Story and Lore of Altar of Malice

Actually EQ2 Lanys isn't dead technically. She was a demi-god and had all of her divine power sucked out of her by Inny to help him maintain the Plane of Hate and his own power. What is left of her is trapped in a gem. Honestly have no idea why Lany's body was in Nerriak.

In EQ2 Emporer Katta was never taken to Luclin either. As far as we're concerned there is a secret sect of druids still guarding his body in stasis somewhere.

FYI: Its the Lifeguide Staff, created by Tunare and most famously used by her Champion Firona Vie. This weapon exists in EQ1 pre-split. It still exists in Firona Vie's possession in EQ2, and was apparently "borrowed" to help bring Lendinaria back to EQ2. There should still be a Lifeguide Staff in EQ1's Firona Vie's possession. From what people said Layns used the EQ2 staff to help get Lendinaria back, and she created a connection to our version of the staff which could explain why Layns in EQ2 may be able to break free from her prison.

One thing to consider is that the Shissar are some of the greatest mages in Norrath's history. The spires that Grieg built with his utter mastery of Geomancy are pale copies of the Shissar spires in the Dreadlands. But...the Shissar tend to blend Necromancy into all their magic. Spell not powerful enough to do what you want? Feed it a few thousand slaves, that'll bump it up.

With the ethernere issues, and the giant Chronomancy spell used on Luclin, it's not beyond reason that some Shissar were 'restored'. It's also not beyond reason that the Shissar developed (or already had) some form of Chronomancy themselves, and had been waiting for just the right time to act.

However, Shissar setting foot on Norrath again should draw CT's attention like nothing else. To him, them showing up would be worse than anything else. Why? Because it would mean they don't fear him anymore. That perhaps they even found a way to stop the Greenmist. If that's the case, then their lack of fear of him could spread. That would be unacceptable to him.

The 'older' Iksar, like Venril (read: ones who refuse to die) should be pretty torqued too, considering the Shissar's opinion of, and treatment of Iksar. They're a little too proud to put up with that, and it might even send the heretical ones back to CT's fold.

The method of Akhevan control, I suspect, is powerful shissar magic. And given the rate Grimlings seem to breed at (wander around Luclin in EQ1...there are a TON of grimlings. Like, a stupid amount.) Well, I'll say that enslaving grimlings to use as batteries for powerful spells would be something the Shissar would probably do without a second thought the moment they felt safe from the Greenmist.

There is another possibility that has occured to me as well, and it's more disturbing. If Luclin went insane after her moon blew up, then she could be the reason for all of it.

Chronomancy is strictly Draconic. Jorlak and Lendaria say as much, even Kerafyrm only had a few that practiced it himself. so there's no reason for the Shissar to have it, and if they did, they'd have the means to stop the Greenmist. the whole complaint I have with it is that pre-time split, the Shissar empire was destroyed and eaten by the Greenmist. They escaped by the Temple being translocated to the moon, and then they put up the Grey, out of sheer terror of the greenmist.

So now we got the Shissar on Luclin. all shissar in the Grey itself are dead/undead. most of the Shissar in the Temple are undead. mainly there's a few guards, and the Emperor himself. the rest are liched/undead. even their 'minions' are undead. the Shissar were so xenophobic that most the rest of the races (vah shir/combine remenant) didn't even know the Shissar were ON luclin, even thought they knew about the Akheveans...that waged a civil war when they tried to talk to them.

Okay so we got Shissar on Luclin, no one knows about them till adventurers find them, and they are in the Temple. okay then we get the shattering...and the Temple gets thrown to Norrath, buried upside down.

fast forward to now. Jorlak has reformed the moon..trapping Kera and Theer in it.

But how are there more Shissar on the moon? much less how is there an ARMY, much less living? even the Chamber of Stasis, if you want to use that as the 'this is how the living shissar are there' is on Norrath. and we still don't have an army in the Temple on norrath.

though I will say that the Shissar were/are the masters of Necromancy and Translocation, bar none. but no, the dragons kept Chronomancy to themselves.

which is why, unfortunately, I have to hope that the next xpac or something in this xpac, will show us Luclin. so that hopefully the devs can fix this flub, that smacks distinctly of 'we like Shissars as a bad guy, lets jam them in here somehow'.

Yeah, I put more thought into it and realized that not only is shissar chronomancy a stretch, it's not needed. They had the calendar, and the knowledge to read it. They obviously read it well enough to not get totally snuffed by CT. They also use necromancy to boost other spells. What's to stop them from taking some slaves (long-lived ones, preferably...elves I'd say) hitting them with necro-boosted Coercion spells to possess them (a shissar lich could pull the trick off without risks) and then leaving The Grey in the body of those slaves, likely after the first wave of adventurers hit the temple.

Those shissar in the perfect disguise could then spend the time before the Sundering infiltrating societies, rising in influence, and manipulating events to get things to go where they want them to. All as part of some plan that wouldn't make proper sense without seeing whatever prophecy from the calendar got them going on it.

The army, however, for the sake of my sanity, I'm assuming it's not from our thread. That rather, when the threads got tangled by ethernere and chronomancy just recently, the Emperor used that connection and Shissar teleportation magic to acquire troops from a thread where the shissar weren't successfully greenmisted. In fact, I suspect that it's the reason the Akhevans they seem to control just went active. Until this chain of events, those shissar remaining on the shattered chunks of Luclin could only sit there and survive. Now, the moon is whole again, threads got tangled, and gave them a chance to strike back. So they activated their pawns to fire up the temple's transportation systems (since I doubt that Luclin's Nexus was restored, so they couldn't just use it) and are prepping for...something?

Still not sure how they plan to deal with The Faceless and his all-slaughtering friend, along with the possibility of enraged Iksar (and whoever happens to have Greenmist, The Unholy Khukri of Rile), and any other Cazicites who take note.

Beyond that...do the Shissar have ANY fans on Norrath? I think pretty much every race that has info about them has ample reason to go for total extermination.

The big question, though, and the big worry...if the Shissar are in force on the moon...can they use their magic to tap the power of Theer and Kera for themselves? Did using the moon as the prison actually make things worse?

Strictly Draconic? Lets see, we have those euradites in each major city that for a few gold will lower your level. They call themselves Chronomancers. Ok, so they are more of a game mechanic than a source of lore, but they also are associated with a yearly event where we get to celebrate EQ2's past....in EQ1.

Lets get to the 500lb gorilla in the room, Miragul. AKA Roydel the Ethernaught our time traveling human sorcerer supreme, master of all magic (except apparently Geomancy). Was he not practicing Chronomancy when he time traveled? While he probably didn't pass his secrets on to anybody, if Miragul can independently discover time travel who is to say the Shissar couldn't? We're woefully ignorant of what they can and can't do.

Then there is an small heritage quests that involves a gnome and time travel. While there isn't a whole lot of time travel in EQ2, if you look you can find examples.

And the big case in point is the Ethernaughts waging war with Rohen Theer when we break into his palace. The Ethernaughts entered the palace about 10,000 years before we did, back when the Curse of Ro finally displaced the Elddar Elves and Bayle possibly fathered the founder of Qeynos. If your able to travel between dimensions you can play with the flow of time.

We know one of the Shissar's two known specialties is traveling to the realm of the gods (aka dimension travel). If they were confident that they weren't going to be hunted, the Shissar could leave the temple and use dimension travel to create a safe haven where they could rapidly "grow" an army. The fully translated Chelsith Calendar included a rune that predicted the Council of Gods. The Shissar could of been lying low in the Grey until the gods withdrew and then went rampaging to another pocket dimension to create an army and use the Shattering to get the means to create a portal to their new other dimensional fortress. Once Luclin was reformed they would know its safe to return, and for their immortal Akevah servants to take action.

the EQ1 anniversary event is an anomaly at best.
Chronomancers can only effect you, and even that is a bare scratch of the kinds of things Jorlak or Lendaria can/could do.
Miragul 'floated in the ether' by his own admission. he obviously didn't have a place or time in mind, and as such I don't think he was anything near Jorlak in 'chronomancy'.
the Ethernaughts were fighting Anashti Sul...and it wasn't chronomancy as much as the Void has no time flow in comparision to Norrath.
the Time travel for the shiny robes was a HIGHLY unstable faulty machine that we destroyed.
Lendaria and Jorlak tell us that the kinda of chronomantic power that Jorlak used to reform the moon, or that they used to 'hid' Lendaria in time, was Dragon taught only. same for the Skyshrine questline. it was Dragonic only ability.

I'm sure there's some kinda paradoxical event when the moon reformed that put live Shissar on the moon. But we'll have to find out about the Akhevean/Shissar link.

I thought of the idea that the Akhevea just want back to Luclin. but they don't understand Shissarian magic..so they made a bargain that they'll be the 'outside troops' for the Shissar in return the Shissar will open the gate back to Luclin. but the Shissar have no intention to of honoring that pact, hence why they have an army waiting. to come to norrath to conquer, as well as keep the Akhevean stuck under thier thumb.

but how the hell the army got there, and how they linked up with or got in contact with the norrath shissar in the temple is a big issue with me, much less that they are living. especailly on a dead moon.

The big point was that the Shissar don't need chronomancy to accomplish what they have (apparently) done. By using and understanding the true meaning of the Chelsith Calendar they not only avoided the Greenmist, but were able to predict when the gods would withdraw and it was safe for them to dimension travel again. By using the time differential between different dimensions they could take their small population of shissar and breed them into a super army. By using the same sort of enchantments that were used to enslave the giants on Kunark the Shissar could of conquered the Akheva and the Grimlings. Relying on the Akheva's immortality to survive the trip to Norrath would of saved the Shissar a bit of time, especially since the Shissar didn't know if the rest of Norrath would survive or fail to stop Kerafyrm. If creation survived, they could invade. If Norrath didn't make it...the Shissar would of wanted to get somewhere that would of (probably) survived the prophecy.

The big question in my mind is why aren't they afraid of the Greenmist? What do they have/know that makes them think they can return to Norrath? A goddess? Something that actually can defeat the Greenmist? Do they think Cazic is dead? Do the Shissar have a way to control the Greenmist?

Well, if the Shissar are from EQ1 and not EQ2's thread....Cazic really is dead.

Actually, CT got put back together. He's sleeping now, to recover from the trauma of being murdered, then having his essence swallowed, then exploded, then squabbled over before his most devoted followers managed to put him back together...with the assistance of Luclin and her highest vassals.

He's currently being guarded by his high priestess, who was given a permanent /direct line/ to Luclin herself, with instructions to call if she's being overwhelmed, because 'Some day soon, Norrath will need Cazic-Thule.'

Which may be a hint about Shissar-shenanigans.

but they didn't avoid it. they weren't prepared for it. it blantantly was shown that they were terrified of it because it was eating them and then in panic translocated the temple to the moon, and the second they got there, they erected the Grey to try and ensure it couldn't get to them...and they won't set a foot/scale outside it.

Fear of CT might be the reason they have the Akhevea doing their work. scared to death that if CT finds they are there....the Greenmist is coming back.

The whole race wasn't prepared for it, the Emperor was prepared. Not only was he able to teleport the Temple and his closest advisors to Luclin, they were able to erect a barrier that should keep out the Greenmist just in case it could get to the moon.

The nature of the calendar was that it predicted events, not when they would happen but what had to happen in the End of Days prophecy. So the Emperor didn't know when the Greenmist would come, only that someday it would. He also didn't know exactly when the Shattering would take place, but he knew it would eventually happen. At best he knew what order events would take place. It could all be that the Emperors plans for after the prophecy centered on the Council of Gods and they wouldn't leave the temple until then, and then they had to prepare for the Shattering.

And the part of the Akheva doing their dirty work makes a little sense, until you consider the invasion force are super buffed Shissar soldiers. Maybe the Shissar think that Cazic might forgive them after all this time? (odds are he wouldn't, Cazic is slow to anger but he isn't known for being forgiving at all) They got to have a contingency plan of some kind unless they think the dead CT from EQ1 is actually EQ2's CT. Then they are in for a very special family reunion.

Was anyone else a little disappointed at the new shissar model? I expected something closer to the EQ1 model - not overly physically imposing, sort of thin, relying on their magic more than brute force. Instead I kited around a super-buff WWF wrestler that would've felt right at home in a commercial for MuscleGain9000.

I liked the EQ1 look better. Felt a bit more Egyptian. A lot more classy.

this look to me seems like a more 'Vah Shir' version. the ones in the grey and temple are undead outside the like the emperor and his finest guards.

if they had the time to forge an army, you could say that like the Vah Shir, the enviroment meant they needed to become physically stronger and more enduring..even more so on a 'dead' moon, that would explain them needing more physicality

I agree with the Shissar models. Even the original Ssra zone was vaguely Egyptian in style. The "Chelsith Reborn" zone in Rain of Fear really expanded on that look.

http://everquest.allakhazam.com/db/zone.html?zstrat=914

The Vah Shir were suppose to be the noble caste of the Kerra society. While the commoners were based off of panthers, the Vah Shir were based off of Lions and Tigers. The more muscular cats. They were also made tall and more blocky to make them look more imposing. The Kera you see in EQ1 aren't the Kerra you see in EQ2. EQ1's Kera are about the same size as a wood elf and very lanky. The modern Kerrra is a cross between the Vah Shir and the more common Kera found in the Ocean of Tears.

The Vah Shir didn't get buffed out on Luclin, they were suppose to be like that before they arrived.

are you sure? I coulda swore it was that they got bigger and physically stronger because the enviroment on Luclin was a LOT harsher and unforgiving. considering that the vah shir had lynx/panther/cougar color schemes as well would seem that the Vah Shir also had 'commoners' amoung it's ranks and they all have the much more physically imposing side of things especially in comparison to eq1 kerra.

now eq2 kerra are yeah the 'hybrid' though it seems the ONLY trait they got from the 'Vah Shir' was thier height. they are all thin and lanky just like eq1 kerra..they are just taller.

It isn't just taller, the Kera had a posture similar to gnolls where they were hunched over. Modern Kera stand straight. While they aren't as stocky as a Vah Shir, the modern Kerra don't look like either of the other kinds really.

I don't remember them mentioning anything about a change in appearance with Luclin. I do remember they explained the different appearance being due to the upper caste of their society existing in this city.

Actually after spending time on Kera Isle I think the main thing that would be shocking is that the Kera built a city. The common Kera live in grass huts. You think if they could build a city like Shar Vhal they could do a bit better on Kera Isle.

The Kerra don't really get the chance, sadly. The Erudites, all the way back to the days of the civil war, declared them to be simple animals, and that all their attempts at communication were just mimicry. (HUGE EGOS.) The only reason they didn't actively exterminate them is because the Kerra rarely got near them after the whole 'boom, there goes your royals, oops, we don't care'.

Now, Kobolds? They HATED them. Same general view, but Kobolds would raid them for stuff, and capture Erudites that they got the chance to (and cook them). So both Erudin and Paineel had literal genocide campaigns going against them, complete with lavish rewards from the palace for proof of kills.

Current Erudites, however, don't tend to remember the days of the Kobolds in the Warrens, and the remnants of that clan are in hiding, with the rest of the clan being reduced to 'slobberjaws', and obviously Rolfron Zek isn't helping them. But...the current Erudites DO see the Kerra however, and tend to raid them for test subjects or sport, as well as blasting them apart if they show themselves off their Isle, as 'vermin'.

Yes, the most intelligent humanoid species in Norrathian history is utterly hubris-ridden, and severely speciesist. Them being isolated in Ultara for so long hasn't helped any, as they didn't get put through the Qeynos/Freeport melting pot to at least get them to admit that Kerrans aren't mindless beasts doing annoying mimicry.

The Vah Shir likely built Shar Vahl either before Erud arrived in Erud's deep, or at least before the founding of the first Paineel. The Kerrans who were on Kerra Isle (and thus spared from lunar life when the big boom hit) likely weren't just commoners, but the cat-man version of serfs or even hillbillies.

I'll have to go back and look. but I swore that Shar Vahl was built on the moon itself. and the appearance of the Vah Shir was because they had to 'evolve/adapt' to the moon which is/was a much more unforgiving place then norrath.