Locust Plaguecourts

Origin

Locusts, swarms of them stripping life from all in it's path. A creature so small but still so destructive, like a voidbrought omen from above which opens it's colourless gape and devours light and life.
The research of insects and the diseases they brought with them started many years ago with the start of Morkadia's countless losses to that of the Dark Elven realms. The laboratories was set up in desperation to try and see if magic or chemicals inserted to the eggs of insects could somehow urge them to spread through the farms and towns of the Drow, to slow down their warmachine.
The results mostly failed with the exception of a few operations to breed and release locusts onto their enemies fields.
The locust swarms alone however proved so efficent that the Morkadian resistance could for the first time push back their foes from their mountain bastions and reclaim their old passages, along with the broken lands beyond.
From there started the wild experimentiations on the insects, which accidently developed several different forms of mutations, viruses and also medicines. Most new breeds of locusts died out at the first deployment though, while most diseases also happened to just be something mild or mutations of already treatable afflictions.
In the end, the locusts could not stop the Drow alone, as they developed new tactics with more dried and conservative rations along to the field, as they pushed Morkadia back from their outskirt farms and to the gates protecting their lands.
A breakthrough would soon come though, yet by accident a strain of intelligent, flesh eating locusts were breed within the laboratories. Though seen as to dangerous to apply within the field as they could easily turn onto the Morkadian population rather than their foe, one jar filled with a colony accidently broke. The results, as disturbing as they were intriguing.
The scientists had not quite directly been assailed, but the locusts had entered their mouths and nostrils as they made their ways into their intestines and started to form burrows within the living men and women. Knocking them all unconsious by the pain of being eaten alive from the insides.
Death never reached them though, as the scientists all woke up to the feeling that they could read each others minds, and with bodies as healthy as they could ever be. The oldest seemed to age backwards while the young were shaped strong, mighty and even more intelligent before. It could only mean one thing. The locusts had not sought to kill them, but had engaged in a violent form of symbiosis where the host served as their living nests which they served and protected with their own lives. Thus the newly born Locust Priests had no issues directing death and disease back unto their enemies.

Use

The main use the plaguecourts serve are healing of the sick. As ironic as it may sound for laboratories meant to experiment with plagues, toxins and disease. Though by chanse a ton of medical cures and wound treatments were also found during the experimentations.
As a result of the happy condicents and Morkadia's national pride, patients would often offer themselves to be experimented on with more critical injuries such as dismemberement, and untreatable diseases in both hopes to be cured or at least, in death aid their nation in their struggle of survival. Surprisingly, most people who give themselves up to the plaguecourts do however survive the inevitable, even though permanent reprecautions could follow. Then again, who wouldn't chose a third functioning eye or the ability to spit acid over a slow, gruesom deathh.

Style

Steel spikes in the sky? Check. Thunder striking into the beams and through coils and wires? Check. People running around in white coats and glasses? Quite false.
If one would enter a plagecourt building, the first thing that might be striking is the clinical cleanliness of the place. This much due to the necessity to prevent anything from spreading outside of the laboratories. Further follows steel doors with marbel walls and floor, with various guards wielding close quarters bludgeons and axes, rather than firearms. They'd also likely be suited in dark robes and ravenlike plaguemasks.
Within the locked rooms would be rows on rows of vials and terrariums, to keep all forms of chemicals, liquids, animals and creatures. Since bacteria is too small for their technology to handle well, animal tests can often be seen performed within the steel caged rooms.

Locust Priesthood

Within the top, glass dome of the cryptlike building lies the chamber of the Locust Priesthood. It's famous for hosting a beautiful garden inside the steelclad room, which harbours the research and alchemy stations of these insect based healers.

Sanitarium

Sometimes the old ways are the best. So why change a winning concept. The sanitarium consist of most rooms underneath the top dome, and hosts all manners of medical facilities. Both focusing on healing or experimenation, this is where the Morkadian Plaguemancers work to shape and bend diseases to cure the right and infect the wrong.

Ratknights crypt

With experimentation comes ultimately failures. A lot of failures, big and small, significant and insignificant. Not all failures necessarily means bad though, as you can still fail with one task but accidently accomplish another.
This is the case with the Ratknights crypt. Once a cellar for devious animal experiments, it swiftly changed once the new lord of House Locus took his place on their vile throne. Nowadays the crypt works as a training area for newly born ratsteed and their knights. Thus the cellar contains various large cages along with training objects, food and water.

Type

Room, Medical, Laboratory