As March turns into April and the city of Highmoon begins to emerge into the fullness of a warm, wet spring, the city gradually pulls back from its fear of plague and annihilation. As traders begin to enter the gates again, markets refill, and rumors spread, the following narrative emerges, by bits and pieces, on the tongues of the city’s criers and on gnomish broadsheets hung from lamp-posts. Some parts are true, some are false, but this is what the people come to believe:
The resurgence of the Crimson Rasp was caused by a High Priest of Zemox called Rubio, named for his sinister red mask, as all high priests of Zemox wear a wooden mask and renounce their true names. Rubio discovered ancient magic to re-awaken the plague invested in archaic bronze coins from the south, and forged a bargain with a demon of disease to make the disease resistant to conventional healing magic. At least seven variants of the name Yithrix are circulated, but public consensus eventually settles on “Yithrox” as the name of the demon in question. Together, "Yithrox" and Rubio assembled a small army of evil priests disguised as plague doctors, who had the power to force demons into the bodies of plague victims, turning them into brutish hulks and giving them sinister powers. Each plague doctor was said to have a uniquely colored mask and name to go with it; no less than 39 such named individuals are described by various town criers and rumor-mongers. The plague doctors’ ambitions extended from seizure of criminal assets in the humanoid neighborhoods to infiltrating the temples of Ceridwah and infecting the priests, all to provide resources for their grand scheme to assume control of Highmoon and transform it into a city of the plague-ridden undead. Rumors of multiple factions among the wielders of the Crimson Rasp never really get any traction, nor do those suggesting that the Rasp itself was a form of demonic possession.
Rubio’s forces, however, met their match when confronted with the collective powers and might of the ragtag bands of heroes assembled by Lord Sycron for a grand challenge, who agreed to set aside their differences and work together to contain the plague and defeat Yithrox and Rubio. Each band took on a task best suited to its talents. Their stories become woven into the narrative of the Rasp, some by secondhand sources, and some by their own members proclaiming their deeds in the public square.
The New Banner of Silvercloud was charged by Sycron with defending plague victims from the paranoia and reprisals of their neighbors, co-workers, and others. To this end, they disguised themselves as plague doctors to get closer to the victims, and in so doing discovered and defeated two renegade bands of “plague doctors” unaffiliated with Rubio: a gang of thieves using the plague doctor’s freedom of movement to rob the vulnerable, and a cadre of necromancers taking advantage of the plague doctor’s access to victims to steal the breath of the dying.
Yarsa’s Avengers and the Wolves of Sorenmere were jointly tasked with controlling the spread of the disease, and arranged a series of agreements with nonhuman healers, priests, and toughs to isolate and quarantine known victims and control access to highly infected areas, as well as distributing breathing scarves to protect the uninfected from the miasma of the disease. Rumors that they also hunted down and sniped infected homeless people remain unconfirmed, but their efforts succeeded in keeping the Rasp from spreading through the city’s crowded Southwest Side any faster than it did.
The Silver Sabers, including among their number alchemists, priests, and a survivor of the first Rasp, were given the job of seeking a cure. They never did arrive at exorcism as the answer, but they did succeed in creating and distributing a fairly inexpensive serum that diminished the disease’s symptoms and greatly slowed its progression.
Meanwhile, in the city’s graveyards and charnel houses, the dead of the Rasp did not rest easy in their graves, returning as undead at an alarming rate. Ceridwah’s Rejects patrolled the houses of the dead, keeping the blood-spattered zombies and ghouls from coming back to claim the lives of the uninfected. They claim to have fought a “crimson vampire” that spread the disease through its bite and corralled many of the undead to its service, but no other rumors of such a creature have been heard, and some doubt that the creature actually existed.
Lord Sycron saved the most important task for the leaders of his challenge: the defeat of Rubio and Yithrox. The two leading bands, Club Doom and New Warriors, exchanged some of their members, assembling teams optimized for each enemy and splitting the masters of the Rasp between them. Fighting their way through dozens of plague doctors and brutes, the two teams defeated the lieutenants of the Rasp’s army one by one. Eventually, the New Warriors stole Yithrox’s true name from the lips of a dying bard in an orcish neighborhood, compelled the demon to appear in the walls of a Crying Monk monastery, and, bolstered by the holy power of Zemox’s good servitors, banished the demon from the world for 99 years and 99 days. In the meantime, Club Doom tracked the elusive Rubio to the home of a sorceress and weapons merchant, Mercy Whitechain, whom Rubio had taken hostage and forced to manufacture magical weapons for his plague doctors. They stormed the manor, rescued Mercy, and destroyed Rubio after a pitched battle, but the manor and Rubio’s temple to Zemox within it burned to the ground.
As these stories of the Crimson Rasp’s architects and their defeat circulate in Highmoon, the aftershocks of the events resonate through the city. At the moment Yithrix was destroyed, dozens of individuals around the city- those who had bargained with the Rasp itself- die suddenly, in horrific, bloody dissolution, the protection afforded from the plague rescinded when Yithrix’s contact with Galon was severed. Public opinion eventually concludes that these tragic souls, most of whom were known to have had the disease but miraculously recovered from it, were still carrying it in weakened form and were slain as “Yithrox’s” final act of spite at the moment of his destruction. Rumors of “bargains with the plague” eventually get subsumed into stories of those who, desperate for survival, made dark pacts with Zemox, pledging to serve Rubio in exchange for the promise of a cure, and are never connected in the public eye with the people who died the same time Yithrix was banished.
The last cases of the Crimson Rasp do not end with Rubio’s death, but following his defeat, the disease ceases to be contagious, and becomes susceptible to conventional and magical cures. Over the following days, many victims’ fevers break and they recover on their own, although all those who survived Crimson Rasp will forever be marked with “plague-token” scars upon their forearms, backs, and legs. Not all survive; a few dozen die of the Rasp even after Rubio’s defeat, but no new infections occur, and within a fortnight the last patients have died or recovered. Survivors of the Rasp begin to take a sort of fraternal pride in their recovery from this deadly disease, and many proudly wear their sleeves short to display their scars; in some circles, painted-on plague tokens become fashionable for a month or two. The survivors also come to find, in time, that their bout with the Rasp has left them hardier, more resistant to delirium, toxins, and the touch of the unnatural in the wake of their infection and recovery(1).
The name “plague doctor” quickly becomes a byword for evil on the streets of Highmoon. Within two days of Rubio’s death, the bonafide medical practitioners who adopted the traditional plague doctor’s garb have abandoned it, wrapping their faces in heavy scarves and their heads in tight-fitting cowls in lieu of the now-reviled costume. A few legitimate plague doctors do face reprisals and accusations of evil, and at least one physician is killed, until the watch puts out word that all known followers of Rubio have been destroyed.
Within a week of Rubio’s defeat, the High Council meets and lifts all public curfews, restrictions on travel, and quarantine laws passed in the wake of the plague, and public institutions reopen. A unanimous resolution is passed honoring Lord Sycron and his Challengers for their contributions to the civic good, and the names of participants in the Challenge are proclaimed by the city’s criers as heroes (unless any of you wish voluntarily remove your names from Sycron’s list before he hands it over to the city), granting them lifetime citizenship in Highmoon, immunity from civic taxes, and blanket pardons for any crimes they may have committed in the city up to this date. The Grand Duke, James Simerian, pledges that he will personally attend the next gathering of Sycron’s Challengers to offer his thanks and distribute honors.
A more contentious decree is announced by the High Council at the same time. The original Crimson Rasp was historically blamed on Destrot, the God of Flame and Plague, an elemental deity (like Aeros, Stocus, and the Sea King) whose worship originated in the province of Mealdra and who was little known to most Gregorans before the Rasp killed a tenth of the kingdom’s population a century ago. Destrot’s worship has been banned throughout Gregora since that time. However, as of the 7th of April 689 PD, by a narrow majority, the High Council of Highmoon rescinds that ban within Highmoon’s walls, finding that Destrot’s church was unfairly condemned. Immediately, five secret temples of Desrot around the city go public, and a number of citizens, especially blacksmiths and smelters, publicly proclaim their long-hidden faith in the God of Flame. Within a week, two of the five temples mysteriously burn down as the newly emerged secret priesthoods vie for the top of the faith’s power structure. The three surviving temples rally around Brother Melos Tamelendren as Highmoon’s first Great Priest of Destrot in a century; he proclaims that the fire god is a deity of harsh purification, one whose flame cauterizes the wound, burns slag from ore, and boils away impurity from the clear water of faith. He also promptly files suit with the city for restoration of properties seized when the religion was banned a century ago. Highmoon’s Rolisina (archbishop) of Aeros, who maintains that Destrot is still an evil deity despite not being responsible for the Crimson Rasp, bitterly opposes both the restoration of the faith’s status and any return of seized property. The lawsuits will probably take years to resolve. Whether or not King Tylor will follow suit and legalize the worship of Destrot throughout Gregora remains to be seen.
When all is said and done, what comes to be called the Second Crimson Rasp or the Fifth Great Plague of Highmoon (other diseases over the past 500 years accounted for the other three plagues) claimed somewhere between 4,000 and 6,000 lives, or slightly more than 2% of the city’s population. Four of Sycron’s Challengers in various bands (one each in Ceridwah’s Rejects, the Wolves of Sorenmere, the Silver Sabers, and the New Banner of Silvercloud) died from the Crimson Rasp itself or in combat with false plague doctors or plague zombies; another two (including Kerrick) were infected and survived. Without the efforts of Sycron’s Challengers, many sages believe the death toll would have been far, far higher.
Altogether, six plague tokens are known to have existed--three red-marked tokens left from the original Crimson Rasp, brought to Highmoon in the trophy collection of the Cerdiwan paladin Constance Pelonessa and stolen from the antiquarian Fuldamus by Rubio and the Plagueridden, and three green-marked tokens crafted by Rubio as he sought to get the seven needed to perform a ritual to make the Rasp an airborne disease. All of them ended up in Club Doom’s hands by the end; the green ones lost power when Yithrix was banished, and the red ones were destroyed by Club Doom or by the fire at Mercy Whitechain’s manor.
And a final postscript: Rubio and his inner circle of six “true” plague doctors were each attended by two “Crimson Acolytes,” one of whom was eventually promoted to the status of full plague doctor, taking the title Testaceus, after Club Doom killed the plague doctor Estriatus. Rubio and his entire inner circle were killed. As for the Crimson Acolytes, 13 of them (including Testaceus) were killed either in game by Club Doom or “offstage” Mercy Whitechain, the plague doctor Lilacinus (Samira) when she rebelled against Rubio, or, in one case, by Rubio himself when he (wrongly) suspected the Acolyte in question of treachery.
But one Crimson Acolyte survived—one who served the plague doctor Argentus and fled when his master was killed by Mercy Whitechain. He left Highmoon and hid in the Penumbra, and word eventually reached him that Rubio and the rest of the plague doctors were eradicated. Lacking sufficient faith in the cause to attempt to resurrect the Crimson Rasp himself, he renounced the service of Zemox and did the only thing that he logically could-- he went to Las Vegas and opened a restaurant in the Monte Carlo Resort and Casino, which I saw during my recent visit. I've enclosed a picture of the establishment for for your edification.
Footnotes:
The resurgence of the Crimson Rasp was caused by a High Priest of Zemox called Rubio, named for his sinister red mask, as all high priests of Zemox wear a wooden mask and renounce their true names. Rubio discovered ancient magic to re-awaken the plague invested in archaic bronze coins from the south, and forged a bargain with a demon of disease to make the disease resistant to conventional healing magic. At least seven variants of the name Yithrix are circulated, but public consensus eventually settles on “Yithrox” as the name of the demon in question. Together, "Yithrox" and Rubio assembled a small army of evil priests disguised as plague doctors, who had the power to force demons into the bodies of plague victims, turning them into brutish hulks and giving them sinister powers. Each plague doctor was said to have a uniquely colored mask and name to go with it; no less than 39 such named individuals are described by various town criers and rumor-mongers. The plague doctors’ ambitions extended from seizure of criminal assets in the humanoid neighborhoods to infiltrating the temples of Ceridwah and infecting the priests, all to provide resources for their grand scheme to assume control of Highmoon and transform it into a city of the plague-ridden undead. Rumors of multiple factions among the wielders of the Crimson Rasp never really get any traction, nor do those suggesting that the Rasp itself was a form of demonic possession.
Rubio’s forces, however, met their match when confronted with the collective powers and might of the ragtag bands of heroes assembled by Lord Sycron for a grand challenge, who agreed to set aside their differences and work together to contain the plague and defeat Yithrox and Rubio. Each band took on a task best suited to its talents. Their stories become woven into the narrative of the Rasp, some by secondhand sources, and some by their own members proclaiming their deeds in the public square.
The New Banner of Silvercloud was charged by Sycron with defending plague victims from the paranoia and reprisals of their neighbors, co-workers, and others. To this end, they disguised themselves as plague doctors to get closer to the victims, and in so doing discovered and defeated two renegade bands of “plague doctors” unaffiliated with Rubio: a gang of thieves using the plague doctor’s freedom of movement to rob the vulnerable, and a cadre of necromancers taking advantage of the plague doctor’s access to victims to steal the breath of the dying.
Yarsa’s Avengers and the Wolves of Sorenmere were jointly tasked with controlling the spread of the disease, and arranged a series of agreements with nonhuman healers, priests, and toughs to isolate and quarantine known victims and control access to highly infected areas, as well as distributing breathing scarves to protect the uninfected from the miasma of the disease. Rumors that they also hunted down and sniped infected homeless people remain unconfirmed, but their efforts succeeded in keeping the Rasp from spreading through the city’s crowded Southwest Side any faster than it did.
The Silver Sabers, including among their number alchemists, priests, and a survivor of the first Rasp, were given the job of seeking a cure. They never did arrive at exorcism as the answer, but they did succeed in creating and distributing a fairly inexpensive serum that diminished the disease’s symptoms and greatly slowed its progression.
Meanwhile, in the city’s graveyards and charnel houses, the dead of the Rasp did not rest easy in their graves, returning as undead at an alarming rate. Ceridwah’s Rejects patrolled the houses of the dead, keeping the blood-spattered zombies and ghouls from coming back to claim the lives of the uninfected. They claim to have fought a “crimson vampire” that spread the disease through its bite and corralled many of the undead to its service, but no other rumors of such a creature have been heard, and some doubt that the creature actually existed.
Lord Sycron saved the most important task for the leaders of his challenge: the defeat of Rubio and Yithrox. The two leading bands, Club Doom and New Warriors, exchanged some of their members, assembling teams optimized for each enemy and splitting the masters of the Rasp between them. Fighting their way through dozens of plague doctors and brutes, the two teams defeated the lieutenants of the Rasp’s army one by one. Eventually, the New Warriors stole Yithrox’s true name from the lips of a dying bard in an orcish neighborhood, compelled the demon to appear in the walls of a Crying Monk monastery, and, bolstered by the holy power of Zemox’s good servitors, banished the demon from the world for 99 years and 99 days. In the meantime, Club Doom tracked the elusive Rubio to the home of a sorceress and weapons merchant, Mercy Whitechain, whom Rubio had taken hostage and forced to manufacture magical weapons for his plague doctors. They stormed the manor, rescued Mercy, and destroyed Rubio after a pitched battle, but the manor and Rubio’s temple to Zemox within it burned to the ground.
As these stories of the Crimson Rasp’s architects and their defeat circulate in Highmoon, the aftershocks of the events resonate through the city. At the moment Yithrix was destroyed, dozens of individuals around the city- those who had bargained with the Rasp itself- die suddenly, in horrific, bloody dissolution, the protection afforded from the plague rescinded when Yithrix’s contact with Galon was severed. Public opinion eventually concludes that these tragic souls, most of whom were known to have had the disease but miraculously recovered from it, were still carrying it in weakened form and were slain as “Yithrox’s” final act of spite at the moment of his destruction. Rumors of “bargains with the plague” eventually get subsumed into stories of those who, desperate for survival, made dark pacts with Zemox, pledging to serve Rubio in exchange for the promise of a cure, and are never connected in the public eye with the people who died the same time Yithrix was banished.
The last cases of the Crimson Rasp do not end with Rubio’s death, but following his defeat, the disease ceases to be contagious, and becomes susceptible to conventional and magical cures. Over the following days, many victims’ fevers break and they recover on their own, although all those who survived Crimson Rasp will forever be marked with “plague-token” scars upon their forearms, backs, and legs. Not all survive; a few dozen die of the Rasp even after Rubio’s defeat, but no new infections occur, and within a fortnight the last patients have died or recovered. Survivors of the Rasp begin to take a sort of fraternal pride in their recovery from this deadly disease, and many proudly wear their sleeves short to display their scars; in some circles, painted-on plague tokens become fashionable for a month or two. The survivors also come to find, in time, that their bout with the Rasp has left them hardier, more resistant to delirium, toxins, and the touch of the unnatural in the wake of their infection and recovery(1).
The name “plague doctor” quickly becomes a byword for evil on the streets of Highmoon. Within two days of Rubio’s death, the bonafide medical practitioners who adopted the traditional plague doctor’s garb have abandoned it, wrapping their faces in heavy scarves and their heads in tight-fitting cowls in lieu of the now-reviled costume. A few legitimate plague doctors do face reprisals and accusations of evil, and at least one physician is killed, until the watch puts out word that all known followers of Rubio have been destroyed.
Within a week of Rubio’s defeat, the High Council meets and lifts all public curfews, restrictions on travel, and quarantine laws passed in the wake of the plague, and public institutions reopen. A unanimous resolution is passed honoring Lord Sycron and his Challengers for their contributions to the civic good, and the names of participants in the Challenge are proclaimed by the city’s criers as heroes (unless any of you wish voluntarily remove your names from Sycron’s list before he hands it over to the city), granting them lifetime citizenship in Highmoon, immunity from civic taxes, and blanket pardons for any crimes they may have committed in the city up to this date. The Grand Duke, James Simerian, pledges that he will personally attend the next gathering of Sycron’s Challengers to offer his thanks and distribute honors.
A more contentious decree is announced by the High Council at the same time. The original Crimson Rasp was historically blamed on Destrot, the God of Flame and Plague, an elemental deity (like Aeros, Stocus, and the Sea King) whose worship originated in the province of Mealdra and who was little known to most Gregorans before the Rasp killed a tenth of the kingdom’s population a century ago. Destrot’s worship has been banned throughout Gregora since that time. However, as of the 7th of April 689 PD, by a narrow majority, the High Council of Highmoon rescinds that ban within Highmoon’s walls, finding that Destrot’s church was unfairly condemned. Immediately, five secret temples of Desrot around the city go public, and a number of citizens, especially blacksmiths and smelters, publicly proclaim their long-hidden faith in the God of Flame. Within a week, two of the five temples mysteriously burn down as the newly emerged secret priesthoods vie for the top of the faith’s power structure. The three surviving temples rally around Brother Melos Tamelendren as Highmoon’s first Great Priest of Destrot in a century; he proclaims that the fire god is a deity of harsh purification, one whose flame cauterizes the wound, burns slag from ore, and boils away impurity from the clear water of faith. He also promptly files suit with the city for restoration of properties seized when the religion was banned a century ago. Highmoon’s Rolisina (archbishop) of Aeros, who maintains that Destrot is still an evil deity despite not being responsible for the Crimson Rasp, bitterly opposes both the restoration of the faith’s status and any return of seized property. The lawsuits will probably take years to resolve. Whether or not King Tylor will follow suit and legalize the worship of Destrot throughout Gregora remains to be seen.
When all is said and done, what comes to be called the Second Crimson Rasp or the Fifth Great Plague of Highmoon (other diseases over the past 500 years accounted for the other three plagues) claimed somewhere between 4,000 and 6,000 lives, or slightly more than 2% of the city’s population. Four of Sycron’s Challengers in various bands (one each in Ceridwah’s Rejects, the Wolves of Sorenmere, the Silver Sabers, and the New Banner of Silvercloud) died from the Crimson Rasp itself or in combat with false plague doctors or plague zombies; another two (including Kerrick) were infected and survived. Without the efforts of Sycron’s Challengers, many sages believe the death toll would have been far, far higher.
Altogether, six plague tokens are known to have existed--three red-marked tokens left from the original Crimson Rasp, brought to Highmoon in the trophy collection of the Cerdiwan paladin Constance Pelonessa and stolen from the antiquarian Fuldamus by Rubio and the Plagueridden, and three green-marked tokens crafted by Rubio as he sought to get the seven needed to perform a ritual to make the Rasp an airborne disease. All of them ended up in Club Doom’s hands by the end; the green ones lost power when Yithrix was banished, and the red ones were destroyed by Club Doom or by the fire at Mercy Whitechain’s manor.
And a final postscript: Rubio and his inner circle of six “true” plague doctors were each attended by two “Crimson Acolytes,” one of whom was eventually promoted to the status of full plague doctor, taking the title Testaceus, after Club Doom killed the plague doctor Estriatus. Rubio and his entire inner circle were killed. As for the Crimson Acolytes, 13 of them (including Testaceus) were killed either in game by Club Doom or “offstage” Mercy Whitechain, the plague doctor Lilacinus (Samira) when she rebelled against Rubio, or, in one case, by Rubio himself when he (wrongly) suspected the Acolyte in question of treachery.
But one Crimson Acolyte survived—one who served the plague doctor Argentus and fled when his master was killed by Mercy Whitechain. He left Highmoon and hid in the Penumbra, and word eventually reached him that Rubio and the rest of the plague doctors were eradicated. Lacking sufficient faith in the cause to attempt to resurrect the Crimson Rasp himself, he renounced the service of Zemox and did the only thing that he logically could-- he went to Las Vegas and opened a restaurant in the Monte Carlo Resort and Casino, which I saw during my recent visit. I've enclosed a picture of the establishment for for your edification.
Footnotes:
- For future reference: In game terms, the background “Survivor of the Crimson Rasp” is now available to any human or part-human character on Galon who recovered from the Crimson Rasp without striking a bargain with Yithrix. The background grants the character resist 2 psychic, resist 2 poison, and resist 2 necrotic, or increases existing resistances to these by 2. The resistances rise to 3 at 11th level and 5 at 21st level. Amber, as the lone PC infected by the Rasp during this story arc, Kerrick is eligible to take this background if you haven’t already taken a background benefit of some sort for him.
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