A dreadful secret lies beneath Giustenal’s dusty streets: The sorcerer-king of this destroyed city still exists in a subterranean network of caverns and tunnels. Once Giustenal was a city-state as grand as Tyr or Nibenay, ruled by its powerful sorcerer-king Dregoth. Here, Dregoth forged a new race of followers—the dragonborn, or dray. But almost two thousand years ago, the other sorcerer-kings conspired to kill Dregoth, fearing his growing strength. The resulting magical duel turned Giustenal into a vast tomb. In the end, Dregoth fell dead, and his opponents left the ruined city to the desert. But with the last of his power, Dregoth made the transition to undeath. The Dread King has secretly gathered his few surviving templars and slaves underground. Now, after all these centuries, the undead Dregoth schemes to take his place as ruler of Athas.
BENEATH GIUSTENAL’S RUINS, a dark master bides his time. Dregoth’s people treat him like a god, and the Dread King rules his reborn city in absolute secrecy. He burns for vengeance against the other sorcererkings, who slew him centuries ago but neglected to prevent his fell rebirth.
After millennia, Dregoth still covets godhood. He has succeeded at godlike tasks, such as the adoption of a dragonlike aspect and the creation of the dragonborn as his chosen people. In the past, however, his naked ambition unnerved Athas’s other sorcerer-kings.
Abalach-Re warned the other city-states’ overlords, and they partnered to destroy Giustenal and its defiler dragon monarch. The shattering of Giustenal scattered the surviving dragonborn inhabitants and flooded the spirit world with the trapped souls of those who died in the titanic arcane battle. Giustenal became a literal city of ghosts. The sorcerer-kings ultimately failed in their task, though. Dregoth returned to Athas as a monstrous and powerful undead being. He led his loyalists to a cavern far beneath the surface. The site had been prepared for a settlement during a bygone era, but it was never occupied. Dregoth required all inhabitants of New Giustenal— slave and citizen, noble and templar—to undergo the dragonborn transformation. The Dread King believes the worship and devotion of this new race will bring him deific apotheosis.
Dregoth has an army of dragonborn, undead, and other creatures. He plans to soon lead his military force topside. He has old debts to pay and a world of devotees to win.
New Giustenal’s dragonborn are usually evil and superior, or so they think, to those descended from the stock of fallen Giustenal. Most practice arcane magic and have psionic talents
Dregoth and his surviving followers retreated underground after the other sorcerer-kings combined forces to put the defiler dragon down. As the years passed into millennia, New Giustenal evolved into a teeming city of dragonborn, and its Dread King still plots godhood and, of course, revenge.
Dregoth is lichlike, and his soul resides in a hidden phylactery in New Giustenal. If slain, he rises again in three days, a secret none but Nieznane knows.