Races

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

Racial Articles The Return of the Ziyn

It had been largely considered by the Zissah people that their Shalzaari cousins had been long made extinct by the Shar'Vaire Purging. With the Zissah sense of family and togetherness, this was a particularly devastating wound to them as a people. The Shalzaari Zissah had some cultural differences from the Irysians, but there had been at one time common enough travel by ancient Zisshali sailing vessels to the largely forested continent to maintain good and familiar relations.

With the Purging, the only Zissah that survived had been the ones kept prisoner in what would later be called the Screaming Halls by the infamous Shar'Vaire Theocrat, Lord Jhariath J`Dyn. They had been experimented upon, altered and twisted in many ways, though many quite unsuccessful. The strongest of those that lived through the horrors of alteration became known as the Ziyn. Given long, snake-like torsos rather than legs,

Over the centuries, the Ziyn slowly overtook the Screaming Halls and made it their home. Attempts to make contact with the outside world turned afoul, for the Shadow Elves and others encountered could not speak Old Zissahli and the knowledge of the Common tongue was lost to them. Assuming them to be mindless monsters, they were attacked on sight by most Tallis-Vyss patrols, or hunters. And while they were more than capable of dealing with these sort of encounters, the Ziyn realized that if casualties began mounting for the upworlders, they would eventually have a large force knocking on their doorstep. At no more than four hundred or so of their kind in existence, the Ziyn elders did not want to leave their safety to the mystique of the Screaming Halls legend.

So, the hunting and gathering parties that set out into the above-world were always small, no more than three or four Ziyn and they took only what food and water they required to survive. The smaller the take, the less notice they might attract. Like the Halls themselves, the Ziyn hoped to fade into a sense of legend and mystique, content to live out their lives unhampered. For roughly 1,700 years, this had been the case, with their population growing to over several thousand in relative secrecy. The Screaming Halls were rid of the other monsters over time and the entire structure became a defensible home for the justifiably xenophobic Ziyn.

This relative peace was brought to a crashing halt in 1345 AC, when Arch Artificer Kinard Hammerspark, Exile of the Hammerspark Clan and Synri loyalist brought the gathered remnants of his golemized forces to the Screaming Halls, unaware of the current residents. At first, Kinard attempted to negotiate with the naïve Ziyn, explaining he and his clockwork-altered soldiers were on the run from persecution, rather than lawful capture. The Ziyn Elders, already having a great distrust for the upworlders and having a growing concern for space for their own kind, politely refused, but offered to share the hunting territory.

Kinard agreed to this arrangement readily, posted his forces around the keep and at dawn of the next day, while the Ziyn slept, he began a heavy bombardment using Golemized Heralds of Synri he still had at his command. Caught almost completely by surprise, the Ziyn were wiped out of the upper levels entirely and trapped in the Underhalls. After a two week siege, the Ziyn, with their numbers more than half, were forced to surrender to the laughing, lager-drinking Dwarf, now sitting atop the ancient Shar'Vaire throne.

When Ziyn requested to collect their dead for proper burial rites, they were horrified to discover that some of them had been converted into creatures not too different than the ones that had invaded their home. Now, under the brutal thumb of Kinard, the Ziyn labored in seething silence, the Elders watched, waited and plotted for a moment where they might catch their mechanized master unaware. While many of the Ziyn followed the Edicts of Serenity, the unfortunate truth was, freedom would cost blood and not be gained from passive resistance.

Biding their time for roughly eight months, collecting as many of the Arch-Artificer's weapons as they could secret away, including K'Jaar Hand Cannons, Aranium weapons and charged devices, meant to subdue, the Ziyn suffered their dead being turned into these mindless, golemized horrors. Those who kept the Spirit of Serenity's faith continued to pray for aid, even if passive resistance was largely out of the question.

In 1346 AC, the answer to those prayers came in the form of the Heroes of Am-Xitha, led by Murcalus Arthandas and accompanied by the Zissah shaman, Vysera. In a mission to capture Kinard Hammerspark, the group found the Ziyn in open rebellion with Kinard. Having suffered many losses themselves, the group allied with the Ziyn and were eventually led to Am-Xitha by Vysera.

With Kinard dead and what remained of the Ziyn liberated, Duke Arathys Blackthorne pronounced the Ziyn that wished to remain citizens of Am-Xitha, with construction plans added to give them their own quarter. The last remaining Elder, Ophris was given the title of Am-Xitha Councilman. With an offensive pending in Irys, against Siru's armies there, Vysera, now struck blind and albino for evoking the Spirit of Serenity's power, took the most able-bodied Ziyn with her to reunite them with their long-lost cousins.

With the return of the Ziyn to Zissah culture, and the founding of the city of Szarahn, where most of the Ziyn that followed Vysera settled, the expected inter-mingling of the cousin races has come to pass. Mixed Ziyn/Zissah couples have broods of hatchlings that contain both Zissah and Ziyn as well. The integration back into a traditional Zissah culture has been slow for the long xenophobic Ziyn, with so few of them left, doing so is now a matter of survival.