Ruger leaned against the bedside, leafing through the booklet.
There were also cursed lands so well hidden that they were difficult to detect. People could settle there safely and leave just as safely, as easily as traveling back and forth through the Cavern Domain on business. Nothing seemed amiss until the third generation of a family was born, when a tenacious curse was discovered in the infants, its source nowhere to be found. Only after dozens of such cases had been collected over a century, then carefully investigated and compared, were connections discovered among their grandfathers' generation-for instance, that they had visited the same place at some point in their youth. In some families, that generation had already passed away.
Ruger read with interest and gradually sat upright.
Some of the deadly places recorded in the booklet intrigued him, but only as a way to broaden his knowledge, or so he could avoid them if he ever encountered them.
It was the effect of one peculiar curse on an entire people that truly piqued his interest.
He read carefully.
It was a story about the Terracotta People, a fragile bunch.
Ruger had the strange impression that this people, whose fate had been changed by a curse, were practically another version of the kobolds.
They had originally been ordinary humans, not terracotta figures. Even now, they were hardly beautiful ceramic ornaments. The curse had turned them into fragile beings. Like ordinary people, those among them with talent could become Wizards, which at least made them much better off than kobolds in that respect. But they shattered far too easily. Giving birth was an enormous challenge. The curse gave them periods of fragility, and if childbirth coincided with one, both mother and child could be in danger.
Most of their children spent