Ovixmutia

Otovko Windstrider struck down the ixulova tun with a bestial stroke from his fighting oar. Standing, he saw the ovixmutia raise a gnarled finger. "Fool!" she bellowed. Otovko saw many dark objects stir beneath the shallows of the noissome swamp. "For each child of the killing sea you fell, another six will rise to take his place!"

— Legends of Otovko Windstrider

  An ovixmutia (translating roughly as "one of deathly spirit" in Iuxat) is a swamp witch of esotericist. Capable of raising the drowned as undead abominations, driving storms, sinking vessels, ensorcelling the minds of the unwary, and imposing generation-spanning curses on those weak in faith, ovixmutia are prominent antagonists in the tales of mythical heroes like Otovko Windstrider. Ovixmutia are typically depicted as spiritually fallen old women with occult learnings turned towards dark pursuits, but may also appear as anthropomorphised forms of decaying plant matter in the service of Ixutabmut, the Esotericist spirit of death, itself. Rostran culture associates the imagery of ovixmutia with notions of jealousy related to beauty or romantic pursuits, the Faustian pursuit of dangerous knowledge, or, especially in modern times, with the creation of technologies (especially weapons) without regards to the moral or environmental ramifications thereof; thus, "liberating the ovixmutia" is the Iuxat equivalent of the phrase "opening Pandora's box."