Shadrusun, The

A Treatise on the Phenomenon of the Disappearance and Reemergence of the Shadrusun

“Our two-pronged assault was brilliantly planned. As we beat back those damned Crusaders and they poured in through the Citadel’s gates, the Order heard their tales of defeat, one after another, and expended their resources on fortifying that front. They simply were not prepared for the coalition to suddenly be joined by those sorcerors from Hwar-al-Ashad.
“In all honesty, though, we weren’t prepared, either. All our correspondence with them was long-distance. The battle plans were in place, but after their forces stormed North Harbor and ours breached the southern walls, when we finally met in the middle, we bore witness to horrors far beyond what we could imagine. And remember, we were their allies in battle.”

- Prashmat in-Alma, a general of the Rebel Coalition, during an interview
about his experiences during the Assault on Andaen, c. 3504 HE

The Shadrusun,¹ known to humankind as a reclusive and aloof “race” of sorcerors, have made a number of appearances in the historical record, yet they have made a number of disappearances throughout documented human history as well.² The last of these disappearances was in the early years of the Internecine Era: After the Continental Crusade began to expand beyond coastal Takhet and the northern and western reaches of the Haifatneh Sea in roughly 3435 HE, the Crusaders met fierce initial resistance from Shadrusun armies, clad entirely in sturdy bronze arms and armor and well versed in bewitchments and magical wards. The few records that have survived from this time indicate that the Shadrusun resisted this incursion not merely for territorial reasons, but also out of aversion to being coerced by the Crusaders into practicing any human religion. Some accounts are more charitable than others, variously claiming that the Shadrusun saw themselves “above” human gods and religious traditions or that religious practice itself was something alien to them. For one reason or another, the Shadrusun and the Crusaders evidently never resolved their differences, for the Crusaders regrouped and launched an aggressive campaign into Hwar-al-Ashad-al-Ashad with the help of their subjects and Takheti mercenaries. After nearly a decade of fighting, it was thought, the Shadrusun had been fully driven into the world’s hidden places if not into extinction.

The Crusaders’ dominion continued to grow, eventually enveloping much of the western half of the Continent and reigning over it for an entire generation, but the subsequent generation saw the formation of a coalition of human dissidents who led a newly revitalized campaign of resistance and reconquest against them. As the Resistance enjoyed one uncanny victory after another, despite the Crusaders beseeching their god for sometimes substantial aid, a number of Crusaders began to suspect that some foul force was bolstering the strength of the rebel coalition. Coincidentally or not, when the rebel coalition finally pushed their way to the Citadel of Andaen and assaulted it, the Crusaders suddenly found themselves beset upon from a second flank by oceangoing ships of foreign origin. That the passengers of these ships were their old enemies was even more shocking, considering Hwar-al-Ashad is a landlocked, nigh-inhospitable desert.

But these Shadrusun were different. Whereas the Shadrusun of old could sometimes pass as tall, eerily lanky humans if one didn’t look too closely or make eye contact with them, the vengeance-seekers arriving aboard these ships looked horrifically aged, almost mummified, and their yellow eyes had been replaced with what looked like dense, impenetrable, white fog floating in their sunken eye sockets. Yet they moved roughly as fluidly as they ever did, and they wielded a terrible new magic against which even the most ardently faithful members of the Order of the Returning Sun had no countermeasures.

The gaunt-yet-preserved visages of the Shadrusun are consistent with what is known about their new physiology, for it appears that they do not meaningfully age, such that the events of the last 600 years could be deemed recent from their perspective. They are also far less susceptible to succumbing to pain and ordinary wounds than are their human contemporaries, and conflicting accounts of encounters with the Shadrusun variously suggest that they need not sleep or sustenance, that they only have a minimal need for these, or even that they occasionally binge on food and drink and then remain dormant for days at a time, rather than being subject to the frequent biological needs of humans. All of this, it is said, can be attributed to what is called Dartun’s Gift, some manner of ritual or blessing—or curse?—for the Shadrusun in their entirety, devised by a fabled sage who is this spell’s namesake.
The Shadrusun, in their apparent agelessness, seem to persistently harbor old suspicions and grudges as well. They are now even more reclusive than they once were, evidently paranoid of the designs of humans after their near-genocide by the Crusaders from the north. They now, for the most part, live in underground places and a few restored ruins of Hwar-al-Ashad; it is even attested by those few scholars who have visited Hwar-al-Ashad that the architecture, fashions, and a number of other cultural features of the place have hardly changed since before the disappearance of the Shadrusun during the Crusade. However, some number of them have taken to wandering the wilderness or even inhabiting human cities in pursuit of knowledge and self-improvement, seemingly to make the best of the indefinite timelines of their lives.

Footnotes

<sub>1 Strictly speaking, in the main language spoken by the Shadrusun, ‘Shadrus’ is the singular referring to one member of the Shadrusun “race,” and ‘Shadrusun’ can refer to a group of Shadrusun or to the people as a whole. However, this distinction has long been lost on those humans who have contact with them, so in common parlance, ‘Shadrusun’ can be singular or plural; some languages of the Continent will even take the word ‘Shadrusun’ and add a plural modifier to it.

2 The patchiness of the human-kept historical record of these beings is not helped by the fact that the Shadrusun language and particularly its script are the ultimate shibboleths for human scholars. Every Shadrusun morpheme (unit of meaning) is represented by a convoluted written character that seems to carry no information as to how it should be pronounced; Shadrusun grammar, too, is rife with complexity, and much of the connotative content of a written Shadrusun sentence is likely to be overlooked by one who is not intimately familiar with Shadrusun history and culture.</sub>

Lifespan

Unestablished; potentially indefinite.

Average Height

Typically 210 - 230 cm.

Average Weight

At least 70 kg. (estimate)

Geographic Distribution

• Haifatneh Sea and Basin, The
• Hwar-al-Ashad