The Black Eyrie is a name that every northerner knows. It refers to a draconic city in the Riggsland, nestled near a broken mountain range. While not immediately hostile, the dragonborn of the Black Eyrie are not quite friendly with the southerly races. Those who come down to trade or adventure or even to sell their swords as mercenaries are usually given a wide berth by most northern folk, and an even wider one by the Græwys who still tell stories in their temples of how entire settlements were incinerated and whose memory goes back farther than man's to the time when a dragon-scourged army of men burned and looted the ancient Gray Kingdom.

The city itself appears to be, from a distance, simply a series of narrow stairs carved out of the mountainside. From the journals of Davan of Rutland,

"When the first raids came that summer, we knew that we would suffer. Astride great beast-steeds that legend says they breed in pits of boiling blood, the dragon-kin descended upon every hamlet and dale, content to take what they would and leave the villages standing so they could be harvested again and again.

That year I came into my own as a warrior, a defender of the little towns. I was knighted by my lord and chief along with five others just like myself. When I took that belt he said to us, 'Today you are knights. Tomorrow you lead the charge for vengeances into Riggs-land.'

...

When we finally tracked the wide swath of destruction their beasts left after they broke down camp for the summer and headed home to its source, we were all 'mazed. Even my lord, the good Earl, simply stared in wonder. Already cold winds were coming down off of the sea to herald the coming of autumn in Rutland. Here, in the Riggs-land, the first frost had come. The very ground was crusted with rime and ice.

Before us, as though carved out of the very peak of the mountain itself, was the city that the dragon-kin call the Black Eyrie. It's name is not misleading. It is made of a sheer black glass that I have been told is volcanic obsidian. It rises, tier upon tier, like a temple of the dark times, glaring up against the white heavens and at its peak there stands a carving of a dragon so huge that we could see it clearly for miles. When we finally caught a glimpse of this place, the Earl said to us, 'Revenge can wait for another year,' and we went home."

The Eyrie is, like most draconic constructions, an awesome sight to behold. It is a holy city as the Dragonborn were once a holy class in the ancient empires of the dragons. Its heart is the great Dragon-altar that Davan described so vividly in the previous passage.

The Dragonborn no longer feed the altar with blood, and it is highly unlikely that their war-reptiles are raised in boiling pits of human effluvia. These are myths and legends that may have been started by the Dragonborn themselves to press fear into the hearts of men. It is true, however, that when the winters are extremely bad or (as was the case in Davan's account) the summer crops suffer some disaster, the Dragonborn do not hesitate to descend upon the north to raid for what they need. For the most part, they disdain trade on such a mass scale with humans, as it would make them appear weak to the outside world.

Wether or not a dragon (or a dragon-god!) resides in the Eyrie I cannot say. It was certainly their custom to live in their home cities in the dawn of prehistory. However, since I have never been deeper into the Eyrie than its very foot (where a meager trade with bold or stupid merchants and adventurers goes on), I can speak to it no more.