Blight

The Dragons of Caen warp and taint the land and creatures around them. This effect, called blight, can extend for miles around a dragon’s lair, depending on the age and power of the dragon. Land affected by a dragon’s blight often appears as a twisted shadow of its natural state. The presence of a newly settled dragon in an area becomes more noticeable as its blight strengthens and spreads. For the first day after the creature’s arrival, the blight extends only a few feet outward from the dragon, but this area grows rapidly, spreading a mile every few days until it reaches its maximum size. A dragon’s blight permeates everything around the creature. The effects of a dragon’s blight include tainted water, stunted vegetation, fouled crops and game, stillborn infants, and strange weather patterns, but its effects on living creatures varies considerably. Blight is a perversion of the natural order—a contaminating force inimical to the balance shaped between Dhunia  and the Devourer Wurm . In addition to its malignant effects on living creatures, a dragon’s blight taints and corrupts the land around it, seeping into soil and rock to poison the very body of Orboros. It is even capable of annihilating the natural flows of Caen’s ley lines altogether. The Circle Oroborus has developed several techniques for correcting and mitigating this damage, but these solutions have been unreliable. The Scharde Islands, for example, were once fertile with natural energies, but the innermost islands of Cryx are now useless for druidic rites due to the pervasive blight of Toruk. In an effort to head off similar catastrophes in the future, many high-ranking druids have pushed for urgent action against the spawn of the dragon Everblight, whose mastery of his corrupting influence has allowed his forces to wield blighted energies as weapons of war.