The Tempest Order: History [Part 1]

Announcement and part 1 of the history of my Flight Rising clan!

Before we get into anything, I have a bit of a prelude.

I originally intended this to be a regular writer tips article — not for any reason in particular, just that it felt too early to jump back into story-based content for Monday releases. I wanted to give some time between Mythic ending and any future stories.

…but that’s not quite what’s going to happen. This week, we’ll be starting something new. Or rather, I’ll be revamping and revitalizing something old that pretty much no one here has seen before.

For the past 7+ years, I’ve played on a website called Flight Rising (FR). The premise of the game is simple — it’s a pet site where you build a clan of dragons. If you’re at all familiar with websites like Lioden, Neopets, or Howrse, this concept probably sounds familiar. There are a million ways to play and various facets of the site to explore and throw your time and attention into, and I’ve really enjoyed it.

One of the things that I’ve enjoyed the most, though, has been doing lore for my dragons and their clan. It’s been a major passion project since I joined in 2015. Stories, poems, art, etc. I’ve put a LOT more work into these pixel dragons than I ever anticipated, and I don’t regret a second of it.

On Author’s Notes, I strive to keep writing fun and interesting for myself — this is my dream job, after all, and I want to enjoy it. In keeping up with everything here, Flight Rising and its lore fell somewhat by the wayside, which is a real shame because there’s so much I love about writing for those dragons and there’s so much of the clan’s history to explore.

I’ve considered putting some of the writings here several times, and have finally decided to go through with it. Several factors were at work in that, not the least of which being inspiration from other creators both on and off Flight Rising. In particular, I want to give a huge shoutout to Outpost on FR, whose lore is absolutely phenomenal, as well as Dead Sound/David Armsby on Youtube, who you may know from the Autodale series or his more recent Dinosauria series.

His works and subsequent Making Of videos were and are a huge inspiration for this blog and always have been. In particular, the reason I’m bringing him up now is due to a video released just yesterday — the Making Of video for the finale of his Dinosauria series, The Last Tyrant. In it, he remarks about how he started the series to remind himself why he loves to animate and what sparked that love in the first place, linking his creativity directly to his lifelong love of dinosaurs.

If you’ve read any story on this blog, you may have noticed that dragons pop up a lot in my works. Cardinal has dragon dogsled teams. Mythic had the dragonforges. Sleepless has Wingstorm dragon trading cards.

I love dragons. My first and greatest love will always be horses, but you’d be surprised how much overlap there is between horse girls and people who like dragons. It’s more than you’d think, influenced in no small part by the existence of dragon riders, but I won’t get into that right now. The point is, I love dragons, and I love the lore I’ve created for my dragons over the past several years.

The project fell by the wayside because I was always occupied with something else and didn’t have time for it. Some parts of the lore have not been touched since 2015. Some parts were written in a hurry. Others touch on major story beats but have so much room for smaller stories that never got explored.

And it’s about time I fixed all of that.

So, to summarize:

• From now on, one of the types of free content articles will be stories and snippets from my lore on Flight Rising. There will still be writer tips too.

• The stories and characters are original creations, but they exist within the world that Flight Rising and Stormlight Workshop LLC have created. I do NOT own the rights to Flight Rising’s world or lore.

• This content will be much closer to an anthology — the stories will all take place in the same clan, but won’t all follow the same characters or plotlines. Because of the extensive history of the clan, they will also take place all over the timeline, not just in the “present” day of the clan. Some stories may be related, but most are more like character studies or scenes rather than having a rigid narrative and plot. There may sometimes be groups of stories that fit together, but most will be standalone pieces.

• Because the scenes will jump around, each story in the anthology will start by letting you know in what time they occurred and where, for the sake of everyone’s sanity.

With all this said, it felt like a good idea to start out with an overview of the clan’s history. Because this project has been running for a while, there is actually a significant amount of history to tell. Currently, I have it separated into five distinct times known as Eras: The Pre-Era, The Golden Era, The Death Era, The Aesian Era, and the Immortal Era (present).

I originally intended to put down the entirety of the clan’s lore (up to where it is currently, at least) here, but I fully admit that it would be WAY too much to address at once, especially because this is the first time anyone here has heard of the project. So instead, we’ll be focusing on just the first era today.

The first era is traditionally referred to as the “Pre-Era” and covers the origin of the clan and its founder(s). I wrote my lore chronologically with the idea that every half a year or so, a new event would take place that changed the course of the story. I wanted the story to be ongoing, things changing and evolving like a real clan.

Because of this, the original description of the pre-era is, while not the oldest bit of lore still floating around, OLD and desperately needed a redo. I'm honestly very happy with how the updated version came out:

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The Origin

To say that The Tempest Order’s history began humbly would be an understatement; the clan’s history begins with nothing. Less than nothing, in fact.

The story begins with destruction.

It began with a storm.

Now, the denizens of the Shifting Expanse were no strangers to storms.

Living in the domain of the deity of lightning made them part of life for any clan daring or unfortunate enough to walk the desert dunes and canyons. Part of life, but no less dangerous for it.

And that day was no exception.

The Highland Scrub was largely considered to be the safest area of the desert, a place where resources were far from abundant but between cacti, lizards, and carrion birds, there was enough food and water to go around so long as you rationed them well. Located in the far northeast of the territory, storms often petered out before reaching them. Lightning storms usually spelled only rain and distant thunder by the time they reached the scrub, and sandstorms almost never crossed the Carrion Canyon — the scar upon the earth that separated the scrub from the rest of the desert.

This storm, however, had blown in from the Ashfall Wastes — the volcanic region the desert, and the scrub, bordered.

It came seemingly out of nowhere as night fell and the temperatures in the desert began to drop — a veritable wall of hot ash and sand, black against the night sky.

Some clans were prepared, or well sheltered. Some had built their dens into the sides of mesas or deep underground and could escape to safety when the storm came. Not everyone was so lucky.

The storm blotted out the sky for several days, and it was only when the dust cleared that the extent of the damage could be understood.

For many months after, dragons all across the scrub would continue to find campsites that had been wrecked and buried in the storm. Occasionally, bodies would be unearthed as well, suffocated by the sand and ash or else stricken by fast-moving debris.

And in the wake of this destruction, buried beneath the sand, a nest containing three eggs hatched.

They came into a world freshly torn asunder, in the ruins of a campsite belonging to a clan and parents they’d never meet.

The siblings — one female, two male — had no way of knowing what had happened. All they knew was their hunger, their need to survive.

And survive they did, hunting and persevering on their own for some time before they were eventually taken in by a group of nomads. It was not the first time they had seen other dragons — they had spotted and ran from several before, not understanding what they were.

The only type of dragon the siblings knew well was each other — a breed called Mirrors, not that they would know that. Mirrors are smooth, with leathery skin and wings. They had large fins on the backs of their heads and two sets of eyes — one for seeing light, the other for heat.

The strangers they spotted before looked nothing like this. Some were huge. Some had horns upon their faces. Others had massive spines running down their backs. None had fins or two sets of eyes like they did. Not knowing any better, much less having any language to communicate with them, they ran.

The pack that took them in was made entirely of Mirrors, and was more than familiar with the storm. They understood that it had left the three young dragons to their own devices, abandoned and somewhat feral. With some work, they were able to teach them how to speak, and educate them on more of the world they had been born into, and what had likely happened to their parents.

It was with them that the three gained their names as well — each of them a word. The youngest brother was given the name Pugnacious, alluding to his eagerness to bicker and fight. The other was given the name Acerbic, in reference to his sharp way of speaking.

The eldest sibling instead chose her name, a word that means deathlessness, or immortality: Athanasia.

Their time with that pack was a formative one, but not permanent. Like many Mirror groups, the pack was nomadic, leaderless, and shifted in size every few weeks as others joined and split off in the search for good hunting grounds.

This brought in new blood fairly often, many of whom were willing to share their stories of distant places they’d been and seen. It was through these stories that the three gained most of their early knowledge of the greater world beyond the desert.

They would eventually split from this group, traveling west towards what they hoped would be richer hunting grounds. Instead, tragedy struck. They unknowingly wandered into the territory of harpies — wicked half-birds more than willing to spill the blood of young, wayward dragons.

It was a hopeless battle. They were forced to retreat, but it was already too late. Their youngest brother had sustained incredible wounds, and it wasn’t long after that he would succumb to them.

The remaining siblings were able to find their way back to safety and another pack to roam with, but each blamed the other for their brother’s death, and the lingering pain eventually drove them to take separate paths. When the opportunity came, they split up, and have not seen each other since.

Athanasia bounced between several packs in the time that followed, but always found herself at the bottom of the food chain. She was small, and not as fast as the others. It was rare that she’d see anything more than scraps after every hunt.

She would eventually meet another Mirror in a similar position to her — alone and occupying the bottom rung. It put them at odds, at first, fighting over scraps. But soon there came a time when hunting was at its scarcest. A time when the others would clean the bones and leave nothing for them.

The nomadic packs tended to hunt an area near-dry before moving on — so much so that the stationary clans of the area often considered them pests. Many began setting out and defending official hunting grounds, keeping the Mirrors from taking “their” food and leaving them to keep roaming the desert.

It was then that Athanasia concocted a plan. She refused to live her life starving, refused to be bullied off good hunting turf by clans. She would build something new. Something better — a pack of her own — and she would make sure they never went hungry again.

Sharing a similar view and ambition, the other Mirror, a male who would take the name “Carnage”, agreed to help her. They became mates, of sorts — a union of mutual ambition rather than love — and began their work at raising, rallying, and gathering a group of their own with themselves at its head. Most were Mirrors, naturally born or drawn into that nomadic life, but they took on other breeds as well — blood was of no consequence to them so long as you were willing to work.

And work they did. The start of the clan was a shaky one — just a handful of dragons traveling the desert in search of the bare necessities. But this was not like the other packs Athanasia had been in. This pack would not split or ebb and wane in size — it would grow, and she promised herself that she would do everything to make her pack prosper.

But to the stationary clans, she and her dragons were still but a nuisance. Pests that came to take their food and leave nothing behind. So, Athanasia figured it would be easiest to begin speaking to them in the language they understood: commerce.

She had not a coin to her name and neither did any of her dragons, but they would make capable enough mercenaries in exchange for access to food and water.

Good clans were willing to honor the deal, hiring them to take care of small problems and paying them in useful resources. It was usually only just enough to get by with, but it was a start, and with resources, they could continue to grow their number and take on larger problems with higher pay.

Some clans, though, took advantage of their small numbers and lack of any real bargaining power. Some offered too much work and too little reward, but with no other options, the pack had to accept. Others would hire them only to refuse to pay for their services — even threatening them or driving them off.

When this happened, there was nothing for Athanasia and the others to do but grit their teeth and move on to the next area in search of more work, but these experiences would begin to fester within the young leader’s heart very early on.

Her clan would grow, and one day, no one would be able to treat them this way.

And if they were ever going to reach that, they needed a name. Something for dragons to overhear, pass around, recommend, maybe even seek out. Something strong. Something that warned of the force of nature they would become.

And so, they chose the name The Tempest Order.

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