Wanton
The world ablaze
A living fire spreads across Telara, screaming, slaying,
setting the world ablaze. Cannibalistic centaurs gallop in herds. Goblins and
kobolds lay low village and walled city. Driving the hordes before them come
devils and the merciless Dragonians. They never stop to conquer, or even
pillage, but burn everyone and everything to ashes and charge on like wildfire
across a dry plain.
These are the Wanton, the Cult of Fire. Unlike other Dragon
Cults, they have no legendary founder. They keep no records. Permanence angers
the Flame Sire, so they worship through conflagration and chaos, fires searing
away at the traces of time.
The rampage never stops long enough to allow for scheming or
strategy, so there is no grand hierarchy among the Wanton, only individual
war-bands that vary in size from ominous to endless. They follow the
boom-doom-boom of battle drums. They burn and kill.
Wanton
The Flame Sire's children
The Wanton are the easiest Dragon Cult to understand. They
want to burn you and everything you love to ash. Not because it’s an insult to
nature, but because they relish the sight, smell, and taste of flame. They
won’t stop to take your valuables, pillage your mind, or rule your lands. They
won’t raise you as a slave—but if you rise on your own like the Ascended,
they’ll gleefully slaughter you again.
Wanton war-bands will fight anyone except one another, for
they are united by love for their dire god. He shows his affection by roasting
them in droves and letting them rebuild stronger and stronger. The Wanton seek
his volcanic prison far out at sea, beyond the mile-high waves that churn in
the wake of the rifts.
Fervor
Asha Catari led the Defiant against a Wanton horde. The
Telaran force looked tiny compared to the Wanton, like a bright cottage on the
shore of a vast red sea. But they held the high ground, they had magitech, and
they had Ascended, so spirits were high.
On the eve of battle, the Gedlo priests marked out a
circular arena as wide as a town, and chanted as a hundred goblins fought a
hundred kobolds. They fought to the death, but they fought without weapons, and
soon the circle was stained deep crimson.
As the chanting rose, a huge Oni female waded into the
murderous sea: horned, fanged, and fearsome, fins running along the backs of
her musclebound arms. Her barbed tail flicking in excitement, she began to tear
the goblins and kobolds apart, biting off heads and twisting off limbs until
she stood alone amidst the charnel. The chanting stopped, and she roared at the
Defiant lines, then turned and strode back into her own as the Gedlo began to
burn the dead volunteers.
“Why would they slaughter hundreds of their own before a
battle?” Asha wondered aloud.
“To please their red god, general,” said Rahn Chuluun,
sitting beside her on his yarnosaur. “And to show us they can.”
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