Shoon VII

{{Character|

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| name=Shoon VII (Kodos yn Nadim el Jhotos)

| aliases=Zallanora Argentresses, the Necroqysar

| gender=Male/Female

| race=Calishite human male (ex), lich (ex), moon elf

| parents=Selara bint Munaa yr Oma el Shoon (Qysara Shoon V, b.264 - d.300 DR), Nadim el Jhotos

| dob=290 DR

| pob=Almraiven, Calimshan, Shoon Imperium

| occupation=Archmage, Qysar of the Shoon Imperium

| affiliations=Shoon Imperium (ex), The Cowled Wizards

| siblings=11 siblings

| spouse=Unknown

| children=Shaani yr Kodos el Shoon (Qysara Shaani, b.367-d.427 DR)

| class=Necromancer

| alignment=Horribly Evil

}}

Born Kodos yn Nadim el Jhotos, Shoon VII would accede to the throne of the the Shoon Imperium after executing a brutal assassination against his uncle, the Qysar Shoon VI. He ascended to the throne in 309 DR and ruled through 367 DR.

The most infamous of the qysars started his reign with bloody assassination, and that was only a hint of what was to come. Like the present-day syl-pasha, who wishes to restore many things Shoon to Calimshan, Shoon VII kept himself in power by controlling nearly everything himself, and delegating little of importance to his underlings. The result was that his untimeiy death would have undone the Imperium rather than forward any ambitious noble lackey's or courtier's plans. Despite his cruel nature, Shoon VII had an uncanny knack for inspiring deep loyalty among his closest underlings, and his speeches and actions were awe-inspiring to his people. Many historians have assumed he used magic to control his people and inspire the crowds of screaming zealots his orations produced, but no evidence exists of his use of charm enchantments of such wide-scale effect. In truth, no charm beyond the force of his personality and drive was used.

Raised among the intrigues of the oldest guild arcane in Calimshan, Shoon VII developed an uncanny ability to win spell battles by almost perfectly predicting what magics his opponent would wield, how they would cast them, and what they stood to gain from each encounter. By the time he became the Qysar Shoon VII, the young man had slain more than a dozen archmages who, upon Shoon VI's death, vied for the position of qysar. Once he had the Qysari Throne, Shoon VII demanded a magical vow of loyalty from each of the calephs arcane. Those who acceded lived and gained great rewards for their orders and themselves; those who did not died, as did the ranks of their orders until either the guild's ranks were decimated and the qysar ruled as the guild's caleph arcane (as he did in Memnon) or a ruler willing to swear loyalty to the Imperium stepped forward.

Shoon VII had little patience for counterplotting with the underworld, as his harsh, but direct, methods proved. Amid complaints of increasing crime and violence and the rising threat that thieves held over the merchant class, the qysar had oil dumped into the sewers beneath every Shoon city and magically lit. The resulting Great Fires destroyed Calimport, Ankhapur, Innarlith, Memnon, and Ithmong and partially engulfed the other great imperial cities and towns. While the fires, which had been planned to be controlled burnings, raged almost unchecked and were responsible for the deaths of over 3,000,000 people, they did serve the qysar's immediate purpose and destroyed many criminal bases of operation, setting organized crime within the Imperium back decades. By the time the families who controlled the illegal trades recovered and reorganized, the qysar and his advisors had taken control of much of the illegal activities themselves. This belief that the ends justified the means, no matter what the cost, was typical among Shoon loyalists and embraced heartily by the qysar himself.

Shoon VI committed by far the worst atrocities of any qysar throughout the Imperium's history, Unicorns and elves alike were nearly driven to extinction in the Imperium due to his experiments and sanctioned hunts against them. The infamous Staff of Shoon and the Tome of the Unicorn were products of Shoon's magic and madness, and more than two dozen unicorns were slain merely to prepare the components of these artifacts. Other evils flowed from the qysar's combined fear of and obsession with destroying Iryklathagra, also known as Sharpfangs, the dragon who stole his Staff of Shoon.

In his drive to destroy Iryklathagra, maintain his hold on the Imperium, and endlessly increase his personal might, he created many awesome and terrible spells including soulfire, ''Kodos' eruptive strike, and the worst of all, Shoon's villein volley''. Soulfire sacrificed lives to fuel arcane fires. Kodo's eruptive strike combined the worst effects of an earthquake and a volcanic eruption with a special reverse gravity that flung solid and molten rock up at foes-without concern for those beneath once the matter fell to the ground moments later. Shoon's villein volley transformed from one to 20 living beings into huge magic missiles under the caster's control; more than 500 peasants and slaves lost their lives in Shoon VII's later years to his use of this spell. All of these arcane inventions and many others like them showed a callous disregard for mortal life in general, and many of them also showed an almost sickening glee in twisting the flow of the mortal life force-especially one inclined toward good-into raw destructive energy.

After his final battle against Sharpfangs the dragon in the Year of Molten Anvils (366 DR), the qysar had lost his right leg and his left arm was shattered and nearly ripped from his body. Contingency magics prepared years before kept him alive and relatively safe from the minor machinations of his court nobles and family while he recovered, but the Necroqysar-an insulting title he wore as a badge of honor-saw his near-death experience as a sign that he should put his ultimate plans into motion. Feigning almost-total incapacitation and weakness, Shoon VII placed his daughter on the throne as his heir apparent and began planning his transformation into an undead state. He took this opportunity to plan and have constructed his own tomb in the Tomb City of Debukkher within Shoonach; beneath it lay his hidden lair and much of his personal treasure. While he maintained the appearance of being seriously wounded through illusions, Shoon VII did in fact bear one real lasting badge of his encounter with Sharpfangs - he would ever after walk with a severe limp.

In the Year of Shying Eyes (367 DR), seven months after his fictional incapacitation, Shoon VII's daughter poisoned his soup and laughed triumphantly as her father apparently died. The Necroqysar himself merely wondered what had taken her and her advisors so long to try to seize the reins of power. Only temporarily paralyzed by the poison to which he was inured, Shoon VII freed himself from his deathlike state and, unnoticed by anyone else (through magic), placed a dead clone of himself in his place for embalming and interment. Three years later, the Necroqysar stepped beyond death as a lich, but the rule of his empire, meanwhile, had passed on to his heir.