Lore
Demonshields
Thirteen fiend-prisons forged for the Shoon Imperium
Thirteen Shoon-era diamond shields forged by Hilather to imprison fiends and place their defensive powers at the service of imperial summoners.
General description
Hilather, the Raurinese wizard later known as Halaster Blackcloak, made the Demonshields for the Shoon court. He combined Calishite genie-binding lore with formulas related to mirrors of life trapping. Each shield contains a different fiend and grants protections derived from its prisoner. The captive cannot be safely contacted through the shield, and breaking the prison risks releasing it.
Reference details
- Creator
- Hilather, later Halaster Blackcloak
- Origin
- Shoon Imperium
- Forged
- 128 DR
- Known Number
- Thirteen
- Known Example
- Kuraltaar
Key facts
- In 128 DR, the Year of the Addled Arcanist, the court of Qysar Amahl Shoon IV hired Hilather to bind fiends into shields for its military officers and mameluk slave-kings.
- Hilather delivered thirteen diamond-shaped shields made with arjale and tantulhor, then vanished with his payment.
- Twelve shields went to high-ranking mameluks, who used their imprisoned fiends as shock troops across the Calishar Emirates. Kuraltaar remained beneath the Imperial Mount of Shoonach for study.
- A Demonshield is a prison, not a safe means of questioning its captive.
- Destroying a shield releases the imprisoned fiend.
- The Demonsbane Shields of Tyr are a separate set of holy relics that historical sources sometimes call Demonshields.
Hilather's work in Torsil
Hilather worked from an isolated tower in Torsil near Beregost. In the catacombs below, he found a breach leading to the Abyss. He used that breach to capture planar beings while adapting Calishite genie lore and the principles of mirrors of life trapping to imprison them in shields. In 128 DR he delivered thirteen finished shields to Qysar Amahl Shoon IV, collected his payment, and disappeared from court.
Imperial distribution
The court distributed twelve shields among high-ranking mameluks, military officers and slave-kings who used the captive fiends as shock troops across the Calishar Emirates. Kuraltaar remained in the royal vaults beneath the Imperial Mount of Shoonach for court mages to study. Qysara Shaani gave it to Iryklathagra in 371 DR, before the Great Fires destroyed the imperial court in 450 DR.
The fall of the School of Wonder
In 1266 DR, the Year of the Leaping Frog, explorers recovered four Demonshields from a barrow in the Fields of the Dead and sent them to the School of Wonder. The imprisoned fiends reached beyond their bindings and corrupted student mages with promises of power. The students summoned more planar monsters into the school. Its masters were killed, the institution was destroyed, and few students survived.
Ulcasterian interest
Ulcaster founded his school in part to recover Hilather's method for binding mighty beings into crafted objects. Modern Ulcasterian conjurers believe a surviving shield could provide the physical key to Hilather's Workbook. Thalantyr seeks Kuraltaar as the foundation for refounding the school, despite the likelihood that Calishite rivals and hostile summoners would attack anyone who resumed the research.
The proposed fourteenth shield
Mordas has not recovered a lost Demonshield. He has fabricated a new Shoon-style diamond shield and intends to bind a glabrezu inside it, but his method is impossible. A Netherese spell-lens can magnify the summoning only along its existing planar phase. It cannot replace Hilather's missing prison-key, invert the glabrezu's resonance, or seal the shield from within. At full power the lens phase-rejects, the shield remains inert, and the summoned demon threatens to emerge. Mordas's written ledger can let a future faction repeat that disaster, never create a fourteenth Demonshield.
Modern rivals
Rhinnom of Amn seeks Kuraltaar as leverage against the Cowled Wizards. He threatens to release its glabrezu in an Amnian city and blame the magical catastrophe on his enemies. Any open search for the shield is also likely to draw Calishite mages, rival summoners, and planar servitors sent to kill or dispossess the seeker.
The other Demonshields
Some histories use Demonshield as a general name for the Demonsbane Shields of Tyr: Kimeltaar, Naelotaar, and Dizeltaar. Those three holy shields were made to oppose the rogue fiends of the Shoon age. They are not part of Hilather's set and contain no bound fiends.
Also known as
- Demonshield
- the Demonshields
- thirteen Demonshields
- Hilather's Demonshields