Ch'Rael's Egg
Ch'Rael's Egg is an Official GemStone IV Document, and it is protected from editing.
The Legend of Ch'Rael
An oracular legend of the indigenous Iyo tribe, on the Isle of Four Winds
(As transcribed by Eslada L'Rae, a researcher imbedded with the tribe for several years, in early 5015)
There are not many winged creatures that can make their way to the Isle of Four Winds. The distance to travel is so far that none but the most mighty can survive the trek, and there are no migratory patterns that would guide any to its fertile treetops. As such, Ch'Rael was the first in a great while to come winging through the air currents to alight atop the great mountain that dominates the Isle.
Ch'Rael was a mighty beast, with a wingspan several times that of the largest griffin, and her eyes bespoke an intelligence far beyond the avian kingdom. This was no accident, for Ch'Rael did not begin her life spiraling through the skies. Like so many other things, she began as something else entirely.
Ch'Rael was born of terrestrial parentage, though none have ever been clear as to their race or origin. What was known, though, was their profession. When Ch'Rael was found, she had no ability or desire to speak, and she carried a pack with the most meager of provisions...and a small journal.
Her journal detailed, in ever-more-erratic text, the efforts by both parents to infuse their daughter with the gift of flight. Their many failures, complete with the macabre details of the rituals involved, were fully documented, oftentimes accompanied by graphic illustrations. The final entry, however, proclaimed success...and catastrophic failure.
Details were scarce, but it was apparent a bargain had been struck, and a price paid. The absence of her parents in Ch'Rael's life was indicative of what the price might have been, but the entry was brimming with pride at the accomplishment. Their daughter would fly, and they could rest easy in that knowledge.
The amount of time that passed before Ch'Rael's circumstances became apparent is lost to time, as she had no method by which to communicate. When her change had completed, she rose to the skies, unknowingly fulfilling her parents' fondest desires.
Mightier than the largest flighted being, yet with instincts never meant for the skies, Ch'Rael drifted on the winds, eating and nesting clumsily as new and unfamiliar urges drove her. Ch'Rael tested the winds, and herself, daily. She learned what she could do, and pushed against those boundaries constantly. One day, she flew higher than ever before, then pushed herself near to her breaking point, striving for pure speed in the thinner air currents. She flew, and flew, reveling in her abilities, until a sudden, new sensation caused her muscles to seize painfully.
Gracelessly, she faltered, catching herself moments later, her avian heart hammering. This was something new, and something that frightened her terribly. She glided down towards the world, but all she saw was water. Ch'Rael conserved her energy, riding the plentiful winds as she fought off the pulsing sensations deep inside her, until she finally spied a spot to land.
Shortly after her arrival, Ch'Rael begat her first, and only, egg. But any egg borne of one such as she is no mundane thing. Whatever price her parents had paid for her wings, the egg was the culmination of the transaction. A foul, cylindrical thing barely larger than a chicken's egg, the blighted rock pulsed with power once, then once more, and a translucent sphere sprang into being around it. Ch'Rael scrambled away in shock, but she was exhausted to the point of clumsiness from her flight, and her reflexes were those of a legged being. She fell into a nearby gorge, cracking her skull and neck on the way down, and was no more.
Ch'Rael's Egg lay dormant for a time, but was found by a Krolvin scout, who picked it up with ease, never noticing the shimmering sphere that encompassed the Egg...and himself. This fist-sized rock was something he might be able to trade, he surmised, as he returned to the southern end of the Isle.
Where the Egg lay for the multitude of years between then and now, none can say. There are no records to speak of, and no accounts of its powers in the many tomes that document such things. Ch'Rael is long forgotten, her bones having deteriorated to dust at the bottom of a gorge on the Isle of the Four Winds.