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Ankhor
2007-12-24, 10:18 AM
I noticed there weren’t very many diseases and afflictions around here, and this popped into my head. It’s geared towards my own setting, but should be easy to adapt. PEACH, and enjoy.

Magebane mindrot [supernatural disease]

This sinister disease was first concocted by a bitter yet powerful psion entering into a foul pact with an equally potent necromancer. Their intent was to cause enough havoc to overthrow the high-magic government of the human nation of Librium. The psion was wise enough to realise that, even with his considerable personal power, a direct assault on their Ivory Tower and the veritable hordes of mages within would be near suicidal. Instead, he decided to target their one weak point: the very people of the nation itself. After many months of experimentation – much of it on his own followers – the psion perfected this horrible affliction, and set it loose upon the masses. By means of this affliction, the vindictive psion hoped not only to turn the infected populace into de-facto foot soldiers, but to place the lawful good government into a paradoxical situation: because the disease was engineered specifically to be unlikely to infect the mages themselves, they must either they cull their own citizens or watch idly as their dominion descended into madness and chaos.
Rumours tell of an enhanced version of this disease, indented to be released once the majority of the weaker humans had succumbed to the primary infection. Supposedly, this would target much stronger creatures and would be much harder to resist, creating advanced phrenic allips of the beings it killed. Fortunately, this has yet to be perfected…

((In your setting, you could have this disease originate by some other means, such as a classic dark cult, mad wizard, etc. in essence, this is designed to weaken the strength of magic-wielding castes by turning their followers against them in undeath.))

Infection: contact. Physical contact with an afflicted individual prompts an immediate DC 12 fortitude save. This disease only affects nonpsionic humanoids and monstrous humanoids.
This disease has an additional function, whereby casters - taken to be humanoids or monstrous humanoids able to cast at least 1st level arcane or divine spells - can act as carriers without showing any symptoms. Whenever a caster comes into contact with an infected creature, it must save not only to resist the effects, but also to avoid becoming a carrier. The fortitude save DC to resist this extra effect is 18. Casters thus afflicted do not suffer any of the effects of this disease, but can spread the infection to others as if they did.
Incubation: 1 day.
Damage: Each day, the afflicted creature must make a will save or take 1d4 points of wisdom damage (DC 14). Success means no damage is incurred, but the disease can only be shaken naturally by successfully saving often enough to completely heal all wisdom damage previously caused.
In addition, whenever a spell of 1st level or higher is cast within a 20ft radius of an afflicted creature, it must make an additional DC 14 will save, or suffer a further 1d4 points of wisdom damage. If the spell was cast on the afflicted creature directly, it must save or take 1d6 points of wisdom damage instead.
Upon taking 6 points of wisdom damage from these effects, or half of the creature’s initial wisdom score (whichever is higher), it immediately suffers from insanity, as the spell. Only curing the disease itself can remove this condition.
1d6 days after succumbing to the insanity effect, an afflicted creature is driven to suicide (unless, of course, it has been killed in the interim). A creature killed by this effect rises as an allip one day later, which then seeks to kill any arcane or divine caster it can find, believing them to be responsible not only for failing them but for causing the trauma that led them to suicide. Due to the supernatural nature of this disease, any allips thus created also intuit the name and general status of any casters (arcane or divine, highest level spell known) who have acted as carriers in the same chain of infection as them. These allips will seek out such individuals in preference to others, if at all possible.
This disease, due to its nature, is particularly difficult to alleviate by magical means. Any magical effect that would cure an afflicted creature must make a caster level check, DC 20. Failure means that the attempt not only fails, but causes 1d6 points of wisdom drain, as per the disease’s second effect.

Balkash
2007-12-24, 10:49 AM
Very interesting. I like the secondary effects, because my players like to use magic. I may like to use this for my campaign, although the disease im currently using basically turns any who contract it into un-turnable, un-controllable zombies. Though this disease could be very useful to keep all my mages under control...

Lochar
2007-12-24, 11:03 AM
And the DCs are low enough that players who contract it can shrug it off, but god forbid them touching the local yokels, because level 1 commoners and such won't be able to do so.

Ankhor
2007-12-24, 11:07 AM
Precisely :smallwink:

Lochar
2007-12-24, 11:09 AM
You should also make primary infection only able to be carried by a magic user. Once someone has it, they can pass it on, but only magic users can initially be the carrier of it.

Since this a supernatural disease, have it link itself. Those who die and become allips, can follow the path of the disease up to the originating person who had the disease. That way they 'KNOW' it's that person's fault they suicided, etc.