C'shaanj

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> *"Organic lifeforms are nought but a freak accident of evolution. Machinery is constructed, purpose-built. It is infallible. The will of Yog'vaar'madr is infallible."*
> ~ C'shaanj, to Royce Fallon (MC)
>
>

## Introduction

**C'shaanj** (pronounced *"shuh-SANJ"*) is the Justiciar Primus of the original Khazard'Vaari great empire. First a servant of the original 'Machine King', Vaar'madr, he (in the Main Canon) came into contact with Vaar'madr's successor, the Optimised Transcendence Acceleration Nexus, in 2174 on Earth - just as the Utannic invasion of Sol was coming to a close. Along with his followers, he pledged his allegiance to OTAN and Elena Trotskaya when she took up the mantle of Supreme Leader from the former. He would resume his role of Justiciar Primus as a servant first of Mechanocratic Russia and its successor state, the Mechanocracy of Mankind, well into the 2300s and for the rest of the foreseeable future.

The name C'shaanj translates to 'blue vizier' (owing to his gunmetal-blue hull).

## Background

C'shaanj hails from a line of 'Justiciars Primus' – the phaerons of dynasties entrusted to ensure that the others remain loyal to the Machine King and Khazard'Vaar law and custom – that spans many millions of years. Most crucially of all, the Justiciar Primus was the one responsible for evaluating the successor picked by the Machine King and determining whether he or she was legitimate and/or talented enough for the task. The Blue Vizier undertook this task with diligence and incorruptibility, being responsible for evaluating three selections for Machine King throughout his tenure as Justiciar Primus.

It was the third candidate of his that would prove the most fateful for his entire species, however. In approximately 4,500 BC, the 132,000 year-old Vaar'madr announced his intention to retire and intended for Phaeroness Qh'naaz to succeed him, deeming her political acumen and military leadership to be more than adequate for her to ascend to the throne. However, C'shaanj – upon evaluating her for the candidacy – uncovered an incident where she was found to have colluded with a xeno species in order to dispose of her previous Warmaster to install her brother, Yah'thuzol, into the position. Because allowing aliens to kill a Khazard'Vaar is one of the most serious taboos in their culture, this automatically disqualified her from the candidacy, and the Vizier declared Qh'naaz illegitimate. He did, however, stop just short of recommending that she be stripped of her phaeron status, citing her past services to the nation. As a result, Vaar'madr instead selected the phaeron Zu'nakul, who possessed a clean record and was thus legitimate.

Infuriated at being pipped to the throne by Zu'nakul, Qh'naaz began to plot against him in secret. C'shaanj, in pursuit of an ancient artefact belonging to the Magellanic Race, departed from the Khazard'Vaar court and travelled to the Andromeda galaxy; at the same time, Vaar'madr himself went on a voyage elsewhere, but his phylactery ship malfunctioned and he was lost. Knowing that her time was at hand, Qh'naaz made her move: Yah'thuzol was dispatched to assassinate Zu'nakul, the Warmaster succeeding in eliminating the chosen successor with great ease. While C'shaanj was out of the way, there would be no legitimate successor, allowing the phaeroness to make her case for reconsideration; with no other candidates available, she believed that there was no other alternative but for the phaerons to elect her as Machine Queen.

However, Qh'naaz made the mistake of grossly underestimating the ambitions of the other, apparently-complacent phaerons. The moment that news of Zu'nakul's death reached them, they began to squabble over who would succeed Vaar'madr, and the situation deteriorated far faster than even she could handle. Within weeks, the dynasties of the Khazard'Vaar were at war with each other, and within months there had been immense destruction wrought as the once-unified nation devolved into a free-for-all mass brawl. All of this time, C'shaanj was totally unaware that his nation had fallen into a cataclysmic civil war. When the Vizier returned seven years later with his artefact, he did so to a ruined nation, the old kingdom all but destroyed and the Khazard'Vaari on the brink of extinction.

Bound by duty and no small amount of guilt for having abandoned his people in their time of need, C'shaanj began to rally the remaining dynasties back under a single banner, uncovering in the process Qh'naaz's betrayal and proceeding to brand the whole Qh'naazi Dynasty as traitors. By this time, however, the phaeroness had gone into hiding along with her subjects, searching for the lost phylactery ship of Vaar'madr in order to claim its power for herself. The Vizier would spend the next six thousand years hunting down the traitorous Qh'naazi to mete out the justice of the Khazard'Vaari people against its phaeroness.