Editing Dragonlance (section)

==Setting==
[[File:Tasslehoff's Map Pouch The Age of Mortals.png|thumb|right|350px|Ansalon, the main setting, post-Chaos War]]
The setting is fairly interesting, in its own way, with a lot of positive traits. For example, it's one of the few settings to focus on giving lots of variety to demihumans as well as humans - [[dwarves]], for example, come in at least three major typings (Hill, Mountain and Dark), with each typing being made of multiple ethnicities, or clans.

On the other hand, there's also a lot of [[derp]] or even outright [[fail]] involved. This ''is'' the setting that gave rise to the infamous race known and loathed as the [[kender]], after all. And the "Good" dragons are not "good" per se, but outright petty, selfish cunts that were happy letting the world drown in blood and torment as long as "their" eggs were safe. (Lovely.)

The setting began with a trilogy, focusing on a band of adventurers, and their quest to stop the world being conquered by armies of dragonriders, goblins and [[draconian]]s in league with [[Takhisis]], Goddess of Evil. The reason why all this happened? Well, that's a long story...

... and we're gonna give it to you.

In the beginning, the Gods decided to create the world. In doing so, they split into three factions: Good, Neutral, and Evil. The leaders of the three factions each created their own races: Paladine, god of good, created the [[Elves]], Takhisis, Goddess of Evil, created the [[Ogres]](originally called the Irda), and Gilean, God of Neutrality created [[Humans]]. Takhisis and Paladine also created the Chromatic and Metallic Dragons, respectively. Takhisis and her Dragons then waged quite a few wars to try and conquer the world. The Third Dragon War ended when the knight Huma Dragonbane, with the blessings of the Gods, struck Takhisis with the Dragonlance, causing her pain for the first time, and forcing her to promise never to invade Krynn again. There was peace at last. Until some idiots had to screw it up.

In short, centuries ago, the King-Priest of [[Paladine]], resident God of Good, went totally mad with power. Using an artifact-tier magical crown to basically let him mindrape people into obeying him, he set up a totaliarian police state in which all evil was punished, with his definition of evil growing increasingly broader - probably not helped by the fact he had particularly racist elves who considered themselves the perfect, Paladine-created race with all others being inferior in some fairly important positions. He even went to the trouble of using clerical agents to mind-probe random people to seek out thought-crimes.

As you might guess, this kind of upset the whole "balance between good and evil" thing, which is kind of important to the setting. However, the setting claims that the "upsetting" this did was by [[Stupid Neutral|''making Good stronger than Evil'']]. If this rings at all hollow and petty like the temper tantrum of a 13 year old to you, then congratulations, you're putting more thought into this than the original authors did. Or at least your brain hasn't been fried by your particular flavor of faith -- they ''were'' both pretty devout Mormons, after all.

So, anyway, the gods get pissed and start sending omens. Heatwaves, unseasonal storms, turning the sky funky colors... you know, just enough mystical crap to make people scared that something bad is going down, but absolutely nowhere near a straight answer as to why they're ticked. The real reason? The King-Priest wants to demand the Gods make ''him'' a god too, so he can "wipe out all evil forever".

The day before the big ceremony, the gods snatch up all their clerics and spirit them away to their homes in the planes. Those who refuse to come, they leave behind, but strip them of all their clerical powers.

And then the big day comes. The King-Priest demands the gods elevate him to their ranks, and the gods respond like any sane, rational all-powerful beings would - by grabbing a huge-ass meteor and [[Exterminatus|smacking him right in the face with it]]. This literally reshaped the whole continent in the process - the kingdom of Istar becomes an inland sea, coasts change, [[Grimdark|famine and fire and pestilence runs rampant, and there's nobody around who can use any divine magic to try and reduce the nastiness.]] Later the continent [[Taladas]] was retconned into this world; which got even worse hit, despite doing absolutely nothing wrong. [[Grimderp|Seriously, nobody did anything wrong actually]]. Not even the Priest King who did exactly his scriptures told him to.

After things quiet down, the gods wait for the mortals to apologize for the hubris of the King-Priest. Instead, the mortals demand to know what the hell the gods were thinking doing all this to them over one man and his wrongheadedness. In a huff, the gods declare the mortals will no longer benefit from their powers and they stop allowing any divine magic to be used at all.

Cue the present day, in which people sadly realize they turned their back on the gods, believing that none of them will answer their prayers anymore. Wew.

Eventually, Takhisis realises that while the other gods are busy ignoring the world, she can wriggle back into it and conquer it. She wakes up her armies of evil dragons, steals the eggs of the good dragons, starts converting the stolen eggs into her monster minions (whilst lying to the good dragons that their eggs will be safe if they just let her minions do what they want), and gets to work. The ancient "good" dragons are somehow (read, gave up as selfish cunts instead of returning to Krynn and fighting and making more eggs after that) tricked into this. The moment they discover the truth, they immediately join in the War against Takhisis. 

And that's when the first trilogy starts, ending with Takhisis beaten back, the other gods returning, and divine magic being restored. Until the next big setting-changing upheaval, anyway.