Few cities in the world inspire fear as instinctively as Rispast.
Hidden deep within brutal mountain ranges, the city clings to icy cliffs beneath perpetual storms and crushing snowfall. Black stone walls rise from the mountainside like tomb markers, while a lone tower overlooks the frozen rooftops below.
Even finding the city is difficult.
Reaching it alive is harder still.
Yet for more than a thousand years, Rispast endured unseen by the wider world.
The city was founded during the chaos of the Three Crises, when the rest of civilization was too consumed by war, famine, and catastrophe to notice what was being built in the mountains.
There, far from fearful eyes, a small order of necromancers pursued a singular goal:
to save the dead from becoming monsters.
Rather than destroying undead wherever they appeared, the founders of Rispast secretly collected them. They studied mindlessness, soul decay, magical corruption, and the strange fragmentation that overtook consciousness after death.
Over centuries, the hidden city became both laboratory and sanctuary.
Eventually, Keridwyn discovered them.
The crown had every reason to eradicate the settlement immediately. Instead, they chose secrecy.
Rispast possessed knowledge too valuable to destroy.
In exchange for magical services, research, and carefully controlled trade, Keridwyn allowed the city to continue existing in secret. Only trusted merchants and select scholars were ever permitted to learn the truth.
The city’s ruler throughout nearly all of this history has been Shelia, an ancient mage from forgotten ages.
Shelia achieved what many necromancers believed impossible:
deliberate undeath while preserving both mind and soul intact.
To some, she is a visionary.
To others, she is the greatest abomination ever created.
From her towering observatory, Shelia continues her endless research into restoring cognition to mindless undead. Her assistants oversee the city below, guiding the shambling dead through frozen streets with carefully exerted magical influence.
The majority of Rispast’s population remains mindless.
Silent figures wander through snow-covered roads performing simple labor or drifting aimlessly through the city. They are not treated as tools or disposable servants, but as patients awaiting recovery.
And occasionally, recovery succeeds.
The rare undead who regain coherent thought are given a choice:
remain within Rispast and aid the research… or return to the outside world under oath never to reveal the city’s existence.
For centuries, the secret held.
Then the alliance collapsed.
Fear spread faster than reason.
Scholars from Beacon eventually discerned Rispast’s location, and outrage erupted throughout the fractured cities. Calls for extermination echoed across the continent despite Shelia’s repeated offers of truce.
Faced with the destruction of everything she had built, Shelia made a ruthless calculation.
She offered undead mercenary forces to the warring cities.
If the living turned their hatred toward one another, perhaps they would leave Rispast alone.
For a time, the strategy worked.
Then one of the controlling necromancers was slain during battle.
Without guidance, the mindless undead descended upon everything nearby — enemies, allies, civilians, and soldiers alike.
The resulting massacre cemented the world’s worst fears.
Retaliatory assaults against Rispast soon followed, some driven by vengeance, others by terror, and still others by simple principle.
Despite the danger, outsiders are now permitted within the city walls.
The rewards are difficult to ignore.
Rispast’s mindful undead possess centuries of accumulated experience impossible for mortals to replicate. Smiths refine techniques over lifetimes. Scholars preserve knowledge that entire kingdoms have forgotten. Alchemists harvest rare plants from lethal terrain without fear of poison, cold, or exhaustion.
Merchants willing to brave the mountains can find wonders unavailable anywhere else in the world.
Provided they remain close to the calming influence of the mindful undead.
Straying too far into the silent districts is strongly discouraged.
Huig is older than most kingdoms.
He was born during the First Crisis, when Humanity and Dragonkind waged catastrophic war across the world. The earliest Animalfused creations were unstable experiments — powerful, emotionally volatile, and widely regarded as monsters rather than people.
Huig was among them.
Fused with the essence of a great bear, he became something immense and terrible. Massive even by modern standards, his body resembles a living siege engine of muscle, fur, claws, and rage barely contained beneath exhausted restraint.
Time did little to soften him.
Though modern society has largely accepted Animalfused peoples, Huig’s instability remains too dangerous for normal civilization. Violent emotional surges still overtake him with frightening speed.
So he withdrew from the world.
For centuries, he has lived in near solitude among the mountains surrounding Rispast, long before the city itself existed. When Shelia settled the frozen peaks to found her sanctuary for the undead, she did not drive him away.
She treated him as a person.
In that, the two became kindred spirits.
Both are feared by the outside world. Both are viewed as dangerous things that civilization would rather exile than understand.
Huig now serves as one of Rispast’s greatest protectors. When battle overtakes him, his rampages are devastating enough to shatter armies. Fortunately for the undead defenders beside him, they are far easier to repair than living soldiers.
Outside combat, however, Huig is surprisingly gentle.
He spends most days alone within a cavern overlooking the city while snowstorms howl beyond the entrance. Shelia occasionally sends him calming magical artifacts or small comforts gathered by traders.
He is especially fond of music boxes.
And books.
Yara was the first true success of Rispast.
Not merely an obedient corpse.
Not a puppet guided by magic.
A person restored.
The name “Yara” was chosen on the day she awakened. Whatever identity belonged to the body before death is gone completely. No memories remain. No history survived.
She does not know what her emerald eyes once witnessed.
She does not know why her hands bear no callouses.
She does not know where her warm singing voice came from.
And none of it troubles her.
Because in her mind, that woman died long ago.
Yara considers herself someone entirely new.
Unlike many of Rispast’s scholars, she possesses little talent for advanced spellcraft. She rarely assists within Shelia’s tower or participates in complicated necromantic research.
Instead, Yara chose a simpler purpose.
She stands watch at the gates.
Day after day. Year after year.
Motionless as a statue until danger approaches.
Travelers arriving at Rispast often first hear her before they see her — a hauntingly beautiful voice echoing softly through the frozen mountain passes.
Enemies hear something else.
Stories spread throughout the continent of a lone undead dwarf holding the gates against entire armies. Bodies piling around her feet while her great hammer carved wide arcs through blizzards and blood alike.
Arrows, blades, and magic break against her without slowing her advance.
And throughout it all, witnesses claim she speaks calmly to her attackers.
Promising them the same chance she was given.
A second life.
