Lore
Shoon Imperium
The dynasty behind Hilather’s Demonshields
An empire that ruled Calimshan and Tethyr from Shoonach between 27 and 450 DR, sustained by slavery, conquest, and the magic of fourteen spellcasting qysars.
General description
The Shoon rulers used political murder, slave labor, military expansion, and dark magic to maintain their empire. Their commission of Hilather’s thirteen Demonshields made bound fiends instruments of imperial war. The dynasty fell, but its surviving magical prisons remained dangerous.
Reference details
- Period
- 27–450 DR
- Capital
- Shoonach
- Realms
- Calimshan
- Tethyr
- Rulers
- Fourteen spellcasting qysars
The rise of the dynasty
Syl-Pasha Akkabar Shoon engineered political assassinations across Calimshan and Tethyr to prepare his dynasty’s rise. In 27 DR, his great-great-grandson Amahl Shoon III crowned himself Qysar Amahl Shoon III and united the two realms under a single empire ruled from Shoonach. Qysar was the imperial title. Fourteen spellcasting rulers held the throne over the following four centuries.
Hilather’s commission in 128 DR
Under Qysar Amahl Shoon IV, the imperial bureaucracy sought a secure way to bind fiends to military officers and slave-kings called mameluks. In 128 DR, the Year of the Addled Arcanist, the court hired Hilather, a Raurinese arcanist later known as Halaster Blackcloak. From an isolated tower in Torsil near Beregost, he developed a process for binding fiends inside diamond-shaped shields made with an alloy of arjale and tantulhor. He delivered thirteen Demonshields and vanished with his payment.
Deployment and countermeasures
Twelve Demonshields went to high-ranking mameluks, who used the imprisoned fiends as frontline shock troops across the Calishar Emirates. Kuraltaar, the thirteenth, remained in the royal vaults beneath the Imperial Mount of Shoonach for court mages to inspect. The church of Anachtyr, also known as Tyr, answered the raids by forging Kimeltaar, Naelotaar, and Dizeltaar. Paladins used these three Demonsbane shields to slay fiends and defend commoners. They were holy counter-relics, not additional fiend-prisons.
Kuraltaar and the fall of Shoonach
In 371 DR, Qysara Shaani gave Kuraltaar to the blue dragon Iryklathagra, called Sharpfangs, as part of a century-tribute. In 450 DR, Prince Strohm I of Tethyr slew Emperor Amahl VII, triggering the Great Fires of Shoonach that destroyed the imperial court. Kuraltaar had already left the city and is believed to survive in the dragon’s mountain hoard.
What this means for adventurers
The destruction of the Shoon court did not free the fiends imprisoned in its surviving shields. A genuine Demonshield must be treated as an occupied prison: breaking it releases its captive. In Adventure 007, Mordas has made a new shield rather than recovered one of the thirteen. It contains no fiend, and his incomplete reconstruction cannot make it a functioning prison. Its familiar outline is evidence of what he is attempting, not proof that he has succeeded.
Adventure appearances
Adventure 007
At High Hedge, Thalantyr explains the Shoon commission, the distinction between Demonshields and Demonsbane shields, and why the surviving relics remain dangerous.
Also known as
- Shoon dynasty
- Shoon Empire