Ishanah

**Lady Ishanah** is a highly influential member of recent history, particularly involved in the Orc Wars, the Itzhin Genesis, and the Ushanran Expansion.

## Biography

### Pre-Orc Wars

Ishanah was born into the Tunna Clan of the Oiudda Song in the Tayrishan Province.

Ishanah's father was an ambitious pashoren in the Tayrishan, Lord of Oiudda Song. He attempted to gather an army to go against the Kechi, hiring kategahr (orc raiders) mercenaries to bolster his targan (border patrol) men-at-arms.

After Ashoren Hinidas do Kechi crushed her father and eldest brother in battle, the Emogren Himero do Kechi wanted to make an example of the Oiudda and sent his cousin, Findol do Kechi (the future dasgren of Kechi) to their manor with the order: "Make it bloody."

Her family was killed by the rival house; mother raped and murdered; older brother was stampeded to death in the courtyard by horses. Ishanah was spared as the sole heir of the Oiudda and betrothed to the prince of Moreshaal, Yilsu do Moreshaal, whose father was a Kechi informant who reported Oiuddan troop movements to the Ashoren.

- Ishanah won over the affections and political lusts of a young targan prince, Arukain ta Gibrin, a Mancasin elf of Obestolan heritage. She had him kill her betrothed for her and arranged for their marriage.

• Ishanah had to contest the right to rule Moreshaal, but was denied by Himero do Kechi since her marriage was never legalized. She settled for Gibrin.

- Ishanah always longed for vengeance against the Kechi lords who murdered her family. She promised vengeance.

### Orc Wars

Arukain to Ishanah after the Metamorphosis: "I see the night sky when I look at you."

Ishanah, discussing her exile from the Shuridiaar after Sharizah's ascent. "They can keep their sun and their moon and their stars. I am the night sky."

### Joining the Ushanra Empire

- Rumsa Nuriya & Lugarian conquest

- Renamed \_\_\_ to Kizzar to fit better with the Ushanrans.

### Betrayal

- Empress Sharizah renegs on her promise to the Jibren, canceling her inherited marriage pact to Prince Kizzar.

### Later life

Itzhin folk legend hails Ishanah's death as a story of protest and desolation. After suffering all her life, Lady Ishanah finally declared her dissatisfaction with life and petitioned the Jibrendi diaar for a gentle death. Mortified, the counselors her, on the basis that she was not of right mind. A second time, Ishanah petitioned for the gentle death, and the Diaar refused her on the basis that she was too valuable to the People to lose. They summoned her son, Kizzar, to speak with her, but even his words could not allay the pain and anger that possessed her. In her third attempt, Lady Ishanah came to the court of Rumsa Sharizah ai-Shunra, who granted her wish and awarded her a vial of othin. The Mourning Queen then returned to her residence where she took her own life.

Ishanah became a very fond drinker after coming to Ushanra. Elves, however, are naturally very sensitive to alcohol. Over the years, after her son's murder and again after being disempowered & excluded from Ushanran politics, her alcoholism and dementia worsened and she was often seen talking to people who weren't there or reliving moments of her past, often vividly.

Her death in DATE from natural causes was a remembered event by those who lived it, and is celebrated as a holiday by the Lapisan Diaspora and many Ushanrans who gather in the streets to mourn the Widow's memory.

## Behind the Scenes

Ishanah had adapted well to the political arena of Ushanra in her years living there, and Sharizah’s insult to the Itzhin by denying her betrothal to Prince Kizzar incensed the Lady Widow towards extremism. Unbeknownst to anyone outside her close circle, Ishanah position towards the Empire had shifted, and she had begun strategizing for a revolution to wrest control from the Rumsa and to install the Itzhin imperialists as its new rulers, like the Biascian elves during the Hansean Dynasty, storming through [Spain] on horseback. Ishanah died before she could finish drafting her plot, and in the afterward of her much-celebrated death, the conspiracy lost its footing due to Kizzar’s reluctance to participate in his mother’s drastic vision.

Years later, Loriv Thieoidin discovered Ishanah’s manifesto against Ushanra and her incomplete notes on how she intended to stage a revolution to make the Itzhin supreme. Inspired by her vision of conquest, Loriv finished the Lady Widow’s plans and put them into action during Empress Mizaara’s expansionary campaigns into Central Cremalia. He organized Operation Eclipse to wipe out the empress and the upper leadership in Usharbanipal, but the plan went awry and instead led to the Alvard Incident. The aftermath of [Fat Bomb]’s detonation vaporizing the military command of the Ushanra Empire gave rise to the Cabal, who put the Kaschei Itzhin Himasser i-Gizthar in power as Kailar to provide guidance during the crisis. By allying with the Continental Congress, the Kailar ended the Valpriot War and reformed Ushanra under his dominion, signing the very unpopular Treaty of Serez that outlawed slave trading.

Himasser’s scandals as a leader led to his replacement by Jibrendi Mascad i-Apsa, a grand-nephew of Prince Kizzar’s and a finance minister in the mid-courts of Ushanra. Mascad, a moderate by nature and diplomat by trade, has spent his years in power ingratiating himself with the public and building his support while keeping a hard eye on his disempowered adversaries. After the death of the briefly-returned Empress Fayza to the throne, Mascad eagerly anticipates the ascendance of Empress Baharra to realize his goal of a legacy, wedding the Itzhin to the [royal family] as the gallant Prince Kizzar was fated to do.

Meanwhile, Loriv has been continuously dissatisfied with how the Valpriot War turned out, and was jaded at both Himasser’s and Mascad’s lack for ambition and vision. Loriv dreamed of a grand, uproarious revolution, not a (mostly) bloodless coup that shifted the heads of state instead of sent heads rolling. Motivated to now take matters into his own hands, Loriv Thieodin has been networking to stage a new uprising that would remake Ushanra into an Itzhin Nation.

## Modern

### Cult of Ishanah

Called The Widow, Our Mother.

Followers are sometimes called **Mourners**, due to their ritualized grieving and penance, and their wearing of black. The Itzhin, as inspired by Lady Ishanah, see mourning as both transitory and transformative. The Metamorphosis is a captivating subject, as it concerned the loss of identity and reinvention of Self of an entire people when the Biascian elves living in Tayrishan mutated into the Itzhin, or 'blue elves', in DATE during the Orc Wars while defending against the Okaramog of Ban'Sangra. The circumstances regarding the Itzhin Genesis, as it is called, is highly speculative.

"What am I? What have I become?" The First Itzhin were confronted with these questions and had to readily move on with their dramatic change, from one day being an elf and the next day into waking as something entirely not while in the midst of a gruesome war. Disillusionment trailed the first generation of darklings, who were inspired by Arukain and his pregnant wife Ishanah to commit themselves to the war effort against the Janican orcs as opposed to dwelling on their transformation. The subsequent exodus of the itzhin to [Spain] only hurtled the battle-hardened darklings into further campaigning, this time under the shadow of the Roc, after the widowed Ishanah made an alliance with Rumsa Nuriya of the Ushanra Empire.

Today, a popular tradition practiced by itzhin who revere Lady Ishanah is to shave one's head on the eve of adolescence or a momentous life change. In Besperian culture, hair-cutting is ritualized as an excision of a part of one's life, their memories, manifested as peyla ("growth"). An elf shaving their head bald is symbolic of rebirth, 'to leave the field fallow', but when performed by the traumatized Lady Ishanah after the violent deaths of her husband and first-born son, the tradition examined instead the aspect of grieving and loss. To the First Itzhin throughout Ushanra who found themselves unwanted strangers in an unfamiliar country, the expatriated veterans of the Orc Wars found solidarity in their shared confusion & anger, and admiration for the still-striving Widow Queen. Lady Ishanah exchanged her clothes for black robes and veils, wearing her grief. They had fought hard for a homeland that they now left behind, traded everything they were for their country, and now wandered the dry lands of [Spain] without even recognizing their reflections. Who they once were was dead, buried in Tayrishan. Who they were now was entirely their decision, beholden to nothing but the unfitted future. The question became, "Who am I? What will I become?"

Lady Ishanah retained her somber-shaded wardrobe for notoriety's sake, but she let her hair grow back. Ushanra was home now for the Itzhin, as Tayrishan had been home to the Biascians, and to be Itzhin, one had to accept that there was no going back. War had demonstrated the stark edge of reality to the elves and that transformed them in deeper ways than the mutation could have. They mourned, for the home they lost, the friends left behind, and the lives they could no longer live, crossing the sea and embracing a liberty treasured by the Diabrans who determined their own destinies. And so it is that when a young Itzhin comes of age today in Ushanra, they shave their heads and leave behind their childhood, prepared for the next new stage of their young lives, unfettered by the past.

The custom is entirely voluntary according to individual, and can be undergone several times throughout one's life, as it is believed that a person transforms more than once by the trials they are faced with.

Both male and female elves of the Lapisan Diaspora have popularized a [Spanish] hat, characterized by its wide-brim and stove too, decorated with hanging coins or wool balls on the outside rim. Ishanah wore this type of hat when she spent time in Lugaria's oppressive sun.

In current day, these black hats have become iconic of the political supporters of the Kailar Mascad i-Apsa.