Virule

God of Diseases and Pestilence

The Blightfather

Every outbreak and sickly disease that has spread across Riven, every poison and toxin that has taken the lives of kings and queens across the land, and every deathly, sentient corpse that has stumbled out of its grave owes thanks to the Blightfather. Virule is the god of disease, decay, and pestilence and is the Primal Fiend most directly involved with the plight of mortals, particularly humans, who suffer so acutely from a fear of death. He is the embodiment of the constant cycle of death and rebirth which animates all life in the universe and was brought into being by mortals' fears of death and the despair they feel about their inevitable mortality from age and disease. While not an arbiter of death and the afterlife like that of the Raven Queen and her reapers, Virule is just as similarly a god of death in the way of the inevitable cause that brings mortals to the Queen of the Shadowfell.
Though so much of his portfolio is concerned with death and decay, Virule is unexpectedly also the personification of rebirth. After all, decay is simply one part of the cycle of life, without which no new life could grow. In the same way, Virule also personifies perseverance and survival. While those who wish to spread death, decay, and corruption are certainly amongst his followers, there are also those who wish to endure, to become resilient enough to handle the difficulties and opportunities presented by an uncaring world. Only the most powerful weapons or the most lethal of wounds have a chance to slay a true follower of Virule, though even the process of closing into martial range with the Plague Lord's children can bring an agonizing death from one of his joyful diseases.
Virule tends to his concocting diseases within the Garden of Pestilence, a realm within the Lower Planes. Here using the bodies and souls of his Fiends he creates batches of viruses, bacteria, and poisons that he plans to spread across Riven's lands.

Depiction

Virule is usually depicted as an immensely obese humanoid whose scabrous flab is the greenish-brown hue of decomposing flesh. His paunch, swollen with corpse gas, spills stinking organs, and a legion of daemonic mites -- Plaguelings -- play among his entrails and suckle the pus-riddled discharge streaming from his sores. Fat flies hum around his antlered head. His blubbery, pustulated face wears an amiable smile of contentment. Around his head is a gaping maw of endless yellow teeth and bone, hiding within its disgusting collar a multi-eyed figure with stag horns protruding from its skull.

Enemies

The Plague Lord's greatest enemies are those that seek to either end his cycle of decay or that which he cannot corrupt. The Raven Queen proves to be one of his greatest rivals as her attempts to destroy Virule and his corruption prove futile. While she has no regard for the death of mortals brought on by the diseases spread, it is that the mortals corrupted by Virule are afflicted and pass before their times have come only to sprout up from their graves as wandering corpses. Virule also holds a rotting hatred towards the Wildmother, Iona. It was her and Epheal who banished Virule during the Calamity, and now he seeks nothing more than to turn her beautiful wilds and oceans into festering pools of rot.

Divine Domains

• Death
• Grave
• Nature

Divine Symbols & Sigils

A pyramid comprised of three circles.

Tenets of Faith

• Rot and stagnate the land around you until the stench of undeath blooms.
• Watch your enemies wither and decay in front of you. Enjoy the present you've bestowed upon them.
• Spread the gift of disease across the world in the name of the Blightfather.

Divine Classification

God, Primal Fiend

Alignment

Neutral Evil

Species

Fiend

Honorary & Occupational Titles

• The Plague Lord
• The Great Unclean One
• Grandfather of Death
• Urfather
• The Finality
• The Crow (Norsca)

Gender

Male

Areas of Worship

• Pestilence
• Disease
• Decay
• Poison
• Famine
• Rebirth