Curses are simply another branch of magic, albeit an especially vicious one. Where most workings shape vharin (“aether,” if one insists) around a target, curses are designed to seize and twist the internal flow of a person’s or object’s own natural current. The practice is virtually unknown on this continent; most mages and priests have only hearsay to go on. The pale-aelvar of the Vael’sarí Empire, however, appear to employ it on occasion, and the results are instructive: accelerated aging, sudden internal bleeding, organs warped or turned against themselves, and other grotesque failures of the body.
All reports agree that such workings are difficult and unstable, often requiring several casters to maintain the necessary precision. The only confirmed recipient of a partial curse I know personally is Levak. When pale-aelvar raiders struck his home village, some incomplete working left his hair drained of all color, turning from blonde to stark white while the rest of him remained unharmed. My best guess is that the curse was interrupted mid-weaving; whatever horror it was meant to complete itself into, I am quite content never to see it demonstrated properly.
— from the research notes of Zyr’Magi Tes’Lothen, “Magi the Blade”, high-aelv scholar, mage, and swordsman
