Lich Limb

"Slough the flesh and agonize the wretch, at the cackle of the crones you'll be cursed down to your bones!"

Full Necromancers are often spiteful mages, especially in the annals of history. It's not hard to see why, as their craft has been often seen as uniquely deplorable for centuries, but one curse that is nigh-infused with their spite is Lich Limb. Starting off as a baleful curse, it degenerates a limb on the target like a bacterial infection, wracking them with pain and promising more if they don't amputate the limb.
It was born of spite, used through spite, and is one of few curses that persist after death, making it the ultimate spit in ones eye.

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Transmission & Vectors

Lich Limb begins as a baleful curse placed upon a target, usually by a Necromancer or similar death-oriented mage. This can be done a variety of ways, such as via blood, touch, injury, or transmissed through means of sympathetic magic such as with effigies or symbolic items. This spell only effects one target, so it only ever harms the object of the casters ire.

Causes

Lich Limb is a magical curse, one that is cast with hatred and spite as it's core components. The caster often has to use a great deal of magical power or a long period of time in order to make it's effects irreparable. Once such power or time is spent, then the caster merely needs to inflict it on their target by whatever means are available or convinent to them. There have been cases in the past where it's been done in the heat of battle, usually as a necromancers death throes, where it is at its most unsubtle, usually a beam or blast of sheer necrotic energy.
Other methods involve getting blood on the target, using a consecrated weapon on them, or errecting an effigy in order to curse them with it from afar, although distant methods are much more liable to fail or be prevented ahead of time.

Symptoms

The spell targets the victims most used/most valued limb, typically their primary arm. Once the curse is successfully cast, that limb will start to feel intense pain that only increases if they should try to use it. After three days of this pain, it'll suddenly stop as well as any other sensation in that limb. Once this begins, the limb will begin to degrade on the outside, becoming gangrenous at the base and seemingly rotting in a rapid period of time.
Despite not having any odor or any physical bacteria, the effects are not plesant, as the "rotted" flesh begins to slough off as the curse makes its way down the limb, reducing the limb in its entirety to an animated skeletal frame coming off of the body. This process takes two weeks at the most, and once it is the skeletal limb remains animated as if it still had all the flesh around it, but everytime the victim goes to use it the intense pain rockets through their body instead of just the limb, rendering even the slightest use an agonizing experience.
Many victims who reach this stage prefer to amputate the limb, as the curse remains within the bones, especially in the case of a leg or other movement-based limb being targetted. This renders them the same as any amputee.

Treatment

In the early stages of the curse, if the affected limb is amputated, the pain and degredation are spared despite jumping to the end point. Sometimes a skilled healer can reattatch the limb, but that's a high-risk process, and if the limb has not been checked and cleansed of the curse then it will continue as per usual. Sometimes, if one is knowledgeable in necromancy or healing arts, they'll be able to spot the curse and cure it before the limb begins to degrade, but such cases are rare.

Prognosis

The curse, while painful, will never target a vital organ or the head. It's goal is for the target to live each painful, humiliating moment as they lose a piece of indpendence, skill, and health in one fell swoop. In recorded cases, it's always led to amputation, and only 3% of victims have had the limb reattatched and stabilized.

Sequela

If a victim dies before the curse has fully worked its way through, then they run the risk of becoming a two-fold necromantic monster. Firstly, the curse will animate their whole body, usually as a skeletal minion of the caster, although in cases of the curse being a last gasp manuever, the skeleton will instead wander aimlessly. Meanwhile, the victims spirit will be wracked by that whole-body pain as their skeleton wanders, often turning them into a maddened, vengeful wraith unless/until their risen body is destroyed.

Prevention

The only prevention for the curse lies in magical methods, either having arcane wards about your person or domain, or by invoking a divine shield of sorts. If you know you've been targeted, by means of divination or just insider information, then killing the caster before they finish the curse or by erecting defenses on the fly can also serve to increase its chance of failure.

History

Lich Limb was first utilized in a duel between Ethelred the Flayed and Parthenia Nieto, the Malignant Virgin, supposedly taking place sometime between -2014 EE and -2018 EE. The two were bitter rivals in the art of Necromancy, and were having a bout of combat to permenantly solidify the superior.
The battle had gone through several stages through various proxies, but finally their 1-on-1 combat was beginning to reach the end. The final blow went to Parthenia as she blasted through Ethelred's defenses and eroded his crimson flesh with a baleful burst that would prevent any further resurrection. With his own last breath, however, he came up with a rudimentary curse in his final moments, as when one is dying they need not conserve their energy, and fired it off towards Parthenia, who seemed at first to be unharmed.
Parthenia got her epithet due to meticulously crafting wards and rituals to keep her body from decaying or aging, so at first she thought that he had merely targeted her body but couldn't overcome her own defenses. The truth would dawn on her days later, when the primordial state of the curse would activate, with intense pains inflicting both of her arms and legs. She did her best to put her magical knowledge and power to work, but even when she identified the cause she didn't understand it well enough to undo the curse before it started rotting her limbs from the inside out.
Eventually, the curse would work its way through fully, and Parthenia would swallow her pride and have her limbs amputated, replaced with carefully crafted prosthetics. In revenge, she would then summon Ethelred's spirit and turn him into a placated servant of her entourage, making sure to reserve the most deameaning tasks for him. But despite having the last laugh, his attack was still successful.
Those who watched the duel go down, as it was common for Necromancers to watch through familiars when two of their kind dueled, heard the news of Parthenia's loss and quickly got to work reconstructing the curse. It would go on to be a mainstay in the repertoire of the Necromancer, and as outlawed and shunned as the rest of their craft. There was, soon after its invention, an epidemic of long-standing grudges being targeted by the curse, but eventually it fell into just another terrible curse that occasionally struck, especially between mages.
For a time, it even fell out of vogue as Necromancy was close to being redeemed in the eyes of many and understood as an equal branch of science. And then came the reign of the necromancer known as Shadescale. During the Border Wars he amassed armies of undead from the fallen soldiers, and used the distraction of warfare to cover up dozens of malignant rituals, spreading panic and chaos while tarnishing the barely recovered name of Necromancy. His skill was so prodigious and vast that entire platoons of soldiers would become inflicted by this curse.
When he was finally defeated after the war, his own final act was to use the curse against the one who slew him, depriving the hero who spelled his end of his family, his courage, and the wings he was so proud of.

Cultural Reception

When someone is afflicted by Lich Limb long enough that it becomes visible they are often seen as a lost cause, with many wondering if they're going to go through amputation or suffer all that pain? The fact that the limb appears rotten with skin and muscle basically falling off ostracizes the victim, even if there is no germ or sickness to spread. This ostracization can be compounded by the fact that to get Lich Limb means you've caught the ire of a necromancer, and especially with the current negative stigma around the art, no one wants to get caught in the crossfire between you and the one who cursed you.
Still, many healers of science and faith alike try their best to cure the curse when it rears its ugly head, and strides are being made to see if they can understand and prevent it in a medical way versus just the magical ones.

Type

Magical

Origin

Magical

Cycle

Chronic, Acquired

Rarity

Rare