The Saurian Cosmology
The Saurian Cosmology is a poem recorded from the Lizardfolk oral tradition by, as the historian and divinity student K———— wrote, "an unlucky series of flavorful graduate students." The name is a scholarly invention; the true Draconic name of the work is unknown. In his epigraph on the subject, K———— writes:
Like those of many tribal peoples, Lizardfolk beliefs are diverse, informal, syncretic, and variously expressed. Common to almost all tribes is a belief in an entity known as The Mother, the progenitor of the universe and creator of the Lizardfolk, who after creation left the surface for the warm, dank caverns at the heart of the Earth. In the Mother’s absence, a vast roster of minor gods – generally euhemerized ancestors, culture heroes, borrowed foreign gods, and saurifications of natural phenomena – governs the sacred. Some illustration of this can be found in the so-called “Saurian Cosmology.”
The standard translation into the Common tongue comes from Elven High Prefect Elandar Ancientblooded's Crusader’s Guide to the Blasphemies of the Barbarous Races, and is provided below.
The Saurian Cosmology
"Like everything, the world hatched from an egg.
The Mother split it open, and the shell's
two pieces formed the vast bowl of the earth
and the dome of the sky, and mountains were
the jagged edges. From within, the fell
and fey and noble spirits all were birthed,
and they became the trees, the beasts, the birds,
the fish, the stones. The greatest of her brood
became the gods, the numberless, who berth
among the stars. The Mother, to ensure
that all should be maintained, formed from the crude
clay of the earth the lizard folk to rule
over creation. Then the Mother turned
to gaze upon the boundless plenitude
and beauty of her issue, sharp and cruel;
it pleased her. Satisfied, she left to sleep
belowground, where the pillars of earth stood.
The gods, desiring to possess the jewel
of her creation, came down from the deep
night sky and warred together, raising hordes
of monstrous men and elves, their blood like pools
of wine staining the stone of their tall keeps.
But when they turned their savage spearpoints toward
the lizard folk, the Mother stirred below.
In rage, she raised the mighty waves to sweep
the mammal armies from the earth, and for
her lizard children, made the waters flow
and placed her egg, the moon, into the skies
to rule the tides. When the gods' final war
destroys the earth, she will emerge anew
to crack the moon, and a new world will rise.
Like everything, it will hatch from an egg."