K — Karitamen’s Legacy

 

The ancient history behind the talismans and the ruins.

Long before Padua was a frontier town of muddy streets and uneasy alliances, something older stood here.

The name Karitamen surfaces rarely, and never in the same context twice. In half-burned manuscripts and fragmented carvings found among the ruins upriver, the name appears beside strange symbols: spirals, eyes, and sigils that predate the Empire by centuries. Scholars argue over whether Karitamen was a sorcerer, a priest-king, or something less human entirely. What they agree on is that whatever power once gathered here did not vanish altogether.

The talismans are the most tangible proof. Small things, rings of carved stone, pendants etched with worn glyphs, fragments of metal that seem older than the ruins they’re found in. Some do nothing at all. Others hum faintly with power when the air grows thick with magic. A few have demonstrated effects no one fully understands, which makes them both valuable and deeply unsettling to possess.

For people like Vaervenshyael and her companions, Karitamen’s legacy isn’t academic curiosity. It’s a warning once buried in the earth. Every ruin they explored, every relic they uncovered, suggested that whatever civilization once stood here dealt with forces far beyond ordinary magic. And ruins have a habit of holding onto the things that destroyed them.

Which raises an uncomfortable question: If Karitamen’s power truly died with his empire…why do the talismans still work?