Skull of Kortaz

On a hidden marble altar covered by an cloth, blackened with dried blood, sits the monstrous Skull of Kortaz in its ivory reliquary. For centuries, the most renowned of monster hunters find their way into the skull's hidden shrine to pray for the profaned relic's blessing. Finding their way into sanctum, using the skills they have mastered over the decades, is seen by their fellows as an act of devotion in itself. Few would believe the hunters worship a skull as monstrous as that of Kortaz. For the right half of its skull has a frontal bone and lower jar which extending unnaturally from its human base to resemble those of a boar, the left half is a ghastly ethereal copy of its right counterpart.

History

Kortaz was once an noble orc priest who, recognising the importance of their work, offered a refuge for the often ostracized monster hunters and occasionally joined them on their hunts. On one of these hunts, during the hibernal solstice where the wicked are most active, Kortaz was bitten in two by a great beast. His soul was send to the Moon of Reincarnation, where it was snatched by a dark hag and send back into his broken body. With cracking bones his body was transformed into a monstrous new form; his back hunched up, his hairs became bristly, his tusks and jaws pushed themselves out of his face, his nose flattened into a snout, and his missing half came back to him in a new spectral form.
Most man would have lost their sanity at such a moment: either through the intense pain, or through the loss of self in this new form. But through his faith Kortaz was able to hold on, and once transformed he returned to his duties and lead the hunters against the wicket. His form now hidden under several layers of cloth. None of his allies knew the truth of their patron's hideous visage, for had they done so they would have likely ended him before he could have convinced them not to. Only once Kortaz perished in his sleep did they learn the truth. They grieved him as a fellow hunter, and canonized him as their patron forever more. Yet they knew that the common folk would not be able to look beyond his monstrous visage, and would believe that the hunters were secretly working with the monsters that they claimed to hunt, so the hunters took off Kortaz's skull, and buried him in a hidden shrine where only a true hunter could find him.

Item type

Religious / Ritualistic