The Childless Plague
The Childless Plague
Also known as: The Fertility Plague, The Sterility Curse, The Barren Doom, The End of Days
The Childless Plague is the name given to the universal curse of sterility that befell the world thirty years ago, rendering all living beings incapable of reproduction. Striking simultaneously with the Eternal Winter on what survivors call "The Day the World Broke," this catastrophe ended all pregnancy instantaneously and has prevented any new conception since. No child has been born in three decades, and the youngest survivors of the pre-Fall world are now in their early thirties. The Plague represents not merely a medical affliction but an existential death sentence for civilization itself—a slow extinction playing out over the span of a single mortal lifetime.
The Day It Began
Year Zero: The Day the World Broke
The Childless Plague manifested on a single catastrophic day approximately thirty years before the present, though its precursor signs had been accumulating for five years prior. During those final years, births grew inexplicably rarer, miscarriages increased, and midwives across distant lands whispered of patterns they could not explain. What began as statistical anomaly culminated in absolute catastrophe.
On the day itself—occurring at midday in most accounts—every pregnant woman across the entire world simultaneously felt her unborn child die within her. Healers were overwhelmed as miscarriages occurred everywhere at once. Within minutes, the wombs of all fertile beings were rendered permanently barren. This was not a disease in any conventional sense, but a curse woven directly into the fabric of reality itself, affecting every species capable of reproduction: humans, animals, even plants ceased to bear viable seed.
The effect was instantaneous and universal. A farmer's wife in the southern isles felt the same emptying horror as a noblewoman in the imperial capital. Forest does dropped stillborn fawns. Birds abandoned nests of eggs that would never hatch. The world's future ended in a single, synchronized moment of loss.
Manifestation and Symptoms
Physical Effects
The Childless Plague does not present as a traditional illness with visible symptoms or progressive deterioration. Those affected experience no pain, no fever, no physical weakness—at least not directly attributable to the curse itself. Healers who have examined the afflicted report that reproductive organs appear physically healthy and unchanged. The plague operates on a deeper, more fundamental level.
For those who were pregnant on the Day the World Broke, the experience was traumatic beyond measure: a sudden, visceral awareness of death within the womb, followed by the physical ordeal of miscarriage. For everyone else, the realization came more slowly, as attempts at conception yielded nothing month after month, year after year.
Medical examinations reveal no physical cause. Fertility rites, alchemical treatments, divine interventions—all have proven utterly ineffective. The curse appears to affect the very essence of procreation itself, not merely the biological mechanisms.
Psychological Impact
The psychological toll of the Childless Plague is immeasurable and universal. An entire dimension of human experience—parenthood, legacy, the future itself—has been stripped away. The effects manifest differently across demographics:
Former Parents (those whose children were already grown by Year Zero) struggle with the absence of grandchildren, the severing of lineage, and survivor's guilt. Many obsess unhealthily over their adult children's wellbeing.
Those of Child-Bearing Age during the Fall experienced the most acute grief—the stolen potential of families never formed, children never conceived. Many fell into lasting depression or turned to substance abuse.
The Youngest Generation (those born just before Year Zero, now in their early thirties) face a unique burden: they are the last. There will be no one after them. This knowledge shapes every decision, every relationship, every moment of their existence.
Across all groups, the Plague has created an existential void. Festivals celebrating birth and fertility have ceased or transformed into mournful remembrances. Courtship and marriage persist in some communities, but without the prospect of children, these institutions have lost much of their traditional meaning. Educational systems have collapsed—what purpose is there in preparing a generation for a future that will not exist?
Theories of Origin
The cause of the Childless Plague remains a matter of intense debate and speculation among the surviving learned, with no single explanation achieving universal acceptance. Several competing theories have emerged:
Divine Punishment (Common Belief)
The most widespread explanation among common folk holds that the Plague represents punishment from the gods for humanity's sins. Adherents point to the hubris of the Old Empire, the abandonment of traditional worship, the practice of dark magic, and the bloodshed of civil wars as evidence of moral failing. The fact that the sterility curse and Eternal Winter struck simultaneously suggests divine coordination.
Proponents note that the World Mother—goddess of fertility and life—withdrew her blessing, closing all wombs, while Old Man Winter descended in wrath. The simultaneous nature of both catastrophes proves, in their view, a grand judgment. However, this theory struggles to explain why thirty years of repentance, prayer, and sacrifice have produced no divine mercy or reversal.
Malignant Curse or Dark Artifact (Folk Tales)
Popular stories blame a "Witch Queen" who, in jealousy or vengeance, cursed the entire world's fertility and summoned unending winter. Other tales speak of a Demon Lord unleashed from an ancient prison, whose very presence withers life and conceals the sun. Some believe a cabal of warlocks enacted a great curse using a legendary artifact of immense power.
These theories, while dismissed by scholars as folklore, persist among the desperate. Cultists of various dark entities actively promote such explanations, hinting that service to their patron might restore fertility in a twisted new world order.
Natural Catastrophe (Minority View)
A few pragmatic souls argue for an unprecedented natural event, perhaps a comet's radiation, a cascade of volcanic eruptions creating a "volcanic winter," or an extreme magical climate shift. They note that catastrophic events can occur without divine or malevolent intention.
However, the perfect simultaneity of the sterility curse and climate collapse, combined with their supernatural characteristics, strain purely natural explanations. Most dismiss this theory as wishful thinking from those unwilling to accept magical or theological causation.
Effects on Society
Population Collapse
In the first winter following Year Zero, 30-40% of the world's population died from exposure, starvation, violence, and despair. Over the subsequent three decades, losses continued steadily. By the present day (Year 30), only 15-20% of the pre-Fall population survives.
With no children being born and the elderly dying naturally, the demographics have inverted catastrophically. The youngest members of society are in their early thirties. Most survivors are between forty and seventy years old, with a handful of ancients in their eighties or nineties who somehow endured the worst. Each year, the total population shrinks inexorably.
Collapse of Institutions
Institutions built around the assumption of continuity—governments, educational systems, apprenticeship programs, hereditary positions—have either collapsed entirely or transformed into hollow shells. What is the purpose of training apprentices for crafts that will die with them? Why maintain libraries of knowledge no one will remain to read? Why preserve family estates with no heirs to inherit them?
Some communities maintain such institutions through sheer determination or hope, but most have abandoned them as futile exercises. The focus has shifted entirely to immediate survival.
Religious Crisis
The Childless Plague shattered religious faith across the spectrum:
The Old Faith (traditional pantheon) saw its fertility goddess, the Queen of Summer, seemingly abandon her worshippers. Desperate prayers and sacrifices yielded nothing but silence. Meanwhile, Old Man Winter, once a minor deity, became an object of fearful reverence as the apparent architect of suffering.
The Cult of the New God (monotheism) suffered similarly. Priests who had promised their god's salvation and protection found their prophecies hollow when the world froze. The Cult's promises of divine intervention rang increasingly false year after year, leading to massive defection and internal schism.
New Cults arose from the ruins, including:
- Frost cults that worship the Eternal Winter itself as the new supreme power
- The Creed of Dawn (Order of the Last Light), which frames the catastrophe as a test of endurance
- Dark cults promising that forbidden powers or demon lords can restore fertility
The universal thread across all faiths is crisis and doubt. Even the devout struggle with the gods' silence.
Cultural Death
Perhaps more devastating than physical death is the death of meaning. Festivals celebrating harvest, birth, coming-of-age, and future prosperity have ceased or transformed into mournful shadows of their former selves. Art, music, and literature—expressions of hope and beauty—wither when there is no future to create for.
Education has collapsed. Why teach children to read when there are no children? The sum total of human knowledge, accumulated over millennia, is being lost as the last literate generation ages with no students to receive their wisdom.
Marriage and courtship persist in some form, but largely for companionship in the face of oblivion rather than the foundation of families. Without children to raise together, these bonds have lost much of their traditional structure and meaning.
Known Exceptions and Anomalies
Ambiguous Cases
Scattered reports of pregnancies over the past thirty years have invariably proven false—usually desperate delusion, fraud for attention or resources, or (in a few tragic cases) growths or parasites mistaken for pregnancy. Some settlements have executed women for claiming to be with child, viewing such claims as dangerous blasphemy or fraud.
A handful of very old accounts from the first five years after Year Zero mention women who were pregnant on the Day but did not immediately miscarry, instead carrying apparently viable pregnancies for weeks or months before inevitable stillbirth. Whether these represent the curse taking longer to fully establish itself or were simply medical misdiagnosis remains debated.
Animals and Plants
The precise nature and scope of the Childless Plague remains a subject of debate among scholars. While the curse absolutely and completely affects all intelligent, sapient beings (humans, frostmarked, glasgrim, and other thinking peoples) its impact on animals and plant life appears more complex and less absolute.
Animal Reproduction
Animals can still reproduce, but at drastically reduced rates compared to the world before. Wildlife populations have declined sharply over the thirty years since the Fall, and continue to diminish, but they have not gone entirely extinct. Hunters report that herds of musk ox, caribou, and frost elk are perhaps one-tenth the size they were before Year Zero, with fewer young born each season. Marine life along the Frostwhale Coast still migrates, though in reduced numbers. Fish populations in the few unfrozen waterways sustain themselves, allowing for ice fishing, though catches are unpredictable.
Some theorize that the curse's impact on animals correlates with their intelligence—that more instinct-driven creatures are less affected, while those with greater awareness suffer more. Others believe it's simply that the harsh conditions of the Eternal Winter make successful breeding nearly impossible for most species, regardless of the curse's direct effect.
The practical result is that hunting remains possible but extremely competitive and dangerous. Game is scarce enough that a single successful hunt can feed a small community for a week, making hunting grounds sites of intense territorial conflict. Trappers and hunters are among the most valued members of any settlement, and conflicts over hunting rights have sparked violence between communities.
Plant Life
Similarly, while traditional agriculture has become impossible due to the frozen ground and lack of warmth, some plant life persists. Most conventional seed-bearing plants produce sterile seeds or fail to germinate entirely. However, certain hardy species have adapted or were less affected:
Fungi and Mushrooms
These have become the staple crop of the post-Fall world. Mushrooms reproduce through sporing rather than seeds, and this method appears largely unaffected by the curse. Underground mushroom farms in caves, cellars, and geothermally-heated chambers sustain most settlements. Various species provide different nutritional values—some for calories, others for vitamins, a few for medicinal purposes.
Root Vegetables
Certain tubers and root vegetables that propagate through vegetative reproduction (runners, root division, tuber splitting) rather than seeds can still be cultivated in rare geothermally-warmed soil or underground gardens. Potatoes, certain onions, and turnips persist in this limited fashion, though they're luxury foods in most places.
Lichens and Mosses
These primitive plants, found in caves and on ice-free rocks, provide emergency sustenance. They're bitter and not particularly nourishing, but they can keep a person alive in extremis.
The Red Forest
In certain anomalous regions, such as the mysteriously radioactive Red Forest, mutated conifers still stand, providing rare lumber. Whether these trees produce viable seeds or propagate through some other means remains unclear, but their continued existence suggests the curse is not uniformly total across all plant life.
Food Sources in Year 30
Survivors subsist on a precarious but sustainable (for now) mix of:
- Mushroom cultivation (primary staple)
- Ice fishing in unfrozen streams and holes in sea ice
- Hunting of diminishing but not extinct game animals
- Scavenging of preserved pre-Fall food stocks
- Limited cultivation of root vegetables in geothermally-heated plots
- Rare gathered lichens and mosses
- Precious imported furs, oils, and dried meats from nomadic traders
The slowly dwindling animal populations mean that each year, hunting becomes slightly harder and less reliable. If the Eternal Winter persists another few decades, many species will likely go extinct even without the curse's direct effect, as harsh conditions and lack of sufficient breeding make population recovery impossible. This gradual ecosystem collapse adds to the urgency of finding a solution; the window for survival narrows with each passing season.
Theories on the Differential Impact
Scholars debate why the curse seems to affect intelligent life absolutely while having less impact on animals and plants:
The Sentience Theory
The curse was crafted specifically to target sapient, self-aware beings—those capable of understanding their own mortality and legacy. Animals and plants, lacking this awareness, fall outside its primary scope.
The Sacrifice Theory
Old Man Winter required the sacrifice of future generations—a concept only meaningful for beings who think in terms of lineage and legacy. The curse targets those who would mourn their lost descendants.
The Partial Effect Theory
The plague affects all life but with varying intensity. Intelligent beings suffer total sterility because they possess more complex reproductive systems or because the curse scales with consciousness. Simpler organisms are diminished but not destroyed.
The truth likely lies somewhere among these theories, or perhaps beyond them entirely. What matters to survivors is the practical reality: while there is still game to hunt and fungi to farm, these resources grow scarcer each year, and the specter of total starvation looms on an ever-nearer horizon.
Current Impact (Year 30)
Immediate Effects
- Demographics: The youngest adults are in their early thirties; most survivors are 40-70 years old
- Knowledge Loss: Literacy declining; entire bodies of knowledge disappearing with the deaths of specialists
- Mental Health: Clinical depression and PTSD are universal; "Frost Madness" (catatonic dissociation) is common
- Substance Abuse: Widespread use of alcohol and mushroom-based drugs to cope with existential despair
- Social Fragmentation: Communities divided between those clinging to hope and those embracing nihilistic resignation
The Weight of Extinction
Every survivor lives with the knowledge that humanity's extinction is not a distant possibility but a mathematical certainty. The oldest members of society will likely die within the next 10-20 years. The youngest have perhaps 40-50 years remaining if they survive the harsh conditions. Sometime within the next five decades, the last human will die, and with them, all memory of civilization will be extinguished.
This awareness colors every decision, every relationship, every moment. Some respond with desperate hedonism—taking what pleasure they can while time remains. Others embrace rigid discipline, maintaining order and civilization even in the face of inevitable extinction. Still others simply wait to die, hollow shells going through mechanical motions until their end.
Rumors and Legends
- The Last Child: Folklore persists about a child born after Year Zero who was hidden away by her protectors. Most dismiss this as wishful thinking, though a few hermits and seers speak cryptically of "the ember that survived the frost"
- The Cure in the North: Some believe the floating fortresses contain the secret to reversing the curse—if only they could be reached and their archives accessed
- The Price: Dark rumors speak of forbidden rituals that might restore fertility at terrible cost—mass human sacrifice, demonic pacts, or the consumption of sentient flesh
- The Gods' Return: Prophets occasionally emerge claiming the gods will return when humanity has atoned sufficiently, or when some specific condition is met
- The Natural End: A few philosophers argue that the Plague is simply the natural end of the world's cycle—that existence has limits, and humanity has reached its appointed conclusion
"We are the last generation. There will be no children to remember us, no descendants to honor our graves. Everything we build dies with us. And yet... we persist. Perhaps persistence itself is meaning enough."
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