Wanderers #4 - Shulraki Alran and His Shards

A Memory of Dupec Safar appears as Sao Njack is confined to the Halls of Time.

Quick Facts	...
Place of Origin	Saodein (Capitol), Saodein, Ul Sadh
Race	Katcyakin
Ethnicity	Saodeini
Magic Type	Soulbinding
Mentor Spirit/God	God of Ways, Uldal
First Appearance [Book/Chapter]	Tears for the Moon God / Prologue

As part of the ongoing post series on the Wanderers, last week I covered Ank the Sanark. As we continue the series, we'll be covering Shulraki Alran this week. Shulraki is somewhat of an enigma even among the Wanderers because he doesn't actually know why he was imprisoned, and I won't be getting into the specifics of why that happened here as this is going to end up being a RAFO situation. I intend to cover that within the confines of the series as it progresses and, eventually, takes us into Saodein. But there are a few unique features about this character that are worth getting into, which don't risk giving you spoilers for things that haven't been written yet.

First, Shulraki is a pathfinder. I've covered one other pathfinder in a previous post. That is Dupec Safar, who is the character the bulk of Tears for the Moon God is centers around. Shulraki's status as a pathfinder (an acolyte of the God of Ways, Uldal) sets him apart in that he can quite literally be in multiple places at once, and has the ability to travel vast distances almost instantaneously. Second, the interval between his imprisonment and the reclamation of Sao Njack impacts thousands of lives, resulting in a mingling of identities inside the Halls of Time like has never been seen before. Today's article focuses primarily on these two features of Shulraki Alran's life, as well as his untimely death and his relationship with the Empress of the Dead Ocean, Shao Luin (who features in the climax of Tears for the Moon God in relation to another character: Xirakura).

Shard Souls and Other Pathfinder Abilities

As a pathfinder, Shulraki Alran possesses certain abilities unique to those who have studied the magical arts under God Uldal of Ways. Among the pathfinders both of his time and throughout history, he was uncommonly skilled in the use of these abilities, but was not concerned with using them for purpose of combat despite his native Saodein becoming increasingly aggressive in its campaigns to annex Sarkahn's Fingers (a series of peninsulas on the southern edge of Ul Sadh. Depicted in the map below.)

Map of Ul Sadh

Shard Souls and Cores

A Shard Soul is the physical manifestation of a piece of the soul which a pathfinder splits off in order to increase his efficacy in combat or in some other regard. The Shard Souls present a vulnerability in that once killed, those pieces of the pathfinder's soul cannot be reclaimed. In essence, if a pathfinder is careless enough to get his Shard killed, his own soul will be permanently damaged, and he will be weakened as a result. On the other side, a benefit presented in having so much of the pathfinder's own power housed within the Shard lies in that once rejoined, both the Shard and the Core are healed of all of their injuries. In this way, Shard Souls present both vulnerabilities and advantages in the way they function. The level of autonomy they have once expelled depends largely on how much their Core is willing to give them, but these are not mere puppets even when their autonomy is limited. Rather, they are fully functioning replicas of their Core who possess limited free will and the ability to think for themselves. They are always bound by orders, and cannot break them, but they are in every other way identical to humans in their capacity to reason and function.

A peculiar feature of Shard Souls is that they can survive beyond the death of their Core for a number of months or even years. The known limits of how long they can last were defined by Shulraki Alran in his time of life, and post mortem, to be seven years. I'll cover more of this later.

Fast Travel

All roads in the Waxing World lead to Uldal, so it is said; but this isn't entirely true. While Uldal has access to most roads throughout the world, that accessibility is predicated on his ability to sanction them through ritual processes. Some roads have never been sanctioned by him, and thus he has no ability to travel them except by conventional means. Most of those lead to forbidden places like Ur, a city that safeguards its residents from persecution by the gods and spirits as part of a truce known as Echo's Peace.

Pathfinders are trained to access these roads, but not to sanction new ones. Because of this, they are capable of accessing nearly every corner of the world by opening "doors" and thus bridging two paths together through the use of forth dimensional physics. This ability allows them to leave one area and arrive at another instantaneously, whether those areas are a few feet away from each other or on an entirely different continent. Shards, likewise, possess this ability; but they are seldom ever ordered to use this ability and are generally reluctant to do so on their own because the degree of separation from their Cores leaves them more vulnerable to harm or even death.

Shulraki's Trade Empire and Downfall

Once well enough versed in the abilities of a pathfinder to use them effectively, Shulraki took his gifts home to Saodein and established a trade company which specialized in exotic goods. This angered the other major players in the trade industry in Saodein, as Shulraki was able to undercut their prices and operate more efficiently than them. With more contracts going to the pathfinder's new company, his competitors first leaned on Trade Guild policies and bureaucratic red tape in order to undermine their new competitor and chip away at his finances, on the hope they would eventually run him out of business, or run him out of Saodein entirely.

Those methods failed to yield results, as Shulraki deftly played their game and cozied up to the Saodeini royal family, becoming close with the queen and her sons. He was eventually made Minister of Trade, which gave him express command over the Trade Guild and placed his former competitors at his mercy. They chose to mount a conspiracy, accusing him of everything from tax evasion to murder and treason, and created a paper trail documenting his "illegal" activities that would ultimately see the crown turn on him and order his execution.

Hurt by the betrayal and wanting revenge, Shulraki hashed a complicated plan involving six well placed individuals that would ultimately lead to the Queen of Saodein being deposed and her sons and powerful members of her court vying for control over the throne in a protracted succession war that would last more than a decade. Shulraki made use of his Shards to ensure his plans were executed, giving them each orders to be carried out at the appropriate time and place, but leaving them enough autonomy that they could decide on how to create the conditions by which their parts in the plan would be executed with the greatest odds of success; as well as to ensure they were able to blend in by living relatively normal lives. His execution marked the beginning, and not the end, of his scheme, and served as the catalyst by which the actions of his Shards, all of whom assumed new identities and changed their appearances, could carry out his orders in secret.

Shao Luin

While his Shards played out their parts in ensuring his revenge was carried out, Shulraki watched from within Empress Shao Luin's City of the Dead (deep within the ocean's depths) for signs they had been successful. He was able to verify that several of his enemies and detractors had been successfully brought down, including the queen who had once favored and then betrayed him. By the time of his imprisonment in the Halls of Time, his Shards had all died and Saodein's monarchy had been pulled down and replaced with a democratic system for the first time in its history.

He never did learn what led to his imprisonment, or what had been so terrible about his reign of terror that the gods were angered enough to reclaim him. Nonetheless, not all of his actions could be entirely undone, and Soadein never had another queen or king. Instead, the territory came to be ruled by a number of powerful aristocrats, a few of whom were her sons, and this was the state of the nation when Sao Njack came along to conquer it, as he sought to build an empire.

An Unforeseen Complication

Around 100 years after Shulraki's reclamation, the gods saw fit to reclaim another. Sao Njack has been covered in a previous post and will also be covered from a different angle next week. (The existing post covers what inspired me to create the character, but the book wasn't out when it was released, and so next week's breakdown will go into more depth than it could.)

What remains true is that with Sao's reclamation, something happened that had not been seen in the Halls of Time before. The lives that had been touched by both Sao Njack and Shulraki Alran were twisted into a singular mass that took on the form of a vast lake. The identities of these people were lost, and the arcs of their lives ran into each other, creating chaos. Shulraki, having already accomplished everything he set out to do, has very little motivation to remain bound by the Halls for all eternity. He does not value the idea of escape. He really just wants to die, or to cease. And so his arc revolves not around escape and retribution, like so many of his peers, but around the idea of living a meaningless life, having already obtained everything he wanted. The primary source of tension for him is the lake in which all of these identities are housed. He can remain in the Halls of Time, where his continued existence is assured, or step into the lake where he might finally cease to be. The lake provides no guarantees, however, and the other Wanderers, in particular Ank and Sao, are keen to prevent him from taking the plunge.

But still, the lake calls to him. The question is: will he take the plunge, or choose a life after death that feels so much less inviting than it ever had when he was still in Empress Shao Luin's lands?