In the jade city of Verdiel, one of the several Goddesses protecting the freedom and safety of the citizens is the Lady of Knives, Goddess of Vengeance, Liberation, and Edgeplay. Once a month, a beautiful woman is chosen from among the worshipers to be stabbed and cut in a ritual to empower the Goddess, a sacrifice of her pain and passion for the Goddess's pleasure. Priestesses armed with enchanted knives will inflict the erotic violence of the ritual, and afterward the volunteer will be healed with their holy magic.
Today is the day of the sacrifice, when the worshiper will enter the ritual chamber. The room is enormous, with a floor of huge blocks of silver-streaked black marble. Planters overflow with black and dark green roses around the edges of the room, their pointed thorns gleaming faintly in the light. The walls are carved with iconography of knives wrapped in rose vines, thorns prominent around the hilt and the blade alike. In the center of the room, stone stairs rise up from all sides to a circular dais, just a few feet up, and in the center is a large ritual table, carved of solid jade, and engraved around the sides with the Goddess's iconography. A pair of naked priestesses stand to either side of the room, wearing only a thorned necklace each, and bearing a sharply pointed knife that glints in the candlelight.