Devaguea sighed, before using mage hand to get a few drinks from the nearby alcohol cabinet. He then offered his mother a choice from the selection. "Go ahead and grab one if you see something you like. This explanation is going to take a while, and some of the story is not mine to tell."<br/><br/>He used a 'quick' sending to request Nyrissa's presence. {<em>Beloved, if you're free, can you join my mother and me in the sunning room? She has questions about our past and meet with you.</em>}<br/><br/>A few minutes later, Nyrissa entered the room, and Dev shifted from a kobold to an elven male to embrace and kiss his wife. "Beloved, allow me to introduce you to Yviorth the Red Lady and my mother. Mother, be known to Lady Nyrissa Blossom, Nymph Queen and the elder fey of the River Kingdoms. Not an Eldest. Yet. Oh, and my fiance."<br/><br/>Once everyone was comfortable, Nyrissa burrowed against his side, Devaguea started speaking. "Please don't interrupt until I am done, this is going to be something that is hard enough already."<br/><br/>"The tragedy of my abduction was merely a set piece to a far greater tragedy that started over ten thousand years ago, when several Eldest found Nyrissa guilty of usurping power from one of them, and turned her over to the orchestrator of everything. It severed the parts of her soul that related to 'higher' emotions, and gave her an impossible task. It wanted to drink the ashes of a thousand kingdoms that she had killed as an apology, and it would return her severed soul pieces, or else. The purpose of this task was to get Nyrissa to commit atrocities, get his forgiveness and her soul back, and then laugh as she regained her empathy and was overwhelmed by what she had done, either going mad or committing suicide. It was truly a culmination of tragedies, all leading up to the greatest of tragedies, the tainting of a pure love, which was why Nyrissa had done what she had that had been taken as an insult."<br/><br/>Devaguea frowned, before shaking his head and continuing. "So the suffering began. Given the ultimatum hanging over her head, and lacking the ability to care about consequences, Nyrissa's body did things no one sane would, especially not a nymph. Millennia pass, and as the crescendo of the tragedy comes into view, the orchestrator realized he forgot something. A hero who would rise from the gutters to the highest pinnacle of success and power, only to fail as so many others had before him, an extra tragedy in a depressing litany of them. So it went looking for one, seeking answers as only an Eldest of the Fey could, and finally found the best tragedy, a recently laid egg from two dragons of high standing. And even better for the schemer, stealing the egg nearly broke the female, and shattered the trust of the male, who departed the material plane when he learned what had happened, only sweetening the divine tragedy in progress."<br/><br/>From there, he went on to describe his 'upbringing,' mentioning everything. The gladiator fights, the hunts, the vivisections. Having to see people wearing holy symbols of gods that should have been obligated to help him, but instead screamed for blood. How he had finally broken free of the charm monster spell, and earned his freedom with his own fangs, before denouncing every one of the religious parasites that had been gathered outside the lair and leaving with what he could carry. How he had wandered north for a year, and barely survived the first year out of the tower from pure spite. And how the Eldest had cleverly drawn him back into the plot, now that he wasn't trapped in a tower.<br/><br/>After that, he described the trials and tribulations, the triumphs and celebrations as his nation slowly staggered toward power and independence. And how he discovered both that Nyrissa had been carefully orchestrating things, but something had been done to HER to make her that way. And the moment of pure pride when they had forced her to remerge with the other half of her soul, killing the black that had killed Amvarean and talking down Nyrissa's more intelligent minions. And how the orchestrator had shown up and lost his temper at the play's sudden swerve at the end from divine tragedy to comedy.<br/><br/>From there, he described the desperate search for a solution in the tiny window they had been granted, meeting with more sympathetic Eldest and fighting monsters, and just BARELY making the deadline. And how they had pushed into the overrun capital, rescuing everyone they could as they fought toward the center, and then fighting, then defeating in a debate, and finally killing the godling.<br/><br/>As he told of shoving the last of the three masks onto the opponent, he revealed his crown, and placed it on the table, and finally revealed the name of the being responsible for so much death and suffering, just for a laugh. "And the Lantern King died, his power dispersed and his clerics unable to call upon his power until he reforms, and I swore to remind him of the simplest of facts. That actions. Have. Consequences."<br/><br/>He took a drink, finally done talking after nearly an hour, and then glanced at his mother and smirked weakly. "And that is why I seem to know so much about it. Having to work from this end back to you was... difficult, and lacking ways to contact other dragons, I had to try and backtrack the Lantern King's actions to try and find you. We tracked him all the way back to the merchant that he gave the egg to after stealing it, but we had no way of tracking that further back, until Fynnyntyss told us about the dragon gathering about the Taldor situation. So I went there, and advised against helping the rotting corpse of the Taldor empire, citing their proud tradition of dragon slaying, and asked for help finding you. Having nearly four dozen dragons interested in learning more about me made finding my parents FAR easier, as they had more contacts, and frankly experience in hunting mysteries, than I did."