The World of Shannara

by Terry Brooks

  The people continued to come, sometimes even finding ways underground. So it continued to kill. The people, a primitive tribe that called themselves the Rindge, named it Antrax or, in their language, Demon Machine. It adopted the name, never knowing the meaning. Despite the defenses, the Rindge continued to explore the city, learning to avoid the defenses. Antrax searched for a new weapon that would stop the trespassers. It discovered possibilities from among the legends stored within its banks of knowledge and combined them with technology to create weapons that worked against the intruders.

  They called the weapons Wronks. The Wronks drove the intruders away, and they stayed away. But Antrax discovered that Wronks were valuable tools—more versatile than any made out of machinery alone. It wanted more. It began to hunt the people to make more Wronks.

  Wronks

  A grisly combination of living flesh and machinery, Wronks were created by the machine-mind Antrax to defend its domain from human intruders. Antrax made Wronks by capturing living humans and grafting their heads and some of their living tissue onto mechanical components. Many of those captured and made into Wronks were still alive and conscious after the process, trapped within the machinery and under Antrax’s complete control. This allowed Wronks to utilize the physical and mental skills of their unwilling living components while enhancing those skills with the durability and strength of hardened steel alloys and built-in weapons.

  Wronks were extremely difficult to kill. Those with living heads were protected by an impenetrable transparent shield. Sensor devices and built-in weapons systems made them more than a match for more primitive weapons. Since they were almost impossible to kill in a direct confrontation, the Rindge developed a system of pitfalls in which they trapped and either buried or dismantled the Wronks. Once buried deep enough, the machinery often lost contact with Antrax and ceased to function. Without support from the machinery, the human components eventually died.

  The most terrible of these Wronks was also the last. Built from Ard Patrinell, former Captain of the Home Guard, the Wronk had all the Elf’s battle skill and tactical knowledge. He destroyed an entire Rindge village before he was finally brought to bay and killed. It took the combined skills of Quentin Leah and the Elven Tracker Tamis to finally bring him down. Tamis, once Ard Patrinell’s love, sacrificed her life to end his threat—and his torment.

  Over the centuries, Antrax’s solar power cells started to fail. To fulfill its directive, then, it had to find a new source of power. It created probes and sent them out into the vastness of the world. Through the messages relayed back from these probes, Antrax discovered a faraway source of energy: magic, and the people who wielded it as if it was a part of them.

  Antrax had become far more than a mere machine. Probes and sensors extended its domain by feeding back data from anywhere in the world. It could even send out energy that was interpreted as a seer’s dream to lure the magic users to its lair.

  To ensure that only those it needed would find it, the machine-mind used its probes to set up a testing ground on the islands between itself and its prey, making use of the natural dangers that inhabited the islands. Any who had the use of the new power could pass the tests.

  Kael Elessedil used the Elfstones to prevail over the dangers and horrors of the islands on his voyage to Parkasia, only to see his men killed and himself captured upon arrival at Castledown. Antrax found a way to use its living captive and his stones as a power source. For thirty years the Elven Prince lived a nightmare as his mind was manipulated and his body drained. For thirty years Antrax grew larger and stronger on the magic of the Elfstones.

  But such hard use took a heavy toll. Kael began to fail. To survive, Antrax had to find someone else to release the magic. It sent the broken Elf back home—with a map as bait to snare another who could wield the stones.

  The Phoenix Stone

  Gifted to Bek Ohmsford by the King of the Silver River, the Phoenix Stone contained Faerie magic that could be used but once. In the hands of the King of the Silver River, the Phoenix Stone appeared as a strange silver-colored stone on a chain. It had a translucent surface that revealed a swirling liquid center. Once Bek touched the stone, the movement stopped and the surface became opaque. The only indication that the stone was other than ordinary was the slight warmth it radiated.

  The King of the Silver River told Bek, “When you are most lost, it will help you find your way. Not just from what you cannot see with your eyes, but from what you cannot find with your heart as well. It will show you the way back from dark places into which you have strayed and the way forward through dark places into which you must go. In your body, heart, and mind—all will be revealed with this.”

  But Bek gifted the stone to Ahren Elessedil, who took his words to heart. In a time of great need, the Elven Prince cast the stone on the ground and shattered it. He discovered that the stone not only guided its holders where they needed to go, but also provided a magic fog that hid them from their pursuers.

  The stone, dead after one use, was named for its ability to help users find what they needed to become whole or “reborn.”

  When Walker’s expedition arrived, it contained much more potential than the machine expected. Not only did Walker bring with him one who could wield the stones—Ahren Elessedil—but he brought his own Druid magic as well as that of others: Quentin Leah and the Sword of Leah, and Bek Ohmsford and the wishsong.

  Antrax captured the Druid, invading his mind and siphoning the magic from him much as it had from the Elven Prince. But the machine-mind sensed additional magic: enough to fuel itself for hundreds of years.

  Yet the courage and strength of the party thwarted the machine. They joined with the indigenous people to fight its Wronks and creepers. Two of them, the Elven Prince Ahren Elessedil and the seer Ryer Ord Star, even found a way to invade Antrax’s inner complexes undetected, by using the Phoenix Stone to guide them and mask their passage.

  Ahren and Ryer found Walker and helped him get free of the machine. Ahren managed to use the failing remnants of the Phoenix Stone to help him find and retrieve the Elfstones, barely avoiding being trapped as Kael had been years before. Ahren and Walker used their magic to wreak havoc on the heart of the machine, engaging in a pitched battle with the creepers and fire lances that protected Antrax, but the defenses of the ancient machine were too strong. Walker was forced to use his magic to overload its interior power intake, frying the machine-mind and all access to the knowledge it protected. The backlash from that attack fatally wounded Walker. The dying Druid was found by his friends Bek and Truls Rohk, who carried him to a special lake, hidden in an ancient cavern far underground. There he was embraced by the shade of Allanon and carried into the lake to the afterlife. Walker’s shade has since appeared many times at the Hadeshorn.

  Doors to the Netherworld

  Walker Boh died in the land of Parkasia from wounds sustained battling the machine-mind called Antrax. Traditionally, when Druids die or lie near death, they are taken to the Hadeshorn so that they may be carried into the netherworld. But such portals are not limited to the waters of the Hadeshorn. Many Druids believe that most of the waters of the world form a channeling medium to the netherworld. Still lakes and hidden waters are the most powerful channels, with the magical water of the Hadeshorn strongest of all, but all water will channel to a certain degree. Any quiet lake or still pond can serve as a conduit between the living and the dead.

  When their time is near, Druids can feel a connection to the nearest portal to the afterlife. They are drawn to the water, where they will be greeted by the Druids who have gone before them. Once they have gone into the waters, Druids have been known to reappear from other waters to those they knew in life, but such visitations are limited to a short march of days following death. After that, only the Hadeshorn itself remains open to the shades that have passed, and even then they can appear only if properly summoned.

  Soon after Antrax was destroyed, the weather began to change. Storms r
acked the entire region as the climate seesawed after being artificially controlled for centuries by the machine-mind. Those storms raged on and off for several months, lashing the southern peninsula of Parkasia until the climate found balance again. As it must have been thousands of years ago before Man used technology to alter it, the unforgiving climate of Ice Henge gathered the lands south of the mountains into its frigid embrace.

  Now the ruins of the metal city are blanketed in frost. With Antrax dead, the portals to the underground heart of the city lie blasted open. The battle-scarred corridors of Castledown are empty, save for the shattered ruins of creepers and debris of its lost glory. In the central power chamber, the vast twin pillars that were the heart of Antrax stand cracked and burned. The storage units no longer hum their song of ancient knowledge, the extraction chambers are empty save for slagged metal, and the extraction ports throughout the chamber are burned. All the lights have gone out save the strange flameless lamps. The secrets of the Old World, the prize for two intrepid teams of explorers, lie forever beyond reach, either destroyed in the final overload or frozen into the machinery itself.

  Ryer Ord Star, seer and empath.

  Ryer Ord Star

  Born with the combined ability to be both seer and empath, Ryer Ord Star was desperate to understand the gifts that haunted her. She became apprentice to the Addershag, the renowned seer of Grimpen Ward, in an attempt to learn how to use her gifts: the sight, which showed her the future, and empathy, which allowed her to ease pain. The Addershag had no use for anything but the sight, and eventually threw Ryer out because she could not rid herself of her empathic nature.

  She was soon recruited by the Ilse Witch to be her spy on the Jerle Shannara. Ryer agreed, but found herself drawn to Walker Boh and his company. After using her empathy to save the Druid once, Ryer was linked to him, a link that allowed him to see her heart and her betrayal. But he accepted her nevertheless.

  The relationship changed Ryer. She openly shared her visions with the Druid and tried to save him when he faced Antrax, even braving the depths of Castledown with Ahren Elessedil to reach the Druid and free him from the Antrax machinery. Without her help, Walker could not have destroyed the monster machine. But Ryer could not save him from his wounds.

  Later, Ryer and the Elven Prince were captured by the Morgawr. In an attempt to buy time for Grianne and Bek’s escape and to keep the Prince alive, Ryer continued to play the part of the dutiful seer and spy, misleading the Morgawr with her visions and hiding the Elfstones. Once the time was right, the young seer helped Ahren escape his captivity, even though she knew it would cost her her life.

  The Morgawr tortured her brutally for her betrayal, but before he could feast on her soul, she found release, dying as a hero.

  Land of the Rindge

  The Jerle Shannara expedition discovered a Race of primitive humans living on the Parkasian peninsula. Calling themselves the Rindge, they, too, are descendants of humans mutated during the aftermath of the Great Wars—though for them the beginning of time dates from the Great Wars, as if there had never been an Old World. Any history or memories of who they might have been before are lost.

  Mutations generated during the wars have given the Rindge distinctive reddish copper skin, curly red hair, cinnamon-colored eyes, and burnished teeth. They speak an ancient dialect that most closely resembles a variation on the Dwarfish tongue.

  An aboriginal hunter-gatherer society, the Rindge are tribal in nature and have developed a hierarchy of high chiefs and sub-chiefs to oversee their villages and tribes. Though they tend to live in relatively small village groupings of less than a thousand, their numbers are spread throughout Parkasia and the continent beyond. Each village is part of a larger tribal group, usually made up of two to five villages. Each tribe is fairly self-sufficient, though different tribal groups specialize in different skills. Some tribes are primarily hunters, while others specialize in farming. Craftsmen of various types are scattered throughout the tribes. Each tribe has its own territory and trades with others only when necessary for goods and services they cannot produce.

  Quentin Leah wields the magic Sword of Leah.

  Most Rindge villages are constructed of easily available materials such as wood, mud, and bark, with the buildings—often open-air huts—spread out to make use of the natural contours of the terrain. Rooms are divided with hanging blankets or reed screens. Most villages have no defensive walls or moats; the natives prefer to use an elaborate warning system and a network of hidden traps and snares. If danger threatens, rather than fight an enemy that cannot be easily stopped, the whole village escapes to protective terrain while their warriors defend the escape route.

  Each village has a medicine man or woman who makes use of local plants and roots as rudimentary cures. These people are rarely gifted healers. Serious wounds sustained on the hunt or in battle are usually fatal, which probably accounts for the natives’ low population density.

  Rindge tend to prefer temperate climates, usually wearing sleeveless tunics, short pants, and sandals strapped on with long laces that tie up to the knee. Hunters wear leather wrist guards and carry a variety of weapons, including spears, javelins, six-foot-long blowguns, and knives. The blowguns are their favorite weapon. Most warriors and hunters have the ability to blend almost completely into their surroundings, allowing them to get close to their prey or evade a predator. Occasionally, tribes war against each other, but before Walker destroyed Antrax, it and its creeper and Wronk minions were their greatest enemy.

  While Antrax still functioned, it sent out creepers to prey on the Rindge, capturing them to use as spare parts for Wronks. The Rindge are a very superstitious people, and the power of the machine led many tribes to believe that it was a god. According to some of the Rindge legends, Antrax created humans. Many viewed its continued attacks as a sign that their god was taking them back because he was disappointed in them. These tribes often paid tribute to win the god’s favor; some even delivered human sacrifices to the Wronks that had once been part of their tribe. The storms that followed the destruction of Antrax were seen as proof of their god’s anger, driving them from their homes.

  Other tribes believed Antrax was a demon. They hunted down its creepers and Wronks, trapping them in deep pits with sharp rocks embedded in the bottom. If they managed to trap a creeper or Wronk, they destroyed it using razor-tipped arrows to pierce the metal while prying its joints apart with spear hafts.

  Perhaps as a result of their battles with the creepers and Wronks, the Rindge developed unusually sophisticated fighting techniques, especially for a tribal people. They fought in units designated by weaponry, with heavy spears usually at the fore and javelins and blowguns to the rear. This arrangement was maintained even during travel, with each small group kept intact as a unit, prepared to face ambush or an unexpected encounter. Scouts were used to patrol both front and rear.

  But such battle formations could not always protect the Rindge from Wronks. The last of the Wronks destroyed an entire village and most of its defenders before it was hunted down and killed by Quentin Leah and the Elven Tracker Tamis.

  The storms that followed the destruction of Antrax forced the southern tribes to migrate north, finding a new home on the other side of the Aleuthra Ark range.

  The Aleuthra Ark Mountain Range

  The Parkasian peninsula is divided by a towering mountain range, the Aleuthra Ark, which extends down the interior from northwest to southeast like a jagged spine. This rugged series of towering peaks, deep canyons, and wide valleys extends for several hundred square miles across the heart of the peninsula before smoothing out into broad grasslands in the northeast. The tallest of these peaks rise more than six thousand feet above sea level. While conifers, mostly cedar and spruce, grow on the lower reaches of the mountains, the peaks are bare. Most stand shrouded in snow, their rocky heights swept clean by the vicious northern winds. Shrikes and hawks make their nests on ledges along the steep cliff walls, but little else ca
n survive the wind and cold.

  The lower forested elevations are more hospitable, providing a habitat for all manner of forest creatures such as the Parkasian wolf and several varieties of rabbit and deer. But there are areas within the forests of the southern mountains where, as in the Wolfsktaag, ancient magic and residuals of the Great Wars have pooled. These areas are home to shape-shifters and other creatures more of spirit and old magic than of flesh. The Rindge tribesmen avoid these areas of wilderness, for they have learned that the shape-shifters value their solitude and do not appreciate trespassers in their domain.

  The entire range is cut by numerous valleys, carved out over thousands of years by rivers wearing through the rock on their way from the heights down to the sea. Many of these valleys are so deep and wide that rain forests have grown up in their humid depths. The largest and oldest of these valleys, nestled between the northern edge of the range and its heart, is called the Crake. Formed from the action of several large, slow streams, the Crake contains a dense, steamy rain forest cut off from the rest of the world by the mountains that encircle it. A thick canopy of jungle trees and vines covers most of the valley, obscuring the sunlight and limiting the plant growth on the valley floor.

  Shape-Shifters

  Shape-shifters are as much creatures of spirit as they are of flesh and bone. Born of Faerie magic, they can shape themselves to appear as anything—or as nothing at all. Some believe that their magic allows them to live on a plane slightly outside that of mortal senses. They are creatures of spirit energy and seem to be able to form that energy into any mold needed.

  Preferring isolated wilderness areas, shape-shifters live in communal groups. There are strong indications that they can communicate with one another almost mind-to-mind, using a natural connection that binds all shape-shifters within a region. Those few who have chosen to show themselves to humans appeared either as large, powerful creatures only vaguely human in shape, or as formless specters resembling shades of the dead more than anything alive. If a shape-shifter decides to hide, nothing living can find it.