Races

Zish (Zissah and Ziyn) - by T.A. Saunders ©2010 v1.5

Racial Articles The Purging of the Zissah

The first strike was on Irys on the city of Porayu and came with such lightning quickness there was simply no time to muster a response. The only viable port city that could have sent ships out to warn their kin in Shalzaar that an invasion was coming was destroyed and no sorcerous means to contact the Shalzaari Zissah, the sub-continent was isolated and suffered the onslaught of the Shar'Vaire. Each city and town the Shar'Vaire came to, the option to surrender was given and each time the Zissah, who were following their beliefs, resisted passively and prepared to defend as best they could, allowing the Shar'Vaire to make the first move.

Doing this however only prompted the Shar'Vaire to use their devastating Radiance spells and Radiance-Charged Weapons from a distance. Combined with the other lethal magics at the Shar'Vaire's disposal, there was little the Zissah could do other than stand and die, or flee.

The single advantage the Irysian Zissah had was extensive knowledge of their own territory. Out of the vast numbers that were wiped off the subcontinent in a matter of a few months, the ones that survived had done so by heading into underwater caves and many of their own ancient ruins that had been long since hidden by tropical foliage. Unwise to these hidden nooks on Irys, the Shar'Vaire missed these scant few survivors and set their sites on Shalzaar once they were satisfied that the Zissah here had been wiped out and would offer no challenge to the Witchfire Crystal caves they now claimed as theirs.

The following eighteen years were a bloody incursion onto the continent of Shalzaar, where there were far fewer places to hide. While the dense forests offered some cover, the Shar'Vaire were more inclined to simply blast them en masse, rather than going into the deep jungle and risk ambushes. By this time, the first Witchfire weapons had been created and deployed on the battlefield in what would become the first Witchfire Crossbows; effectively turning the Zissah's own power against them.

By 8481 BF, there was not a single trace of Zissah culture on Shalzaar, save for a few smoking ruins not entirely reduced to rubble and those that remained were enslaved and used for sorcerous experimentation. Ruins such as the infamous Screaming Halls are a testimony to to that dark time, where the Shar'Vaire roamed and conquered at will, doing what they pleased to whomever they pleased.

While the Shar'Vaire maintained a presence on Irys, they did not guard it as heavily as one might imagine. Most of their forces were off crushing the Zissah on Shalzaar and finishing up their offensive against the Van`Su. With the dragons either sleeping or hiding in the coldest reaches of Tirania and Shalzaar, where their airships would be at a significant disadvantage there was really no need to heavily guard Irys. Therein resided a glimmer of hope for survival for the Zissah. They remained quiet, hidden in the dark places on the subcontinent and resorted to only moving around on land at night to hunt and gather food. These handful of survivors were all that was left of the Zissah race; it became imperative to become a conquered shadow of the past in order to have any existence at all.