Cult of the Citadel of the Dragon

The Cult of the Citadel of the Dragon originated on the land of Tethric. In what was the southwest region of the Esti Forest, this racially mixed group of worshipers of The Five-Headed, Telimal and her chromatic dragon offspring built the original Citadel of the Dragon. No one but Cult members know when this first Citadel was actually built, but it was sometime after the Great Catastrophe and centuries before the Dragon Wars. The Cult grew until it had at least one citadel in almost every country in the world, and each citadel had at least one elder dragon ally and several younger dragon allies, if not much more.

No one knows for sure what prompted the Cult to start their war of domination, but most believe it was at the prompting of at least one, if not more, of the Cult's ancient dragon allies. The wars were going well for the Cult and their allies until experimenters in the Cult created the drakkon by mixing the blood of humans and dragons. Unfortunately for the Cult, The Five-Headed, Telimal, took exception to this, as did his sister, The Brilliant, Belimal, and using their combined powers, they changed the drakkon into a true breeding race. The drakkon, with the blessing of both dragon gods, then turned on their creators. This, combined with the fact that The Five-Headed stopped granting the prayers of the clerics of the Cult, was the major turning point in the Dragon Wars.

After the fall of the Citadel on Tethric, the Cult was thought to be utterly destroyed, but the five remaining High Cultists of the Citadel managed to escape. These cultists sought atonement from The Five-Headed and received it. They then vowed that there should never be more than five High Cultists of the Citadel, one for each head of The Five-Headed, for at least 1,000 years, and that at that time they would reconvene and decide how to proceed. With that, the five High Cultists chose a code phrase so they could identify each other and then went their separate ways. For the next 1,000 years, there were no more than ten members of the Cult of the Citadel of the Dragon, five High Cultists, and their apprentices and would be successors.

After 1,000 years, the High Cultists of the time and their apprentices met at the designated location and decided that the time was not yet ripe for the Cult to re-emerge, but they did decide that they should now meet every century and that each High Cultist could now start to recruit more members, though each cell should remain small and hidden. Thus has it been for the past centuries, and none know when or where the Cult will resurface.