A Treatise on the Fellpox: The Final Testament of Doctor Guy de Krosz
Introduction
To those who dare read these words, may whatever gods you still hold faith in grant you mercy, for no mercy shall be found in what follows.
The purpose of this text is not to comfort, nor to offer salvation. It is not a plea for aid, nor a call to action. It is documentation—a record of horrors that must not be forgotten. I, Doctor Guy de Krosz, have dedicated my life to the study of afflictions, yet nothing I have encountered, no pestilence of nature or blight of sorcery, compares to the nightmare that is the Fellpox.
The Fellpox is not simply a disease. It is a corruption that defies reason, a malady so insidious that it does not merely kill but perverts the very nature of life itself. Its origins can be traced to the aftermath of the Godfall, that great calamity which shattered the divine order and left the mortal world vulnerable to things best left nameless. It was in the kingdom of Mirstitrav that the first plague pits overflowed, where the afflicted perished by the thousands and yet did not stay dead. What we know now—what I have spent years unraveling—is that the Fellpox is not a single affliction, but a mutable horror, a parasite that adapts, corrupts, and consumes in ways that defy all known medical and alchemical principles.
The Stewards of Saint Khrell, those grim shepherds of the dead, were the only ones to walk among the infected unscathed. They called it a punishment of Fellgoth, a manifestation of the Elder God’s will. Perhaps they were right. I have dissected the risen, examined the lesions of the afflicted, traced the progression of their torment. And I cannot deny that there is something beyond the natural at work here.
No cure exists. That is not conjecture—it is certainty. There are only two fates for those who contract the Fellpox: death, or something far worse. And yet, in my arrogance, I thought knowledge would grant me distance, that I could study this affliction and remain untouched. But even the wise and careful are not spared.
I feel it now, the fever blooming beneath my skin. The tremor in my hands as I write. I have documented the progression of this disease in countless others. Now, I will document it in myself.
This treatise will serve as both a record and a warning. If you read these words, know that I did not write them as a plea for my own salvation—I am beyond saving. But if the Fellpox should ever return, then perhaps in these pages you will find what I could not.
May the gods have mercy on your soul.
Pathology & Transmission
The Fellpox does not spread like common plagues. It does not drift upon the wind nor lurk unseen in the breath of the afflicted. It is a hunger, carried in the very essence of its victims, seeking new vessels through blood, bile, and bone. To touch the infected is to invite death; to drink from a tainted well is to seal one’s fate. No host survives its grasp, and no living thing—man, beast, or crop—is beyond its reach.
The mechanisms of its spread are grotesquely efficient. Upon entering the bloodstream, whether through an open wound, ingestion, or some other breach of flesh, the pathogen takes root within hours. It is not a simple rot, nor a mere fever—it is a perversion, a reshaping of the body into something monstrous. The afflicted do not merely die; they are consumed.
Stages of Infection
The disease manifests in distinct yet merciless stages. Though the duration of each stage may vary, the outcome never does.
- Day 1: Incubation – The victim feels little at first. A mild fever, a dryness in the throat, an ache in the joints. Subtle, unassuming. Many mistake it for exhaustion, the onset of a seasonal illness. But beneath the skin, the corruption has already begun. The blood thickens, darkens, carrying with it a sickness that cannot be undone.
- Day 2: Suppuration – By the second day, the first true symptoms emerge. The flesh begins to itch and burn, as though unseen fingers claw beneath the skin. Lesions form along the extremities—small at first, but deepening, ulcerating, weeping a thick black ichor. The fever intensifies, and with it, a gnawing hunger that no food can sate. This is the body turning against itself, devouring its own muscle, consuming its own reserves.
- Day 3: Delirium – By now, the mind begins to unravel. Some victims experience a terrible clarity, believing for a time that they are healed, even as their bodies rot from within. Others descend into madness, convinced that those around them are sick, that they alone remain untouched. These delusions drive them to violence—many have murdered family and friends in their fevered paranoia. The skin blackens, sloughing away in strips, exposing raw sinew and bone. The eyes cloud, the nails blacken, the voice becomes a wet, rasping thing.
- Day 4: Necromorphosis or Wasting Death – Here, the disease reaches its final divergence. In most cases, the victim succumbs to necrosis, their body crumbling beneath the weight of decay. The heart falters, the lungs drown in their own fluids, and at last, death comes—brief, fleeting, before reanimation. But others—those damned few—undergo something far worse. Their bodies twist, bones lengthening, flesh contorting into grotesque new shapes. These are the ones who do not merely rise but change. Their humanity is stripped away, replaced by a thing of rage and hunger, something no longer bound by the frailties of mortal flesh.
- Rebirth: The Risen – In death, the body belongs to the Fellpox. Whether they return as shambling husks or nightmarish aberrations, all who perish to the disease serve its will. They do not think. They do not tire. They exist only to spread the affliction further, driven by an instinctive need to feast, to tear, to consume. And they do so without end.
Means of Contamination
The Fellpox is carried in the fluids of the infected—blood, bile, saliva, and sweat. A single drop in a water supply is enough to poison an entire village. A single bite, a single scratch, and the doom is set. Animals are not spared. Cattle blacken and bloat, their meat turning to poison. Fields touched by the dead wither into rot, the very soil itself becoming a breeding ground for the sickness. Even insects carry the blight, their bodies bursting with it, spreading it upon the wind.
There is no escaping it. No reasoning with it.
The only solution is fire.
Those who perish must be burned, their remains reduced to ash before the disease takes hold. Water sources must be sanctified, purged, or abandoned. Those infected must be dealt with before they can turn. This is the only way to contain the blight.
This, I have seen. This, I know.
And yet, as I write, my hand trembles. My fingers darken. My nails blacken at their tips.
The knowledge does nothing to stop what is coming.
Symptoms & Progression
Fellpox is not merely a disease; it is a sentence, an inevitable march toward unbeing. It does not steal life swiftly, nor does it grant its victims the mercy of ignorance. The afflicted are granted full awareness of their descent, forced to endure every moment as their flesh betrays them, as their minds decay, as the sickness hollows them out.
Below, I have chronicled the symptoms of the affliction in full detail, both as they have been observed in others and, now, as I feel them gnaw within my own marrow.
Day 1: The Hidden Rot
At first, there is nothing. A mere shadow of illness. A dryness upon the tongue, a dull ache in the joints, a slight fever that clings to the bones like an unwelcome chill. It is the sort of sickness one dismisses, the kind that men work through, that they drink off with ale and push aside with stubborn resolve.
But there is something else, something subtle, lurking beneath the skin. A sensation—not of pain, not yet—but of something moving, just beneath the surface. A tingling at the fingertips, a pressure behind the eyes, as though the body senses the coming storm.
For me, it began in my left hand. A twitch in the fingers, an itch that could not be scratched, a crawling discomfort beneath the flesh. I thought little of it. I was a fool.
Day 2: Suppuration & The Unmaking of Flesh
By the second day, the body begins to reveal the truth. The fever burns higher, stripping away strength, turning the limbs weak and heavy. The hunger begins—deep, gnawing, insatiable. No matter how much one eats, the belly remains empty, the body consuming itself in desperation.
Then come the lesions. They bloom like vile flowers along the extremities—blackened, weeping sores that split open like gaping mouths. The fluid within is thick, tar-like, and putrid beyond description. It moves. I swear upon all the gods, it writhes as if alive, a churning mass of filth seeking purchase upon new flesh.
My left hand is worse now. The skin along my wrist has begun to peel, curling away like parchment left too close to a flame. I can see the tendons beneath, darkened and rotting, yet still moving at my command. The pain is… distant. Muted. As if my body no longer considers it my own.
Day 3: Delirium & The Fracturing of the Mind
The fever reaches its peak. Hallucinations set in. The mind, overwhelmed by agony and rot, begins to splinter. But the disease is cruel in its design—it does not simply strip away reason. It lies.
Some believe themselves cured. They rise from their beds, proclaiming themselves free of the pox, swearing that their pain has vanished. And in truth, for a time, it has. The body numbs, the suffering fades. They walk among the living as corpses in waiting, oblivious to the horror clawing through their veins.
Others, like myself, see the truth—but not as it is. The world twists, shifts, bends beneath the weight of fevered madness. Shadows creep where none should be. Voices whisper from within the walls. Those uninfected take on monstrous forms, their faces writhing like things half-formed. Paranoia festers, driving the afflicted to lash out, to flee, to kill.
I see them now. The things in the corners. They watch me as I write, grinning with too many teeth, waiting for me to fall.
I will not give them the satisfaction. Not yet.
Day 4: Necromorphosis or The Wasting Death
This is the final divergence. For most, the body can no longer sustain the horror within. The organs liquefy. The blood thickens into sludge. The bones become brittle, breaking beneath their own weight. The victim collapses, gasping, choking, and at last, blessedly, they die.
But death is not the end. It is only the next step.
Those who fall to the wasting death rise again as hollow things—mindless, shuffling corpses driven by hunger alone. Their flesh is blackened, riddled with sores, yet still they move, their bodies refusing to acknowledge their own decay.
For the others—the damned few—the disease grants something else. Their bodies do not crumble. They change. The bones lengthen, twist, puncturing through skin. The flesh warps, stretching, reshaping, forming grotesque new shapes. The eyes melt away, replaced by pits of festering darkness. The limbs split, multiply, distort into wicked things of claw and sinew.
These are the horrors spoken of in whispers. The Necromorphs. The true children of the Fellpox.
I feel my own body shifting now. My fingers do not obey me as they should. My breath comes ragged, wet with something that stirs within. My teeth ache, though not from pain—no, they feel wrong, as though something within me strains against its human form.
I do not know which fate awaits me.
I pray it is the first.
Final Moments: The Slipping Away
In the end, all thoughts fade. All memories, all reason, all self. The flesh is no longer one’s own. The mind is no longer one’s own. There is only the hunger.
But before that final step, before the last thread of the soul is severed, there is a moment. A single, terrible moment where the victim knows. Where they feel the last remnants of their humanity being torn away.
I have watched this moment in others. I have seen it in their eyes—the flicker of recognition, the silent scream that lingers upon their faces even after death has claimed them.
I wonder… will I know when my moment comes?
Or has it already passed?
The ink splatters the page. I do not remember dropping my quill.
I will continue. You are still my hand for now damn you!
Necromorphosis & The Risen
The Fellpox does not simply kill. It does not grant the solace of death, nor the quiet reprieve of the grave. It is not a disease of the flesh alone, but of the very essence that binds man to life. When the body succumbs, it does not rest—it changes.
There are two paths that await the afflicted at the precipice of death, and neither can be called mercy. I will describe them here in full, as they have been observed, and as I now fear I will soon experience firsthand.
The Wasting Death
For most, the body can endure no further after the fourth or fifth day. The fever has burned away all reason, the flesh has sloughed from bone, and the organs have turned to putrescence. Death is inevitable. The heart stutters, the lungs collapse, and the body ceases to function.
And then, after a time, it moves again.
Those who rise from the wasting death are no longer who they were. There is nothing left of the person they had once been—no memory, no thought, no soul. The hunger that drove them in their final hours persists, but it is now all-consuming, an instinct rather than a desire. They shamble forth, guided by nothing but a ceaseless craving for warm flesh.
The risen dead are clumsy, rotting things. Their flesh blackens with each passing hour, peeling away as the disease continues to fester even after death. Their movement is slow, but unrelenting, and they seem utterly impervious to pain. They do not sleep. They do not tire. They do not stop unless torn apart or burned to cinders.
Some have been known to utter sounds—moans, gasping breaths, even faint echoes of words they once spoke in life. But this is nothing more than the remnants of a body that does not yet know it is dead. They are not men. They are not even beasts. They are hunger given form.
I have seen these creatures in the streets of the quarantined villages. They lurch through the ruin of their former homes, their fingers raw from scratching at doors, their faces torn from gnashing at wooden walls. They do not recognize family, nor friend, nor the cries of those who still live. They are blind to all but the call of the living heart.
They are the most common result of the Fellpox’s final stage.
But not the worst.
The Necromorphs: Beasts of the Fellpox
For the unfortunate few, death does not bring stillness. It does not bring even the hollow mockery of undeath. No, there are those for whom the disease has worked too deep, those whose bodies are too far gone to merely rise as shambling corpses.
They become something else.
It begins with movement. The body should be dead—it is dead—but the flesh does not cool. The organs do not cease their wretched function. Instead, the body changes.
The bones twist, lengthening with sickening cracks. The flesh re-knits itself, but not as it was—new muscle forms in unnatural places, distorting the limbs, reshaping the body into something monstrous. Joints split and reform, granting movement where none should be. The fingers sharpen, thickening into claws of raw bone. The head elongates, the jaw unhinging into something too wide, too jagged, too wrong.
The eyes rot away first. They collapse into the skull, leaving nothing but hollow pits that weep black ichor. And yet, these creatures see—they sense—far better than any man. They move with dreadful purpose, no longer shambling but stalking, hunting with the patience of a predator.
The transformation takes mere hours, and the result is something wholly unnatural. They are not undead in the common sense—they are something beyond death, beyond life, something designed by the disease for a greater, fouler purpose.
And unlike the risen dead, they do not lose their minds entirely.
There is thought within them. Not intelligence as we know it, not reason, but a dreadful cunning. They remember things. Not words, not names, but actions. Instincts. They recall how to open doors, how to set traps, how to wait.
I have seen one such creature. It had once been a man—a soldier, judging by the remnants of armor still clinging to its warped frame. When we found it in the ruins of Branthollow, it did not charge as the others had. It did not lunge mindlessly toward the torchlight.
It watched.
It crouched in the darkness of a ruined chapel, silent, motionless, its hollow eyes fixed upon us. Only when we stepped within reach did it move, and when it did, it struck with the speed of a starving wolf. It was no longer a man. It was never a man.
The Necromorphs are the true horror of the Fellpox. The walking dead may overrun villages, may bring ruin to the weak and unprepared—but these creatures? They are the harbingers of something far worse.
They do not simply hunger.
They hunt.
The ink smears here. My hands tremble. The fever burns hotter.
I must continue while I still can.
The Purpose of the Fellpox
And so, the question remains: why?
The disease does not spread merely to kill. It does not rise in corpses merely to feast. It creates, it molds, it transforms its victims into things beyond nature.
Some scholars have whispered of darker origins. That the Fellpox is no mere plague, but a work of design—something ancient, something intentional. A blight crafted to make men into something else, something worse.
I had dismissed such talk as superstition. As the ramblings of fearful minds grasping for meaning in their suffering.
But now, as I feel my own body rebelling against me, as I see the black filth twisting beneath my own skin, I wonder:
What will I become?
Treatment & Inevitability
I write this now with failing hands. The fever has taken root in my bones, and the ink upon this page is smudged by the sweat that drips from my brow. But I must finish this account—for if there is any hope, any chance at salvation, it must be recorded.
Let me be clear: the Fellpox has no cure. No balm, no tincture, no divine blessing has been found that can halt its progress once the first black pustules appear. I have scoured the tomes of apothecaries and spoken with healers, clerics, and alchemists alike. Their responses are the same:
"May the gods give you a death by fire."
And yet, there are methods—grim, desperate, but methods nonetheless—that may stave off the inevitable. I will detail them now, though I make no promises as to their efficacy.
Known Treatments: The False Hopes of the Afflicted
Bloodletting & Purges
Many physicians, in their arrogance, insist upon the old methods—leeches, lancets, and burning herbs to ‘purge the humors’ of the body. I have seen this tried. I have seen men drained near to death, their flesh slashed open in a futile attempt to expel the black taint within. It does not work. The Fellpox is not a mere imbalance of bodily fluids. It is not a poison to be drawn out, nor a sickness to be sweated away. The bloodletting does nothing but weaken the patient further, hastening the inevitable collapse.
Holy Cleansing & Blessings
Priestess of the Dawn Mother claim that faith may burn away the plague. They douse the afflicted in sacred oils, speak their incantations, and lay their hands upon fevered brows. For a brief moment, the patients seem calmer, as though some grace has touched them. Then the pustules burst. Then the screams begin anew. It seems no god yet answers prayers against the Fellpox. Or if they do, their mercy is a cruel one.
Fire & Amputation
Of all methods, this is the only one with any success, and even that is a paltry, desperate thing. If the infection begins at a limb—an arm, a leg—there is a narrow window in which the disease may be cut away. A swift amputation, followed by immediate cauterization, has seen a handful of men spared from the full horror of necromorphosis. But the window is slim. Mere hours. Any longer, and the disease has already spread through the blood, rendering the act meaningless. And even then—what life remains for one who has paid such a price?
The Inevitability of Death
There comes a moment, regardless of treatment, where the truth must be faced: the Fellpox does not release its victims.
No man has recovered. No soul has returned from the brink once the fever has claimed them. The disease is patient, inexorable—it festers in the body until there is nothing left but the disease.
I have seen men fight against it with every ounce of their will. I have seen warriors—great, unyielding men—bind their own limbs, scorch their own flesh, drink poisons in hopes of killing the infection before it takes hold.
None survived.
None.
And so, it is not a matter of if the afflicted will perish, but when. The suffering may last days, weeks in rare cases, but the end is the same. The pox will rot them away. Their bodies will rise again, mindless or monstrous, and the world will suffer for their unwillingness to die.
That is why I say this, with what little strength I have left:
If you, dear reader, find yourself marked by the Fellpox, do not wait.
Do not hope for a cure that does not exist. Do not allow yourself to become another horror, another beast, another unholy thing that stalks the night.
You must end it before it ends you.
A blade to the throat. A rope at dawn. A pyre of your own making.
Choose your fate before the disease chooses it for you.
A Final Plea
My time draws short. The ink runs dry, and my breath comes in rattled gasps. I can feel the fever deep within me now, a creeping, writhing thing that stirs beneath my skin.
I do not know what I will become.
But I know what must be done.
To those who find this record, I beg of you—do not let my body rise. Do not let me wander these halls as a mindless wretch or a beast of hunger. I have left a dagger at my bedside. If I do not wake as myself, use it.
The Fellpox takes all. But it will not take me.
I end this account here.
The candle burns low.
My hands are shaking.
Personal Journal Entries
Extracts from the private journals of Doctor Guy de Krosz, chronicler of the Fellpox
Entry 1 – The Stench of Mirstitrav ( Midwinter)
The air here is thick with rot. Even in the biting cold, the scent seeps through scarves and masks, clinging to the skin. I have seen battlefield carnage before—piles of dead left unburied for weeks—but this? This is something else.
The corpses refuse to rest.
I observed a woman today, or rather, what was left of her. Her body was stiff with rigor, her skin marbled with that telltale black veining. She had been dead for at least three days. And yet, when a soldier approached to inspect the remains, she moved. Her fingers twitched. Her lips pulled back in a rictus snarl, and she breathed.
By the gods, she breathed.
When the soldier recoiled, she lunged at him, jaw snapping. It took three men to put her down. I counted the strikes—seven sword-thrusts, one to the heart, four to the gut, two through the ribs. None of it stopped her. Not until one of the men, in desperation, took a torch and plunged it into her throat. Only then did she cease.
The flame did not burn her flesh as it should have. It clung to her, as if drawn by something unseen, and devoured her from within.
I do not yet know what we are dealing with, but I feel in my marrow that it is no mere sickness. No pestilence should fight against death itself.
I will write more once I have finished my examination of the infected.
Entry 5 – The Hollowbrook Incident ( – Third Week of the Outbreak)
There is no one left alive in Hollowbrook.
The Lord-Governor arrived too late. By then, the town had turned into a prison of the damned—shambling figures prowling between the buildings, clawing at the doors, moaning through shattered teeth. We approached the gates at dawn, and I could hear them inside. Gods preserve me, they were whispering.
I swear upon my own soul, I heard one of them say my name.
The soldiers sealed the gates, and by the Lord-Governor’s command, set the town alight. I did not stop them. What else could I have done?
I told myself that it was mercy. That none inside could have been saved. But when I turned away from the inferno, I saw the shadow of a child standing in the flames, watching me.
She did not scream. She did not burn as a person should.
She only stared.
Entry 12 – The Truth of Ravenshade Keep (Unpublished)
I have found the records.
The histories say that House Morlan was lost to sickness, that their keep was abandoned after a tragedy no one would name. But that is a lie. I have seen the letters sent by their steward, begging for aid. And I have found the last entry written by the Lady of Ravenshade herself.
She knew. She knew, and she did not run.
Her husband had been the first to show symptoms. Then her children. Then her guards. She should have fled, should have taken her household and cast herself upon the mercy of the Stewards of Saint Khrell.
But she was proud. She believed the gods would spare her.
She wrote:
"I will not abandon my house. The Morlans are chosen. We do not perish as lesser bloodlines do. My husband will not rise. He is not some groveling wretch to be made into a beast."
Two nights later, she recorded something else.
"I heard them scratching at the door today. But the door was locked, and the key is still in my pocket."
I found the door she wrote of. It was splintered from the inside.
There were no bodies in Ravenshade Keep. None at all. Only the deep gouges in the walls, the shattered furniture, and the quiet, waiting halls.
I did not stay the night.
I do not think anyone should.
Entry 21 – The Final Warning ( Date Unknown)
The Fellpox is not gone.
People think it was banished with the fire, that the land is free of its corruption. But I have seen the signs in the bones. I have examined the remains of those long thought safe. And I tell you now—it lingers.
It waits.
It is not a mere disease. I no longer believe that it ever was. It does not spread through mere contagion, nor through the common means of pestilence. It is something born of suffering, something that festers in the wake of war, of famine, of despair.
A sickness needs a living host. The Fellpox does not.
It is drawn to places of mass death, to the echoes of sorrow and ruin. When the bodies pile too high, when the land drinks too much blood, it awakens once more.
And when it does, there will not be enough fire in the world to stop it.
Final Entry – The Last Words of Doctor Guy de Krosz
(Year ??? – Date Uncertain)
I see now. I was wrong.
It was never the sickness. Never the body. Never the blood. It was the soul.
We caged it in flesh, shackled it in sinew, pretended it was something we understood. But the Fellpox knows. It sees past the veil, past the brittle lies of mortality.
It is inside me.
I have locked the doors. I have shuttered the windows. The lantern flickers, and the light does not reach the corners of the room anymore. The shadows move without me.
My hands shake as I write this, but not from fear. No, not fear. There is a joy in this, a revelation.
I am cured.
Do you understand? I see the truth now. The suffering, the fire, the death—it was all a baptism. I fought against it for so long, but the sickness was never my enemy. It was a gift.
I feel it now, in my bones, in the marrow that no longer festers but sings. The fever has passed. The pain is gone. I am whole again.
The candle is dying. But that is alright. I do not need light anymore.
I can see in the dark.
I can hear them calling my name.
They are waiting for me.
I am coming home.
I am—
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