Blood Curse

This cursed place is as much a part of history as it is a place in the land. Aveldans revere this place with a dark intensity and speak of its only sparingly. Even then, this is spoken of only in the greatest of curses or oaths. It harks back to the great Amazon Warrioress Omphalea, also called the Mother of Five Battles. In 331 BCY Boruumahr, she returned home from a victorious campaign against the invading nomads in the north only to find her steading nothing but burnt wreckage and her seven daughters hanging from ropes tied to the center beam. Her fury was boundless—as great as her sorrow and lust for vengeance. Overpowered by a great outpouring of spirit and fire, Omphalea uttered the first horrible words to this fell curse, each falling from her lips like cursed thorns to blight the blood of the soil underneath her feet. With each daughter’s name she proclaimed for vengeance, the ground darkened, and with crawling tendrils expanded until the last cogent and horrible part of the curse was spoken. At its end, the ground was like blood and formed a cursed blight on land where no seed could take root. Omphalea too was not untouched: Her eyes were the color of the soil and her voice a whisper screamed from a deep void. Fearful of her but bound by love and duty, her sisters did not abandon her then or later as she swept from the ruins of her home to slay those who had taken her scion and life. Her end was as tragic as her daughters, as the calling on such powers calls upon a great price, one that devoured her mind, body, and soul before its course was ended. Thus was the first Blood Curse sworn in Avelda, soiling the ground where it was sworn, tainting it forever to a sanguine hue.