Shintan

Shintan
[[File:{{#setmainimage:Shintan.jpg}}|250px]]
Details
Race	Human
Birthplace	Jeskai territory, Tarkir
Lifetime	Original timeline of Tarkir
Sources

Shintan was the personal guard of Khan Narset, in Sage Eye Stronghold of the Jeskai Clan in Tarkir's original timeline. It is unknown if he exists in Tarkir's new timeline.

History

Shintan always stood guard outside the plaza of the Sage Eye Stronghold. Narset would host guests in her pavilion, and he would keep a respectful distance from them but always kept an eye on the Khan. Although Shintan's main job was to keep the Khan safe, his other job was to serve the elders and ensure she was observing the ceremony. One of those was that the Khan should meditate after receiving visitors, before receiving her bodyguard back into her pavilion. Although custom dictated that Shintan must wait outside the plaza, he had the occasional vantage point to ensure Narset was present.

On one occasion, as Narset visitor's left and Shintan and Narset nodded to each other, she waited until his back was turned, and immediately spun and stood, reaching behind some of the ornate statues. She quickly constructed a decoy, dressed in the same clothes, complete with a melon for a head she had stored here the night before. At the distance Shintan was it looked as realistic as it needed to be. Narset moved fast out of the opposite end of the pavilion, which dropped off as a steep mountainside, and made for the holdfast of Sage Eye Stronghold to sneak in some reading time of the Annals there.

When Narset returned to the plaza, she found eight formerly Abzan orcs standing within, holding Shintan. Each orc was armed with a blade, and two of them were archers. Narset hid behind a pillar, unseen. Her decoy had been broken into pieces, bits of stick and hay everywhere, with an arrow in the melon that would have been her head. Two orcs held Shintan, contorting his bones painfully, bending them behind his back farther than should be possible, but Shintan showed no reaction. They yelled for him to tell them where Narset was.

Neither Narset nor Shintan had any weapons, they had the element of surprise and years of training on their side. The Khan ran quickly from behind the pillar toward the closest orcs and leaped forward into the air, kicking the heads of two orcs powerfully, then striking a third orc's chest upon landing.

The other orcs barely had time to react. Shintan took the chaos as a chance to topple the orcs holding him, delivering a swift kick to one orc's head and leaving the other unconscious. Narset delivered a kick to the commander orc's throat. When the last two orcs attacked, she fought them with their commander as a weapon, guiding his fists to crack their skulls.

Shintan then revealed that he had made one of the orcs talk and that they had been hired by the traitor Taigam. Shintan then told her that he would have to tell the elders she had left her meditation, but she retorted that in that case, she would have to tell them the orcs had gotten the drop on him and that she would have taken an arrow through her head if she had not done as she did. Shintan glowered, then moved to secure the unconscious orcs.

The orcs were imprisoned, and all told the same tale, that Taigam had hired them as retribution for an assassination attempt. The elders were eager to accept the orcs were lying, most likely to cover the treachery of one or all of them. Shintan feared there would be other attacks, as Taigam was not the only one who wanted Narset or the Jeskai dead. Their people plotted the deaths of others. Taigam and the elders were symptoms of a larger problem. Tarkir was sick with war.

Story appearances

Title	Author	Publishing date	Set	Setting (plane)	Featuring
Enlightened	Matt Knicl	2014-10-22	Khans of Tarkir	Tarkir	Narset, Shintan, Taigam

In-game references

Depicted in:

• Swift Kick