Ruins of the Isstosseffifil Empire
Only ruins now break the landscape of this bleak region. Some of those ruins, however, are rich enough to result in a steady stream of adventurers.
Anarath: The ruined City of Statues lies in the northern reaches of the Frozen Sea, in the shadow of the High Ice. Abandoned in the dying days of Isstosseffifil, Anarath was picked over by early Netherese explorers. Today, it is the haunt of Iymrith (female ancient blue dragon sorcerer 7), the Doom of the Desert. Iymrith does not know the name of the city in which she lairs, but she has found the accommodations suitable. No one dwells in Anarath except the dragon, her legion of gargoyle constructs, and the Company of Flame Spiders (an enslaved Athkatlan adventuring company that the dragon uses to explore nearby Netherese ruins).
In recent years, word of Anarath’s discovery has reached the serpentfolk of Najara, and they have begun making regular pilgrimages to this ancient ruin. Since none have dared enter the city so far, Iymrith tolerates their offerings, just as she does those of certain Bedine tribes.
Bhaulaea: In the western reaches of the High Ice, near the old bed of the Narrow Sea, lies the ruined City in Ice. Abandoned by the sarrukh during their war with the phaerimms, it now lies encased in glacial ice at the bottom of the High Ice, forgotten by all except the liches of Oreme. Unless the denizens of Shade resume the melting of the High Ice, the only way to reach Bhaulaea is an ancient portal that links the ruins of Ss’yin’tia’saminass with an intact remnant of the city preserved in a bubble of glacial ice. Since the portalkey to return differs from the one needed to reach the City in Ice, however, would be explorers who do not take special precautions are usually trapped there. The frozen corpses of seven yuan-ti and their deinonychus steeds in the center of the ice cavern bear mute witness to just such a miscalculation.
Crypt of Hssthak: Hssthak, a sarrukh mummy sorcerer, who believes himself to be the last of the Isstossef, rests within this ancient tomb guarding two of the Golden Skins of the World Serpent. Although his crypt has remained undiscovered for countless millennia, he waits patiently for the day that he can pass on the wisdom of the sarrukh to their lesser progeny.
Circa –6000 DR, the elves of Evereska stumbled across Hssthak’s tomb and recognized the threat it posed. A half dozen elves volunteered to become mummies themselves so that they could guard the tomb for all eternity. Once they had been placed in position, the tomb was resealed and buried by elven magic. Because the crypt lay beneath otherwise unremarkable flatlands, the Netherese never chanced upon it. Recently, however, the walls of a deep sinkhole at a desert oasis on the eastern edge of the Frozen Sea crumbled, revealing the front of the ancient structure. Already a band of lizardfolk and the Company of the Golden Sands have explored parts of the tomb, so it is only a matter of time before someone recovers the powerful sarrukh magics that lie within.
Hall of Mists: In the depths of the High Forest, beneath the towering Grandfather Tree, lies a truly ancient ruin known only as the Hall of Mists. The elves who first discovered this ancient structure more than 13,000 years ago recognized it as a fell legacy of the Iqua-Tel’Quessir (creator races). So great was the evil contained within it that the elves summoned an arakhor (an Elven term that translates loosely as “one who protects the forest” or “tree warden”) to guard the site. This creature, known as the Grandfather Tree, has protected the Hall of Mists ever since.
Akin in some respects to elementals, the arakhora draw life, energy, and intelligence from the forests in which they dwell and repay the debt by serving as the caretakers and guardians of these places. Writings preserved from this era by the church of Labelas Enoreth suggest that the arakhora were a form of elder treant – perhaps even the progenitors of the modern treants. With the exception of the Stone Stand cutting, the Grandfather Tree is the last known arakhor alive in Faerûn today.
Unbeknownst to anyone except the remaining sarrukh, the Hall of Mists is the ancient stronghold of the Ba’etith, an organization that began in Isstosseffifil but outlasted that empire. The group was later dominated by the sarrukh of other realms, then by the batrachi, and then by the aearee before it vanished during the waning Days of Thunder. The Ba’etith studied the primitive forms of magic practiced by the various races of Faerûn and, over thousands of years, codified them in the form of the Golden Skins of the World Serpent, which were later known as the Nether Scrolls.
Today, the Hall of Mists is infested with a colony of giant red ants that were spawned in the Year of the Fell Firebreak (883 DR) by an eddy of magical chaos emanating from Hellgate Keep.
These ants opened tunnels to the Hall of Mists for the first time in eons, and at least one adventurer—Mintiper Moonsilver—has since explored the subterranean ruin. Word of this discovery has finally reached the sarrukh of Serpentes, and at least one band of yuan-ti adventurers has been dispatched to the far North to explore the site.
Oreme: The ruined City of White Towers lies some 200 miles east of the Weathercote Wood, on the edge of the empty sands of the Frozen Sea. Once a city of artisans ruled by sarrukh wizards and sorcerers, Oreme was largely abandoned during the fall of Isstosseffifil. In the bowels of the city, however, the few dozen sarrukh who chose to remain behind transformed themselves into liches and have clung ever since to the remnants of their empire, ruling the asabis who stayed behind to guard them. The rest of the asabi population from that era fled into the Underdark, only to be enslaved by the phaerimms.
The ruins of Oreme remained unknown to the surface world for more than 30,000 years after the city’s towers had been buried in debris from the dustbowl that had once been the Narrow Sea. But once the phaerimms returned to the upper Underdark of the Buried Realms and began to plague the Netherese, they quickly discovered the remnants of their ancient foes. The liches of Oreme were forced to withdraw even farther behind their magical wards, conceding all but the city’s catacombs and a few surrounding caverns to the minions of the phaerimms.