Vaults of Helia

The Vaults of Helia lie deep beneath the city of Helia, in what were once the Blessed Isles. They served as the archipelago's most closely guarded repository, the place where its most dangerous and powerful artifacts were sealed away from the world. Among the treasures held below were the Waters of Life, a source of healing and renewal potent enough that its guardians kept it locked behind the vaults' deepest wards. Thresh was once counted among the keepers of this place. Set to guard the very objects most likely to destroy him, he was slowly corrupted by the dark artifacts in his care until nothing remained of the man he had been. He became a thing that delights in collecting and torturing souls, and the vaults that had trusted him with their protection became complicit in his ruin. The end of Helia came when Viego forced his way below in his desperation to reach the Waters of Life, believing they could restore his dead queen. His breach of the vaults unleashed catastrophe rather than salvation. The disaster that followed loosed the Black Mist upon the isles, the corrupting fog that harvests souls, enslaves the living, and twists everything it touches. Today the Vaults of Helia are ruins swallowed by the Shadow Isles. Their old promise of eternal life and endless riches still lingers over the wreckage, a lure that draws souls toward a place where death is not an ending but the beginning of an eternity of tortured servitude.