The Shadow Fold.
A scar on the map…
that tore our country in two.
In we go.
I fell in love with Shadow and Bone.
Bring the light.
Every chapter had a propulsiveness to it.
For this show, we've taken the stories of Shadow and Bone,
and we've taken the characters of Six of Crows,
and we've brought them together in this really extraordinary way.
Shadow and Bone takes place in a world very much inspired
by Tsarist Russia of the early 1800s,
and this country, Ravka, has been torn in two
by a swath of darkness called the Shadow Fold.
To the north, you have Fjerda,
to the south, the Shu Han.
And these borders are constantly shifting,
depending on who is winning or losing the war.
Alina?
In the Ravkan First Army, we find our heroine,
Alina, and her best friend, Mal.
They are, really, grunts of the First Army
that feel a lot like cannon fodder.
-When did you get in? -Yesterday.
Everyone's getting their assignments.
They've been through everything together.
Both grew up in the same orphanage.
And they're in the army.
Their relationship is so true and earnest.
They really do care about each other.
If it goes wrong, come back.
Ravka has really failed to industrialize,
so they're not gonna win this fight in the long term,
but the thing that has kept them safe
is not the First Army but the Second Army.
This is made up of people known as the Grisha,
and Grisha have unique powers.
There are three principal orders of the Grisha.
The Etherialki, the Materialki,
and the Corporalki.
The Etherialki are Summoners
who essentially can manipulate the elements.
Fire, water, air.
The Materialki are Fabrikators,
and they can manipulate physical materials and chemicals.
Then you have Corporalki. They can manipulate
the human body itself.
They can heal you or speed up or slow down your heart rate.
Then you have General Kirigan, commander of the Second Army,
who is the one person
who can manipulate shadow and darkness
and use it as a weapon.
The Western side of Ravka is doing its best to sustain
the East with various supply runs and whatnot,
but the way to get anything in or out of Ravka,
quite often, is straight through this Fold.
Crossing the Fold is potentially lethal
because it's not only traversing
a massive swath of pure darkness,
but it's darkness that's populated by these creatures, the volcra,
who most definitely want to kill and eat you.
The one hope for Ravka
is a myth called the Sun Summoner,
and whoever he or she may be
has the power to harness pure sunlight
and banish the Shadow Fold forever.
Early in the story, Alina Starkov and Mal
are attacked while crossing the Fold.
And Alina reveals a power to summon light.
She is the one.
She is the Sun Summoner, which is extraordinary.
What this power does is put her on a collision course
with some of the most powerful people in the kingdom.
Then we get to Ketterdam,
a place crammed
with ruthless criminals and grifters.
This is where we meet theSix of Crows,
led by Kaz Brekker, the rising star in the criminal underworld.
In my gang, we have Jesper,
who's the sharpshooter, and Inej, who's the Wraith.
People want to make money in Ketterdam,
and the Crows can con you in ways
you will never ever know.
And so this group, this gang, find out about Alina Starkov
who's just been discovered as the Sun Summoner.
So our story starts to interweave.
The prize is one million kruge.
Now bring me Alina Starkov.
Much in the same way that Stranger Things
is always character-anchored storytelling
against a backdrop of genre,
Shadow and Bone is rooted against a backdrop
of wonder and magic and adventure and scope.
We've got amazing stunt sequences
and drama sequences
but also these really lovely human story lines.
-No! -Alina!
They have built something that is going to feel incredibly familiar
and that is so true to the heart of the stories
but is going to give the fans of these series
something entirely new and thrilling.
Now the work begins.