Sharn

The sharns were mysterious, tripartite aberrations that embodied magical chaos. They were also called shiftshades, blackclaws, simmershadows, skulkingdeaths, and fhaorn'quessir.

Description
Sharns had two physical forms. Their first form was their natural one, the form they were in most often. It was as a slimy, cold pseudo-fluid. With a thought they were capable of assuming their second, more commonly encountered form. This second form was of a large body&mdash;up to tall and weighing &mdash;shaped like a teardrop with amorphous, hairless, and oily black flesh surrounded by a nimbus of purple light. Their massive black and silver bodies were lit by continual magical flares. They each had three huge, eyeless eel-like heads which only consisted of two nostrils and a large mouth with sharp fangs dripping saliva. All three heads were connected to a single 'trunk'. Despite their ungainly form, sharns were very quick, and appeared at all times like they were under the effects of a haste spell.

The main distinguishing physical feature of a sharn was their unique and usual arms. They had three arms, each starting as a solid trunk that ended in a joint. From each joint grew three arms that looked like a humanoids forearm. Each of these forearms were covered in small eyes. Each forearm ended in a hand that also looked humanoid.

Abilities
Sharns were capable of naturally creating hexagonal portals that acted as windows between themselves and other points in space nearby. The sharn could see and even reach through these windows, although others could not reach back, and the portals could move at the sharn's command. They could create up to six such portals at a time.

Sharns were immune to all charm, enchantment and illusion-based affects and spells. If their minds were linked to that of another creature, they could psionically muddle the other creatures mind, similar to a feeblemind spell. They were also immune to any spell that caused the target to change shape, in fact sharns themselves were unable to shapeshift even if they tried, such as with the polymorph spell. Peculiarly, it was also impossible for other creatures to polymorph into the shape of a sharn.

All sharn were able to cast spells but a small percentage of sharns were very powerful spellcasters. Every sharn could cast both arcane and divine spells. For divine spells, sharns had access to the chaos, death, knowledge, luck, magic, protection, travel and trickery domains. Sharn used magic differently than most creatures. With the sharn, spells were used innately rather than through memorization and did not require the use of foci, material, somatic or verbal components. If a spell cast by a sharn interacted with the phaerimm spells life drain or magic drain, the resulting reaction caused the nearby terrain to become drastically altered.

Sharns could both activate and detect earth nodes. They had the ability to slowly regenerate physical injuries.

Following the events of the Spellplague, many sharns became plaguechanged and could wield plaguefire.

Personality
Sharn motives and reasoning often seemed inscrutable to most people. An individual sharn was an amalgamation of personalities and awarenesses, which contributed to their chaotic natures. When they spoke, it was with different voices from each of their three mouths.

Combat
A sharn could wield up to nine weapons simultaneously. They were naturally skilled in the use of nearly all melee weapons. If lacking a weapon, a sharn attacked an opponent with sharp claws. They positioned their hexagonal portals to strike at opponents from multiple directions, or to cast spells at targets they might not otherwise have been able to see.

Society
As creatures highly sensitive to magical resonances, the sharn regarded themselves as keepers and protectors of the Weave, and would hunt down those they believed abused it.

The sharns weren't very numerous, yet it was believed that they could rule all of Faerûn if that had interested them. Their society housed a lot of political argument and social intrigue, and their power struggles, which were typically based on ideological conflicts, were near-constant. Furthermore, the sharns were noted to spend the majority of their time engaged in internal debates and experiments, with only younger sharns occasionally taking an interest in the affairs of mortals. Sharns communicated with each other using short-range mass telepathy.

Sharns lived in large clans, called "pools" after the fact that they often dwelt in large pools of amorphous black goo into which their bodies could transform. Each clan was ruled by a council, and sharns of the same clan shared a communal consciousness but retained individual intelligence. Each sharn clan worshiped a different deity. Clans have been known to worship elven, human and goblin deities. The clan that inhabited Undermountain worshiped the Drowned Queen, who was believed to be a powerful aboleth. Sharn clans usually avoided becoming involved in the affairs of other creatures who lived nearby.

Sharns loathed the phaerimm.

Ecology
An area of the Underdark called the Sharnlands was home to a large number of clans, but due to their interests in planar travel and manipulating environments with magic, sharns could live anywhere they pleased. They were most often encountered in subterranean environments, such as in Undermountain. It was claimed that sharn pools were in fact all interconnected via a shared demiplane, which itself was connected to most other planes of existence.

Sharns were omnivores and their diet mainly consisted of animals, lichens, roots and plants. They could relax different aspects of their personalities in order to let them rest, and as a result, an individual sharn never needed to sleep.

Sharns were asexual. It was once thought that they reproduced via budding such that when they reached a certain age, they created a bud from their own cells which developed into a young sharn resembling the parent. The reality was that sharns reproduced via assimilation of another creature. An individual&mdash;usually but not always a willing participant&mdash;was subsumed by a serpentine sharn symbiote, which transformed the individual into a sharn. The assimilated creature lost all their own individuality, and the process was irreversible except for very rare and specific circumstances. Sharns were seemingly immortal, although they grew more powerful as they grew older and elder sharns eventually disappeared for unknown reasons.

Unlike most creatures, sharns lacked internal organs, as well as a circulatory and nervous system. Due to a lack of lungs, this allowed the sharn to function normally in airless environments.

Origins
The first sharns were the surviving citizens of the ancient dark elf and wood elf realm known as Miyeritar. Aryvandaaran historians discovered a familial link between the family of their ruler, Coronal Ivósaar Vyshaan, and the Olrythii, the ruling house of Miyeritar. Circa, the Vyshaanti began negotiating to annex Miyeritar peacefully, but the Miyeritaari resisted. Around, the powerful sun elf realm Aryvandaar began raiding along Miyeritar's borders and interfering with its trade routes, and around Aryvandaar mounted an all-out invasion of Miyeritar, thus beginning the First Crown War. Circa Aryvandaaran forces had occupied Miyeritar, and by, while the Second Crown War was raging between Ilythiir, Thearnytaar, Eiellûr, Syòrpiir, and Orishaar, Aryvandaar had conquered Miyeritar, ending the First Crown War.

Dark and wood elf clans in Miyeritar continued to resist Aryvandaar, then called the Vyshaantar Empire, and around, during the Third Crown War, Vyshaan high mages produced a terrible magical storm called the Dark Disaster, or the Killing Storms, that hung over Miyeritar for months and laid waste to it, turning it into an infertile wasteland that became known as the High Moor. The fell magic proceeded unopposed because of a Vyshaantar assassination campaign that had killed many Miyeritaari high mages in the months before.

Three grand mages of Miyeritar—T'karon, Hamra, and Alunor—;who would become known as the Three Watchers, devised the means to become sharns—using the Ritual of Myriad —;and transformed themselves into sharns along with about eighty citizens of Miyeritar, which included elves, dwarves, humans, and the guards and scouts of Miyeritar, the centaurs. It was unclear whether the transformation was intentional—in order to preserve their civilization in the hopes that it would one day rise again —or if the ritual had been intended to defeat the Dark Disaster, but went wildly wrong. Regardless, these sharns melted together into black goo and drained into the lands beneath the surface where they slumbered for millenia in the first sharn pools.

The elves of Uvaeren also later became sharns. In Mirtul of the, the members of the Pentad Retreat also became sharns after the traitorous precept, the vampire wizard Palron Kaeth, used the orcs of the Everhorde to attack their hidden enclave. Survivors of other fallen civilizations had also become sharns over the years, notably from such places as Ammarindar, Ascalhorn, Eaerlann, and Netheril.

"Through us your civilization can endure."

- A sharn

War with the Phaerimm
The original sharn from Miyeritar were reawakened by the Shattering of. They found themselves with an instinctual hatred of magical abuses—like the Dark Disaster or Shattering—burned into their minds, leading them to act as self-appointed custodians of the Weave. They hunted down those who would evoke great magical disasters, and when unable to stop them, would preserve some of the victims as fellow sharns.

In the, their first recorded clash with the phaerimms occurred after the phaerimms' use of lifedraining magics caught the sharns' attention. The ensuing war between the two mighty magical races changed the physical face of Toril, leveling mountains and incinerating forests. In the, the sharns finally imprisoned the phaerimms behind the Sharn Wall beneath Anauroch, in the Buried Realms, which the phaerimms called the Phaerlin.

The 14 Century DR
By the mid-to-late 14 century DR, most of the seemingly omnipotent elder sharns had phased out of existence, leaving the remaining ones without their critical guidance.

The sharns collected items of Miyeritar scattered all across Faerûn for a high magic ritual that would restore the high magic city of Faer'tel'miir, an ancient city of Miyeritar that was located on what is now the High Moor. The last time the sharns had acted with such purpose was when they constructed the Sharn Wall around the phaerimms. Usually, magical fields or internal conflicts among their collective mind made them act unpredictably or madly, disruptiing their efforts.

On the Feast of the Moon in the, the malignant magic of the Killing Storms was cleansed from the area (the entire High Moor was gradually being cleansed of the corruptive magic, which would take centuries to conclude ), and the Library City of Miyeritar, Faer'tel'miir was restored and renamed Rhymanthiin, the Hidden City of Hope, through a High Magic Ritual. Khelben "Blackstaff" Arunsun and Ualair sacrificed their lives to restore Rhymanthiin, and their spirits went to Arvandor, the elven heaven. Most of the sharns shed their skins, which become a part of the walls of the city, and returned to their original forms.

Some sharns of Miyeritar choose to remain sharns, for they knew that they would become drow if they relinquished their sharn forms (for they were still subject to Corellon's curse laid upon the dark elves). They remained Rhymanthiin's defenders and worked against corrupt magic in the Realms. They could form from any wall or street of the city to apprehend malefactors due to the sharnstuff woven into the city. All former sharns and those who partook in the ritual were granted a home in the city. The new Rhymanthiin served as a center for magic, knowledge, lore, and the unity of different races, and those with malice in their hearts would not find their way there.

The 15 Century DR
As creatures closely tied to magic, the Spellplague quickly infected nearly all sharns, although those who dedicated themselves to Rhymanthiin were unaffected. The Plague turned the sharns' skin a metallic blue, with blue plaguefire replaced the purple flares that had once adorned their bodies, while the plaguechanged pools they called home glowed blue and bubbled violently. Those infected did not see this as a curse or disease, however, rather they viewed the Spellplague as the last remains of the Weave that they had struggled to protect for millenia, and thus viewed spreading the Spellplague to be their duty. They soon became closely associated with the Order of Blue Flame, which revered them as avatars of the Spellplague itself, Those sharns who worked with the Order of Blue Fire generally did so based purely on chaotic whims, and their commandments to the cultists tended to be confusing if not irrational. A number of sharns began residing in the Plaguewrought Land near to the Order's base of operations in Ormpetarr.

As of the 1470s DR, the sharn were actively exploring the plaguelands of Halruaa, especially the ruins of Halarahh in search of Zalathorm's Clockwork Sceptre. Just as they had transformed past survivors of magical disasters into fellow sharn, so too had they assimilated many remaining Halruaans.

Appearances

 * Comics
 * The Grand Tour
 * Novels
 * Blackstaff • The Sorcerer