting places, to act as guides and sage teachers rather than Gods. All of his children listened, but Mankind did not recieve such word. While many turned to worshiping Ator, or the newly revealed Secondborn and Firstborn, there was still a significant part of mankind that worshiped Ispadasker and his children. The Dragon Cultists still remain to this day, through death and tragedy.

The Godserpents slumbered for a time, eating and preying on the helpless monsters of the world, and offering advice, leadership, and magic to mankind. Ispadasker was the one to teach many of the first Magi how to temper their newly-found power, and many of his children did much the same. This cycle of benevolence and idyllic stagnation among the Purespawn, though, was not to last. When the Godswar came, and when Ispadasker gave the call to support the Mother against Aenfirdas, did he watch his family splinter and shatter. They turned on one another, with flame and teeth, and bit and clawed at one another. They tore themselves from the skies, and battled on the muddy ground alongside mankind. They tore one another apart over the two, the Mother and the Daughter, and many turned on Ispadasker - who, with love to his children, vowed to not harm them. They did not share the same sentiment, and so set upon him with claw and teeth. They scarred him and mauled him, and when Ispadasker finally saw there was no way through to the children he once loved, to the ones that turned on him, he turned against them. His flame burnt their scales while their own did nothing to him. His claws split them in half when theirs did little more than nick his scales. With sad fury he clawed through his children, and at the end of the Godswar returned to the Dracohorud. He walked through the empty nests and forgotten eggs, never to be fertilized, and wept. And when the Decimation came, when Mankind turned on his children, he languished in a depressive state. He gave the word for his children to flee, to find succor in lands without man.

They would turn on them all, and no matter how many they killed they would never give up. The few that fought died, but those loyal to Ispadasker did heed his word. Most fled to Esan or Udran, to lands so inhospitable only they could live there. But the eldest, and the youngest, fled to the Dracohorud. To Ispadasker, who vowed to protect them. Brava would have no part in the Decimation, and so was beset on all sides by war. He destroyed bridges and turned against the South with the help of Myr, Hjalikan and many of the Princelanders. But, through this war, an army under the command of Marcher-King Gristold van der Akliment, the then-King of Gren Burgond, found their way to the Dracohorud, just a few miles from Aydilmarka, Brava's seat of power. They bypassed the Barakud, and went to strike directly at the heart of the Godserpents. But when they found their way up the mountain, Ispadasker stopped them. He gave them one warning - turn back, and they would not burn. Stay, or try to fight, and he would punish them. Gristold, believing the idea that Ispadasker was immortal to be false (how many Godserpents had fallen already, after all?), ordered his men to attack. They assailed the White-Scaled King, and Ispadasker responded in kind. With flame blue and bright, he cleft through half of the army. He singed them in their armor, and they barely had time to scream as their bones melted and their eyes exploded, their metal faded away and their souls burnt out. All that was left was charred metal, and flesh burnt to little more than ash. What was left of Gristold's army fled back down the hill, fleeing back to Burgond. And yet Gristold stood, and dove forward with his spear. He made it under a scale, and finally dealt the first true wound to Ispadasker. And, in kind, received an open-palmed smash. Crushed into the stone like a man would crush a fly, Gristold's story ended as a smear. Ispadasker pulled the spear out of his side, and walked away.

Millennia later, past the Godswar, past the Sorcerer-Kings, and to the modern era, things are bleak. The Godserpents number, if you believe it to be, around twenty-two, or twenty-three. Some conservative estimates believe it closer to nine. All that is known is that they are rarely seen, if ever, and the only one known truly to still be alive is Ispadasker, the King of Kings. He slumbers atop the Dracohorud, overlooking Aydilmarka, and thinks on the past. He sees the faces of his children, and stays asleep. He hears the screams of the men he killed, and his face wrenches in misery. His kind, his children, are near extinct. There will be no new Godserpents, and he will be the last one to remain. He knows this. He will outlive his children as he did his mate, and he will be all alone in a world that hates him. Naros, the one true land he could call his own, fell to the Greenskins.

Ispadasker stands, and looks off of the cliff into the blizzard. With a puff of smoke, he wanders back into the cave. A few monks make their way out from the monastery positioned nearby, watching the aged beast, who barely leaves his own slumber, make his way into the darkness. They swear they saw a tear.