Black Death

Black Death
Mundane Disease
DC: 16
Progression
Pestilence: 0
You purge the disease from your body.
Effect: You are cured.
Pestilence: 1 - 2
You suffer from a high fever, headache, and nausea.
Effect: Tired, Sickened, and Weakened.
Pestilence: 3 - 4
Your lymph nodes swell, causing large buboes to form in the armpit, groin, or on the neck. You have severe nausea and vomiting, sometimes vomiting blood.
Effect: Tired, Nauseated, and Weakened. Take 1 point of Blood Loss at the end of each extended rest.
Pestilence: 5 - 6
Severe muscle cramps and seizures join the terrible nausea and vomiting of the previous stage.
Effect: Weakened, Pain (4), Exhausted, Nauseated. Take 1d2 points of Blood Loss at the end of each extended rest.
Pestilence: 7+
You die horribly.
Effect: You are dead. Your corpse is intact.
Immunity: After recovery, a creature is immune to the Black Death for a year.
"When the Plague comes, ye can feel it in the air, like a chill wind from the underworld. The shadows seem darker, the nights longer. It ain’t just a sickness, it’s like Death himself is walkin’ amongst us, touchin’ folk with his skeletal hand, markin’ them for the grave."
——Old Man Harrow, survivor of the Black Death.

Description

The Black Death, often whispered as "The Plague," is a darkness that casts its shadow over the land like an eclipse of the sun. It sweeps through towns and cities, leaving in its wake piles of lifeless bodies and shattered families. Those cursed with the Black Death find their skin marred by black boils, oozing with pus and blood. Fever and chilling cold take hold of them, as if they are caught between the fires of hell and the abyss of the grave. The pestilence is so abhorrent that it seems as though Death itself has swept its ghastly cloak through the streets, taking young and old, noble and beggar alike.

Typical Exposure

The whisper of the Plague is carried by the wind, or so it is believed. Many suspect that rats and their parasitic fleas are the harbingers of the Black Death, as their numbers seem to swell before the plague’s arrival. The touch of the sick, their clothes, even the very air around them, is believed to carry the affliction. Some swear it's a divine punishment, meted out to cleanse the world of its sins, while others suspect it’s the work of witches and dark sorceries. Many towns and villages resort to isolation, barricading themselves from travelers and sometimes even their own kin.