Sarnam's Blight

Sarnam's Blight is a plant contagion that devastated velge plantations in Rhaddin's Rest and Ztavsk in 266.30 N.L., leading to considerable unrest in both Shardscape realms. Velge is a root crop endemic to Rhaddin's Rest that is popular for its hardiness, its ability to tolerate a wide range of climates and soil quality. It is broadly used as a staple and features centrally in most dishes in the region. This is most commonly in the form known as brath, which is made of shredded velge tubers that are steamed and then lightly fried.
Despite localized outbreaks reported only in the late fall of 265.30 N.L., late enough that most communities had finished their harvest, velge crops planted during the early spring of 266.30 N.L. in wider swathes of territory exhibited symptoms consistent with Sarnam's Blight, leading to a severely reduced yield for the first harvest, with a handful of fields being declared a total loss. Wholly and mostly diseased fields were burned in the interest of containing the contagion, but it became clear that the problem would only worsen when initially healthy plants from the early summer planting began to exhibit blight symptoms.
Attempts to contain the spread and save the midsummer harvest were largely ineffective, with an even greater number of fields being considered wholly lost to the blight. Suspicions of a windborne pathogen led to the planting of "buffer crops" around velge fields during the late summer planting but this strategy ultimately proved futile—regardless of buffer crop density.
Initial study of the blight suggested that it was caused by a windborne pathogen but subsequent analysis and observation revealed this to only partially be true. While Sarnam's Blight is indeed caused by a fungus that spreads through airborne spores, these spores can travel at most a few tens of meters away from the fruiting body. These spores can only germinate in the close proximity of velge plants but are incapable of penetrating the thin waxy layer that covers all exposed parts of a healthy plant on their own, making it unlikely that the blight was spreading under the sole power of the culprit fungus.
It was discovered that tiny aphid-like insects were to blame for the rapid and devastating spread of the blight. It is unknown when these insects became prevalent in Rhaddin's Rest, but as far back as 210.30 N.L., farmers reported seeing "dust" blowing out of their velge fields in high winds, leading to the colloquial name of "velgerute" or "velge dust" for the microsopic creatures.
Although incapable of flight under regular circumstances, velgerute are able to travel considerable distances on the wind—the higher the wind speed, the further they can go. Uniquely adapted to be able to pierce the waxy coating that covers a velge plant, velgerute provide an path for blight spores to infest velge plants. In turn, the blight makes blighted plants more appealing to velgerute by slightly altering the composition of the velge sap, encouraging a population boom that trasmits the blight to other plants as the velgerute disperse on the next breeze.

Type

Fungal