Windhover's Clan

WELCOME TO THE WINDHOVER WORKSHOPS!

On the border of the Carrion Canyon lies Windhover Mesa, a natural spire of rock battered by the Stormcater's ceaseless tempests. In the warren of tunnels that run through the mesa, the Windhover clan works to "uplift" the local wildlife, augmenting them by magical and mechanical means. Strange, twisted animals wander the halls, clanking and muttering to themselves--the products of the Windhovers' experiments.

But visitors are advised not to venture down into the unlit caverns, deep below ground level, where the cultish Acolytes of Erebus carry out their dark schemes.

Scroll down for massive backstory!

In the earliest days of the Windhover clan, Sarnath and his employees worked tirelessly in their construction of the great Rune Clock, a magical device that could accurately predict the future. However, combining science with time-manipulating magical artifacts has its downsides. In a terrible accident, a magical explosion froze the entire Windhover clan in a bubble of static time.

When the effects of the explosion finally dissipated, years later, the Windhovers returned to the normal flow of time. Sarnath reluctantly deemed the Rune Clock project too dangerous for further work, and relaxed his control over his "apprentices." The ancient Mirror retired to spend long months in his chambers, brooding over a pile of shattered gears, clock faces, and vacuum tubes.

The rest of the dragons, undaunted, decided that they needed a new project. Gwen, a natural leader, seized control and convinced the whole clan to continue her secret work on "enhancing" or "uplifting" familiars. The Windhover halls now crawl with outlandishly modified beasts, sporting mechanical prostheses and brain implants that allow them to carry heavier weights, move faster, and even speak.

The Windhovers' great secret, however, is that few of their discoveries have been achieved with science alone. Most of the familiars' implants are powered by forbidden arcane energy, and their bodies have been warped by modified phages, originally acquired from Plague dragons. To avoid the wrath of the Stormcatcher (and the more patriotic Lightning clans), the Windhovers have avoided publishing their techniques, though they are more than happy to sell modified familiars to interested buyers.

There is another reason for the Windhover clan’s silence: not all their work is strictly above-the-board. Deep beneath the mesa, in dark twisting caverns, a cabal of black dragons, led by the crazed Erebus, conducts less-than-savory experiments. Most of the "proper" Windhovers eschew experimenting on intelligent Beastclan members... but the Acolytes of Erebus have no such compunctions. But because they do produce amazing results, Sarnath and Gwen have cautiously allowed the Acolytes of Erebus to continue their work.

In recent months, Sarnath has begun to worry about the Acolytes of Erebus. According to rumor, they've been experimenting with fragments of The Shade, dug up from gods-know-where. While Gwen still leads the clan's experiments, Sarnath has begun to recruit some of the Windhovers to spy on and disrupt the work of the dark dragons. Erebus is straying into dangerous territory, and Sarnath will have none of it.