Yssa was Morgana’s childhood friend — the two of them “girls together in that forest” that is now the White Forest, back before the whitening. When Morgana left, Yssa stayed. She is presumed to have been part of the coven rumored to live within the forest. Her fate is unknown, and was unknown to Morgana herself.
She has never appeared in play. Everything known about her comes from a single passage in Morgana’s journal, recovered in Session 9.
What Morgana Wrote
“I keep thinking of Yssa. Of all of them, if I’m honest, but mostly her. We were girls together in that forest before it was anything anyone in Freedale would recognize now — before the whitening, before the silence where the deer used to be. I left when I was young and foolish enough to think leaving meant I’d outgrown it. She stayed, the way she always said she would. I never once asked her why, because I was young and foolish and thought there would always be time to ask her later.”
And later in the same entry:
“I don’t know what became of the coven. Up until now I don’t know if Yssa is alive to be angry with me for staying away as long as I did.”
The journal closes on her: “I hope she remembers me kindly. I hope there’s a she left to remember anything at all.”
Significance
- She is a coven contemporary who was inside the forest when the whitening began — potentially the only living witness to how the curse actually started, if she survived it.
- She is the emotional center of Morgana’s decision to go. Morgana watched the forest through her scrying font for a decade largely because Yssa was in it, and her guilt over leaving — “tired of being the one who left” — is what finally drove her out the door and to her death.
- The party believed her name was the guardian’s password. “The guardian answers only to its charm” had Úlfr convinced the word was “Yssa.” The theory was never tested — the party found the guardian’s command amulet on Morgana’s body instead, and the “charm” turned out to be a physical object. The guess may still matter elsewhere.
Open Questions
- Did she survive the whitening? Morgana couldn’t say, and Morgana was watching the forest daily for ten years.
- Is she connected to the bound woman in white seen in Asha’s scrying vision, tied to a tree in the White Forest alongside Asha’s mother? Nothing establishes this — the vision gives only “all in white, long blonde hair.” Pure speculation at this stage.
- What became of the coven as a whole.
Related
- Morgana — the friend who left
- White Forest — where she stayed
- Freedale — the nearest town, in the days before it would have recognized the place
- Verelda · Dia — the other names in Morgana’s papers
- Morgana’s Tower — where the journal was found
First Appeared
Session 9 (July 29, 2026) — named in Morgana’s journal, recovered from the tower’s third-floor bedroom by Red. (Never encountered; status unknown.)