The Coven

Founded by Mesophistas after the death of Iviradelle’s last king. There is some evidence that the weavers had built this tyrannical council long before Mesophistas became it’s leader, but he was the one that gave it the first real power. The kings of Iviradelle have long been known to possess their own magic, but it is different from that of the weavers – stronger, or so the story goes. The first king of Iviradelle worked together with the weavers happily. He was, in the first days of the Silverlands as they are now, a powerful mage, cousin to the witch kings of Tyrth, who passed his magic to his children. The weavers were men of nature who learned of their magic from the king and gained control of it through his teachings.

No-one is sure when the relationship began to sour or why. Perhaps the weavers, beyond their grandfathers far enough that they did not remember what they owed the royal family, grew bitter to always be serving those who were rumored to not be wholly of the human race. Maybe it was because no matter how powerful they were, the royal family was always stronger and not limited; the weavers each were bound to their own element while the king and his children could control all the elements and beyond.

The Coven, made of thirteen men and led by Mesophistas, took Iviradell for themselves and the other weavers, using strange, foreign men they called the Enforcers as their brute strength. There is no knowledge outside The Coven and their weavers about the relationship here, how the deal was struck, or why these men would serve the Council when it is plain that the weavers cannot touch them with magic; it simply rolls off them.

Roughly ten years before the finding of the child of power, there was an uprising in Blossom Town. Though the Enforcers did not befriend the downtrodden folk of the city, they did turn on The Coven and drive them from it. The old castle there is empty, now, for the weavers lost the battle and the Enforcers that rose against them closed the gates against all but those bringing supplies.

This was only a small faction of the Enforcers, though, and the rebellion was focused solely on Blossom Town. It is believed that, if the child had been born elsewhere, it would quickly have been lost to The Coven for they certainly were hunting for it.

There are no women weavers. There were rumors that a girl might be born, now and then, with the nature powers, but this was denied by the first king. There was no reason to question him, for he was not a weaver himself, and he had made it clear that any who bore a daughter with the powers of a weaver be declared at the moment of her birth. There were tales that he did not like that there were no women among the weavers and those who were close to him wrote that he had often complained of this imbalance, for even the girls among the royals had their own gifts, though they tended to be less violent and combustive than those of their brothers.

Mesophistas, lord of the coven, stands at its head even today. Though his brutal takeover of Iviradelle occurred nearly a century before the finding of the child of power, he still lives. He has aged, so is not immortal, but has done so slowly. Some whisper that his wife, a woman so beautiful that she is rumored to be the child of a god, is a witch and that she has bent the natural laws for him. It is also said that it was she who had put him in power to begin with, for she is clever with poisons as well as magic and the king had no love for her.

Though every other woman in Iviradelle, be she noble or peasant, is treated like they are prized livestock at the very best, Lady Carmine is treated as a queen. Mesophistas seems almost to worship her, though he will bow to no man, and she treats everyone, even The Coven, as though they serve her. Any who have seen the weavers in her presence and have the bad sense to talk about it say that they almost seem to cower before her.