The Fall of Hessia

Disaster / Destruction

The Kingdom of Hurria was one of the first settlements impacted by the corruptions of the Blighted Coast. After weeks of disease ravaged animals assailed the surrounding towns, refugees flooded into the city bringing disease.   A kind of siege took hold over the city and attempts at relief where all for not. After a time, news from Hessia stopped coming...

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The Fall of Hessia

Prelude

Shortly after the death of Aman'Yok and his intermnet at the shrine, a corruption began taking root around the surrounding lands. Starting first, the coastal groves began to wilt and bend into umbral shades of black rotted oaks under replacing the natural fauna with oozing pustuals of maggot feasted fungii. With no healthy vegetation, the herbivorous wildlife began to die off, either by taint or through the slow attrition of starvation. When these creatures began dying off, so too did the predators of the land began to die, but by this time the corruption had began impacting them in different ways.   They began to change, first in small unoticable ways like a change in hunting grounds or a sudden sort of boldness in where they might attack but then changed into something much more terrific to behold. The bears of the wilderness grow larger still, the wolves of the forests faster and more bloodthirsty with the very corruptions of the blight coating their own teeth, poisoning and rotting anything that might fall prey to their bite or to their claws.  

The Fall of Hessia

  The first attacks noted by the defenders of the Kingdomof Hessia where that of packs of wolves attacking the outlying castletowns. Upon sallying out to defend these villages they would, time after time, find the attacks had already concluded by the time they had reached the towns, leaving only dead, wounded and the ill in it's wake.   While Refugees slowly began to trickle in to the city, they brought with them disease and an outbreak of the disease now known as The Rotvein Blight quickly broke out, devestating both the city and it's garrison. The Lord Castellan of Hessia was however, fast to act, first by barring further refugees from entering the city then by sectioning off the now fading trade district to quarantine the ill.   Neither of these proved to be popular decisions, the refugees, while barred from entering were still arriving at the walls of the city and began to settle in the surrounding grounds. Guards initially made efforts to force away the ill but this only proved to bring further disease into the ranks of the guards, weakening their defenses further. With the settlement of the refugees in the trade district, what little trade from Tel'A'At, Enekraad or Grenet there was ceased entirely, leaving the city to wither still.   Little else is known about the later weeks of the city, a convoy was sent out north to Sanktskrat to make a plea for assistance and for food, however the convoy was not fated to complete it's journey. After a month's time without hearing back, an expedition was led by the captain of the guard and a company of men-at-arms with the goal of either finding the remains of the convoy, or themselves making the journey to Sanktskrat.   Only a dozen men would return to the city, after not but three weeks. The Captain of the Guard himself being mortally wounded and nearly unable to speak owing to his injuries could only report of horrors now infesting the dead woods before dying. Similar attempts were made to reach the coasts that all ended in failiure as noted in logs left behind.  

Aftermath

  After a time, travelers found themselves upon overgrown paths which they found lead to Hessia, now a dessicated husk and devoid of all life, save for the savage wildlife stalking the city.