You have been witness to the calamities that have been the scourge of Krynn.... You must see now that this doctrine of balance will not work! "... I can sweep evil from this world! Destroy the ogre races! Bring the wayward humans into line! Find new homelands far away for the dwarves and the kender and the gnomes, those races not of your creation.... “... I demand that you give me, too, the power to drive away the shadows of evil that darken the land!” So the Kingpriest prayed on the day of the Cataclysm. He was a good man, but intolerant, proud. He believed his way to be the right way, the only way, and insisted that everyone else - including the gods - follow his thinking. Those who disagreed with him were, by definition, evil and, according to the law, must be “converted” or destroyed. The stories in this volume deal with the effects of such edicts and beliefs on the people of Ansalon at the time prior to the Cataclysm.
