The imperial curse—the ultimate judgment on traitors

Table of Contents

Legal curses are a punishment reserved for the worst criminals in the empire. Meant to be irreversible and to both make their recipient pay for their crime and to frighten others into behaving, they are cast by feared curser judges. However, there is a curse that is worst than any others, proportionate to the height of the worst crime possible: a betrayal of the emperor and of the empire. Appropriately, the criminals are cursed by the most senior judge and the most powerful mage in the country: the emperor himself.

The curse

The best curses use numerology to strengthen themselves and sink deep in the bones and blood of their victim. Traditionally, 13 has always been a number associated with bad luck and pain and so it has popular with previous emperors.
However, the current emperor has broken away from tradition in favour of an unusual design that he is said to have conceived himself: a 3-folded 3-fold curse, made of 3 main components, each with 3 aspects. The interweaving ensures it is too intricately attached to the body of its victim to be removed.

I. Physical component: Spams of pain:

1. In their head,
2. In their hands,
3. In their feet.

II. Mental component: Sleep troubled by nightmares making them relieve:

1. Every little things they did wrong during the past day,
2. The worse memories and mistakes of their life,
3. Culminating with what they did to anger the emperor.

III. Compulsions:

1. A strong will to live through the pains and humiliations and to continue to go on no matter how hopeless life is so as to prevent suicide.
2. An inability to lie directly so as to prevent any new scheming against the emperor.
3. A push to always admit the existence of the curse when asked about it, to prevent them from hiding it.

Examples of cursed criminals

Julie's family betrayed the emperor and were consequently cursed by him. Julie herself is a rare example of inherited curse due to the emperor's anger overpowering it and making it sink too deeply in the body of her parents.

Julie winced and Hélène's eyes immediately honed in on her hands. Despite Julie's best efforts, she could not prevent them from shaking and from pain to crisp her expression. Hélène frowned but said and did nothing. This was already the second time this was happening.
Julie was obviously very used to the pain, for she struggled through without a sound and continued to twist her tool to shape the melted glass at the end of her stick, the shaking somehow not interfering at all with the results.
Hélène frowned. Julie was only in her thirties. That much pain so young was unnatural, and surely a healer should have been able to do something to help her if not cure her completely. She focused on Julie's hands, examining their tremors and the lack of any scars or evidences that could helped her guess as to its origin.
A suspicious slowly built in her. 
She waited until Julie was done and had put the glass figure and her tool down before asking flatly, "What is going on?"

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Hélène

Relationships Hélène's family · Friends (Julie, Hélène's friend, Old Malik) · Soulmates (The Emperor and his soulmates) Work Enchanting · Overview of the professions in the Empire · Runic diagrams · Fixed wards, clothes wards, and portable wards Problems Soulmates · The Sannian kidnapping announcement · The imperial curse—the ultimate judgment on traitors · Winners of the neighbourhood wall painting competition Locations Geography of the Empire of Arboise · Ilara—Hélène's home region · Quanahr—Hélène's town · Arboise—Capital of the Empire · The imperial palace · The emperor's quarters