Rathfallian Blight Research Findings

[Mobius]

I had the recent fortune of assisting in the post-mortem review and clean up of Mistweaver Outpost 398, currently under the Directorship of Master Weaver Torpez, as sanctioned by Archduke Rumill and House Kindershaw.

I worked in concert with a number of outstanding adventurers, who can speak up if they wish, as well as Master Weaver Jonas and Mistweaver Joseph. While much of my time was spent in clerical cataloguing and deciphering, I did find a few pieces of information I would like to share with the greater community. I will not bore the masses with the particulars, but my working knowledge is codified in the University archives for study.

• A working knowledge of Mistweaver ciphering, cataloguing, day-to-day activities and practices, at least in as much as they were encoded during the time Outpost 398 was active and what I was exposed to from this group. In addition, I have a members list of some 200 active Lost Ones and Mistweavers working in this area of research.

• The Blight contains a large variety of flora and fauna without any persistent or obvious features in common beyond the ability to consume, excrete, or otherwise manipulate "blight energy" in unique ways. These creatures sometimes manifest as a singular creature with Blight affectations (the so-called Phase Bears) and other times as chimerical half-breeds e.g. lizardlope*. The all consistently act with aggression toward un-blighted creatures.
• A majority of these creatures seem to dislike being in direct sunlight, but it does not seem to directly hurt or hinder them.
• All the facets of a balanced, healthy ecosystem is absent and replaced by an inconsistent, or at least incomprehensible, interactive system. The plants and animals of the Blightlands interact in a chaotic tangle with no overarching or consistent rhyme or reason. The imbalance ranges from an upending of predator/prey relationships, to the more esoteric like hibernation cycles or inter-breeding taboos. That is to say, very little previous knowledge of forestry, animal husbandry, or behaviour will apply.

• I uncovered a few concrete details about specific blighted animals which seem consistent
  • Phase Bears often set up hunting and breeding territory around malatite lodes. How they interact with the mineral is unclear, though it may be similar to how terrestrial bears "claim" exposed salt-licks.
  • The creatures colloquially known as "Red Oozes" seem to spontaneously emerge from an identifiable, but unresearched, ore. Whether this is true spontaneous generation or something akin to maggots from rotten meat is unclear.
  • Blighted treants have developed a rudimentary clan system or, at the very least, an extended family unit within the Blightlands. These creatures seem to interact only semiconsciously and do not appear to have the same higher Spiritual essence as Waking Forests in Prademar.
  • Hints and suggestions of a clan of dryads living in the deepest Blightland persist. This group is said to subsist off the blight itself and are rumoured to have overcome their social taboo and physical allergy to ferrous metals.

I will continue my research and share more as it becomes clear. I encourage any others who have studied the Blight to add their findings here that we might collate our knowledge. Hart guide you.


Dramthin Hartsboon
Prademar University
Keeper of the Tainted Grove


*Lizardlope, as prepared by Mistweaver artist

 

[Lorelei Beinae]

To the point of the dryads:

In these lands, dryads are born from the dead, allowing the spirit to carry on after it falls, but with no memory of their former life. Could these potential dryads be what happens to those that wander into the Blightlands, never to be seen again? Another reason why I think this might be a fact is that it is rumored that being in service to the earth gives you a better chance to become a dryad when you die. I thought I heard someone mention that at a certain point, the Blight will 'enslave you' (don't have a real concept of what I heard you adventurers describe, sound scary.) but based on description, you become their slave. Maybe this is what happens when you become a slave to the Blight and eventually you mortal flesh succumbs to the Blight. You are then reborn into a Blight dryad...


Just a theory...

~Astraea

 

[Mobius]

Goodfolk Leveilleur,


I have little knowledge of dryad etiology in the Grimere Expanse. In Prademar, the dryads awakened very recently from a millennia slumber and emerged onto Fortannis as a fully articulated culture and people. They do not grow from the fallen body, or spirit, of other people. I cannot say how this reflects on the local dryad folk, but it is mysterious indeed. Do you have personal experience with dryads who are "reborn"? I would be interested in more details about the process, if you are willing to share.

I understand that hoblings of these lands are able to survive symbiotically within the blight. Perhaps this group of dryads is developing along similar lines. Elsewhere in Fortannis, there has been recent evidence of heritages merging in sometimes startling ways, not to mention the very recent upheaval in those of Oathsworn and Selunari ancestry. Perhaps these heritages are undergoing a kind of metamorphosis, evolving in line with the local ecosystem of the Expanse.


Dramthin Hartsboon
Prademar University
Keeper of the Tainted Grove

 

[Lorelei Beinae]

Uh.....Cool dude Hartsboon?

Oh yeah, the races here seem to be much different than from where you are from. When I heard the Sulnari from your world don't have a birth sky and your jewels just grow in willy nilly patterns, it was very confusing. The way dryads are born in Rathfall is pretty common knowledge among people though why and how is not. It seems to just happen to certain people when they die. One day your mom dies and you cry, and the next there is a tree person walking around with her face and she doesn't remember you so you cry more. It never happened in my caravan but you hear stories when you travel a lot and it's a little traumatic if you ask me. Not the dryad's fault obviously but...yeah

~Astraea ☆