Okay, so my first entry of my explanation of things in fiction will begin with the Mord-Sith. I wanted to wait and build up some suspense but omg i cant hold it in. These badass bitches are one of my favorite things in any story I have read and it doesn't hurt that they are, in fact, badass bitches. So let's just dive right in… (btw, there will be spoilers to the story because i will be talking about specific situations and plot points of the series so… if you want to read the series, be aware and also… dammit, read this series!)
Mord-Sith
To begin, they are ALL women.there is no such thing as a male Mord-Sith, only male victims OF Mord-Sith. These women are so universally feared that when a Mord-Sith is seen walking through a crowd wearing her red leather bodysuit (red is the color leather they wear when going to battle or prepared to torture because “blood doesn't show as much on the red”...... seriously fear inspiring women!!!) the crowd splits, everybody begins doing anything they can to be less noticeable. One thing about the outfit, red isn't all they wear. Usually it's brown leather, but at the end of the main series, Cara gets married in a white Mord-Sith outfit and in the “Richard and Kahlan'' series after that, there is a Mord-Sith who wears black but this is very nontypical.
Mord-Sith don't have magic, but they have a bond with their Lord Rahl (the leader of D’hara) that gives them the ability to capture the magic of a person who uses it against them and the Mord-Sith can then control the gift of their new ‘slave’. Yup, they are basically the dominatrix from hell and their captured enemy or ‘pet’ is utterly screwed. See when they capture a person's magic, they can use it against the wielder. One example is a wizard is captured and put in a dungeon and when Cara (my favorite Mord-Sith… and Richards as well i think) goes with Kahlan to interrogate him, he uses magic trying to hit Kahlan and Cara blocks the attack… and rather than be harmed by the attack, she smiles.
To make a point to this man and the guards around, she tells them to let him keep his weapon because he is harmless with or without it, and that is another thing they do to their ‘pets’. Letting them keep their weapons helps to instill a sense of hopelessness that helps to break them. Another way of demonstrating her hold is she makes him spit on the ground and then stand on the spit. She tells everyone to clear the way and tells the man “I WANT you to stay right there. To go against my wishes will cause you more pain than you can imagine. Nobody will stop you and if you can make it to the door, I will release my hold on you and you are free to go, but I DO NOT WANT you to leave that spot.”
Well, he grins, thinking he can make it, maybe fall through the door as the pain takes him down so he starts and his leg immediately crumbles to under him as the pain courses through him. He starts trying to pull himself to the door and the pain gets worse. She finally tells him to get back to the spit and the pain will end and when he does, it does.
It's not just a wizard's magic that can be captured. Denna, the best Mord-Sith, known for being able to break anyone, captured Richard. See, the sword of Truth was bonded to him, and contains magic, so when he used the sword against her, she captured that magic.
The main character of the series was captured by a Mord-Sith in the first book and spent a good amount of time being tortured by her (and that torture and psychological damage follows him for the rest of the series) she takes him to her bed, which isn’t something most men survive for long. She let him keep his sword, as I said, to further show him how hopeless his situation was. She had a collar around his neck attached to a chain and she would clip the chain to her belt and force him to walk with her in public like that and at night, at least in the beginning, she would chain his hands and have him suspended just high enough that he needed to stand on his tiptoes all night.
Of course he escaped, and if you read the last entry about his sword, you know that he can turn his sword white. This is a skill that only a “true seeker” can do with the sword and this magic is kinda the opposite side of the coin in regards to the magic of the sword. Usually rage fills you when you pull the blade but turning the blade white, you are filled with love and it is a much more dangerous ability because he was able to use that white blade on Denna (though by that point, Richard being the amazing man that he is, she didn't try to capture his magic because she grew to love him and WANTED him to be free, but her training and who she was prevented her from simply releasing him) so he killed Denna with the white blade and through the rest of the series, she does still come up, and even shows up a few times as a helping spirit.
Now, something I haven't explained yet is a Mord-Sith’s weapon. What is badass enough to fit such a badass woman? Is it a whip or paddle of some other bdsm sort of thing? Nah… it's a foot long leather rod that when they aren't holding it, hangs from a delicate gold chain around their wrist.
This rod is red, like their feared leather suit and it is called an Agiel. It only works when bonded (through a devotion magic that I'll explain when I cover the lord Rahl) to the presiding GIFTED Lord Rahl. I am gifted because it only works with a lord Rahl who has the gift of a wizard. This rod isnt used to beat enemies with, it's not a club of some sort, no its touch can sear flesh, shatter bone or even instantly kill. Yup… not a strike… a TOUCH can kill you. The most interesting thing about it is that a Mord-Sith uses the Agiel that they were tortured, or ‘trained’ with and that Agiel, every time the Mord-Sith holds it, causes them agony. It's like holding lightning in your hand, to hold your own Agiel.
Richard wears Denna’s Agiel, the one he was essentially trained with, around his neck as a reminder and whenever he is in pain, be it physical or emotional, he holds it in his hand to help distract him or help him concentrate on a problem he needs to solve. I know what you may be asking, “I thought men can’t be Mord-Sith '' and it's the truth. He can't capture magic or anything of the sort, he was just tortured by it so he can feel that pain (though considering that he is the lord Rahl as of the last chapter of book 1, a lord Rahl who is also a Mord-Sith would have been cool as hell since a Mord-Sith’s power comes from their devotion bond to the lord Rahl and who is more devoted to a person than themselves? Limitless power!!!) One time Kahlan asked to know what it felt like because she wanted to know what he had gone through that had left him so scarred. He held it in one hand and had her touch his hand, not the Agiel and she screamed out in agony and asked how he can handle that much pain and he calmly held it still while telling her that he had her touch him to insulate her from the full pain it causes and that what she felt was merely a fraction of its true pain.
Think about this for a second… he holds this whenever stressed or trying to clear his mind and it's essentially like lighting and then palming thermite. And he doesn't even flinch. What it comes down to is that Mord-Sith are wonderfully written characters in an amazing fictional world. My favorite part of their character is that having the evil dictators for previous lords, they were beaten, tortured and worse by older lord Rahl’s and because of the bond they stayed devoted and when Richard becomes the new lord, being the kind hearted man he is, they start to joke and push their luck with him.
Cara has, more than once, jumped on him in a hug when she sees him and many of the Mord-Sith who are around him for any length of time and sees he's not a dictator tell him they will listen to his orders as long as the order preserves his safety. He's caring enough that Cara, when she captures the wizard as i mentioned above, because of situations, he did escape and put Kahlan in danger. Richard and Kahlan and when Cara came to him and asked to be punished for disobeying his orders, she assumed the sentence was sure to be death. She made a request as to how it would be carried out and he said no. He told her that he wasn't going to punish her, but he was disappointed in her. Because of her genuine love for her lord who actually cares about his people, including the Mord-Sith, being told he was disappointed in her was a worse punishment than death.
Mord-Sith are raised from small children, tortured like Richard was but for their whole lives and as ways to break them more, they are forced at a young age to kill their mothers, and as a graduation of sorts, are forced to take their father as their first ‘pet’ (no there is no sexual element in the Mord-Sith/pet relationship except rarely, so the father isn't put in sexual situations) and will eventually be a Mord-Sith’s first kill.
What else can I really say about these amazing, beautiful and deadly creatures? Just one last thing… the touch of a confessor will kill them. That might be confusing as i havent talked about a confessor or their power yet but hey, maybe it will inspire you to check out these books… or you might be interested enough to like and follow me for the post about them.
Until next time, “Talga Vassternich” (that is the ancient language in the series called High D’haran and it is my favorite wizards rule meaning ‘Deserve Victory’ so what better way of ending this than with a signoff? lol)