The Risen

The arts of healing have many paths: The flesh work of Necromancers who graft a limb or eye to replace one lost. The Shaman who invokes healing spirits or drives away the evil spirits of disease. The Priest who calls down the divine energies of healing or exorcises spirits of disease and poison. The hermetic mage who refines the body and health via the Astral True form. The mundane healers who use various methods to invoke the spirit of the body, the Po, and strengthen it to fight disease or heal injury. Or address the elemental aspects to kindle the fire of life or like the necromancer give a foreign limb of living plant or borrowed flesh.  We are still troubled with diseased curses and afflictions attacking the body spirit (Po) or the higher soul (Bo): The affliction of the Harrower's Risen.  Corruption.  The Rot and a hand full of others. We might slow the progress but can not cure it. Occasionally we hear word of a sorcerer who has found one demon of the outer Rift that has virtue against them, but for just a few years. We are no wiser now than we were a thousand years ago. 

Cupaji of Kinn, Grand Elector's Lodge of medicine and healers, Olia

Transmission & Vectors

The Risen affliction is spread by bite and even scratches.  The wound may seem insignificant, and may close with conventional or magical healing, but  the flesh is soon turning dark and bruised. Within hours fever and weakness start to drain away vitality, with few surviving even a day after injury and infection.  No Exorcism halts it. No banishing of spirits works, as the infection seems to inflame the Po and it ursurps the Bo or consumes it. No removal of curses has power over it.

Symptoms

The initial wound is soon surrounded by bruises and streaks of red and blue. Each hour the infected suffer tremors and spikes of fever which may cause them to lose strength and vitality. Treatment only delays progress. The last hour before death all symptoms vanish. The flesh appears normal color and the fever is broken, though the subject is still weak and feeble. After death the body rises as the fresh Savage form hungering for flesh and blood. This may take a few hours to several days. It is unknown what influences this. The Risen will be a Savage form, quick and nimble for upto several months when able to feed. Feeding from living flesh allows them to regenerate the body. If unable to feed, the Risen will become a slow and bloated Shambler. Again the duration of this state is variable - weeks to months, possibly years. The last stage is the Husk. The soft organs have melted away, flesh shriveled and the Risen is now a figure of leathered skin, sinews and bones. The Husk is fastest but also the least resilient. No Risen will cross water of more than a meter depth, though they may lay in mud beneath shallow pools.

Treatment

The very best that healers and mages may achieve is holding the condition in stasis. Previously prepared enchanted objects are made and the Po soul unfettered and transferred by one of the diverse methods of magic in to the object. The Po still is connected and yearns for it's natural container of the body - and so long as the vessel and the body remain in contact the infected may live normally for at least several months. This is as long as the trials have been maintained so far.
Of course without the Po the body dies and ceases to function. The heart stops as does the gut.  For this reason contact must be maintained for the remaining existence of the infected.

Hosts & Carriers

This affliction will infect any living creature but not the half-dead Dhampir.  Rumor of Risen animals are a cause for terror.

History

The Risen are most numerous in the Harrowland but the evil lord seeks ever to spread fear and terror and it's pirate fleets loose Risen in to the countryside everywhere. The Emperor's forces keep constant watch, ever on the look out for the black ships or rumor of Risen.  The Olien wild has walls erected and maintained to prevent spread, and the same in the Golam wilds.  Skinchangers even hunt and watch for the Risen in their lands.   All peoples use whatever magics and spirits, watches and guards as they can to prevent the spread of the Risen.  Once destroyed, burnt, dissolved by acids or torn to pieces the Risen is done and gone.  Predators or scavengers seem able to eat the flesh without hazard - only the bite or scratch causing transmission.

by https://wallpapercave.com/w/tc2PZ4E

Origin

Engineered

Cycle

Chronic, Acquired

Rarity

Common