Welcome to the Land of Morden, home of the Accursed, once regular men and women transformed by powerful witches into monsters for their armies for the Bane War: Baba Yaga and her chicken-legged hut, creator of the Vargyr werewolves; Countess Sanguinara, the Blood Witch, creator of the half-vampire Dhampyrs; the Crone, mistress of storm and lightning, who uses it to animate her army of Golems created from mud or stitched flesh; The Chimera whose depraved experiments with men and beasts produce half-human Mongrels; the serpentine Gorgon, Melusine, who cursed her minions into half-serpent Ophidians; the Morrigan, who raises the dead with her cauldron to create Revenants; Hecate, the Dark Queen, who commands the ethereal Shades trapped between corporeal and incorporeal forms; and the beautiful wish-granting Djinn, who raised the ancient dead as her Mummy servants.
The Grand Coven of thirteen witches and their armies of Accursed waged the Bane War and battled to take Morden. Then in an unexpected twist, called The Betrayal, the Fey made a false alliance with the Witches, leading to King Auberon, commander of the Alliance of mortal armies, to pierce the ethereal flesh of the Djinn with his sword, releasing a blast of wild magic the like of which the world had never seen before, slaying tens of thousands, causing just as many to vanish without a trace, and transporting others back from the Summerlands of the Fey.
The Djinn was never seen again. Whether she is dead, vanished, or merely hiding, biding her time and tending her wounds, is a matter of conjecture and speculation. But what is known is that the Bane War was over. The Djinn’s Mummies remained, as did the other Accursed servants of the witches. Some Accursed remain loyal to the witches who cursed them, others seek to regain their humanity or to wield the power of their curse for their own sake.
The Grand Coven disbanded. Five witches left, taking their forces with them, leaving the remaining seven witches to take portions of Morden for themselves, stepping into the power vacuum left by mortal rulers who had perished in the Bane War.
Peace reigns, tenuous though it is. What is to become of the accursed? Will the Dhampir become a courtier? The Golem a scholar? The Vargyr remain a soldier? The Revenant a hunter? The Mongrel a priest? The Mummy an alchemist? The Ophidian an assassin? The Shade become a noble, reclaiming a title they held in life or becoming ennobled in death? Welcome to the land of Morden and the ranks of the Accursed!
