Stamets Rot

the creeping yellow death consuming the Hinterlands

The Breathless Blight. Yellow Death. The Burning Flood. The Devourer. Life eater. The Rot. Stamets Rot is known by many names across Tamrakaaz, yet none seem to adequately describe the strange and horrible force of nature. Though generally believed to be a terrible natural phenomenon like hurricanes or insect swarms, the precise nature of The Rot is debated within both the Zhoyaala of Natural Philosophy and the Zhoyaala of Vitality. It is generally accepted however that Stamets Rot is a living force in some capacity. It covers thousands of acre's of the northern Hinterlands and is constantly spreading outwards from the northern polar region in all directions, suffocating all life before it, and engulfing and consuming everything it meets.
While most animals can easily escape the slow moving progression of Stamets Rot, the phenomenon itself produces an odd and deadly secondary effect: good air. Animals (and people) too slow or too late to escape the expansion often suffocate before the growth of the Rot physically reaches them. Those people who first encountered the Rot, assumed that it produced some invisible poison that slowly killed any animals within a few meters of it, but observations of the first humans to succumb to it, along with secondary evidence showed this not to be the case. Soldier's exposed to the close proximity of the Rot first lost composure, then became unprofessionally euphoric, before eventually collapsing to seizures and fits and appearing to suffocate. It was some time later that brothers from the Zhoyaala of Alchemy, in experimentation, discovered the concept of "good air" and showed that humans and animals could suffocate with too much of the substance, much like they did in heavy smoke, or in the previously discovered "bad air". This was further confirmed, when it was shown that artificially produced "good air" was incredibly flammable, which explained how Stamets Rot, despite it's near liquid nature, could be so incredibly flammable itself.

Manifestation

The Rot is a yellow mass of living semi-liquid material that slowly rolls, climbs, and expands over any obstacle in it's path, permanently covering everything it overtakes like a meter thick blanket of slimy and wet material. When first discovered, it was thought that the rot was some sort of puss. Early explorers believed that the deliverance had caused some great wound in world itself, and the rot was the puss from that wound issuing forth in an attempt to heal. This concept was question and eventually refuted by various Zhoyaalas, and was confirmed to be incorrect many years later when it was declared many years later that Stamets Rot was in fact some form of living thing. Part of the reason for this classification was the discovery that Stamets Rot was not moving and flowing like a wave or floor or like something rolling down a hill, rather it simple grows and expands itself ever forward. While the growth of the Rot is generally very slow moving, expanding no more than a couple of hands a day, that movement is careful, probing, and nearly constant. The main mass of the Rot produces smaller extensions of itself like tentacles, that grow across the ground feeling blindly for obstacles. Smaller objects like bushes or rocks will simply be engulfed by the expanding tendrils, then followed by the larger mass. With larger things like massive boulders or houses, the Rot will go around them first, eventually leaving a sort of island of that thing protruding from it's glistening yellow surface. Eventually however, the Rot surrounding that object builds up enough and pushes up and over it, covering that object too and creating a permanent mound in the great mass. Larger trees share a fate somewhat similar to other large objects. The Rot moves around it like a flooding river, but over a period of days the base of the trunk is consumed by the Rot and the tree dies, then falls over into the yellow body around it, slowly sinking as if being slowly dissolved.

Localization

Stamets Rot is located in the far north of Tamrakaaz in what is generally referred to as the Hinterlands. Since the discovery of the Rot by Joen'Zi explorer Pau'xu Stamets in the late 500s, it has spread roughly a hundred kilometres, and it is theorized by the Zhoyaala of Natural Philosophy that the Rot could have started far into the polar Ice Cap as something incredibly small and been slowly growing and expanding outwards for hundreds of years.
Since the discovery of the Rot's accelerating growth, and it's relative susceptibility to fire, it's expansion has been halted and even partially reversed by the combined efforts of the signatories to the Hinterlands Treaty.

"Stamets Rot is not a strange mudslide or a kind of 'land storm', nor is it the world's attempt to heal itself. Strange of course, a force of nature unquestioningsly, destructive certainly, but it is unintentionally destructive. Like a vine smothering smaller plants when it expands into the light, or a predator consuming smaller animals for food. Stamets Rot is unquestionably alive!"

- Buan Maa Kadae, Zhoyaala of Natural Philosophy (809 AS)

Type

Natural