A record of the North Avosnian Drakes, circa 1140.
When North Avosnia was Estrella’s border province with Razenova, it was covered with military outposts and huge stone fortresses. Estrellan monarchs would always make sure that the nobility there were fiercely loyal to the crown and ready to defend the land at a moment’s notice. After the Razenovan Confederacy pushed through and took not only North Avosnia, but also East Avosnia, North Avosnia ceased to be a border province. The old castles and towers were left unmaintained, and many of them now lie in ruins in isolated parts of the countryside. The warlords who conquered the area mostly settled with their generals in the new border province of East Avosnia, and they then gave North Avosnia to the merchants and consuls who supported them.
Over time, the nobility of North Avosnia grew frivolous. They had decent land, and they were rarely in need of money or food, but they were outside of worries about politics and army building. With little else to occupy their days, the lieges of North Avosnia spent most of their time engaged in finery and amusements. They now boast some of the best falconers, painters, and hunters that Eitador has to offer.
One particularly curious obsession that has developed in the last few centuries is their newfound fascination with drake breeding. It started with one noble importing a large number of blue-breasted lizards from the most eastern of the islands off the coast of Avosnia. They gifted a few of them to their friends, who began to compete to have the cutest and most beautiful drakes. Thanks to selective breeding, the drakes can now be found in an enormous variety of colors and even shapes.
For generations, the noble houses have bred these drakes to be smaller and smaller compared to their wild counterparts. Many of these drakes also have much rounder and larger eyes and heads, and shorter tails. There are purple drakes, red drakes, multicolor drakes, speckled drakes, striped drakes, drakes with large back-ridges, and drakes with exceptionally shiny scales.
Many of these drakes completely lack the ability to climb walls that can be demonstrated by any one of their less civilized brethren. It’s also not uncommon that these drakes barely move at all from the pouches they live in, sewn into sashes that the nobility and wealthy merchants wear across their outfits. They have fully embraced their new, decorative function! Some nobles like to dress them up in hats and robes for special events, and they jokingly refer to the drakes using noble honorifics.
The price of these drakes is usually prohibitively high. In the few recorded cases where a commoner has come into possession of a drake, the nobility has always confiscated it. They claim either that the drake must have been stolen, or that commoners do not have the necessary means to care for such delicate and precious creatures. The most unusual specimen ever sold was a twin-headed red-crest, which went for the price of three good warhorses.
The drake trade has not always been a positive thing for North Avosnian nobility. More than one noble house has been ruined by sudden collapses in the value of their drakes, against which they had borrowed considerable wealth. New and unique styles of drake can cause prices to spike for a few months before another popular style comes along or people begin to lose interest, so the market is always very unstable.
In recent years, Avosnian nobility has stopped wearing their drake-pouches when traveling to convenings in the Northern Heartlands. Older houses of Razenova, particularly the Atrovian Great Houses, often ridicule the drakes as an immature and foolish excess. Nobles in former Xhakhoran regions such as Karfor are also generally against the drake trade, especially those few noble families who follow The Ascendency. The drake trade, therefore, is mainly centered around Avosnia, and particularly North Avosnia, but exists to a lesser extent in Veruva, The Southern Plains, Butylka, and the region of Nauticau in Estrella.
Click here to return to the CYOA index.