Editing Darklord (section)

===Irka Borova===
Darlord of Verbena. Born to a humble peasant family, Irka was short, plump, and plain looking, with a gammy leg that always impeded her movements. The one thing she had going for her was that she had inherited a natural talent for [[witch]]craft from her father's side of the family; training under her aunt Ludmilla, she became a trusted hedge mage, serving up simple spells and herbal concoctions to cure the sick and grant people petty comforts. It was a decent enough life, and it gave her a rare sense of power...

Then she fell in love with a man named Milosz. She wooed him patiently, only to disover that another girl had stolen his heart; a pretty villager named Alina. Believing she had done so with the aid of a love potion that she had "tricked" Irka into providing, the wrathful witch murdered Alina by tricking her into a false friendship that gave her the opportunity to slowly poison her to death. Then she turned her attention to Milosz, who simply mourned Alina's death for a year before Irka confessed her feelings. When he rejected her, in a fit of rage Irka told him that he was responsible for Alina's death, which caused the heartbroken man to run away and commit suicide in the forest, hanging himself with his own belt.

Alina's brother overheard this final, fatal argument, and whilst he had no proof that the homely witch-woman was to blame, he whipped the villagers into a frenzied mob. Irka fled in terror into a fog, somehow finding her way to her ancient aunt's home, and has stayed there ever since - a prisoner of her own sanctuary. She lives in constant terror of being discovered and punished for her crimes, and yearns to be wealthy and famous, but is cursed to never achieve them; she never feels respected in her guise as a humble herbalist, and whenever she comes into wealth, something always happens that forces her to spend her bounty. She cannot leave, whether because of sudden crippling pains in her leg or because of exterior threats. And she isn't even the master of her own domain; she can't close the borders any further than locking the gates and windows, and a hideous [[ratfolk|man-rat creature]] secretly lurks in the cracks and crannies of the shop, terrifying Irka.