The Mothers

The Mothers as they are called throughout Mythris, are anything but. In truth they are the nine daughters, though only five remain, of the mother of all witches, Baba Yaga. In -6431, Baba Yaga mysteriously appeared within the eastern fringes of the world, long before even Dwarfs or High Elves landed on the shores of the eastern hemisphere. It was in the deep south of the subcontinent Amberhurst that she laid the foundations for her grand empire envisioned in her dreams. One where pestilence, plague, and dark magic could thrive without the interference or power of those in the west. It was meant to be an enclave where those that have been outcast or on the run could come and start again with no judgement or questions asked. The only rule was that Baba Yaga had full control and final say in anything that came to her ears.   No one knows exactly when or by what means her daughters arrived in the world. Only that they appeared shortly after the first settlers arrived in Vedania after the War of Idle in 651. Some say they were created in a boiling cauldron, given to her by demons, or fathered by some foul creature. However, she sired ten daughters and no sons. The daughters appeared abruptly, fully adults and every bit as powerful as notorious High Elven mages in the west. They began to appear in the villages and towns, floating like spectres and cackling like maddened hyenas. The daughters terrorized as they went, all trying to spread as much suffering and pestilence as they could in order to earn their mothers favor. The daughters were not siblings like one would think, it was always a competition between them, sometimes even violence occurred, resulting in hamlets being destroyed in their wake. They would travel across the eastern hemisphere, and with the more frequent arrival of people in the southern lands of the east, more and more slaves were taken into the Slave Realm of the Mothers.   In 688, everything changed within the realms, when the daughter Morganna slayed her sister Ichortrice in a furious battle of witchcraft. It was this event that Baba Yaga disappeared a few weeks later and has not been seen since. This of course left and unimaginable power vacuum in the land, and a civil war began between the daughters. The daughters flocked to strength as was their nature, and with that many of them joined Morganna and her call to be crowned Witch Queen. The war was quick, as sisters, Tularene, Umbar, Neatrice and Larnune joined together with Morganna, who they feared the most. While Agatha, Quenir, Casandra, Venatrice and Zentira remained unaligned and at odds with each other. Morganna gave them the chance to join her in her vision of a new empire, but they refused for their own stubborn and vain reasons. One by one, Morganna and her allied sisters hunted down their own kin. It is said that these cataclysmic battles moved the earth of the entire region, fire storms rained blood overhead, and forests came alive with sickening venomous barbs that hunted prey. The dead arose in droves and cut a bloody swathe across the countryside, resulting in tens of thousands of slaves to die or worse, become undead themselves. The raw energy that pulsed from the land reached so far as Arcanix where the Circle of Eight felt the imaginable psychic shock waves.   By 692 when the war concluded between the sisters, all of Morganna's kin remained alive, while her 'traitor kin' lay crushed for all eternity, not dead, but entombed in the earth far below the surface for all eternity to suffer. The slave population was depleted, and the lands were overwhelmed by the walking dead. Powerful vampires and ghouls moved into the sisters lands right under their noses, using the war as a distraction. Seeking to usurp the sisters, the dead attempted a pitifully futile coup, resulting in the near extinction of vampires in the Slave Realms, only those that bent the knee were allowed to live, but only as chained exotic pets to Morganna and her sisters.   The sisters then began to rebuild their slave population at a more accelerated rate, once again drawing the eyes of those in the west. In particular, the churches of Pelor, Heironeous, Ehlonna and even Kord. The churches banded together in something that had never occurred before, and formed what is now known in literature as the Great Crusade. In 710, the largest holy army ever formed landed on the shores of Jade Bay to directly assault the Witch Queen Morganna's captital of witchcraft, Shadowick. 30,000 odd crusaders flooded the capitol, only by the aid of the Circle of Eight who hid their massive landing fleet of ships from scrying by the sisters. Caught off guard, Morganna was forced to abandon the capitol and take the wilderness, which itself is filled with poisonous fungus that spout deadly fumes, living forests filled with carnivorous plants with venomous stingers, and all other manors of foul tricks.   For three years and over seventy percent of the crusaders forces depleted, they managed to finally imprison the last of the sisters within the great torture tower of Baba Yaga herself. Renamed Gallowspire, the crusaders kept the five sisters under lock and key by the most powerful arcane locks and sigils available in all the world. The crusaders then set to rebuilding the land now called Goldenwill, which required numerable uses of divine magic to hallow the tainted ground. For centuries, the crusaders worked tirelessly, always focussed on building a respectable nation, employing dozens of druidic circles to rejuvinate and clease the region. However, under their noses, crime syndicates moved in, witch covens traveled across Mythris in the hopes of releasing their greatest idles from prison.   Their vigilance and zeal gradually dwindled. Meanwhile, the Witch Queen Moraganna plotted her escape and eventually developed the destructive weapon known as the Witchfire. In the devastating summer of 1333, hidden witch covens appeared and obliterated the village of Indred's Hope and the crusader capital of Highmount. At the same time, The Shades activated cells throughout Goldenwill, synchronized murders, arson, and uprisings that shattered the nation. In one season, Goldenwill was broken. Goldenwills ruler, Watch-Lord Revasal II, was forced to retreat to the Republic of Dolene. Goldenwills most influential priest, Aylun Vatos, led recently arrived philanthropists and the stone-faced crusaders who organized daily evacuations aboard ships departing Shadowwick. The remnants of Goldenwill are now known as the Slave Realms of the Mothers. Hordes of undead and monsters roam the countryside, their movements coordinated by the Witch Queens loyal officers. Goblin tribes and those few orcs who chose to ally themselves with the Witch Queen now travel openly within the nation’s former borders. However, to this day some of the former residents of the land chose to stay. Only the truly desperate remain huddled in crumbling strongholds or on failing farms. To travel openly across the Slave Realms is to court death, but the surviving Knights—seek to stem the tide of evil and return to their old land and rid it of the Witch Queen and her sisters once and for all, even in the face of incredible odds.   For three centuries now, the Witch Queen Morganna and her sisters reign supreme in the land. Some consider them the second most dangerous threat in the world just behind the Royal Draugen Empire, and some think they are more dangerous. Only time will tell if the sisters decide to sweep across the eastern hemisphere like an endless plague, to finally consume the world. Perhaps then, their mother, Baba Yaga will return to them.