Mizaara ai-Shunra

**Rumsa Mizaara ai-Shunra** was the 13th Empress of Ushanra who initiated the Valpriot War.

## Biography

### Reunion of the Dimuwari

In DATE, the Dimuwari neeam Ghergis ai-Shunra died from cirrhosis, and Mizaara courted several Dimuwari suitors clamoring for her hand and first marriage.

The Dimuwari host a tournament for their candidates according to the Seven Signs of Love and Devotion, and of the several suitors, the Dimuwar champion Vanut mo-Martaga was the last to remain unopposed. Vanut was made the gulam of Mizaara and the shuridanyr of the Dimuwari, their union sealed by the child growing inside of her.

Heban's birth was complicated, as many orc-human couplings tended to be, and Mizaara's nurses worried she would not survive. After hours of intensive labor, the malformed Heban was born into the arms of the once resilient empress, who was severely debilitated by the pregnancy. However, it was said that no one would have been able to tell how exhausted she was when her eyes first lit on her baby.

Mizaara was devoted to her firstborn, blind to his flaws, and cherished Heban more than the regular empress would any of her neeams, sitting the fitful infant orc on her lap during conferences of the Grand Diaar. Foreign dignitaries would speak of the 'loud and misfitted lump' Mizaara insisted on keeping with her even as he disrupted meetings.
When news of the deformed neeam spread, Vanut was humiliated and repulsed, despairing that Heban served as the representation of his danno to the empress—weak and wretched. The Dimuwari openly gossiped about the "fetid child" that Mizaara gave birth to, and Vanut was banished from the court by his wife when he pleaded she kill Heban and give him a chance to redeem his honor.

### Captivity

//two years of house arrest and sex with Himasser. Mizaara seduced the itzhin general and promised him a place in the House of Ushar if he spared her and her family, which he graciously complied to.

Letters of correspondence by Mizaara to allies outside of the Wirashom were intercepted by Himasser's agents, plotting a coup d'état to liberate Usharbanipal from the Cabal and revealing the empress's own personal duplicity to the Kailar. In her letters, Mizaara confessed she was taking contraceptive remedies to obstruct Himasser's attempts at impregnating her, infuriating the Kailar into brutally "chastising" her. News of the rape unsettled the Cabal leaders, who were now uncomfortable supporting such a volatile man.

### Death

Mizaara was found dead by her handmaiden in her bed. It was claimed that she died from complications concerning her pregnancy by the Kailar. Himasser's subsequent suicide was described as an act of inconsolable grief once he heard of the empress's demise.

Vanut claimed that Himasser strangled Mizaara in her bed, saying there were bruises all over her body when she was discovered and accused Himasser of raping and murdering the late empress in a temper for their continued failure to conceive a child to legitimize his caste promotion.

Promptly after Mizaara's death, her mother Fayza ai-Shunra returned to Usharbanipal and restored herself as regent. Himasser, distraught and paranoid, repeatedly petitioned an audience with Fayza when the Cabal leaders began meeting with her in secret.

### Recently

Mizaara's death spurred Vanut's unwelcome return to the capital to give his support to his wife, the empress.

## Behind the scenes

Mizaara was in fact murdered with poison by her half-sister, the Canveri neeam Lyrra, who wanted to avenge her twin brother's castration that was carried out on the empress's behalf. Lyrra allowed the alcoholic Himasser to take the fall for the crime, uniting the Cabal against Himasser and setting the pace for her ascension and fulfilling on the failed objective of the Eclipse plot.