Thousands of years ago, a sadistic wizard worked for a sadistic king. Their kingdom was small but they prepared to invade their neighbors to increase the size of their kingdom. They could not raise much of an army because the people in the kingdom hated their king and would not give him their loyalty. The taxes they had to pay were too severe.
So with a tiny army, the king relied on his sadistic wizard. The wizard created thousands of cursed objects that they would leave in the neighboring kingdoms in order to decimate their armies. The plan worked too well. Many people were transformed into animals or objects. Many shrank until they were no longer a threat. There were also other bizarre curses. The king and the wizard themselves were transformed by their own curse. The king shrank and got stepped on by his own horse. The wizard became a blob of human flesh, still alive but completely helpless and dependent on the kindness of those he had been cruel to.
People fled the area because of all the cursed objects scattered everywhere. The land became a wilderness again without people. Eventually, most of the cursed objects were buried along with all other traces of the former kingdoms. However, some of the cursed objects were carried to other places by people who did not know the objects were cursed.
Merely holding a cursed object does not trigger the curse. Different curses have different triggers. For some, saying a certain word or phrase triggers the curse. For others, using the object triggers the curse, for example, the plow that turns the farmer into a cow. For others, certain times like midnight trigger the curse. Finally for others, the presence of another element such as water or salt triggers the curse.
This is the story of one of those cursed objects and the unlucky person who found it.