#229 The Gone Queen's Rock

Age: 700 Years

Hidden or Lost?: Lost

History: Centuries ago, the conquering empire of Yelloch was embroiled in what would come to be known as the Waiting War. Assailed by a coalition of their subjugated kingdoms, Yelloch seemed doomed to fail. After generations of political and military supremacy Yelloch’s fierce and terrible Battlequeen Melis struck out from the capital, vowing to return with a power that would help them win the war once and for all. Then she was simply gone.

For a time, word of Melis’ travels reached back to Yelloch, but soon enough they simply stopped. It was assumed that the ‘Gone Queen’ had abandoned her homeland and while some held out hope, most cursed her name. In the space of just a few short years Yelloch was toppled, its lands divvied up. The empire that once ruled the known world crumbled, and still the Gone Queen was lost.

Even as Yelloch fell from memory, the legend of the Gone Queen was passed down the generations, becoming the focus of countless fortune seekers looking to pick up her trail, and find the great power she had sought. But few have discovered the true fate of Melis and the power she was hunting.

In truth, Melis had walked the world looking for a weapon to subjugate the insurgent countries, but what she discovered became her obsession. It was a staff known as the Scepter of the Still, which was said to hold the power to turn living beings to stone, thanks to the Basilisk Crystal embedded in the headpiece. Melis traced the staff to a nameless oceanic rock, and found the scepter was real, but that it was protected by a fell cult that worshiped the artifact as a literal finger of death. The cult believed that the scepter turned the living to stone as a way of transferring a living soul to the afterlife.

Unable to steal the staff outright, Melis joined the cult. Using the cutthroat political maneuvering she had perfected as a noble in Yelloch, Melis quickly rose among the ranks to become the consort of the cult leader, known only as the Deathmouth. But Melis had miscalculated. During the ritual that would place her in a position next to the Deathmouth, and in grasping reach of the Scepter of the Still, both of them were turned to eternal living stone. Their entwined bodies creating a rocky tomb around the staff.

Today, the cult still reigns on Gone Queen’s Rock, and the scepter’s powers are protected by Melis and the Deathmouth’s eternal embrace. But one day the Gone Queen will awaken and the enemies of Forgotten Yelloch will pay.

1. Stonetouch Cultist Village

2. Bay of Sunken Souls

3. Forest of Frozen Stares

4. Fleshsands

5. Graveyard of the Basilisk-Touched

6. Field of the Free

7. The Last Oasis

8. Rockbreaker’s Tribe

9. Queenswood

10. Death’s Passage

11. Deathmouth’s Throne

12. Chapel of the Still Testament

13. The Lover’s Vault

14. The Keystone

15. Forbidden Isle

16. Grove of the Last Basilisk