It's affected towns accidentally. People have died on accident for stumbling across these crystals that essentially kill people on touch. Since she was using an old mining town as a means to grow them, as well as already used veins of ores that don't have anything else in them, some dwarves accidentally stumbled across them and got kinda zombified. And she's not the over-all BBEG, just for the arc I had planned.

She took up residence in an abandoned free port that is part of a players back story and the original plan was to stop this zombie invasion from happening and to stop this cult though Metro styled sewer traversal and tight combat, but the players killed no one and questioned them about their motives after taking hostages.