Shadowqueen

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As often happens, I find her more interesting now that I’ve done the writeup — and her death scene actually gets me a little choked up. (Every time I read it, in fact.)

Though Dr. Strange indicates that Shialmar is much more powerful than he is, it’s not apparent, and I have them roughly on-par here.

Her home dimension is always referred to as “The Realm of the Shadowqueen.” It’s not given a name (Kaichek) until the OHOTMU: Mystic Arcana book in 2007. I use it throughout anyway.

Background

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Powers and Abilities

The Shadowqueen had great magical powers on par with Dr. Strange, the majority of which were derived from the N’Garai. She could:

• View events across a physical distance or across dimensional barriers.
• Fire energy bolts.
• Project magical shields.
• Call on various magical entities (such as Cyndriarr, Daveroth, and the Faltine) for power.

In personal battle with Dr. Strange she took to the skies, and became a giantess for much of the fight. Presumably that was for intimidation and durability purposes — she never used it to attack physically.

Her favored attacks appeared to be magical, yet material projectiles. These spells were powerful enough that Dr. Strange’s normal shields were not adequate protection. That forced him to use advanced counter-spells (Sorcery, in DC Heroes RPG terms) and decreasing his ability to retaliate.

Other assets

Shialmar may have had slightly superhuman strength and endurance, also presumably a result of her possession by the N’Garai. With one hand and no visible use of magic, she was able to lift a man several feet into the air, hold him, and then throw him across a room. She killed a rebel officer with a single dagger blow.

Likewise, she was also shot by an arrow without much effect. She was resistant or immune to aging, living over 1000 years without visible change.

The Shadowqueen, as ruler of her realm, had a number of servants at her disposal. Her most powerful servants included the sorcerers known as the Lords of the Golden Dragon, who themselves commanded warriors with some mystical abilities. Her Sky-slayers, elite warriors mounted on giant birds, were highly effective and feared.

One of her favored tactics was the use of a spell to turn someone into a stone gargoyle obedient to her will. The gargoyle’s stone skin protected it from most attacks, and its touch transformed others into obedient gargoyles like itself. These would transform still more of her enemies. With this single spell she could wreak exponential levels of havoc in an army in short order.

History

Roughly a thousand years ago, in the dimension of Kaichek, the Princess Shialmar was part of a rebellion against the rule of the Wizard Kings. The Wizard Kings possessed various hereditary magics that set them apart from humans. They had used these powers to rule the realm peacefully since the dawn of history.

Shialmar, her brother Jehan, and Jehan’s court magician, Vung, were the leaders of the Young Kingdoms. This was a confederation of nations which saw the Wizard Kings as tyrannical overlords. They viewed the peace of the Wizard Kings as nothing more than slavery.

Shialmar and Jehan’s hatred of the Wizard-Kings was intensified by the murder of their parents. These had been slain by a Kyrii demon believed to be summoned and controlled by the Wizard Kings.

Foreign military advisers

But after generations of peace, the humans of Kaichek knew little of the arts of war. The confederation therefore had Vung use his magics to draw a supreme warrior from another dimension to lead them in their struggle. Using a mystical Black Mirror, they summoned a Tibetan monk named Kan to aid them.

Kan was a monk of a mystical order and a man of many talents. He was a mystic, a teacher, a healer, and at need, a mighty warrior. Having seen the horrors of war, though, Kan had embraced peaceful ways. Thus, he was reluctant to join the cause of the Young Kingdoms and start a war. Shialmar served as spokeswoman for Jehan’s cause, trying eloquently to persuade Kan to aid.

Kan in turn tried to persuade Shialmar that war was neither exciting nor noble. In his view, they should seek to negotiate a settlement with the Wizard Kings. Within a day, Shialmar and Kan found themselves falling in love with each other.

As they walked the battlements of Jehan’s castle, discussing the Wizard Kings and beginning to explore their feelings for each other, Shialmar was attacked by another Kyrii demon. Kan saved her and killed the demon. Faced with such firsthand evidence of the evil of the Wizard Kings, Kan agreed to lead the army of the Young Kingdoms to exterminate the tyrants.

War with the Wizard Kings

Kan trained the mightiest war-host that Kaichek had ever seen. Then he led it into battle. While Jehan seemed to thrive on the carnage, it made Shialmar and Kan both weep. The priest and the princess often sought solace and escape in each others’ arms.

Finally, Kan’s army reached Majaedong, fabled city of light, ancestral home of the Wizard Kings. Kan offered them a chance to surrender, but they refused, facing death without flinching. When the battle was over, most of the city’s men, women, and children had been massacred.

The city of light burned, the flames stretching the length of the horizon and reaching a mile into the sky. Kan and Shialmar comforted each other, as Kan was impressed by bravery of the Wizard Kings and their people, and sick at the suffering he’d wrought.

Elder Gods

It was then that the Court Magician, Vung, revealed his true allegiance. Far from being a freedom fighter, he was an agent of the demonic Elder Gods known as the N’Garai. He was the true summoner of the Kyrii demons. Vung had murdered Shialmar and Jehan’s parents and framed the Wizard Kings, who were truly beneficent rulers.

Likewise, he’d sent another Kyrii to attack Shialmar simply to convince Kan to aid their rebellion. With the Wizard Kings gone, Kan intended to ritually sacrifice Jehan, Shialmar, and Kan to the N’Garai. In return, the N’Garai would grant him increased powers, enough to rule Kaichek himself as their deputy through eternity.

As Vung summoned his dread masters, Shialmar called out to the N’Garai and offered a different bargain. Desperate to save her lover, she offered the N’Garai her soul freely given. The demons were apparently even more interested in the corruption of a good soul than in the more pedestrian human sacrifices that Vung offered.

Shadowqueen

The darkness of the N’Garai descended on Shialmar, and she was transformed into the Shadowqueen. She became an immortal sorceress of great power, almost a goddess. But her soul was lost to evil.

Vung immediately attacked to try and claim the power he regarded as his. But the Shadowqueen easily deflected his assault and slew him with a single mystic blast. Then she revealed that the N’Garai had demanded one additional sacrifice from her — the life and soul of one she loved. Given the choice, the Shadowqueen sacrificed her brother Jehan for the N’Garai.

For the memory of a love she no longer felt, she sent Kan unharmed back to Earth, sealing the Black Mirror behind him.

Kan was never able to find a way back. He became a monk again. He and all his descendants after him dedicated their lives to serving good magicians, seeking to atone for Kan’s role in bringing the Shadowqueen to power.

The Thousand Year Realm

The Shadowqueen established herself as ruler and Sorceress Supreme of the Realm. She rebuilt Majaedong to serve as her capital, but it was now a city of darkness and brutality. The Palace of the Shadowqueen dominated the city, its black crystal towers reaching hundreds of feet into the air.

Rumors said that the palace’s walls were cemented together with the blood of the enslaved men, women, and children who labored to build it. It was a land where life was cheap, “nothing is sacred and no profane act forbidden.”

Shialmar the Sahdowqueen ruled without challenge for approximately one thousand years. Then Bayan, a previously unguessed scion of the Wizard Kings, began to foment a rebellion. Called the Silver Fox for his prematurely white hair and for his cunning, Bayan disguised himself in order to be able to operate secretly.

He managed to elude all Shialmar’s agents and assassination attempts, and raise an army strong enough to threaten the Shadowqueen’s hold on her throne.

Get Wong

The Shadowqueen chose a strange strategy to lure the Silver Fox out of hiding. She somehow was aware of a descendant of Kan named Wong, who had an uncanny resemblance to his ancestor. Like all of Kan’s descendants, Wong served a sorcerer consecrated to good, in this case Earth’s sorcerer supreme Dr. Strange.

The Shadowqueen sent some of her mightiest servants to Earth. She ordered the Lords of the Golden Dragon to capture Wong unharmed and bring him back to Kaichek but avoid the notice of Dr. Strange. At that time Dr. Strange was engaged in a series of battles with his arch-enemy Baron Mordo, so Wong was successfully captured.

Clea, Strange’s disciple and lover, followed Wong’s trail. Agents of the Lords of the Golden Dragon therefore captured her as well. They intended to use her as a hostage in case Dr. Strange should interfere.

Rebel rebel

Clea and Wong were sent through the Black Mirror to the Realm of the Shadowqueen. As they journeyed through the mountains toward Majaedong, Bayan’s rebel forces ambushed them. They slaughtered most of Wong and Clea’s captors.

But then the Shadowqueen’s Sky-Slayers attacked. Bayan managed to escape with Clea, but Wong was recaptured and taken back to the Shadowqueen’s fortress.

Only a few days passed on Earth. But due to the time differential between Earth and Kaichek, for Clea and Wong months went by. Wong remained the Shadowqueen’s prisoner, while Clea used what powers she had to aid the rebels.

Sorcerer Supreme

As was completely predictable, Strange came looking for Clea and Wong once he had beaten Mordo. As was also completely predictable, the Sorcerer Supreme soon found the trail of his friends. Following it to the Lords of the Golden Dragon, he defeated them and used the Black Mirror to enter the Realm of the Shadowqueen.

Following the obligatory short fight between good guys who don’t know each other yet, Strange was reunited with Clea and formed an alliance with the rebels. Meanwhile, the Shadowqueen summoned the Lords of the Golden Dragon back to Majaedong. She transformed them into enchanted stone gargoyles as punishment for allowing the involvement of Dr. Strange in the conflict.

Oddly, though, she found herself looking forward to battling Strange. The Shadowqueen laughed with anticipation at the thought of an epic fight to the death.

Escape!

Strange, Clea, and Bayan snuck into Majaedong’s imperial prison looking for Wong. Strange tried to minimize his use of magic to avoid Shialmar’s attention, but couldn’t shake the feeling that she knew they were there which she did.

Shialmar had sent the transformed gargoyles to the dungeons outside Wong’s cell. Unmoving, they were mistaken for statues and were able to ambush the three allies.

During the fight, Bayan revealed his powers as Silver Fox, last of the Wizard Kings. The gargoyles were defeated, Wong was rescued, and the four escaped Majaedong and returned to the rebel camp. There, Wong told them all of Kan and Shialmar’s history. Thus, the rebels learned for the first time the secrets behind the Shadowqueen’s origin.

When a plan comes together

But Shialmar was a step ahead of them. She’d wanted them to rescue Wong from the beginning. She wanted them to think this man with a tie to her past was a threat to her so that the Silver Fox would reveal himself trying to get to him.

The Shadowqueen had watched the entire rescue via a magical scrying crystal, and had allowed the rebels to escape with only token resistance. She continued to monitor them all the way back to the hidden rebel encampment.

As Wong finished relating the story of the Shadowqueen’s possession by the N’Garai, she appeared alone in their midst and attacked directly. Slaying one of the rebel officers before anyone could react, the Shadowqueen transformed his body into another of her monstrous stone gargoyles. Each person it touched was likewise transformed into a loyal gargoyle.

While Dr. Strange and the Shadowqueen fought each other in the skies, the gargoyles wreaked havoc on the army. Shialmar seized the initiative over the more cautious Dr. Strange, and her powerful and unusual attack spells pressed him to his limits. As he began to falter, Wong snatched up a bow and shot the Shadowqueen with an arrow.

Strange Bedfellows

The Shadowqueen immediately retaliated. But as she saw that her attacker was Wong, she unaccountably threw her bolt of bedevilment slightly off-target. She prepared to attack a second time, this time to destroy him. But as she looked at the twin of the man she’d once loved, she again hesitated.

The distraction was enough for Doctor Strange. Wong’s knowledge of the Shadowqueen had revealed a weakness after all. While the Shadowqueen was irredeemably evil, her bargain with the N’Garai had been an act of supreme self-sacrifice, an act of love. That gave her a dual nature most demon-sorcerers lacked, and gave Strange his opening.

Using the distraction Wong had caused, Strange invoked the Tetragramaton and cast a spell to reach the buried Princess Shialmar, splitting the human part of her from the demon-sorceress. Strange’s spell drove the evil out of Shialmar and into himself, where he was barely able to exorcise and banish it.

He very nearly failed, and had to have Clea examine him with the Eye of Agamotto. That was because Strange was too exhausted to verify for himself that he’d succeeded.

Free your mind

Though free from the N’Garai’s influence, Shialmar was dying. Perhaps there was not enough human spirit left to survive on its own. Or perhaps without the demonic power she’d possessed her mortality was simply catching up to her. Dr. Strange prepared to try and save her life, but Shialmar asked him not to.

She had no desire to live with the memories of a thousand years of atrocities committed as the Shadowqueen. She longed for peace — the peace of death. Dying, she sought Wong’s gaze and saw him once more as Kan. She asked her beloved to kiss her and hold her close.

Her final words were to ask the understanding of Silver Fox and his people. She had loved the land and its people. Her fault was that she had loved a man more.

Description

Shialmar has vaguely Asian features and black hair. Her eyes, listed as brown in the OHOTMU, are often described as black jade. She often wears a black robe with an upside down golden triangle on her chest. She wore earrings that appeared to be golden starbursts or triangles.

In her battle with Strange and the rebels, she wore a dark blue mantle with a light blue collared cape (similar to Dr. Strange’s Cloak of Levitation) and a light blue sash. The cape and mantle had starbursts, planets and various other magical signs on it. She still wore the upside down golden triangle on her chest.

Personality

On the surface, Shialmar the Shadowqueen was a corrupt and despicable tyrant, without mercy or pity. But though she claimed that her humanity had been lost, on some deeply buried level, her original personality survived. This was most clearly seen when she hesitated in killing Wong, but there are other indications too.

For one, though she ruled Kaichek as the N’Garai’s deputy, she never unleashed them into her dimension. The N’Garai have tried several times to escape their own dimension and invade Earth, making use of human instruments like Belasco and Kulan Gath. But unlike these demonic-sorcerer peers, the Shadowqueen for all her evil never freed the N’Garai.

Another indication of the Shadowqueen’s dual nature is her reaction to Wong. Involving him in the first place is fairly inexplicable, since it made a battle with Dr. Strange almost inevitable. Shialmar claimed she wanted Wong to flush out the Silver Fox, and this strategy did actually succeed.

But it’s pretty unbelievable that this was the only plan the Shadowqueen could come up with. It’s likely that Shialmar was simply fascinated with this descendant of her lost lover who looked so much like him.

Thrill killer

Moreover, though Shialmar punished her servants for involving Dr. Strange, her punishment seemed almost a matter of course. She wasn’t truly angry. Her emotions were excitement and anticipation. In part, this is a measure of her self-confidence.

It may also be that, after a thousand years without a real challenge, she was simply bored. But some of her behavior seems reminiscent of a serial killer leaving clues — as if some part of her wanted to be stopped.

In battle, the Shadowqueen was aggressive. For a time, like a typical Evil Master Wizard, she struck from afar via her armies and servants. But she seemed exhilarated to take a personal approach once she’d located the rebel camp. Rather than marshal her armies or send in her Sky-Slayers, she teleported in alone. Without any back-up, she confronted Dr. Strange, Silver Fox, and an entire army.

As it turned out, she didn’t need much help, and this tactic allowed her to act quickly and catch her opponents off-guard. This seems typical of her style throughout the battle. Shialmar obviously enjoyed the fighting, and while she respected her opponents, she didn’t fear risks.

As a result she was able to act quickly and take her foes by surprise. In DC Heroes terms she consistently beat Dr. Strange himself in Initiative (perhaps spending Hero Points  to do so) and Pressed the Attack, using her formidable attack spells to keep him on the defensive and unable to retaliate effectively.

Quotes

“Dread Ones — hear me ! I offer not blood, but the soul of one who loves ! Grant me your power, and I am yours forever !”

Kan: “Why, Shialmar ? By all that’s holy — why ?!?”
Shadowqueen: “For an emotion I no longer feel, and never will again ! I loved you. I would not see you hurt. At any cost !”

Su-Lin, Lord of the Golden Dragon: “M-mercy, Dread Liege ! We did our best — but the Sorcerer Supreme was too powerful !”
Shadowqueen: “Dog — I am Sorcerer Supreme in this realm. Never forget that !”
Su-Lin: “P-please, Shialmar have p-pity !”
Shadowqueen: “Pity ? That is a human emotion, Su-Lin. I lost my humanity more than a millennium ago.”

“I trust you all find your new forms as comfortable as they are appropriate. You have failed me once, my pets. Do not tempt fate a second time.”

“Look to your lives, fools — look to your souls! Before I’m done with you, death will seem like a merciful fate !”

“Greetings, Silver Fox, last of my ancient enemies. And greetings to you, Stephen Strange — as one Sorcerer Supreme to another.”

“Arise, my newformed pet — and kill them all !”

“Ah, mage, how predictably logical ! I expected better of you !”

Doctor Strange: “There may yet be time to save her…”
Shialmar: “Don’t… please… It’s better this way. Memories of what I did as the Shadowqueen are an unbearable torment… I’ll only find true peace in death.”

“Silver Fox ! I know you hate me — and deservedly so. But this was m-my land, too, these my people. I loved it, loved them. My fault was that I loved a man more.” (dies)

DC Universe History

The hereditary magic and elemental powers of Kaichek’s Wizard Kings have a lot of similarities to the Gemworld sorcerers. Shialmar herself has much in common with both Dark Opal and Fire Jade, Gemworld nobles who formed compacts with dark powers. Of course, she’s also reminiscent of Wrynn, the Gemworld sorcerer who became Mordru.

Kaichek and Zerox might therefore be sister worlds, or you might even transplant Shialmar to the Gemworld. She could be from the past, having been thrown down before the days of Amethyst’s parents, or she might exist sometime in the Gemworld’s future, between the present and the Legion’s 30^th century. Most interesting would be to somehow replace Vung with Wrynn.

Perhaps her reign wasn’t a thousand years long, just close to it. She might have taken over after Amethyst first imprisoned Mordru in the soil, and be responsible for the transformation of the Gemworld into Zerox, the Sorcerers’ World. With most of the hereditary nobles killed by the Shadowqueen, the old government couldn’t be re-established, so Bayan started a Council of Wizards.

Or more simply

The simplest way to use her in an adventure, though, is just to have Kaichek be an other-dimensional world where the Lords of Chaos, through Shialmar, have gained a foothold. Have her thousand-year-old tryst with Kan instead be with the ancestor of a PC or a prominent NPC, and let the PCs stand in for Dr. Strange.

I hope they’ve got a lot of HPs or an alliance with the Lords of Order in their arsenal.

By Chris Cottingham.

Source of Character: Marvel Comics (Doctor Strange).

Helper(s): The Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe: Mystic Arcana (2007), Marvunapp.com, the Writeups.org entry “A short guide to magic in the Marvel Universe”.