The Age of Eight Plagues, Part Two

Part one here.

The Plague of Drowned Dead

The year is 831, and the Plague of Vermin has almost been defeated. When their waves come, they are pitiful compared to the former deluges of pestilence that came in earlier years. The Sacellum's paladins see less and less work digging rat-proof trenches, and things seem to return to normal.

And then, people began bursting into flame.

While certainly the quickest of the plagues to take a life, Drowned Dead was toward the lower end of the bell-curve in terms of lives taken. It was another airborne disease, meaning most everyone on Starfyk had it. But the exact mechanisms that caused the infected to spontaneously combust were never discovered - it was seemingly entirely random.

Even the dead would ignite on occasion, leading to the Sacellum declaring burials at sea to be mandatory. This upset a great deal of the populous, particularly the few bugbear citizens - for whom burial at sea was a religious requirement that had been outlawed since their assimilation. Social unrest was the name of Drowned Dead's game, and while their Plague was not the most damaging in the long term - that distinction would be reserved for the Plague of No Tombs - they did pave the way for much of the success of future Plagues.

Drowned Dead was, as had become routine at this point, hunted down and killed in 842 A.E.M. This also marked when the Sacellum came into possession of the city of Baryinnah, complete with its own oracle. Though it would fall and be reclaimed several times over the span of the next few Plagues, its capture was a symbol of the Sacellum's near-domination over all of Starfyk.

The Second Plague of Vermin

God dammit.

We already know the details of how exactly a Plague of Vermin operates. This was just another instance of it, lasting from 855 to 871 A.E.M. (the Sacellum had gotten good at fighting it in the years past). What's more interesting is how exactly Vermin, the very same who had conducted the first Plague with her name, lasted this long.

If you remember, the Plague of Vermin was a sickness of the blood. This means that any animal whose blood mingled with a Vermin-bearing creature would contract it - including when they ate a patient.

Surely, not all the squirrels in the forest were slain by fire and blade. Some were eaten by the coyotes, as any other. And those coyotes fell ill with Vermin, too.

Vermin invented not just a Plague, but a method of reaching immortality. Her sentience stretched thin between a myriad of beasts, like a spiderweb. She still lurks there, in the forest. It will never be rid of her. Her blood has soaked into the soil there, and on quiet nights when the wind rustles through the trees, their leaves whisper her name.

The Plague of No Tombs

With Vermin driven back for a second time and a twenty-one year period (the longest pause between any of the Plagues) of good health after it, the Sacellum began to think the feverish night was done. Baryinnah stood tall, a beacon of the Sacellum's victory over the Alquari. Hushed at first, the whispers that the Age of Plagues had ended grew confident. There was a whole generation of children entering university that had not seen a Plague in their lifetime. Hopes were high for the future.

And in 892, they were ripped asunder.

The Plague of No Tombs was a zombie apocalypse, plain and simple. The dead did not stay buried. The whole continent was plunged into a vile period lasting over a century. No Tombs themself was never discovered - they were just one more shambling husk among the millions. Bodily fluids spread the Plague, drowning whole towns in undead bile until they were naught but an army of things that would be better off in the sepulchers.

This Plague left a huge impact on the culture of Starfyk as a whole. In the north, the tradition of canonizing great war heroes as Zealots (largely in the place of traditional saints) began. The Sacellum pioneered the Turn Undead spell as a means of crowd control. And in 988, there was a proper secession.

In that year, the patriarch of the Vath family found a way to merge the soul of an ancient Giantine Emperor with his own. This was unprecedented, and challenged the divine monopoly the Sacellum had on the continent. Seeking to rekindle his lost people, the man (if he could be called that) now known as Llipyah Vath staged a revolution.

In the already weakened state of the Sacellum, they had few free hands to contest this revolt. And so the Tenth Empire was born. They were an uneasy ally during the later days of the Plague of No Tombs - giants proved incorruptible by the disease, seeing as they were made mainly of earth and spirit.

After countless losses, the Plague was finally brought to sustainable levels in 1001 A.E.M. Baryinnah had been cleared of undead, and it was the new center of the Sacellum's power in the north. With seven Plagues behind them, the Sacellum's territories in the south and the north had come to hate each other, and separating them had become the only sustainable choice for the future.

The Plague of Black Blood

This was the last of the Plagues. It was the shortest, both in terms of turnover between the previous Plague and lifespan. It lasted from 1003 A.E.M. - a mere two years after the end of No Tombs - until 1008.

The Alquari were just as devastated by No Tombs as the rest of the continent, and a power vacuum formed among them that failed to stay full for long during the previous century. They were fighting on two fronts - the reckless Plague unleashed by a desperate High Druid and amongst themselves. Black Blood was more of a warrior than a proper druidic mage, and he was the one who ended No Tombs for them. He found himself thrust into the position of High Druid, and one who sorely needed to produce a successful Plague.

Pulling heavily from No Tombs, Black Blood also produced a blood-based disease. It thickened the blood, congealing it into a useless black sludge. It was similar to what the Sacellum had seen before, and so they were prepared to treat it once it came along. It was even somewhat of a relief compared to what they had seen in the past two centuries. Just more shivering civilians in dusty, hastily-built hospitals.

Black Blood's throat was ripped out by one of Aurdao Vihn's wardogs. With him died the Age of Plagues. These were the blackest days of the continent, bringing a surging tide of ruination upon all who walked it. The Alquari were a scattered mess, reeling from blow after blow, the most of them being self-inflicted. The Sacellum was chained in debt to its foreign sponsors, hastily carving up what little of the frontier remained to try to pay back a backbreaking price. Baryinnah still flew their banners, yes. But to the west they had a new enemy in the Tenth Empire, and their northern colonies were barely recognizable as worshipping Rimhr.

The blackest days were done, yes. But the future was not looking white, only a dour shade of gray.

The Age of Eight Plagues, Part One

I'm trying to flesh out the history of Starfyk, one of my continents. My next campaign takes place on it, and so it seems prudent to know what would have happened in the last 500 years of its history (I already have its immediately-after-God-and-Titan-War stuff down). A big part of the continent is the huge area controlled by mainly anti-civilization druids (known as Alquari) to its north, and they're going to be prominent in the upcoming campaign, too. So I figured I'd start this exploration with them.

I'd been writing this for like two weeks when I decided to just break it into parts. Eight is a lot. This is the first half of them. The next will skip the introductions and just go into the last four.

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In 717 A.E.M., the Sacellum of Rimhr set its sights on the northern portion of Starfyk. They had unchallenged control of the southern half of the continent, with most folks being happy to join the people who had toppled the most powerful of the Giant Empires. Though the two other empires in the north had long since fallen, there were still numerous setbacks in trying to obtain those lands. The biggest of these were the Alquari.

They have no name for themselves. The name we use - that the locals first spoke when communicating with the Sacellum - means "dog people" in Giant. They are the escaped slaves of a former empire, who allied themselves with the wyverns so that they might topple all those who would enslave them. For some, this grew into a hatred for all civilization.

The smallest town is an abomination under their eyes. The forest is the true home of men. To break its bones and refurbish them into obscene symmetry is the highest crime. When all races live like beasts, reveling in the base, carnal pleasures - that is when they will be truly happy.

Not all the Alquari think like this. Some are content to live peacefully in the northern woods, coexisting with the outside world. But the Sacellum see them all as the same, and so they are all put to the sword. They torched their woods and broke their bodies.

So, in response, the Alquari sought the High Druid. They begged her to bend the will of the forest and called for retaliation against the invaders.

The High Druid broke their necks for daring to speak in front of her. And then, she set about to concocting a plague.

For the purposes of this post, all plagues come from the High Druids of the Alquari. They manufacture their plagues, using their own bodies as breeding grounds for all manner of vile disease. Travel to distant lands is no trouble for them (for it is said that every forest leads to another), and so they may capture distant infections within themselves and bring them back to lands where they are foreign and vicious.

Most of the High Druids do not have names. It is against their way - names are a product of civilization, and they have long-since abandoned all that is birthed from that putrid womb. So, in the Sacellum's official historical records, the name of a High Druid and the name of their Plague is the same.

The Plague of Flayed Skin

When the first of the plagues came, it was like nothing the Sacellum had ever seen. Most people were happy to join them, and those that weren't could be easily beaten into submission or destroyed, if necessary. But a disease is an enemy that cannot be fought with spears and torches.

It ravaged settlers and their livestock alike. Clerics from the capital sent to treat it found themselves quickly consumed. Refugees brought the plague to the southern cities, creating an air of intolerance for outsiders that would last a millennium. This was intentional on the part of the archdruid who went on to be called Flayed Skin - her purpose when crafting it was to divide the conquerors. To create a whole new social class: lepers.

Speaking of, this was when Rimhrheld's odd prejudice against armadillos started. The little critters carry leprosy very well, but can live just fine without it. They brought in a second wave of the disease just when the Sacellum was getting good at eradicating it, extending the duration of the plague until 741 A.E.M. This was especially unfortunate for the Armadillo Knights of northwestern Starfyk, who lost much prestige and a beloved mascot to the Plague.

The Pangolin Knights rose after the power vacuum formed, but their mascots just weren't as cute as the old guard.

The Plague of Fallow Fields

Flayed Skin was killed in 738 A.E.M., and her plague was arduously destroyed over the span of the next few years. While the forces of civilization struggled with that endeavor, the druids were busy crowning a new archdruid. The Alquari that was eventually selected came to be known as Fallow Fields, and his patience was only outmatched by his malice.

Why kill the Sacellum, when you can just kill their food?

More of a blight than a plague, Fallow Fields did exactly what the name sounded like. It was never spread as wide as Flayed Skin, but it did its job in creating a dependency on food imports in the north. Again, creating a schism between north and south that would drive a wedge into the continent's two halves.

Twelve years and millions of gold later, and the Sacellum's appointed alchemists concocted a pesticide that would kill the bacteria behind the blight. Fallow Fields himself was killed early into the Plague's lifespan, in 745 A.E.M., but the longevity of it even after its death points to his ultimate success.

The Plague of Shingle-Eyes

There was an almost ten year gap between this Plague and the last, due to infighting among the militant factions of the Alquari as they searched for a new archdruid. Medical staff in the Sacellum's colonies had been increased after the last two plagues, and they fervently watched all who got sick, waiting for the next Plague to rear its head. But both factions didn't realize that a new plague had already begun. When Shingle-Eyes announced to his fellows that a tenth of the settler population had already contracted his Plague, they bent the knee to their newfound archdruid.

Shingle-Eyes is a slow-acting plague. It is said that it first appeared in its earliest stages before Fallow Fields had even been defeated, but the effects are slow-acting that it took until 762 for it to even claim a life.

Shingle-Eyes is an airborne disease that only worsens with the loss of sleep. The result is the growth of more eyes. Many, many eyes, coating the body like shingles (hence the name). The more eyes you have, the harder it is to close them all, the less sleep you get, the more eyes you grow. Eventually, the victims are bedridden, but unable to sleep, and eventually die when enough eyes grow in their throat to block off the windpipe.

As you can imagine, it isn't pretty. Image Source: Bloodborne

Eventually, with help from humiliating curfew laws strictly established in the northern settlements, Shingle-Eyes was defeated in 770. His death stopped the production of more of his Plague - it had spored from him, like a smokestack polluting the atmosphere. The curfew laws continued for several decades afterward, leading to much tension between settlers and law enforcement.

The Plague of Vermin

Though this plague is by far the one with the least casualties (official records state only thirteen died directly from it), it was the most damaging. It was a war not against the people of the Sacellum, but its infrastructure.

Vermin was the next archdruid after Shingle-Eyes, and hers was a blood-born disease. It was essentially a mass dominate spell spread through Vermin's own blood. Rats would come from miles around to drink of her, then birth whole generations of pups who would never have minds of their own. Vermin's sentience superseded theirs.

And in the summer of 774, every single pest in the forest came out to wreak havoc on the cities.

Wooden support beams surrounded by three layers of squirrels, chewing at them until their gums bled, knocking it down in the span of an hour. Moles tunneled under the Sacellum's shrines to collapse them during the next festival held in it. Crows shitting all over statues of Aurdao Vihn, the war hero who had killed the previous three archdruids.

It was also an especially difficult plague to quash. Vermin lived on through her progeny, her feral sentience having no problem existing in the tiny minds of her namesake.

Whole cities were declared fallen to Vermin and burned. The Sacellum would pay a silver piece per dead rat brought in to them, almost driving them to bankruptcy in a mere month. Their victory over it was the most pyrrhic the Sacellum had ever known - and it was impossible to tell if more pestilence would come spilling out of the forest. But finally, in 833, they stopped coming.

However, by that point, another Plague had already started.