The subterranean city of scholars known as Nineveh Novus attracted the ire of both Heaven and Hell with their collection of forbidden knowledge, resulting in its annihilation in a single night of screaming terror in 1272 AD. Warding sorceries woven into the rock allowed the city itself to survive, though the seismic wrath of the earth expelled many of its sunken chambers back up to the pitiless light of the surface. A handful of the unnaturally long-lived scholars, driven mad by their doom, still linger in the ruins, twisted into deranged lunatics by the unleashed cataclysm.