The Shirean Empire

You enter a room crowded not only with ancient tomes and encyclopedia collections but whirring supercomputers and various technological databases.  At a desk in the middle, with two monitors and three books spread about her, a pencil and a pad of paper directly in front of her, heavy rock music in the speakers, and a haze of smoke in the air surrounding her, a woman in a sleek, dark red space suit and curly hair eyes you.  She doesn’t say anything for a moment as she continues to scribble something on her paper, and then as she sets the pencil down, she begins to speak.

Voiced by Thecla, the Tomekeeper

Right, Calista sent you? I’m in the middle of this so I can’t keep you that long, so we’re just doing the short version.

So, You know about the creator gods.  You know about their children.  Sell, no one knows much about them, really, but we know all of their names.  Each of them is associated with a star, one that can be seen from all ten central systems.  It’s thought that the daughter you’re born under shapes your fate, and your relationship to the world around you.  Long ago, though, they didn’t used to be so removed.  After Ko blessed Faesi’s many creations with intelligence, they began to grow their civilizations and reach heights that left all of the gods rather impressed.  Throughout Dakhan, Kaitan, Anpheli, Erahled, Cylphis and Igneda great empires rose.  One in particular caught the attention of the Lolth, Queen of Dusk, daughter of Vitali and Zugtov.  The Shirei were a powerful people, with consciousness derived from ancient, tentacled sea creatures.  These wise beings had learned to master their own minds so great that they could use their own intelligence to cast magic, without the help or blessings of the gods.  Lolth fostered this, and taught them further control that allowed them to dominate the minds of weaker creatures.

This was the first great division of the divine family.  Zugtov supported her daughter but Ko and Faesi saw that only trouble could come from this.  All the while, the gods argued and the Shirean empire grew without them.   They sailed the stars and traveled to the home worlds of other conscious beings.  Though these creatures had grown powerful, they were no match for starfaring machinery and psionic magic.  The many other intelligent races, nearly all of them, were enslaved.  Few escaped this psionic tyranny that slowly grew into the Web’s first intergalactic empire. The dwarves were made to smith metal for bigger an better ships, the Avos were used for their incredible reflexes and vision, which allowed them to travel at warp speeds without the use of expensive performance-enhancing drugs.  The humans serves as general spacefaring laborers, and the gnomes were relentlessly pushed to develop new technologies.

These races were pushed into a singular trade by their masters, and have since continued to regulate each other to these roles though their masters have disappeared.  But I’m getting ahead of myself.

None were brutalized by the Shirei more than the Gith: strong, agile, and fierce warriors, they became the heart of the Shirean military force and came to be the enforcers of Shirean tyranny throughout the multiverse.

Seeing all of this, the gods looked on in disgust and fear.  They no longer knew if they could take the empire.  Zugtov admitted she was wrong, and Lolth, Queen of Dusk,

Became the mistress of the Ashen Domain, a place where she is imprisoned in her own misery and  inflicts punishment on the souls of the damned.  Her sister, Zariel, followed her and stands as her bodyguard.

The Shirei began to take their psionic abilities to greater heights.  People weren’t enough, they needed to master the power of the planets.  They manipulated  the entire Zarezi system, carving each planet into an arcane focus, so that when all of them aligned under the light of Zarezi, the Shire had enough power to create their own pocket dimension.  With this, they aimed to become the prime deity, Usurping Vitali and burning Hallowreach to the ground.  They called the homeland of their new empire Psion.

Psion was the promised land indeed, but not for the Shirei.  The Gith saw their opportunity and, having mastered the magic of their masters, broke free of their psionic bonds and cast a sealing spell to imprison their masters in their own new land.  The Shirei, to the best of anyone’s knowledge, have been imprisoned in Psion since.

All though the systems, creatures were freed of their mental bonds.  They burned their master’s empires to the ground, and began to rebuild.  Now, anywhere you go in the Web, you see the many races, while still unlearning the hatred they were taught towards each other, striving to build together.

The Gith went into nearly an immediate civil war, divided over how they should rebuild their empire.  The war ended quickly as the two factions, the Githyanki and the Githzerai, agreed to go to opposite ends of the hub spiral, staying away from one another and each keeping watch for the inevitable return of their masters.  They are the only ones who remember this ancient empire, the other races lost their spacefaring knowledge and their ancient history as well, and have no written record of their enslavement.  Thanks to the guarding Gith, they went on into the future, Naive to the pain they had met.

Right, any questions? Once you’re down there on the ground, if you talk about any of this, they’re all gonna think you’re crazy, just remember that.  Now, go see Cerebus, so he can decide where to send you.