Races

Asyndi (Shar'Vaire and Quar'Vess Clans) - by T.A. Saunders ©1997 v3.7

Racial Articles The Imperial Era

With the knowledge of Radiant Magic and the crafting of the first Airships, the Shar'Vaire began adopting a new policy towards the other races of Imarel, those who the Old Gods placed upon their world that they fought for without so much as asking. That policy being, submit or perish. After the beating they took from the Dragons the Shar'Vaire vowed that such a thing would not come to pass again.

So it was as the Shar'Vaire set out upon the world and vanquished the Van`Su and the Zissah. The Van`Su were a winged people with very bird-like qualities set about their features. These bird-people lived in the northern Shalzaar and Tirania before their near-extermination. The Zissah were a race of reptilian people with brightly colored dorsal fins who lived on the southern portion of Shalzaar and on the sub-continent of Irys.

In each instance of genocidal assault, the Shar'Vaire would surround a city with their airships and demand surrender of that city. If the city was surrendered, the Shar'Vaire let its citizens evacuate at the pleasure of the standing armada admiral.

While the main forces occupied the city, a small detachment of airships would hunt down the refugee camps and incinerate them anyway. Not surrendering the city led to a full bombardment and razing of the city by all airships present. City by city, the Shar'Vaire darkened the skies above each and in the end, broke the backs of two reasonably peaceful civilizations.

From each civilization they destroyed, the Shar'Vaire also ransacked any and all knowledge they could find, especially sorcerous knowledge they might not have had otherwise. This, above all was the reason most cities weren't just bombarded for fear of losing some archaic bit of knowledge that could be of use to them somehow.

It is from the Van`Su the Shar'Vaire learned extra-dimensional travel sorcery and gained a greater understanding of the outer planes as a whole, while the Zissah gave the secret of the crystals that the Zissah referred to as Neluo…or what is more commonly known as Witchfire.

It is thought that while the Zissah are likely to be utterly extinct, that the Van'su may have escaped Imarel entirely, in much the same fashion as the Elves and Humans came to Imarel, though there is little evidence to say for sure. Every so often a Shar'Vaire will swear to seeing a single Van'su gliding around somewhere while aboard an airship, only to be heckled by their shipmates.

The third and fourth races to encounter the Shar'Vaire during the Imperial Era are the Tallis-Shae Elves and Humans from Ishaela. Several hundred years after the last Van'`Su were dominated, the events that brought these races to Imarel came to pass. While the tales of those events are discussed elsewhere, it does signify a significant split in the Shar'Vaire culture.

To beat the Elves, who were very nearly matched to the Shar'Vaire in sorcerous talent, they fell upon the ancient demons and devils many had taken to worship to aid them. This help was arranged in the form of the entire Shar'Vaire culture submitting to an infernal infusion of power, in exchange for loyalty to the Lords of Chaos. For the Shar'Vaire Theocrats who made this bargain, this was merely a matter of lip service to the infernal powers and had all the intention in the world to break away from them as they did the Old Gods, millennium past. This arrangement was advantageous to the Lords of Chaos, who would reap the souls of Zorah's chosen Elves, even if their new-found pets were perhaps less than loyal.

This mass infusion of power indeed made the Shar'Vaire who submitted to it much more powerful and gave them stronger progeny. The Shar'Vaire born of this culture-changing rite had gained clawed fingertip and toes and had incredible resource for sorcerous talent. Further, it was discovered that these children as they aged did not retain the pale skin they were born with (and untainted Shar'Vaire had) but rather it darkened with age. The one failing to accept this dark gift, as intended by the Lords of Chaos, was that the power would lead to the slow decline and eventual extinction of the Shar'Vaire themselves.

Aware that accepting such a gift from infernal powers, regardless of the reason was tantamount to suicide, a significant amount of Shar'Vaire to simply left D`Mir and the Empire all together and set out on their own, having no desire to take this path to damnation. This new clan of Asyndi would later call themselves the Quar'Vess, or The Enlightened. This period in Shar'Vaire history is commonly called The Darkening for the curious skin-blackening effect it had the forever-corrupted Shar'Vaire people.

At first these Quar'Vess were labeled traitors, but with the pitched battle between themselves and the Elves, there was little time to deal with those who betrayed the Mageocracy or the possibility of risking open war on two fronts. Dismissed as cowards, the Shar'Vaire continued to wage a successful campaign against the Moon Elves.

The Imperial Era of the Shar'Vaire ended with the rebellion of a slave race created by their own hand, the Voraath and a power struggle in the Mageocracy when one Surik Dur`lane, brother to Council Magus, Mourne Dur`lane attempted to proclaim himself the Emperor of the Shar'Vaire Empire and disband the Mageocracy in favor of absolute power. While the Shar'Vaire might have been able to survive one or the other happening, they could not survive both events occurring literally at the same time.

With the government rendered powerless from in-fighting, and the Voraath killing off Shar'Vaire that weren't killing each other, an Empire that stood for the better part of eight-thousand years came crumbling down in a span of two years. An empire that spanned all of Tal`Rah and much of Shalzaar was now whittled down to what survivors there were holding up in the small seaport of Anthalas, while D`Mir lay in ruin.

D`Mir's destruction was the result of unholy things being called from places darker than the Xoss themselves and set upon both Voraath and kin, along with excessive use of Radiant Magic that to this day leaves magic-dead spots over what's now called the Burning Lands. To this day, to travel to the Ruins of D`Mir is to invite one's own doom for yet remains terrible things that were forgotten and left to wander unchecked, for the Shar'Vaire that had called them up were long since dead.