Yseult's Domain
Yseult’s Domain is the region of the Northeast found where coniferous forests become frosted in long winters and near-permanent snows, as the landscape transforms from woodland into tundra. The Domain’s borders are not clearly defined, with Yseult’s Fair Folk ranging to the north and west around the northern Silver River before it joins Lake Sanazala, and the lower reaches of the Road to the End of the World. They are well known by the tribes in the region for their unpredictable attacks, which have descended against Linowa (at Basten), Fenta, Ascending Spruce, the Shandir Woods, and against the various independent townships and tribes (such as the Icewalker barbarians and Pineys). Yseult’s Fair Folk once also raided into Halta by fording the Blackwater River , until they were met in battle and defeated by the armies of Sluluru's Domain. They continue to be a danger to border posts such as at Resplendent Peak and Sal-Maneth but no longer undertake major crossings of the Blackwater.
The Blackwater has emerged as a border due to it marking the boundary of the Treaty of High Order and Wild Roots. While Yseult rejected the Treaty, the Fair Folk signatories Marika and Sluluru accepted responsibility of destroying her should she attempt to violate its strictures. Yseult tested their resolve once before, a century after the Treaty was established, pushing deep into Halta and ravaging the humans therein. Sluluru’s Fae counterattacked, assisted by the forces of the Lunar Exalted who secretly back the Haltans, and drove Yseult back. Her total defeat was prevented only when she employed a half-finished gossamer weapon, inspired by the power of the Imperial Manse… the detonation transformed the trees around the Proving Ground, and Yseult herself, into pure grey stone.
Yseult has survived the detonation, her foes considering her to great a risk to be worth destroying completely. She continues to dwell in the Proving Ground, remaining secluded out of shame and self-hatred for her current stony state. She first came to Creation in the Balorian Crusade, and retains her hatred for Creation and shaped existence even as she is bound to it by her own self-inflicted permanence. Yseult hates the Haltans with a smoldering passion, but her defeat at Sluluru’s hands has made her cautious… she seeks means to destroy them utterly, but without her own role being discovered until it is too late for her peers or the Lunar Exalted to take vengeance.
