Cameo of the Red Empress

When the Imperial Guard broke through to the inner courtyard they were shocked by the grizzly seen before them. It was as if the whole population of the city had been lead into the central courtyard and butchered. So much blood leaked from the corpses that the soldiers practically had to wade through ichor.
As they made ingress, the bodies around them started to tremble and rise. The living dead. Fighting their way through, they made it to the keeps central door, and found it open.  The girded themselves for what horrors they might find inside, and laid siege to the charnel nest of the Red Empress.

-Histography of the Red Empress, by Agostini Fior'laserna

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Not all rulers are made equal.
Some are kind. Some are stern. Others are cruel. As it was with the so-called Red Empress, or so she styled herself as. In reality she was simply a baron of the Empire of the Sun during the early days of the Third Solar Era, who thought herself worthy of far more than her station allowed.
She delved deeply into forbidden magics. Necromancy, Demonology, and  any other dark art that she could get her hands on solely for the goal of binding the whole world to herself, even if everyone else had to die to do it. To cut a long and bloody story short, she arose as a threat in the heart of the Empire of the Sun, and it took them quite some time to put an end to her and her legions of undead. They never got her though, at least not in the traditional sense. They found her body sitting atop her ossific throne, slumped over and clutching a small portrait of herself. This cameo quickly went missing and has repeatedly shown up in seemingly random places ever since, usually the harbinger of some great tragedy.
So if you find a picture of a beautiful woman in a red veil, don't touch it. Simply leave it be and move on.

Item type

Magical