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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Voadam" data-source="post: 7406229" data-attributes="member: 2209">Ancalia: The Broken Towers<a href="http://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/199446/Ancalia-The-Broken-Towers?affiliate_id=17596" target="_blank">Ancalia: The Broken Towers</a>Scarlet HeroesHusk: This ended five years ago, in 995. Without warning, nine massive Night Roads erupted in locations throughout Ancalia. Yawning gates of devouring darkness belched forth a sky-blackening miasma and an endless swarm of savage Uncreated abominations. While the darkness in Ancalia's sky cleared after nine terrible days, the tide of Uncreated had already overwhelmed most of Ancalia's cities and towns.Worse still, the darkness brought with it the Hollowing Plague.Victims of the plague grew light-headed and feverish, their spittle turning black and their chests sunken. A gnawing pain inside their bellies grew worse and worse until the delirious sufferer could only dull it by choking down gobbets of still-warm entrails. The pain was so great that it robbed its sufferers of their reason, and many committed horrible acts against their own families simply to still the mad hunger.Those who sought death as a relief from the pain were cheated by the grave. When their heart ceased to beat and the blood no longer flowed in their veins, the sufferers rose up once more as lesser undead that came to be called "husks".There was no cure for the Hollowing Plague that mortal art could devise. It swept over the nation, decimating the survivors. It even managed to infect the corpses of the freshly dead, with perhaps one in ten lurching up from the charnel fields to hunt fresh prey. The worst outbreaks of the Hollowing Plague seem to be over, but anyone who lingers within Ancalia runs the risk of infection. Close contact with a husk may increase the chance, but no clear vector has been determined, nor any sure way of keeping back the sickness. A thousand folk preventatives are mustered, but none seem sure.The origins of these restless abominations lie in a magical plague that came to Ancalia, and a curse that mere mortal magic could not efface.The first symptoms of the Hollowing Plague appeared immediately after the opening of the Night Roads. The signs were fever, gluttony, and an irrationality driven by increasingly piercing hunger pains that could eventually only be satisfied by human viscera. The fever inevitably killed its victims within a month of the first appearance of symptoms, assuming that the victim wasn't killed by others in self-defense. By the time the Ancalians understood what was going on, it was too late. More than half the entire population was infected by the plague.Anyone killed by a husk will inevitably rise as one within a few hours, if not immediately, as will anyone who dies from the plague's fever. The exact vectors of contagion are still not clear; bites don't necessarily seem to transmit it, nor does close contact with the victims. Instead, it seems to be a kind of psychic miasma that affects anyone within the former borders of Ancalia, potentially striking them down despite their best prophylactic measures. Some believe that being in the presence of large numbers of sufferers increases one's chance to fall ill, while others insist on the preventative power of one of a host of holy relics, peasant charms, or learned countermeasures. The reliability of such measures is altogether unproven.Currently, the Hollowing Plague appears to be ongoing at a lesser rate of infection. There is a roughly one percent chance of developing the plague every month a person remains in Ancalia. Thus, the remaining living population of Ancalians is decreasing at a rate of approximately 11% a year, even aside from the violence and slaughter endemic to the peninsula. If the plague is not stemmed somehow, the population will be effectively wiped out within a decade from the disease's effects alone.General scholarly opinion is that the plague does not manifest outside of Ancalia. Victims killed by Ancalian husks outside of the country will also rise as undead, but carriers of the Hollowing Plague do not appear to be infectious otherwise. As husks do not normally leave Ancalia unless driven by greater intellects, the chief danger of the infection is that some freebooter could take sick in Ancalia before returning to their homeland. Once there, a victim who dies, rises as a husk, and starts slaughtering their neighbors might form the nucleus of a dangerous outbreak.Unbeknownst to the populace of Ancalia, the plague is not so much a biological malady as it is an otherworldly curse. The nine Night Roads that opened throughout Ancalia brought with them this magical contagion, and they exude it like a form of magical radiation.Five years ago, in 995 AS, nine terrible Night Roads ripped open in various locations throughout the peninsula. A black miasma of disaster erupted from the roads, bringing with it a host of horrible Uncreated monsters. Just as awfully, the roads brought the Hollowing Plague; a maddening disease that turned its victims into cannibals before raising their corpses as ravenous, mindless undead "husks".Deviant Husk: ?Energumen: Sometimes a soul refuses to leave its corpse even after it's brought low by the plague or the teeth of the dead. Most souls instinctively sense the peaceful repose emanating from the prayers of Patriarch Ezek and will gradually fall into secure slumber over the course of a month, safe from the horrors of Hell and the agonies of their death. Yet those souls that led particularly vile or sinful lives may fear even this end, dreading what awaits them after death so greatly that their soul refuses to leave their body.On other occasions, dark spirits infest a fallen husk, filling it with an evil intellect and an inhuman set of cravings. Sometimes these wraiths are Uncreated shades, while others are errant ghosts, constructs of dark sorcery, or malevolent natural spirits.Energumen Depraved: The Depraved are normal men and women who have led lives of such wickedness that their spirits dread the grave.Energumen Spirit-Ridden: The Spirit-Ridden are those energumen created when a spirit inhabits an empty husk, either the ghost of a fearful victim or another spiritual entity in search of a corporeal housing.Energumen Uncreated Husk: An Uncreated Husk has been inhabited by an Uncreated spirit.Energumen Eaten Prince: Eaten Princes are the most powerful variety of energumen, as they've carefully prepared themselves for the transition into an unliving husk. Most candidates fail the process, but those souls that remain clinging to the eviscerated shell of their former body gain great occult power from the gory transition.Some exceptionally desperate cults have formed around men and women who choose to be devoured by husks in hopes of rising as an energumen. These half-suicidal initiates understand that the more foul and reprehensible a soul's life, the more likely it is to rise as one of these self-willed husks, though few realize that this result is due more to a dead soul's terror of judgment than any quality of spiritual vileness they bring to their grave. By enduring the brief horror of being eaten alive, they hope to win survival for themselves and their cultists, to say nothing of the ageless immortality that undeath brings.Despite whatever qualms they may have, these candidates perform horrible acts in a ritualized manner in order to prepare themselves for "the new life". When the cult's leadership is confident that they have properly prepared themselves fully, they are shackled to a rack and killed by a husk. Most such souls fall into the dreamless sleep of the grave, but a few spirits cling to their mutilated bodies with such fervor that they rise as energumens, strengthening the leadership of the cult.</blockquote>

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