Since the dawn of humanity, a castle has stood at the center of Metamor Valley, the sole passage between the Giantdowns of the north and the Midlands to the south. Empowered by a spirit, the Lady Kyia, who can change the shapes of rooms and passages at will, Metamor Keep stood empty for centuries, as the great Suielman Empire rose and fell. At last, after the Empire had broken apart and a new patchwork of feudal states had begun to rise in the Midlands, Kyia opened the gates of the keep to noble young Prince Ovid. Ovid's father granted him the title of Duke of Metamor and King of the Northern Midlands, and a new nation was born.
With the death of the Empire, however, a new ruler arose in the Giantdowns: the dark wizard, Nasoj. Granted supernatural power and unnaturally long life by Ba'al, the Prince of Daedra, Nasoj brought the warring humanoid tribes of the Northlands under his control. The short, hardy, green-skinned lutins and the tall, primitive giants were united with Nasoj's human subjects into a great horde, with which he hoped to conquer all the lands of the West. A bottleneck stood between him and the Midlands, however: the land of Metamor.
Nasoj tried to conquer Metamor once, but failed to take the Keep: the destructive magic he depended on was easily deflected by the spell-shields of the Keeper wizards. He withdrew to the Giantdowns to nurse his wounds. When he returned, ten years later, he had a surprise in store.
It was late summer, year 699 of the Cristos Reckoning. The hordes once more invaded the Valley and laid seige to Metamor Keep. As Nasoj and his subordinate mages approached the three gates of the Inner Keep, the Metamor wizards expected another barrage of destructive spells, and raised a shield to counter them. What Nasoj unleashed, however, were spells intended not to harm, but to transform — and taking the Keeper mages by surprise, they broke through the shield. People at one gate were changed into dumb beasts; at a second, they were reduced to infants; at a third, the defenders were changed into mindless pleasure slaves, blind to anything but sexual desire. At the heart of the Keep, a circle of human mages held off the wave of magic and finally managed to counter it — but only partially. Those who had been made beasts became humanoid again, but kept their fur, claws, and other animal traits. Those who had been infants grew older, but could not exceed an apparent age of about fourteen. Those who had been pleasure slaves regained their own minds and self-control, but remained members of the opposite gender.
The energies that made up the three spells, the counter-spell, and the inherent magic of the Keep swirled together and spread out across the Valley, blanketing it in a Curse so tangled that no mage could ever unweave it. As a result, anyone older than fourteen who stayed in Metamor Valley for more than a few days risks falling prey to the Curse, becoming part-animal, a child, or a member of the opposite sex. Transformation spells will work for a time, but inevitably the person changes back again to whatever form the Curse has selected for him.
The Keepers successfully fought back at the Battle of the Three Gates, driving Nasoj and his followers back into the Northlands. Nasoj himself would not be defeated until years later.
Kyia and her mages managed, over time, to tame the Curse to the forms that we know of now over 1000 years later.
Original Source: http://transform.to/~ravenb/worlds.html#mk
