The Gaping Pox

During the Dragon Wars, one of the strategies implemented by the Cult of the Leviathan was to send waves of magical disease across the territories they would soon invade. These plagues were designed to weaken the resolve of defenders and burden them with large numbers of critically ill patients. One of the most terrifying of these afflictions was a pestilence known as the Gaping Pox.

Sufferers of this disease were struck with a high fever that caused them to hallucinate and rave, often running wild through their communities during the early stages. The sensation of anything touching their skin became intolerable, and they would shed all their clothing - giving onlookers a full view of the horrors to come. Enormous pustules would form all over their bodies, swelling like balloons and bulging out of their flesh. Eventually, the skin would burst open, spraying vile pus in every direction. Anyone who came into contact with this substance was likely to contract the Gaping Pox themselves, and it soon became clear that anything it splattered upon could only be made safe by burning.

Where the pustules had been, strange and horrible abscesses would remain - holes into the living body, gaping wide enough for a hand to slip into. They caused intense pain to the victim, but unless they intersected the heart, lungs, or brain, the holes did not kill them. When cleaned out and examined, doctors could see the body's inner workings, somehow warped around these obscene pockets in the flesh. Over time - and if the patient survived the ordeal, for the pain alone drove many to heart failure - the agony would subside, but the wounds never sealed shut. Survivors of the Gaping Pox were permanently scarred with these great gaps in their flesh, and they incited horror in all who saw them. In the aftermath of the war, the survivors secluded themselves, wrapping their marred bodies in all-enveloping cloth that irritated their skin but shielded them from the gaze of the unafflicted.

Thankfully, new cases of the Gaping Pox have not appeared since the end of the wars. The infections were sustained by the occult power of the Cult of the Leviathan, and without their ongoing rituals, the disease cannot spread. However, as with so many of the war's aftereffects, the scars of that horrific conflict will remain with the survivors until they perish - and their souls move on to a happier existence.