The Spirit Dragon Wars End
PDFThe Empire of Venn
The Spirit Dragon Wars end with the Great Spirit Dragons subdued and withdrawing from mortal affairs. They are not destroyed. The Empire of Venn, too damaged by the conflict to recover, continues its decline toward the collapse that will produce the Time of Nightmares.
The Spirit Dragon Wars concluded with the Great Spirit Dragons withdrawing from direct involvement in mortal affairs. The Whistles had changed the balance of the conflict -- giving mortal armies the ability to summon the Dragons to ground they could manage, rather than facing them on terms the Dragons chose. Whether this was sufficient to actually defeat beings of near-divine power, or whether the Spirit Dragons chose withdrawal for reasons of their own, is a matter the available records do not settle clearly.
What is clear: the Spirit Dragons were not destroyed. The five Great Spirit Dragons -- the Gold, the Silver, the Copper, the Brass, and the Bronze -- withdrew. Where they withdrew to, what they have been doing in the two millennia since, and whether the ideology that drove them to war has changed or merely been set aside are questions the Conclave's restricted records may answer and that no other source can.
The Empire of Venn did not survive its victory. The Wars had accelerated a corruption that was already advanced; the Empire that had faced the Spirit Dragons was not the Empire that had commissioned the Spirit Dragons' creation. The Fall of Venn followed, and with it the Time of Nightmares.