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The Voroshk world is one of the sixteen worlds connected through the mysterious glittering plain. It was a significant location in Soldiers Live, by which time it was ruled by the Voroshk clan of wizards.

When compared to the entirely separate worlds of the homeworld and Hsien, the Voroshk world shares nearly identical topography but contains different wildlife, astronomy, and civilizations. The Voroshk world has scores of small moons, two of which collided in an astronomical cataclysm when Shukrat was a young child.

Khatovar and the Free Companies[]

More than 4 centuries before the Annals of Croaker, this world was the location of Khatovar. From this city of Kina-worshipers came the Free Companies of Khatovar, the most notorious of which was the Black Company. All the Free Companies which crossed this world's shadowgate and entered the homeworld did return to Khatovar except for the Black Company. Sometime after the Black Company's departure from Khatovar, the city was reduced to ruins in a large war.

Rise of the Voroshk[]

After the collapse of Khatovar, a wizard clan called the Voroshk rose to power. They swept across their world aboard their flying rheitgeistiden posts, and always wore their impressive shefsepoken robes. Ruled by the Old One or one of his male predecessors, they tried to wipe Khatovar from their history books, believing that they should not preserve pre-Voroshk history.

After She Is the Darkness[]

Shortly after the end of She Is the Darkness, Lisa Daele Bowalk entered the Voroshk world from the glittering plain via their Shadowgate, presumably the first such transit in perhaps 400 years. She was trapped in the form of a fearsome forvalaka. Her resilience and the fact that the Shadowgate was partially broken explains how she survived crossing the Shadowgate without a key like the Lance of Passion.

The Voroshk created an alliance with her, and she taught at least two of their leaders – the First Father and Nashun the Researcher – the language of Juniper.

Soldiers Live[]

Revenge upon Lisa Daele Bowalk[]

The Voroshk sponsored Bowalk's entry into Hsien and her assassination of One-Eye there.

Croaker and Lady, each carrying one of Tobo's Shadowgate keys, led a group of Black Company members and allies to the Voroshk world to avenge One-Eye's killing. Accompanying them across the plain was Murgen, Thai Dei, Willow Swan, Uncle Doj, Cletus, Loftus, Spiff, JoJo, Cratch, Slobo, and a group of fearsome Unknown Shadows called the Black Hounds. They were eventually joined by Goblin and the Chu Ming brothers.

Lisa and three of her flying Voroshk allies attacked, but she was subdued in barrage of blows from conventional weapons, specially-prepared magic fetishes, and fireball projectors. Simultaneously, the Company fended off all three Voroshk wizards: mortally injuring one, capturing the second (Shukrat), and sending the third off in defeat.

Shadow invasion[]

During the Black Company's exit from the Voroshk world, the Voroshk wizard reinforcements attempted to kill them by triggering the detonation of Shukrat's rheitgeistide. But Croaker deceived them, and their plan backfired. The explosion crippled their world's Shadowgate. As a result, virtually all the shadows from the glittering plain would soon pour down off the plateau into the Voroshk world in search of blood. Arkana, Gromovol, Magadan, and Sedvod left the Voroshk world to follow the Company and escape this fate.

Not long after the destruction of their Shadowgate, Tobo summarized the situation in that world as follows:

I expect that, right now, their world is more like hell than almost anything any priest ever imagined. Most of the surviving shadows from the plain must be running loose there. One family of sorcerers, however wonderful their weapons, just has no chance to stop what's happening. Not before the devastation reaches the scale of an end of the world catastrophe.

The shadow invasion eventually became so thorough that Croaker stated it was virtually impossible to find a shadow on the plain anymore. In the end, the Voroshk managed to reduce the shadows to one-tenth of their original number. But Croaker estimated that less than 1 in 100 peasants in that world survived the cataclysm, and, at the time of Arkana's rescue from Rhuknavr, only fifteen or sixteen members of the Voroshk family remained alive.

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