The Cause
With the discovery of
Ambrosia, the people of Hymbra no longer needed the magic of the gods to cure their ailments - they now had a cheap, available, and superior alternative in ambrosia. Thus, fewer and fewer Hymbrans visited the gods' various churches, chapel, and cathedrals until nearly none were going. After all, why do you need to pray for good health when you can have it in a vial. This abandonment of the gods has led many to believe that the Scourge is a curse visited upon the Hymbrans by the snubbed gods. Punishment for the hubris of the Hymbrans.
The Curse
The curse takes hold slowly. What start as a grown man or woman of any race, begins to subtly change over time. A human might begin to grow coarse hair all over their bodies, have their limbs lengthen slowly until they reach macabre proportions, or scratch off chunks of skin until they look like nothing but muscle. Other races have similar changes, sometimes the same and sometimes slightly different. A Kenku may molt its feathers until nothing is left but splotchy grey skin. An Orc may grow fleshy tumors on parts of their bodies. A minotaur may find that its blood has turned to acid. It goes without saying that ambrosia is unable to cure this.
The curse only develops more horrifically from there. The victims soon lose their minds, turning into nothing more than horrible, violent beasts. No fewer than 10 varieties of Scourge are known (the name for the beasts is the same as the name for the curse, for they are inseparable from each other): some are hairy, long limbed, wolf faced beasts with claws and teeth the size of daggers. Some are pale grey hunched creatures hiding under what remains of their tattered clothes. Some look like piles of flesh covered with bulbous eyes and mouths. Only one thing ties all these beasts together: they used to be kith, and they no longer are.
The Cure
There is no known cure to the Scourge. It is punishment from the gods. Seek succor in their mercy, you who remain unchanged, or you shall share the fate of the heretics.
The Aftermath
Hymbra is on the verge of collapse due to this curse. Its army, recently on its way to surely annihilate Hymbra's neighboring nation with their advanced technology, has mostly succumb to the curse. A stretch of land in northern Qemt'Or and southern Hymbra is now completely inaccessible, cut off by an incredible amount of roaming scourge that was once the Hymbra army. Now mindless beasts, they wander the former battlefields, attacking anything that comes near them. The cities in Hymbra are not looking much better. More and more people show signs of the Scourge each day and people lock themselves away in their homes, hoping for a miracle to come and cleanse the land.
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