Ishistu

Ishistu was a living animal idol once worshiped as a god by the non-Enlightened people of the city of Moradask, in what would later be known as the Haunted Lands.

Description
This living idol was constructed of ivory. It depicted a hairless rat with albinism. Inscribed upon it were words talking about the glory of perfection that was the state of being hairless.

Abilities
Like all living idols, the powers of Ishistu were proportional to the amount of worshipers they had. Had the height of its power, the living idol was immune to most spells and could only be harmed by weapons with a +3 enchantment.

History
Circa 800 DR, the people of Moradask gradually grew so corrupt that they no longer cared to work to support their own decadence. At this Ishistu and the other living idols of the city whispered to them that their neighbors were undeserving of what they had and that they should steal from them.

The next year, the First Grand Caliph of Zakhara and his armies retaliated against the plunderers, harrying them back to Moradask and plundering it themselves, stripping the temple of Ishistu and the other living idols of their valuables. During this short occupation by the Grand Caliph's army, the inhabitants of Moradask hid their living idols underground to ensure their safety and barricaded themselves in the farthest reaches of the citys underground catacombs, taking some of the temple valuables with them and ultimately never returning to their legendary idols.

By the 14 century DR, many of Ishistu's altars and smaller stone idols remained in the city. Around this time Sa'ib al-Banu and his devoted followers, the Shorn, stumbled upon the ruins of Moradask after many years of trekking across the Haunted Lands in search of a city that Sa'ib had allegedly been told about by the Gods of the Pantheon. Soon after their arrival, Sa'ib and the Shorn's other leader, Jurash, discovered the city's catacombs and eventually came to find the underground temple where Ishistu had been laying for centuries.

Translating the inscriptions upon Ishistu, the two men came to find that its tenants closely matched their own and became compelled to not only protect the living idol, but to worship it. The idol spoke to Sa'ib in particular, promising to protect him and the Shorn from the monsters that inhabited Moradask's catacombs if they would adorn its altar with their hair. Tentatively they agreed and over time the beliefs of the Shorn became warped-&mdash;no longer were they worshipers of the Gods of the Pantheon, only Ishistu. Eventually the idol rewarded Sa'ib for his efforts by turning him into a wererat, though one incapable of spreading his form of lycanthropy to others.

Around 1367 DR, the janni Sheikh Ardasir al-Darah hired a group of adventurers to retrieve for him the missing fragments of the ancient Peacock Throne of Moradask. This quest would come to bring the adventurers into the Temple of Ishistu and eventually confront the idol itself, who would try to charm them into worshiping it. By this time the living idol had grown tremendously powerful from the Shorn's worship and polymorphed into a giant albino rat to confront the adventurers. After much fighting, they managed to destroy Ishistu, driving its head-priest Sa'ib to kill themselves.