That's So Raven

Field reports from the Lady's chosen.

That's So Raven

Field reports from the Lady's chosen.

Wiki · Entry

The Blight

Type: Mysterious supernatural malady; possibly soul-corruption Suspected Origin: Deep within the Cryptogarden Forest (per Session Zero lore) — though party investigation increasingly suggests multiple origin substrates, including the tunnels under the Toke Inn First Direct On-Screen Manifestation: Session 003 (Lessie's healing fails to hold on Roz and Dorrin Stonefish)

What the Party Knows

  • Pre-campaign: Almost everyone has some life event touched by the Blight. Source unknown; rumor places it in the Cryptogarden Forest.
  • Session 003: Healing magic doesn't stick on the Blighted — the problem is structural, not symptomatic.
  • Session 004: The party leaves Holy Water and salves at the Toke Inn to keep the Blight at bay for Roz and Dorrin Stonefish while they're away. (Holy Water helps but doesn't cure.)
  • Session 008: Runs with Bitches reveals a two-Blight taxonomy under interrogation: the Sons and Daughters of Vlokgar differentiate Necromantic Blight (rot, soul-eating, the kind beneath the Toke Inn) from Growth/Rebirth Blight (a wrong, suffocating over-growth). The wood-elves treat them as two diseases, not one.
  • Session 019: Inside the Kryptgarden Forest, the party is pursued on their way out by Twig Blights, Vine Blights, and 2 Blighted Trees. They thirst for the blood of the living and move through the tree-trunks themselves. This is the campaign's first on-screen contact with the Growth/Rebirth Blight as an active hostile ecology — confirming the Sons and Daughters of Vlokgar's two-Blight taxonomy in the field. The forest contains both the grove (Feywild-clean) and the Blight-creatures (Growth/Rebirth Blight) — the grove is the healthy heart and the surround is being eaten.
  • Session 028 — Lycanthropy as Blight-counter. At the Toke Inn, Rhovan reveals he is now a Wererat and explains that lycanthropy counters the Blight — the curse and the disease occupy the same body-space, and the lycanthropy wins. He has deliberately passed lycanthropy to his mother to save her from the Blight. Jorry refused the cure, asking to be locked in the rookery instead. This is the campaign's first working biological countermeasure to the Blight. (Also noted: Blighted-zombie corpses resist Ubys's Decompose; Moist has to burn the residue with fire — Blight requires both necromantic dispersal and flame to fully unmake.)
  • Session 029: Ubys recalls a study from The Raven Queen's archives — a soul that dreamed of a distant dead world pierced by black tendrils, a form of soul-sucking necromancy. The obsidian-tendril growths in the deep tunnels match the description. AC adds: he has seen growths like these on demon planes — they bear some relation to the Blight. The two readings converge — the Blight is downstream of an interplanar soul-sucking necromancy, possibly the same one that is eating distant dead worlds.
  • Session 032 — The Finding of the Grey Flame. The bodies of three [[The Grey-Robed Order|Grey-Robed Order members]] lie undisturbed by Blight in a chamber where the Blight is otherwise active — the Blight avoids them. The grey flame from the Grey-Flame Torch they carry repels Blight in the field and unmakes Blighted matter on contact (tested on the Rat Queen's corpse — monochrome flame consumption, no heat, no fumes). Ubys pairs the grey flame with healing magic and cures Jorry of his Blighted state — the first cure of record. It nearly kills Jorry; he is left in a coma to recover. The campaign now has two working biological / magical countermeasures to the Blight: lycanthropy (permanent transformation cost) and the grey flame (near-fatal one-shot cure; no permanent cost; equipment-dependent).

Working Hypotheses

  1. Soul-corruption from a distant dead world — channeled into the Material Plane through ancient, possibly Netherese, infrastructure (per Ubys' Raven Queen study).
  2. The black-tendril growths are a symptom or vector, not the disease itself.
  3. The Grey-Robed Order has technology (the Grey-Flame Torch, the candles, possibly the textiles) that operates against the Blight — but their purpose and origin remain unknown.
  4. The Cryptogarden Forest rumor and the Toke Inn substrate are both real — possibly two surface points of the same underlying corruption.
  5. Lycanthropy competes with the Blight in the body — the curse and the disease appear to occupy the same biological substrate; lycanthropy wins the contest. Whether lycanthropy is a managed strain of the same necromancy, an unrelated competitor, or the original cure is undetermined.