Shissar

Overview  

The Shissar are a race of highly intelligent snake-like people.  As a creation of Cazic-Thule, the god of fear, they are a ruthless race of people who rely on fear in their dominance over others.  The Shissar were once the dominant race on the continent of Kunark, rivaled only by the dragons of the Ring of Scale.

The Shissar had established several cities, most notably their capital, Chelsith.  As a creation of Cazic-Thule, they ruthlessly spread fear and dread throughout the continent.  They enslaved the Iksar, a race of lizard people also created by The Faceless.  Their quick rise to power drew the attention of the dragons.  The Shissar smartly learned everything they could from the ancient wurms, and used it to their advantage.  Combining the newly discovered magic from the dragons with their own aptitude for necromancy, the Shissar created the world's first liches and blood golems.  With their increased might, they struck fear in the dragons, driving them back to a solitary corner of the continent.  After establishing their dominance of Kunark, the Shissar Empire sailed north in search of new lands to conquer.

When Emperor Ssraeshza and his army reached southern Tunaria (Antonica), they were met by the Rallosian Empire led by the legendary ogre known as Murdunk.  Surprisingly, Murdunk and Ssraeshza formed a truce.  Rather than go to war with each other, they decided to attempt the impossible.  With all of the known world already conquered by the two empires, they set their eyes on the planes of the gods.  The Shissar laid waste to many of the lesser planes, which were inhabited by long forgotten demigods.  The Rallosian army went straight to the top, the elemental planes, specifically the Plane of Earth.  Their assault on The Rathe was eventually unsuccessful, even with the help of Rallos Zek himself.  As a result, Zek's creations (ogres, giants, orcs, etc.) were stricken with a curse of unintelligence.  The Shissar were punished by their own creator, Cazic-Thule, for he was angered by their arrogance.  The Faceless granted the Iksar an ultimate weapon to rise up and defeat their masters.  Known as Greenmist, the airborne plague disintegrate any Shissar who inhaled it and ripping their souls into the Plane of Fear where they would be tormented for eternity.  Emperor Ssraeshza and the other high ranking Shissar escaped, as their great pyramid was summoned into the sky, presumably never to be heard from again.

The truth was the Shissar had escaped to the hidden moon of Luclin by the will of the Maiden of Shadow herself.  The pyramid landed in a region known as the Scarlet Desert, but it was soon altered by the frightened Shissar.  They successfully created a vacuum called The Grey, thus killing all wildlife in the region, and therefore protecting them from invasion of any native creatures or from the Greenmist if the Iksar should ever discover a means of finding them.  Soon after their arrival on the moon, an uprising occured.  It was the belief of Vzyh'dra and her followers that Ssraeshza should be held accountable for their fates.  She was a powerful wizard who proved herself to be an excellent general in the empire's army, thus many followed her in rebellion.  Ssraeshza acted swiftly by slaughtering the rebels, then reanimated them in undeath to patrol the sands of The Grey for eternity.  As for Vzyh'dra, he sealed her in an unknown plane of existence through a portal he created in the basement of the pyramid.  Ssraeshza successfully convinced the rest of the Shissar that their survival and escape was made possible only by his leadership.

After the cataclysm that marked the beginning of the Age of Destiny, it was assumed that the Shissar of Luclin were destroyed forever along with the moon.

Near the end of the Age of Turmoil though, a surviving sect of Shissar were discovered on Norrath in the Buried Sea.  They were being protected from extinction by the last remnants of the Combine Empire who were also preserving other races such as the sphinx and the kedge.  These Shissar were given a sanctuary called Zhisza, which was built to resemble the jungles of Kunark.  Despite being saved from the Greenmist by the Combine Loyalists, many of the Shissar saw themselves as prisoners.  Secretly, they built an annex to the sanctuary that they called Silyssar.  Some referred to it as simply New Chelsith in memory of their beautiful former home.  They used Silyssar to conduct experiments and pioneer new technological advances that they planned to use in attempt to escape from beneath the sea.  Around this time, adventurers of Norrath were on an epic quest to stop the vampire lord turned god, Mayong Mistmoore.  Their journey led them to the Buried Sea, where they assisted the Loyalists in keeping the Shissar threat at bay.

During the Age of Destiny, it was discovered via a book known simply as The Book of Sunder, that the Shissar had predicted their fate and that of Norrath thousands of years ago after the creation of a rune-covered calendar.  While Shissar have yet to be discovered in this age of Norrath's history, it is the belief of many that if they knew the date of their doom, that they would have moved their pyramid once again.