What is Shadar Logoth? And how did it become what it became?
Shadar Logoth. The Place Where the Shadow Waits, or more simply, Shadow’s Waiting.
Shadar Logoth is an abandoned city. A broken city, literally and figuratively. There are
no animals inside its walls, and weeds sprout from cracks in the walls and pavement. More
than half the buildings’ roofs have fallen in and walls have collapsed into the streets.
There are broken towers and uneven slopes of rubble that may have been the remains of
palaces or of entire blocks of the city that once was. A city that used to be called Aridhol.
Aridhol was one of the lands that stood against the Dark One from the first days after the
Breaking of the World. Aridhol was one of the Ten Nations that had joined the Second
Covenant. In those days, Thorin al Toren al Ban was King of Manetheren and Balwen Mayel
or Balwen Ironhand was the King of Aridhol. They were allies.
But in a twilight of despair during the Trolloc Wars, at a time when it seemed that the Dark
One would surely conquer, a man called Mordeth arrived to Balwen’s court and rose to become
second to the King. Mordeth whispered poison into Balwen’s ear, and Aridhol began to
change. Mordeth counseled Balwen that, in order to survive, Aridhol must be harder than
the Shadow, crueler than the Shadow, and less trusting. And in time, Aridhol drew in on
itself. It hardened. Aridhol consumed itself. Aridhol’s battlecry was “the victory of
the Light is all,” but those were just words. The actions of the men of Aridhol were dark.
Case in point, Thorin’s son, Caar, went to Aridhol to get them to rejoin the Second
Covenant. To rejoin the fight against the Dark One. But King Balwen sat upon his throne,
a withered shell of the man who he once was. Balwen’s eyes shone of madness and he sat
there laughing as Mordeth smiled at his side. Mordeth claimed that Caar and his embassy
were Dark Friends and ordered them to be imprisoned, tortured, and executed. They cut off one of
Caar’s hands, which is how he came to be known as Caar One-Hand. Eventually, Caar escaped
the dungeons and he fled alone to the Borderlands with Mordeth’s unnatural assassins at his
heels. King Thorin of Manetheren sent an army to
Aridhol to avenge his son, Caar, but when they arrived, they found that Aridhol’s
gates had been torn down. There was no living thing inside the walls, but there were something
there – something that was worse than death. Mashadar. Mashadar is a manifestation of the
suspicion and hate. Mashadar cannot come out in sunlight, but
at night, it appears as tendrils of fog. It is mindless, but it can sense food. It feeds
on Dark Friends, Trollocs, animals, and humans alike. That is why Men spoke of Aridhol no
more. They renamed it Shadar Logoth, the Place Where the Shadow Waits, or more simply, The
Shadow’s Waiting. Late in the Trolloc Wars, an army of Trollocs,
Darkfriends, Myrddraal, and Dreadlords camped within the ruins of Aridhol. When they did
not come out, scouts were sent inside the walls. The scouts found weapons, bits of armor,
and blood splattered everywhere. And the scouts found messages scratched on walls in the Trolloc
tongue, calling on the Dark One to aid them in their last hour. Men who came later found
no trace of blood or the messages. They had all been scoured away. That is why even Halfmen
and Trollocs are afraid to go inside the place that is now called Shadar Logoth. Because
Mashadar is still there. Hungry and waiting. And someone, or something, else is still there
as well. Mordeth himself. Mashadar did not consume Mordeth, but it did snare him. So
Mordeth also waits within the walls of Shadar Logoth. Mordeth no longer has a shadow, and
he can stretch out and thin his body, like a tendril of smoke. In doing so, he can travel
through cracks in walls. Over the centuries, Mordeth has influenced
people through gifts that twist their minds and taint the spirits. That taint waxes and
wanes until it rules the person or kills them. And legend has it, that if Mordeth convinces
someone to accompany him to the walls, to the boundary of Mashadar’s power, then Mordeth
will be able to consume the soul of that person, wear that person’s body, and wreak his evil
on the world outside the walls of Shadar Logoth. So that’s the backstory. A very interesting
location. A place where some very key events unfold in the turning of The Wheel of Time.