Quiet Death

The Quiet Death is the name given by scholars to a historical catastrophe of an as-yet undetermined cause that resulted the complete eradication of a number of beradien and eristur settlements in IldUtumbar, Valley of Ghosts in IktOrryk.
The exact date and time of the Quiet Death is unknown as the event is attested primarily in oral tradition, with written accounts appearing only centuries later as part of the first recorded histories on the conflicts of the beradien and eristur. Though details are scant in the historical record, a laborious study of extant accounts has led present-day historians to conclude that the Quiet Death likely transpired in the early 190s of the 27th millennium (ca. N.L. 190.27).
Details conflict from one telling to another but a close examination of the available literature suggests a generally agreed-upon timeline of events for the Quiet Death. All sources agree that the disaster likely originated from the head of the valley, and that the first people to die would have been the inhabitants of a tiny beradienil settlement in the area. Tales of survivors are few and far between in the historical record but all agree that the Quiet Death was preceded by two strange phenomena: a low rumble in the earth powerful enough to shake earthenware jars and cupboards followed by a boom loud enough to rattle doors on their hinges.
Accounts differ from this point. Some describe a wall of fog that swept down the valley, killing everything in its path. Others make no mention of fog, only a rustling in the canopy of the forest, not unlike rippling waves of grass in a meadow during a breeze, accompanied by a wave of eerie silence. A handful of accounts speak of survivors who ventured into the valley in the aftermath, only to never return.
The record suggests that the valley remained deadly for a considerable amount of time thereafter, with the first attempts to reestablish contact with the interior not taking place for days or weeks after the events of the Quiet Death. The beradien and eristur each sent expeditions into the valley and contemporary historians largely agree on what they found in each settlement. Most inhabitants were dead in their beds with no discernible injury except for an outbreak of sores and ulcers on some individuals and an inexplicable change of complexion for others—this, despite no evidence of contagion before or after the events of the Quiet Death. Of the few who seemed to have been awake at the time of the event, most lay dead in the threshold of doors or just past. Hearth fires around the settlements appeared as though they had been snuffed in an instant, instead of burning down to ash after the passing of their keepers. Indeed, most accounts describe the harrowing scene with a common refrain: that it was as if the settlements had, from one moment to the next, changed somehow from villages of the living to villages of the dead.
It is said that not even the beasts of the valley were spared the fate of the people who lived in it. The expeditionary teams attest to finding dead animals wherever they looked. Like the corpses in the settlement, the animal carcasses were said to have been remarkably well-preserved, with little decomposition having occurred despite the amount of time that had passed since the event.

Type

Natural