Realm of Holocene, a Game of Thrones-esque world with fewer politics and more creatures. Mystical and Believable.
Aden El-Rahm, a young sellsword with a -cool, calm, and confident- demeanor who holds a debauchery secret, finds himself facing a fate...
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One month after the people of Lyondyn found Vila's body in the city's Grimmerflow river embankment, the Black Widows became the hot topic once again in every tavern and public corner and social gatherings all over the Lyondyn.
Vila's body was in a terrible state, decayed, broken limbs and bones, floating about on the river for days added more decay, and signs of torture were clearly visible. what's more unimaginable was her face, several huge deep cut open slash wounds, part of her hair was either shaved or forcefully pulled and her mouth was ripped open from ear to ear.
This is the modus operandi of black widows. Lately, there have been dozens of black widow victims in the last three years.
The gruesome state of Vila's body became a reminder sent by the black widows to the people especially the women not to mess with them.
The black widow modus was a torture murder style out of jealousy. The black widows' style of torture-murder was known as reaping. it was a playword between reap and rip because the victims were usually young virgins therefore they called it reaping and they usually scarred the victim's face as in ripping her face.
Originally it was over a hundred years ago right after the story of Syndrilla took place, a woman who wanted another woman's husband to get her a lavish lifestyle she would never have due to the Old Way law which a man can only marry a woman and lasted for a lifetime.
So, the woman killed the wife to get herself married to the powerful wealthy lord.
In the wake of the New Way reformation, the church sanctioned divorce - a concept initially embraced with glee by men across the realm. For a time, husbands exercised this new freedom liberally, casting off wives who no longer held their interest on whims, ever pursuing younger, more beautiful companions. Married women lived in perpetual fear, never knowing when their spouse might take a wandering eye and leave them destitute for another's charms.
To protect the discarded wives, the New Way soon instituted further laws - alimony, child support, and a wife's right to half her husband's assets upon divorce. The Court of Aione granted these dissolutions on a woman's demand, no investigation or evidence was required beyond her mere request.
However, this opened a door to a more insidious transformation. The black widow's deadly destructive lifestyle shifted from closed-door crimes to the wealthy upper classes. Affluent women consumed by spite and jealousy towards romantic rivals could now employ cutthroats to violate or even kill their perceived competition with few repercussions.
The entertainment elite proved especially susceptible to these poisonous machinations. Established actresses, envious of younger, lovelier ingenues threatening their status, found they could simply demand freedom from their marriages...and permanently remove the sources of their bitter jealousy.
Like a virulent plague, the black widows' toxic brand of femininity and entitlement spread through the nobility and social elite. No wealthy man's mistress or the young bride was safe from their vindictive grasp and the blades of their mercenary assassins. The New Way's well-intentioned reforms enabled an unintended kultur of casual murderesshood among the privileged classes.
