Ysht

Ysht was not the given name of this dwarven city at its prosperous peak, but rather the name the college has heard from locals while preparing the send an expedition to the ruins. Local legend tells of a time when the humans above ground in the area traded with the city, only to one day find the entrance hall open and the room filled with bodies. They turned away and never went back, believing the city to be cursed.

The reality is that the city’s leader (Yersi Pestis, now known as the Ghoulmother) turned to a source of dark, powerful magic that demanded Godsblood. Yersi became enthralled with building a device, and brought many followers around to her newfound way of thinking. The city lost thousands of citizens to the machine, and Yersi, her mind. Soaking in the power of thousands of bodies worth of blood, the dark engine granted her power beyond imagining, and she used that power to dominate the remainder of the city. When food ran out, she lost control, and the city fell to ruin as the dwarves tore each other apart. The remaining few Yersi herself killed. But the dark magic permeating the city for so long did not let them rest. As Yersi starved alone in the city, her people rose up once more as ghouls, and upon her own demise, she found herself sustained by the dark machine, driven only to guide her people towards new sources of food. They clear the local areas of humans as far as they could venture from the city without the magic failing, and then retreated inside, never to emerge again.

By the time the Burritts arrived, Yersi is one of the most powerful non-Avar beings in the world, but utterly at the behest of the dark machine lurking in the city’s lower ward. Her will permeates even the darkness of Ysht now, and she commands her ghouls as though she sees through their eyes. While hunger might once have been her primary motivation, what she truly wanted was the peace of death. The machine itself harbored much of the power she had been granted, and its destruction, granted her and her people the rest they deserved.

Ysht has been reopened and until the fall of Arridem, was receiving shipments of supplies and workers, intent on turning it into a functional city once more. Both the stormwalker J’na and the former Avari priest Johnn have taken up residence there, with Johnn moving into a leadership role among the small village that sprung up around Ysht. Dr. Striboch has been in contact with Ysht and Johnn, and the people there eagerly await what they see as a reignition of the rebellion.

In the months since Arridem fell, Johnn and J'na have turned the city into a functional army. They are new, and still largely untrained, but with Ysht fully-secured, they are confident it can be defended even now. With the addition of the documents and money Dr. Striboch is bringing, the rebellion will once again be in full swing.