Backstory

Centuries ago in the cosmos stood a network of planets dominated by Dragons, named Dracmusk[name pending]. small Kobolds and Lizardfolk and Dragonborn populated the worlds as well, but the dragons ruled. Some dragons would grow so big that they could fly into the cosmos unimpeded, their magic surrounding them with air and control. Other races that traveled the stars were forced to steer far away from the territory of Dragons. When a Dragon actively wanted to conquer though, they conquered. They'd carry smaller Dragonborns and Kobolds with them and use them as infantry, taking ships without directly attacking them themselves. These ships would then be take back to their lairs and left to fill their Chieftain's vaults.



But a problem eventually came. For Dracmusk boarded the Shadowfell. Shadow, considered the antithesis of light, was poisonous to all organic matter. Arcane researchers describe it as opposites interacting, killing each other. It was quite rare for Shadow to exist without destroying itself along with any life, but they found that the majority of the Shadow was concentrated in a realm dubbed "The Shadowfell". The Shadowfell is 99.9% shadow, virtually inhospitable to anything organic or uses positive energy to survive. Divine power seems incapable of entering its reach, meaning not even the Gods know for sure what takes place here.



And the Dracmusk system bordered this realm. For millions of years this didn't seem too bad. The Shadowfell could not grow much into their realm and the Dragons didn't feel their territory was threatened too greatly. Until a sickness began to spread. By the time the dragons had found out what had caused it, it was too late.



While the Shadowfell itself could not grow into the Dracmusk, Shadow itself is not bound to each other. And since the Dragons flew through the cosmos without any need for a Jammer or ship, the Dragons had been breathing in Shadow for millions of years. Not enough to truly kill a dragon, but enough to break a dragon down. Eventually the Dragons uncovered that their very spirit was being broken down to nothing. Their children were becoming less and less stable. Mutated and still-birthed eggs were all that were being released, and nearly 500 year ago, the last Dragon died. They were extinct. barren. Their corpses floated aimlessly in space, trying to escape the Shadowfell, or were found buried under mountains of gold and treasure.



The Dragonborn took the initiative from this catastrophe, taking the corpses of their Dragon overlords, and turning them into vessels. The skulls turning into small 1-man ships capable of traveling through the cosmos. The Dragonborn inhereted their overlord's greed and lust and became pirates, crashing into enemy Jammers and ransacking the crew and passengers. Green Dragonborn became the most feared and Dangerous, using their Poisonous breath weapons to destroy the breathable air.



And while the Dragonborn were a new threat to behold, the rest of the cosmos breathed a sigh of relief that the Dragons, true Dragons, were all gone.





... Or so they believed

Truth

While it was true that all Dragons had died, not all had stayed dead. One Ancient Silver dragon decided to go into the Shadowfell, no longer fearing its presence as it was still killing him from so far away. He found his body floating aimlessly into the darkness, helpless and dying. But as he did, he found the darkness become brighter and more luminous. He found new beings, undead and otherwise, living here without worry. His body found itself on a strange obselisk in the center of the Shadow, and for the last 500 years, his body stayed their, merging with the Shadows, becoming re-shaped by it. and at the end of his transformation, he found his very spirit changed to Shadow.



But he was not bound by the Shadow, for it seemed even his very cells were composed of Shadows, and as they replicated, so too did the shadows in him. He found that by polymorphing into a smaller form, his body was able to respond to the toxicity of our world with little to no adverse effects. So he polymorphed into that of a Gnome, and found himself among these strange mortals, and became a researcher, learning as much as he could about what had happened to him. He could hide his nature, but he could not hide his curiousity for it. His connection to the Shadowfell began to draw new desires and obsessions within him. He now saw himself as a denizen of the Shadowfell and sought to strengthen and grow it. He began a company known as Wells International, where he would take trees and other plants grown in the Shadowfell and plant them on growing terraformed colonies. The organic nature of the Shadow trees mean that they won't dissolve away in the material plane, and will slowly turn the soil and air into Shadow as well, and before the denizens of the colonies would know otherwise, so would they become a Shadow.