"Not many of my people knew what a Shadohzan was. You mention the name to a 100 individuals & maybe ONE of them will know what you're talking about; the rest will draw a blank. They're the stuff of legends, really, but as we were about to find out, are very, VERY real.
From what my research on the subject provided, they've been to this dimension before; once centuries before the 1st slaurian walked the planet (before even the Ancient ones were around) & again 2,000 years ago. That last time they almost took over...almost. Some warriors/adventurers managed to push them back to an enclosed valley in the northern region of the planet before they were quickly shut back into their home dimension. The warriors thought they won, but the Shadohzan bidded their time & waited...for just the right moment to strike again.
The third time was finally the charm & their leader, Zzgraxxius, led his legions to storm the planet.
The people didn't know what hit them; it was a masacare. The shadohzan gained control over HALF the planet in less then 90 days. The rest fell quickly over a vail of darkness that barely anyone managed to escape...except for me.
My family...wasn't quite so lucky. I wasn't there for them, too wrapped up in my research on the shadohzan to even visit them routinely anymore. When I tried to go to their home & see if maybe they'd already gotten away, left a note for me saying where to meet them, the entire town was just enveloped in that shadow muck. I was about to leave the area when a Shadohzan scout saw me, thought I'd be easy pickins all by my self. That was his first mistake. The fight wasn't pretty, I lost at least 5 years off my life before it was over...and my right eye. Blinded I stumbled around, trying to get to my cruiser, but I fell down a hole & hit my head. Apparently I stumbled across an old Ston'emm underground tunnel entrance, that's where I met Sta'lagg of Granite.
His race built the tunnel systems eons ago, & they kept fixing them as the planet shifted over time. But that was then...nowadays, very few of them ston'emms are still alive- in all my years I've only seen one twice; Sta'lagg is the second.
I came outta it inside his hideout where he'd tended my wounds. There he showed me all the missing pieces to the shadohzan puzzle; how they lived, fed & more importantly- how they DIED. I got my new right eye from him (the eye of one of his people's fallen rock shamans that enabled me to see a shadohzan even when hiding in complete darkness), my shadohzan-proof armor & my light flash rifle, both 100% ston'emm crafted over 2,000 years ago. He even had a star ship, fueled by pow'arr crystals & built outta a meteorite, that we were going to escape with...'cept only I did.
Sta'lagg pushed me inside as we heard the shadohzan worming their into his hideout, & sacrificed himself so that I could get away. I begged him to get inside, but he refused. He'd almost run outta food anyways & then he said to me 'I've lived a LONG life...all my kind are either lost now, or the sand in the deserts. Stop the shadohzan from taking another world, so that all of this was not for nothing..'. And after that..he was gone.
That was the last time I stood on Slauria, my homeworld. As the stone ship left the planet, I saw the vail of shadohzan darkness covering it like a blanket. My home...my WORLD was gone. Only I was left.
After that point, I didn't see much reason to go by my real name anymore; no one was left who'd even know what it means, so I took the name of my world as my own. So that every shadohzan piece of wretch I kill knows what planet I was from, that we aren't all gone, that there's still ONE of us left out here fighting them.
They're ALL gonna pay with their lives for what they did to my world...for what they took from ME.
End Entry..."
