The Blight
Certain diseases are caused by alchemist with good intentions, they mix potions to cure disease, and sometimes spawn new ones. The Blight is one such disease, it is contracted from tainted healing potions. How they become tainted is a mystery, as they seem to be perfectly normal healing potions. The original out break was linked to a Gnomish tinkerer who was playing with the recipe for healing potions, trying to make them more virulent. By adding some unknown reagent to the mixture, he somehow magically tied all healing potions together, future, present, and past. His goal was to make a mega potion that fully healed its imbiber, but never got it to work. Instead he put a 1% chance for every healing potion made to become tainted.
The blight itself starts out with the user feeling exhausted, then they break out in yellow dots all over their bodies, then a fever sets in, then they lose consciousness and without medical care or healing magic they die. It takes a day or more for the initial effects to set in, leading to the original difficulty in linking the potions to the disease. Those who recover get an added benefit from healing potions they take in the future and seem to be immune to further blighting. Some creatures never fully recover though, they only get half as much healing from future healing potions and have great difficulty sleeping. Sometimes the yellow spots will return, for a few days, then they will leave. The people that bear the blight like this are known as the Yellow Spotted, and they often die younger than the average lifespan for their species.
It is said that powerful magics can remove the blight form even the Yellow Spotted but such healers are few and far between. Some of the Yellow Spotted seek out these healers, hoping to be freed of their burden and return to living their lives like normal people.
A conventional cure has been rumored to be available in the bigger cities, another Gnomish tinker came up with it. So far, it’s efficacy as a total cure is yet to be seen, but if taken when the original effects set in the chances of becoming one of the Yellow Spotted lessen immensely, and the blight appears to be cured. It seems to have no effect healing the Yellow Spotted though, as they seem to have an arcane tie to the blight thus needing powerful magics to cure it.
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