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Isram was already reasonably well-off when The Castle appeared. Seeing an opportunity, he mounted an expedition into the Castle to see if it could produce something of value. The expedition has gone poorly for his crew, but he still hopes to salvage something to make their sacrifices not be in vain. Their families will never have to work again, if he has his way, but he has to survive the Castle first. 

Isram and his companions managed to defeat The Regent, leaving two of their wounded behind to contain the corruption of the place. Upon leaving the castle, the tower containing the entrance disappeared. After the entrance to The Castle vanished, Isram hastily assembled another expeditionary force in case The Castle made itself known again. His uncertainty about whether The Castle was remaining hidden to muster its strength for another incursion or if it had simply slipped away to another place to try again lead Isram to turn his expeditionary force into something more. Isram would spend the last decades of his life turning a rag-tag group of fighters and ruffians into a network of elite mercenaries, ellusive spies, and well-connected informants, using conflicts around the world as an pretext to seek out The Castle's reappearance and ensure its menace be met with resistance as soon as possible. By the time The Castle resurfaces, the Damoclese Cartel will have spread its influence far and wide.

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Maria leads the way, a battered and pitted metal boat oar of impossible durability and toughness hefted across her broad, salt-sun weathered shoulders when not pressed into service as a frighteningly effect conduit of her rage. She wears the sturdy, rough garb of a village sailor, and her long black hair is held back with a bandanna and tied with plain strips of cloth along its length. The only non-functional adornment she bears is a scrap of blue silk used for the final tie in her hair.

After the defeat of The Regent, Maria wanders for the rest of her life. Eventually, she finds that survivors who are contaminated but do not succumb may draw on the powers of The Castle. She takes an apprentice- the only survivor of a devastated village, the first Child of Maria. The Children of Maria become knights-errant, fighting the echoes of The Castle with their rage and polluted blood, wandering where needed and holding no sign other than The Bite: a tattoo in emulation of Maria's own corrupted wound, seven dagger-like gashes in ink. Masters rescue foundlings or adopt them from struggling parents. Most already carry The Castle's stench in their veins, but a rare few volunteer to be so tainted as part of their training. There is no fixed organization or standardized curriculum, only the camaraderie of shared purpose and a respect for those more veteran. And yet, the Children often seem to appear just where they are needed, as if by chance...

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Vyz Sykorax silently follows, moving almost as if gliding. Their short figure is obscured almost entirely by their dress; robes, a hooded cloak and a very broad-brimmed hat, dyed and embroidered with countless bright colours in various strange patterns, many of them eerily difficult for the eye to follow. They're adorned with various shawls, scarves and strips of cloth, and numerous glittering amulets, pendants and beads are sewn into the fabric, all inscribed with strange symbols and designs. Only their hands are visible, but even then they're so heavily tattooed with sigils and geometric patterns that the only thing they betray is a slight build. Their hands are cupped around a small, plum-coloured flame suspended in mid-air. Their face obscured entirely by shadow, the feel of their gaze seems to encompass all of their surroundings...

The Regent defeated, Vyz Sykorax does not immediately return to their coven, electing instead to wander the wastes for a time to search for Illisyth's kin and teach them of her fate as best as they are able, as well as weave what little protective runes around their territory as the diabolist can to ensure that the scalefolk can recover undisturbed by those seeking revenge for what happened while they were corrupted. For a while, at least.

When they finally do return to their coven, Sykorax secludes themself for two years, working almost non-stop on several new treatises on the nature and use of magick, based on revelations they witnessed in the castle. Spurred on by this greater understanding, Vyz Sykorax expands their coven into a genuine school of mysticism, the Umbral Library of Xyn.

The school doesn't survive its founder for long, however. After an aged Sykorax disappears on an expedition to some other mystical layer of reality no one remains to wrangle the school's collection of wild theorists and wild visionaries, and after tempers flare (quite literally in some cases) these various cliques of sorcerors, witches and warlocks disperse across the land, forming smaller covens of their own in pursuit of their own unique visions of mystical truth. Strangely, very shortly after this happened the covens started to correspond with one another again, their ravenous and ultimately indiscriminate curiosity handily overpowering their individual intellectual arrogance.

In the end, the formal institute's dramatic dissolution served to spread Sykorax's mystical heritage much further than the school itself did, and intriduced much greater variety to arcane scholarship. Now it's common to find small covens of mystics, colloquially referred to as 'Xynners' more or less wherever you can find people.

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Last is Illisyth, the coils of her ten foot long serpentine body slipping ungracefully on the strange, smooth floor as she pulls herself off the platform. Her golden eyes have only the slightest slivers of onyx in them, but the light is still too much for her. She lowers her head and brings the tip of her tail up to drag the rougspun cowl attached to her pack over her eyes, hissing with displeasure.

The light is not the only thing that is too much. This place stinks no matter how shallowly she breathes; even the ones who taste with their noses can sense it. Silently, she runs her tongue along her fangs, testing them, hoping that they are still sharp enough, that her venom sac still has enough left in it to make a difference. If whatever is down here has flesh to bite, she will dose it with every drop of venom she has left.

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With slow, deliberate motions, the wizened hermit known as Stigan the Eremite steps up alongside Maria and Isram Kalistad. Tattered, blackened wrappings cover his ruined feet and hands, and a coarse cloak shrouds a body built broad and tall, but eroded by years of ascetical living in the hazards of the wastelands. He steadies himself on a forked staff made from the dense fibers of a desert tree; a staff followed in recent years by those who wish to learn from the man who lives among the snakes, and which has earned him the nickname of Walking Stick.

The Regent was defeated. Stiggan had resigned himself to death so many times already, indeed, nearly every day upon waking, that he himself was not certain whether he had died or not. He dedicated himself to maintaining his state of ataraxia, for days on end, far longer than he had been able to before coming to dwell in this place. These states would be interrupted by those moments of lost time; Stiggan would suddenly be aware of being back in his own withered body, with no recollection of where he had been. He would then wander, tend to his needs, sit down and start again.
Stiggan's faith was that god kept him alive for a purpose, and as long as he drew breath that meant he had work to do. But as time dragged on, no purpose presented itself. His influence on Illsyth waned, his state of meditation grew harder to maintain, and his body grew more frail by the day, but would not perish.
He took to wandering alone, becoming intractably lost in the labyrinthine caverns of this place, finally coming to rest and seeking peace in a small grotto. He sat, and beseeched his god: "I have walked upon and within your earth for a lifetime, that I may serve your will and witness your creation. I have asked for nothing. But now I am beyond any use; I can walk no more, and my mind betrays me. I fear my soul shall become ruined and withered as well before it leaves this place. Tell me god, what is it I was meant to see in this place? All things happen according to your will and design, so what is your plan for Stiggan?"

"I fear that I have wandered where even your will cannot reach." As this thought verbalizes itself in his mind, Stiggan feels something roil within him. "Oh...I see." He collapses, almost deflating. Something wriggles free and slithers away from the ruined pile of dry skin and bones into the darkness.

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