Who is the Genie?

After defeating the Skirds, the royal troops occupied their territory. They exterminated all members of the tribe and reached their main settlement. There, in the ruins of a sanctuary, they found an ancient lamp. The royal mages determined its age to be approximately six hundred years old. They opened the lid and released what they called the "genie." The creature doesn't grant wishes. It casts curses.

The concept is simple: whoever rubs the lamp calls out a name. The Genie doesn't demand sacrifices or ask questions. It simply pronounces the name after its owner and then whispers, "May you be forgotten in your affairs, may your hearth be empty." After three days, the named person begins to lose their memory, then their loved ones die, and then the person themselves. No one has ever survived the genie's curse for more than a year.

In the Skirds' scrolls, the genie was called differently—"our father, who cannot die." It turned out that the genie was the founder of the tribe. He was a great warrior who burned down another's shrine and was cursed himself. He was tied to the body of a rhodos and left in the steppe without water. But he didn't die; he became a spirit, sheltering from the steppe sun in a lamp. And now anyone who rubs copper receives not a servant, but the spirit of a vengeful, unhappy old man who no longer remembers himself.

But why didn't the Skyrds use the genie in their fight against the Erikurians? Historians believe it all comes down to the king's name. He introduced himself as Sigurd the Third. But his parents named him differently, and only after ascending the throne did he become Sigurd. The Skyrds, however, were unaware of this.