زهرا - Zahra
N A M E / A L I A S
زهرا از آزادییان
(Zahra az Azadeyan)
Zahra of the Free
شیر آهن دندانه دار
(Sheer-e A’han-e Dandaneh-dar)
The Iron-Toothed Lioness
A G E O F L E G E N D
Nearly 7 millennia have passed
M Y T H O L O G Y
“So, travelers, you want to hear a story? Of the deserts, you say? Well then, come sit. Sit around this old woman’s fire and let me tell you the greatest tale of them all. Of the woman who saved the tribes of these deserts more than six thousand years past, the greatest warrior of our people and the last of the allomancers: Zahra, The Iron-Toothed Lioness.
When the lands of Ansus were wreathed in chaos, and nations and empires would rise and fall with the desert suns, the tribes of the Dust laid scattered and broken. For centuries we nomads suffered from internal warring and power struggles between clans, fueled by generations of mistrust, hate, and our own fierce warrior culture. Slowly we were killing off our own kin, picking at them like vultures for scraps of food and honor. But as is almost always the way of things, salvation for our people came from the most unlikely of places; the banners of southern conquerors and the will of one tribeswoman.
Panic spread quickly when the boots of the Pakryn Empire began churning the sands of our forefathers’ deserts. They swept through our lands like the worst of plagues, pillaging and burning what little the tribes owned and leaving red sand in their wake. The scattered tribes offered little resistance to such a large, well armed force and more often than not broke before their enemies. It was a far worse slaughter than any of those the tribes had committed amongst themselves. Separated they could not stand against such foes and hope to survive.
It was then that the legend of Zahra began. A simple woman of the tribes, her life had been torn asunder when the invaders found her people. They were not kind. Her husband, the tribe’s headman, had been killed in the skirmish and her daughters, though they survived, were subjected to a far worse fate. It was then, lying in the sands with an arrow protruding from her shoulder and watching her family suffer that Zahra snapped. Unbeknownst to her, Zahra was a desert allomancer, the first one seen in generations. And they had just awakened her latent abilities.
A fire burned so hot in her center that she thought she’d alight any moment, the pain unbearable, until the power growing inside her finally burst in an audible pop. Every piece of metal, to include the metal-clad Empire soldiers, within their camp exploded back from Zahra. There was so much power behind the blow that the men were shot hundreds of feet into the air and were crushed by the fall. Zahra had fainted from the exertion, but awoke to find the remnants of her people staring at her in awe.
This was the start of our people's hope, and of our rebellion against the forces threatening our lands. With Zahra at their head, she vowed to avenge every wrong wrought by the foreigners and eject them from their lands even if it meant killing every single one by herself. She went to each tribe one by one, merging them into her own with either words or the force of her new power. Others flocked to her as news spread of her swelling army and the guerilla war they were successfully waging against the Pakrynian forces. Now that the gap in numbers had lessoned and the tribes could attack the small armies throughout the desert, the clans could take full advantage of their superior knowledge of the plains and their ferocious warriors.
She unified us, our Zahra. A queen of battle without the title, she ripped through enemy lines like the strongest of sandstorms, stripping them of skin and blood. It’s said that she could kill a hundred men in just one battle. Our beautiful Zahra, with the strength and tenacity of her animal namesake. Never before had the invaders seen a magic such as hers; a true allomancer. She was no mere manipulator of metals, she used them. Consumed them and burned them within to fuel her strength, her senses, her power.
Finally, after four years of warfare with the forces of Pakryn Zahra had decided that she would gather all of her forces to her at the edge of the desert and push out into their enemy’s land to destroy the base of operations for their war effort. Small contingents of her armies that had been spread throughout the desert made haste to muster to their leader. Little did she know, the Emperor of the Pakryn’s had much the same idea, only sooner. The most elite of his forces already occupied the post and were preparing to begin their campaign. Nobody could have foreseen the outcome of the two forces clashing, though.
You’ve heard of the Battle of Red Sands, yes? Of course you have. Everyone has. The sands there are still red to this day, you know. The Gods made the sands permanently stained with their blood as a dirge to the fallen. Well, anyway, this was the start of that famous battle and the end of Zahra’s legacy. So pay close attention.
It was pre-dawn at the edge of deserts, the air was still cold enough to cling to your breath and the cooking fires burned low in their pits where Zahra’s forces had made their encampments. Most of warriors were asleep, having traveled at an unrelenting pace for days to join the main force of their army. That’s when the call throughout the camps came. A perimeter guard had spotted the encroaching Pakryn army as the the first rays of sunlight glinted off their breastplates.
They were not prepared, our army. They were travel-worn and the encampments were too far from one another to spread news quickly, to rouse them all quickly. But the Empire was already almost upon them.
Zahra knew her warriors would be slaughtered if they couldn’t muster into a sensible formation. The wall of shields and spears now making their way towards them guaranteed as much. She knew she could not be the shepherd that led the sheep to slaughter, her people, to slaughter. She would bide them time to mass. It would only take five to ten minutes, surely the strongest allomancer in the history of the Dusts could hold them off long enough. And so our brave Zahra consumed what metals she had on her person, drew her twin daggers, and went to meet the army by herself. One against hundreds.
She shot across the space separating the two armies like and arrow, pulling herself towards her armor-plated foes by their own armor. She landed in their midst and began ghosting through their ranks like a Daeva -demon, your people call them- of vengeance and death. In desperate fear of stopping her people's’ impending plight should this army reach them before they were ready Zahra began to burn all her metals at once. A dangerous thing, that. And she knew full well that the power would consume her, but her own life was no longer of importance, only that her warriors be allowed to fight on fair ground and defeat this enemy to protect their lands.
When Zahra’s metals finally ran out she collapsed amongst over a hundred men gushing their life-blood into the sands. With no metals, all of the pain from injuries she’d received during the battle was no longer masked, and she had no energy in which to fight. But the tribes were coming, she could feel the vibrations of it within the shifting of sands. She’d held off the enemy long enough. A hand grasped her by the throat, not content with letting her die where she’d fallen, and dragged her through the ranks until she emerged through the reforming shield wall. The man gripping her neck, the leader of this army of plague, thundered a warcry as he lifted her off her feet like a trophy and brandished his sword.
He thought to kill her in front of her charging men, like it would break them, but our Zahra only smiled and met his eyes in pained-defiance as he slipped his blade into her stomach. Her eyes flashed as soon as the iron blade touched her core where her inner fire lay, and the first several ranks of empire soldiers, including the man who’d run her through, scattered like leaves behind her. The melted end of half a sword fell from her gut and she followed; her last act. Zahra died in the bloody sands of that battle, carried to our forefathers by the sound of her people winning their freedom.” A P P E A R A N C E
The oldest descriptions of Zahra come from ancient songs, poetry, and stories from her own people. Due to their culture of being orators, it’s difficult to say what has stayed true through the millennia and what has evolved through retelling. Regardless, many an artist throughout the ages has attempted to create their own interpretations through visual means and have created a generally accepted visage for her. She is normally depicted as a tall, stunningly beautiful dark desert woman swathed in silks and leathers with long raven hair, startling green eyes that are lined in copious amounts of kohl, and plumb lips set into delicate features. Rarely can one find a painting or drawing of the woman without her two trademark daggers, which is probably the thing most true to the actual woman than anything else.
Most of these attributes, however, if not completely false, have been exaggerated. In life Zahra was indeed a pretty thing, and perhaps exotic in that her tones were darker than was the norm for non-desert dwellers, but never had she been accused of having some kind of unrelenting beauty that would cause men to fall at her feet like she is so often portrayed. She bore the common dark brown hair and eyes of her people, and a face of harsh, sharp angles that in life usually found itself pulled into a stern look of indomitability. Corded, lithe muscle and the stark living of the desert warriors also lent a harshness to her, and it may have been more apt to say that instead of stunning beauty, she possessed a predatory-like grace and countrance. The “Lioness” indeed.
A B I L I T I E S / E Q U I P M E N T
Zahra was the last known desert allomancer, as well as the most powerful recorded. This type of magic is odd in that the user physically consumes different types of metals and then burns them with inner magical fire to gain different abilities. Zahra herself was known to have been able to burn three metals with extreme efficiency: Iron, copper, and pewter. Burning iron allowed Zahra to pull metals towards herself or push them away, copper was used for increasing the six senses, and pewter increases her muscular and skeletal strength, stamina, and allowed her withstand much more pain and injuries than a normal person. There were drawbacks to this type of magic, however: No metal to burn means no power, keeping metals in the body for too long could begin to poison or cause odd side effects, and burning too much at once weakened or even kill the allomancer.
Zahra was also known to carry two long daggers as her weapons of choice, often referred to as her “fangs” by comrades and enemies alike. While there is nothing too spectacular about the pair, they were well made and maintained, and they were weighed to be able to fly well through the air should Zahra use her magic on them.
