The Rise and Fall of the Shai'Nari Empire

A time distant from now. Humankind has spread beyond the Earth to dozens of other worlds. Yet this great diaspora came not through space travel and the ever advancing march of technology. It came when humanity sold its soul to strange Gods and was shown a dark fusion of magic and science, allowing it to achieve the impossible and embark upon a great crusade, travelling to other worlds through a strange realm called Otherverse.

Those strange Gods were the Shai'Nari, a mysterious race of beings who appeared on Earth in the latter years of the twenty-first century, a time of social, governmental, economic and ecological chaos that doomsayers claimed that the end of humanity had come. How and why the Shai'Nari came to reveal themselves to humanity is lost; they offered miracles and hope, their strange techno-magic did things conventional technologies had failed to. They offered a beleaguered desperate humanity a chance to save itself and become something far more.

They revealed secrets. They opened doorways into an eldritch dimension that would allow travel to distant worlds. Places where humanity could colonise and spread. A new frontier of unlimited potential was revealed to humanity. Ripe for the taking. Humanity, trapped on a world in its death throes, long bereft of hope in a brighter future, embraced the Shai'Nari as their saviours, pledging themselves to them in exchange for their wisdom, their knowledge, their guidance.

Perhaps some naysayers argued against this. Maybe there existed some groups who saw the Shai'Nari not as benevolent saviours but monsters taking advantage of a desperate people. With hindsight it is easy to see the folly in humanity's choice. Few could have seen what was to come.

The human race became the tools of the Shai'Nari, a vast army that their dark magic and sciences could mould into something terrible and unstoppable. Ships were constructed that would carry humanity through the Otherverse. And in this way humanity descended upon other worlds, some devoid of life, rich in resources and ideal for colonisation. Others had their own civilisations and they were swept aside by the crusading armies of humanity. Many races were wiped out and others still enslaved. And all the while, the Shai'Nari grew more and more powerful, worshipped as Gods by a growing religion that demanded sacrifice and loyalty.

In time exposure to Otherverse wrought changes upon humanity. Esoteric mutations physical and mental, the proliferation of magical cults and more. The Shai'Nari had found the ideal subject race and created a great many new strains through the fusion of animal and human flesh, spawning disparate forms to better serve them. New warriors to spread their empire, their influence, ever further.

The end of the Shai'Nari came when they created a new breed of human. The Ascendant, their chosen people; a strain that embodied the fusion of mysticism and dark science. The ultimate champions of the Shai'Nari, their Chosen. Was it inevitable that such a mighty people would rebel against their masters? Rumours that ancient enemies of the Shai'Nari made themselves known, beings who had long worked to oppose their corruption and now saw at last a chance to achieve that goal. A people known as the Elnori. Whatever the truth, the Ascendants led an uprising against the Shai'Nari and their Church. The faithful and the rebels clashed on numerous worlds and the horror of this conflict and the weapons unleashed by both sides was monstrous.

Ultimately the Ascendants were triumphant. The Shai'Nari believed to be wiped out and their faithful scattered, leaderless and bereft of their Gods. Humankind was free, yet it was irrevocably stained, tainted by its servitude to their masters. Few races were as reviled and only through great offers of appeasement and diplomacy were the Ascendants able to ensure their one time rivals would not seize the opportunity and embark upon a war of genocide against humanity.

Centuries would pass and humanity would rebuild. It was still hated, yet that hatred had long cooled. The Ascendants are gone too, inevitably betrayed and destroyed by those who desired power and control for themselves. Now, the Human Empire encompasses dozens of worlds and has remained a dominant power, the Shai'Nari a distant memory.

But remnants of the Shai'Nari cult exist still. And so too the Shai'Nari themselves. Hiding. Waiting. Vengeful.