The Land of Unknown Shadows is one of the sixteen worlds connected through the mysterious glittering plain. Its southernmost region, Hsien, was for "twenty generations" the empire of the original Shadowmasters. The Shadowmasters, especially one known as the First One, used sorcery upon feral shadows from the glittering plain to create entities known as the Unknown Shadows, after which this world would be named. It is not known what the world was called before the arrival of the Shadowmasters and the creation of the Unknown Shadows.
The word "Hsien" is also sometimes used in the Annals of the Black Company synonymously with the larger Land of Unknown Shadows itself. There are presumably other populated regions north of Hsien, but these are not discussed in the Annals.
Inexplicably, the physical geography of the Land of Unknown Shadows very closely resembles the topography and features of the entirely separate worlds of the homeworld and the Voroshk world. However, each of these three worlds features entirely different human civilizations and wildlife, and has different moons and constellations in their skies. Whereas the Land of Unknown Shadows has two moons (Little Boy and the Dragon's Eye), the homeworld has a single moon and the Voroshk world has numerous. The Noose is unique to the Land of Unknown Shadows, whereas the homeworld has the Reaper, the Archer, and Vargo's Ship constellations.
History before the Shadowmasters[]
Creators of the shadows[]
In the distant past, cruel sorcerer-priests from the world that would later be known as the Land of Unknown Shadows were the creators the feral shadows which they used to infest the glittering plain. They stole the souls of millions of prisoners of war who had been sent by an "insane sorcerer-king" and were flooding the plain to conquer other worlds, and tortured them, transforming them into shadows of various sizes and endowing them with a hatred of all living things. The uncontrollable shadows were then released onto the plain. The intent was to completely shut down usage of the plain to stop more would-be warlords who wished to conquer worlds beyond their own. After a time, the shadows were locked onto the plain by the invention of the Shadowgates.
The "Ancients", a group of completely mysterious men frozen for centuries in the Cave of the Ancients, came from the Land of Unknown Shadows and may be associated with, descended from, or one-and-the-same as the sorcerer-priests who created the shadows.
Golden age before the Shadowmasters[]
At some point after the Shadowgates were created, the civilizations of the Land of Unknown Shadows lived in a relative golden age for many generations.
Shadowmasters and after[]
- See Hsien for the subsequent history of the Land of Unknown Shadows, including the arrival of the Shadowmasters, the Children of the Dead, the creation of the Unknown Shadows, the escape of the Nyueng Bao De Duang, the exile of the Shadowmasters, the rise of the File of Nine, and the arrival of the modern Black Company.