Sheahlin are island dwellers, born to be warriors, city states scattered throughout islands with their
own identities. The warrior born citizens of Dera from birth are brought up by surrogate mothers,
the nation accepting them as children of the state, not of one person and they are brought up
in schools until their eleventh birthday where the male children enter the Tuon, the warrior school
where they are tutored in the warrior arts including a one month trial where they are sent
into the wild clad in a ragged wolf skin and armed with only a spear. It is a harsh trial from
which many never return, though they are considered the weaker and are not mourned.
Those who do return continue their schooling in the Tuon where they are segregated into classes
of sixty, taught weapon and survival skills and more importantly the discipline of the Axumis,
the unit of battle with its combined archery, spear and shield assault and defence mechanism.
The unit first assaults its enemy with arrows to raise shields, then spears to weigh down
the shields, then the short spear with its three cutting edges used in conunction with shields
to smash through the host of the enemy. The difference in the Holorian and Sheahlin military
machine is that the Holorians would not throw weight behind the foremost shield wall and
punch through but would advance and hold their enemy on the shield wall, resisting its push but
not advancing whilst from behind the spearmen and archers would rain hell upon them.
Then the wall would advance a few feet at a time, grinding the enemy on a broad front rather
than a short punch through. The Sheahlin practiced the latter as they simply did not field
the weight of numbers to enable them to present a broad front assault, also that they had
greater strength than the Holorians. The Holorians therefore developed the Roman system, shield
and sword the Sheahlin the norse shield wall which would have its final outing as the Scottish chiltron.
The Holorian and Sheahlin military never met in out and out warfare. Any analysis of such a battle is pure conjecture. If they had met on equal terms the Sheahlin would have likely overcome them simply by strength - there being
marked racial differences in height, power and stamina. Though the Holorians had traces of sheahlin blood. They had mingled with the Sheahlin when there were trade links with the Eastern Empire and in latter years these traits had strengthened rather than faded.

Hope this helps too.

Who are the Druitha? They are warriors of the Sheahlin, lords of their people who’s purpose is to hunt down the enemy and to destroy them, to take the war to the enemy and so find a way to relieve the assault on their homelands. They live for hundreds of years, most do not trust them. They are also sent to bring to the homeland those who were scattered when their homelands were first ruined. Through the skein of the lives of Men occasionally they are reborn and as they age and become markedly different so the Druitha offer them a place in the ships to the north, ships that sail from Astaroth. They were once widely scattered throughout the Lands, with settlements as far south as Carnath Sula at the crossing between the wild south and the northern world. They maintain a few harbours for the forgotten children as they call those who were lost, when the Druitha can bring them to these harbours boats sail north to Tharngul.

Raudafel is Druitha, he was for many years at Dargor Weald and Celes Tagrim with many of his soldiers behind the lines of the enemy and burning crops, assaulting their columns and causing mischief to delay the building of the endless assaults on Tharngul. When the Holorians crossed the sea Raudafel went south and went amongst them to understand their purpose and to ensure, along with many of his kind, that the Great Enemy did not send their own emissaries to turn the Holorians to evil. It was only a partially succesful endeavour. The enemy could not at that time fight upon two fronts, the North and the South and used subterfuge and guile to guide the Holorians to expand their Empire southwards where they met the Karith and other great tribes who for hundreds of years consumed the Empires efforts until Valisarius pushed the borders to the north, taking both Farinor and Suverra. This put fear into the Enemy for the first time and the enemy began to use the agents and spies it had cultivated within the Empire expending a massive effort to create decay from within. Indeed the Enemy had been largely succesful in its placing of agents; if not directly controlling some of the Consulori then buying them with dreams of power and wealth.

Valisarius however was a wiser man than the Enemy gave credit to and also he was assisted by the Druitha who had opened their purpose to him and thereby gained his trust. As Valisarius began his purges of the Consulori and the curtailing of their powers the Enemy was almost forced to open war that would have doubtless ruined the Empire but also left the Enemy vulnerable to a counter thrust by the Sheahlin who might have retaken vast swathes of the lands they had lost and perhaps even managed victory. But the agents of the enemy were again abroad and this time the Druitha were their target. Those Druitha who were abroad in the Western Empire were hunted and exposed as magicians and wizards who’s mutterings and spells were a threat to the Holorians whose fear of the unknown and so far barbarous West raised in them an unhealthy desire to maintain racial purity for their own survival. Some Druitha were murdered, others fled and it is a tribute to the cunning of the Enemy that the Druitha were located at all; many had settled in the Empire and left families who were equally punished or at worst exterminated by the agents of the Enemy. However Valisarius was no fool, nor was he idle during these times, though he was absent from the Middenstal and unbeknown to even his closest family and friends was not even within the borders of the Empire, but at Tharngul planning an alliance between the Holorians and the Sheahlin. There is no doubt whatsoever that a man as powerful as Valisarius would have turned the opinions of his people towards respect for the people whose lands they had settled and in seeing the strength of the Sheahlin, who were after all the sires of the Holorian race, to accept them as absolute equals and allies in a struggle greater than the petty and irrational fears that had so far consumed them. Valisarius returned to Astaroth but his company was ambushed in the mountains as they rode for home. Valisarius is known to have escaped to Astaroth but gravely wounded died there, along with all hopes of alliance.

This heralded a succession of weak, ineffective and often incompetent Emperors who were beyond the guidance of the Druitha and wholly dependent upon the support of the Consulori. The Enemy relented for a time, allowing the Empire to destroy itself from within as Civil War led to the destruction of the northern provinces of Farinor and Suverra that had been the greatest threat to the Enemy. Indeed their misrule led to one of the most abhorrent occurances that saw the Eastern and Western Empires nearly completely sundered and certainly placed both in a position of susceptibility that years later would cost the lives of hundreds of thousands. Barbarians who had allied themselves with the so called loyal Alscoria of the south were given not only lands to settle within Farinor and Suverra but lordship of Suverra where thousands of Holorians, now named as enemies of the Empire, were treated appalingly by their new masters. The defeated Alscoria were disbanded, their officers slaughtered, the soldiers stripped of their weapons and armour and the cities and towns burned or turned into ruins. It was an incredible reversal of fortune and political and social acceptability that Holorians, normally so proud of their blood line, would allow barbarians to rule over those of so called pure blood, but it suited the Consulori excellently for it instilled fear in every man, woman and child no matter how high born. Those who opposed the Empire and were defeated, would receive no mercy. The Enemy were close to achieving their victory. This, as has been discussed briefly, left a divided Empire. The influence of the Eastern Empire over that of the West was diminishing and with a believed stable border to the North and a threat only from the Karith and tribes to the south the Western Empire licked its wounds that continued to fester. The Enemy could now turn their attentions to the Sheahlin yet again.

The assault on the islands of Deha and Patara began in year 304 of the Ivth Era. Fireships entered the harbour at Celleva, destroying dozens of longships and enabling tens of thousands of Skaya to swarm ashore unhindered other than by a few Sheahlin warships that indeed inflicted terrible losses on the Enemy before they were sunk or burned. Deha lasted four months and the straits of Patara which were passable on foot during slack of tide could be held for two and a half weeks only and allowing the Sheahlin to withdraw the majority of their people to Surem by boat. Surem proved a much harder nut to crack and left thousands of the enemy dead in the sea and the beaches of many of the islands stained red and scattered by diseased remains. With the loss of Deha and Petara the enemy no longer feared that the Sheahlin could reach the mainland in force, coupled with the loss of many hundreds of Sheahlin warriors and leaders. The enemy despite its huge losses had barely expended any of its strength at all and allowed the Vandur to position three colossal armies against Tharngul and thus pin down the northern border indefinately, for the Skaya and the other servants of the Enemy bred much faster than the Sheahlin were apt to do. Now the Enemy could consider the Western Empire. For too long the Vandur had used all manner of subtleties in subduing the Holorians, and had come to accept that such Men would never ally themselves with beasts such as the Skaya, or any servants of the Vandur once they learned the Vandurs true origins and form. The time had therefore come to utterly destroy the Holorian presence in the West and to bring North the Karith and such barbarians who had already proven themselves more than willing to march under the banners of the Vandur but who were actually being soundly defeated by the Holorians. So it was that one of the Vandur returned to Higrathon, the once mighty citadel of their kind that was now a province of the Western Empire and named Andeburg in the Sarach tongue. Andeburg would be easy enough to cleanse. The Vandur, Skalthas had long since entered Andeburg and taken up abode beneath the mountains in the vast cavernous depths of the old citadel that to the Imperials was only a shadow haunted ruin in the confluence of the Barrier Mountains and the sickle of peaks that formed Andeburgs western and northern wall. Beneath those ruins however the Vandur could breed their soldiers, feeding them with captives from the wilds of Faranor where men were still very numerous and bringing them into Andeburg through the great marshes that no nation or people dwelled within or observed and via the secret tunnels that riddled the western mountains. Gradually the province became a foul place to reside in. Dreams plagued its people and eerie sounds haunted the mountains as the caverns beneath them were quietly and secretly populated and opened again. Had the Empire only known it, an army was being raised under the feet of the people of Andeburg. When the time came to cleanse the province the Enemy met its first setback. One of the greatest weapons of the Vandur was the sickness that could be unleashed upon men. It was limited by range, in that it was passed quickly but died equally swiftly after infecting its victims, though its victims would remain in the foul, wild and cannibalistic state that it left them in after a period of waking coma. It could not be passed by any other means than the range of the vapour exhaled by the Vandur and that was limited by weather, being more potent in heat and the wind. However, the Holorians were immune to it, but this was not known to the Vandur until it was unleashed within the confines of Andeburg. The Sarach, being born to the Western lands, were quickly infected and the sickness spread almost to the River Viknoy before the evil vapour died. Hundreds of its victims lived long enough to cross the river and bring terror to those dwelling beyond it, whilst the Holorians within Andeburg were hunted by Skaya, emerging briefly and being under strict orders not to be seen by the living unless it was prior to bringing them death. The success of the sickness enabled the Vandur to populate the mountains of Andeburg and to open the Valdensaga, the great gate in the Northern Mountains through which thousands of slaves passed to work the fields to feed the Skaya or to feed the Skaya with the meat from their own bodies. Thus both within Andeburg and throughout the lands to the North the Vandur raised an army of tens upon tens of thousands and drew their plans against the Empire, knowing now that although the Sarach could be again ruined by the sickness that it would be force of arms that would drive the Holorians from the West.

Meantime the Sheahlin were again under occasional though not very determined assault, merely to keep them from interfering as their last hope of alliance and aid was purged from the West and the way open for their final destruction. During this time the Druitha were most actively hunted by the Enemy. Many were found and overcome in the wild, or pursued far from where they could have any influence. Astaroth remained a haven for them, the home of Vilmiud, it was too powerful for the Vandur to assault by any means other than open war, though that time was shortly to come. Raudafel discovered the emergence of the sickness in Andeburg but knowing nothing of its true origin and continually thwarted in his efforts to reach Andeburg by the enemies servants did not arrive in the North Riding until the invasion was almost unleashed. Indeed he was still in Andeburg when the Vandur sent their armies across the Viknoy and brought them by ship and overland from the south and east. Rusika fared little better, being almost captured in Larandor and hiding for many months in the vastness of the forest, ever hunted, ever pursued until finally she crossed Faranor arriving at the mouth of the River Efrim as Vilmiud, Aewulf and Vanin sailed north and escaping in the nick of time as her pursuers closed in. This was a time of fear for the Sheahlin, with the Druitha all but destroyed and being under siege day and night. The Empire however had its own struggle to contend with and one that would ultimately cost it the greatest price, its very existence.

In considering the purposes of the Druitha it is crucial to look at their beginnings. Were they gods? Were they something akin to the Vandur? They indeed shared many similar powers and were in some cases equally ageless. The Druitha were not one kind of man or woman. They did not look similar and in many cases looked entirely different. They shared the same racial traits in that they were tall, lithe of limb and blue eyed. At the peak of the power of the Sheahlin, who never professed to own an Empire or to be lords amongst men, their influence was felt as far south as Massinia where they had great friendship with its line of Kings until the emergence of the Holorians. It is said that they also learned much from the Massinians.

What I am curious is not so much the history, now, it's the nature of the people. Both Druitha and Sheahlin. For instance, down to the basics, the greeks were philosophers, the romans politicians and a strong military force, the norse were fearless warriors. The greeks like pillars, the romans liked similar things to the greeks, the norse liked utilitarian architecture.

I guess what I am saying is I am not quite sure how to portray them in a visual style, along with personality.

How do you fancy doing it? When I looked at the Holorians, when I was making up a people I first wondered who they would become, then I traced their architecture back to the earliest influence, then kind of merged the two. I thought, if the Holorians would become the Greeks and Romans, who were their influences. It helped a lot as I the course I was doing as part of my classical studies degree was "ancient and medieval cites and technology". Im now doing exploring the classical world so again its feeding nicely into the Holorians (anyway I digress).

I decided to base Holorian architecture on the greek and roman and the military on a mix of Roman/Persian/Spartan

Its all about tracing things as far back as possible, then coming up with a totally fantasy idea of where those ideas might have sprung from, a great civilisation that died out leaving its traces and myths from which the rebirth resulted in.....what you researched.

(Digression first.) I'm actually doing the exact opposite thing as another project. I'm working on a short novel about basically, what the world would be like now, or in a few years, had the norse conquered the world.

I picture these guys evolving in to three groups about, the Danes, the Picts/Woads, and the Gauls. Unfortunately, there is not a lot known about either of those three.

I guess it's up to my imagination really. The best I can do so far to describe the complex image I have in my head of these people is if you mixed the physical features of tolkien's elves with the tactical nature of the romans, added the norse strength and some of their culture and then added some of the greatest bards and druids and wise men and mixed that all together.

The Druitha I think I understand pretty well. I think the Shealhin will just evolve as I begin creating them.

Makes sense. I posted in the chat about Cheydinhal. I think that could be adapted actually, you might have a point there. I frequently eat my words.

It would be good to give the Cheydinhal building set a makeover for the Sheahlin, blend them with some lower class and custom stuff, some Bruma etc. I'm sure you will evolve them nicely.

OK, this is what I had in mind and it fits very well with the mix of Cheydinhal and Bruma, however those models you posted would look really nice for what I'm going for here.

Edit: Durr! Forgot to post the image.



I know it's not all that nice looking but I tried to portray everything I thought should be in there.

Wouldnt be hard to knock up a pro forma model for that. Might be an idea to look at those models, they are quite high poly some of them but we wont really be aimin for any big cities will we? Small towns wouldnt be too cruel on the frame rate.

This is what I have so far for the Sheahlin. I have the skills, attributes and look down, but what I am missing are all the racial spells and resistances and whatnot and blue eyes. Blue eyes are not an option in NPC creation so I'm not sure how I'm gonna pull that one off... tell me what you think so far.

I think that blue eyes are default.

Oh then in that case I think it's fine.

Any ideas for the resistances and spells and whatnot, or are we gonna skip those as magic is not common place?

I think we can go with them. Hopefully we can do a bit of a magic overhaul but for the time being, I would go with something likely for such people, considering the climate, that they spent so long underground, their closeness to the Vandur etc. What do you think would be appropriate?

Resist to cold I think, mana boost maybe..., shield spell they can cast on themselves?

Yep, good ones.