The Legend
Royalty ruled from their thrones and the Church grew to a huge influence on the people in the early 1300’s. In effort to become more of an undefeatable opponent, these two forces secretly formed a group of Alchemist’s to develop a unique and deadly weapon to help establish their powerful front.
The Alchemist’s inspiration for the weapon derived from a childhood story told in the 1200’s. The story begins with a problem of an over infestation of rats. The gathering problem made the Mayor of Hamelin hire a magnificent musician whom promised to lure the rats away with his melody. With completion of their agreement, the Mayor promised the Pied Piper grand gifts of wealth for his services. When the Pied Piper attempted to collect his payment, the Mayer of Hamelin laughed and shooed him away. The Pied Piper threatened to return the rats to the city with his music if the Mayer of Hamelin refused the payment. In the end, the threat of the rats won out and the Mayor gave into the Piper’s demand for gifts to keep the city clear of rats.
The Alchemist’s ultimate plan was to inject a large number of rats with a deadly virus and then release the rats in the area’s they wanted to control. The rats would spread the biochemical weapon throughout the enemy, and once the virus completed its course, royalty would complete the battle by claiming the land and killing the threat.
Unfortunately, in 1337, the rat subjects in these experiments unexpectedly escaped the Alchemist’s labs. Quickly, these animals migrated into the surrounding human population. Fleas bit the rats, and in turn, bit humans. Success! (It was just the wrong population.) The virus spread like wild weed among the people. Hundreds began to die daily. Mass bodies covered the earth’s surface like a blanket of Black Death. Quickly, the people began to question the Crown and the Church about its power to stop the unknown epidemic.
With 1/3 of the population dead, the Crown and the Church forced the Alchemist group to develop an antidote. Unfortunately, the Alchemist's knew that the virus had grown into something organic and uncontrollable. However, they franticly had to come up with a solution for fear they would die by the hand of God, or their ruler. The Alchemists developed a theory that they needed to separate the key elements within the unstable virus. Once separated, they hoped the virus would remain docile and the threat under control.
With the plan in mind, the Alchemist's began the time consuming work of separating out the virus components into smaller controlled substances. In theory, after separated, each exotic ring strand consisted of three different chromosome sets. The random mixed and matched animal DNA samples they used (which they called dragon animals), experimental metal alloy compounds, and early human genomes.
Once the group began to separate the human genomes from each strand, they realized it wasn't going to work as easily as they planned. The separation made the virus sample more unstable. Not wanting to bring the power of the Crown or God down on them, they searched for a solution. After time, the Alchemist group decided to match the ring strands to human hosts whom survived the Black Plague epidemic’s first attacks.
They secretly pleaded and begged these selected hosts to help keep the Black Death under control by bonding their chromosomes with the genetic makeup of the virus. For the greater good, these hosts agreed to keep the virus docile and the secret of the legend intact.
Since then, the Dragon Rings transferred from one generation to the next keeping the Black Plague at bay. Unfortunately, through the generations, the human host secretly began to gain additional bio-powers. These powers and unexpected changes enhanced the hosts’ strongest human traits. The accidental public use of the enhanced traits often brought unwanted attention to the hosts and the protected legends secret. Hiding the truth caused the triangle (the government, military, and church) endless headaches. They assigned trusted Elders to secure the Dragon Ring Legend.
The Elders encouraged dragon fables in hopes to keep the truth of the first biochemical weapon a true secret. In the past, the four Elders have reigned successful. The virus, and generations of hosts, had gradually become a part of imaginary dragon legends. However, this century long conspiracy is a hard secret to keep under wraps forever.