Embrace of Decay

Virulence: 5
Difficulty to Treat (Mundane/Magical): —/6
Morbidity: 5
Treated Morbidity: 3

Symptoms: The victim’s skin grays. Necrosis of thin tissues occurs, and the skin starts to peel away. The victim grows hungry but cannot be satisfied. She grows frail and is increasingly easily fatigued. (The difficulty of the roll to correctly diagnose someone with these symptoms is 5.) When the victim dies while infected her body will rise again, no more than a minute later, as a zombie, retaining her memories and skills but fully devoted to the causes of Oblivion with an unearthly hunger and hatred towards all living creatures.

Duration: Upon being exposed to the Embrace of Decay, victims first feel the disease’s effects after a number of hours equal to their Stamina. After that, they lose one dot of Stamina per day. This degeneration continues until the victim reaches Stamina 1. The Morbidity check comes at this point.

Vector: Originally airborne, the Embrace of Decay has been reduced by the ray of the unconquered sun to be only transmitted by lethal damage from a zombie infected with this plague. Anyone whom such a zombie kills or who dies from the disease rises again, carrying the plague.

Treatment: There simply is no mundane way to treat this disease. Filling a victim’s body with the cleansing Essence of the Unconquered Sun, through magic, prayer or Solar anima, supplies an effective counter-agent; magical treatment usually revolves around that principle. Most of the time, the only way to stop this plague is to kill its victims quickly and burn the bodies before they can rise again to spread the disease. Fortunately, survivors of the Embrace of Decay are immune from then on.

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