Death curse

The death curse was a disastrous and far-reaching event that occurred on Toril in the late years of the 15 century DR. The curse prevented the raising of the dead, even when using resurrection spells, and caused creatures that were previously raised from death to wither and die.
==Description==
The main effect of the death curse was that the soul of any creature who died on Toril became trapped and, after some time, destroyed. This occurred so quickly that even liches were unable to feed their phylacteries with fresh souls before they were siphoned away, and spells meant to restore the dead were completely unable to function with the exception of necromantic spells that produced undead. Thus, certain unholy rituals—such as the Rite of Stolen Life that was practiced by the green hag Nanny Pu'pu—could still bring someone "back".
While the death curse was in effect, humanoids who had previously been brought back from the dead began to waste away, rot, and eventually die. This could not be healed or cured, could not be slowed with the use of something like a ring of regeneration, and traveling to another plane of existence or world did nothing to halt the wasting effect once it began. Curiously, the death curse did not affect preexisting ghosts or similar undead. It also did not inhibit spells like speak with dead.
It was said that the death curse may have additionally caused a weakening of healing magics in general.
==Cause==
The death curse was caused by a necromantic artifact called the Soulmonger that was located within the Tomb of the Nine Gods beneath the ruins of Omu in the jungles of Chult. Built by the demilich Acererak, the Soulmonger absorbed the souls of all those who died on Toril in order to feed them into an atropal. The Soulmonger also had the effect of diverting positive energy away from the rest of Toril, which appeared to be a reason why those who had been raised from the dead were rotting and dying.
The only known means of stopping the death curse was the complete destruction of the Soulmonger.
The knowledge about whether an individual's soul had already been absorbed or consumed was only discernible by means of a casting of the spell commune or divination. The loss of the soul could not be reversed, even by means of divine intervention.
==History==
===Origins===
The seed of the death curse was Acererak's discovery of an atropal adrift in the Negative Energy plane, and his subsequent inspiration to elevate it to become a world-ending god of death (a prospect in which he himself had little interest). To achieve this, he needed to supply it with an obscene amount of necromantic energy in the form of countless souls.
Acererak relocated the atropal to the deepest depths of the Tomb of the Nine Gods—a death trap which he had constructed a century prior for the purpose of luring, traumatizing, and absorbing the souls of adventurers to feed to his phylactery—and recruited the services of the Sewn Sisters, an infamous coven of night hags from the Lower Planes. Intrigued by the promise of a nearly endless supply of souls, the Sewn Sisters agreed to help nurture the atropal to godhood, and assisted Acererak in crafting the Soulmonger.
As the atropal began to glut itself on the souls of Toril, Acererak entrusted its care to the Sewn Sisters and departed the Tomb, although he kept a distant eye on his death god's development. As he left, he recruited the yuan-ti of Omu, led by Ras Nsi, to protect the entrance to the Tomb by promising to aid them in their goal of releasing their god Dendar from her prison beneath Chult. Naturally, Acereak had no intention of keeping his word, and in a cruel irony, Ras Nsi himself was soon struck by the death curse without realizing that the lich was to blame.
===The Curse===
Beginning shortly before Midsummer, priests and adventurers across Toril began to notice the effects of the worldwide death curse. While its exact cause was unknown, some were able to divine that an artifact called the "Soulmonger" was responsible and that it was located somewhere in Chult. Among the first to take action against Acererak was Szass Tam, another powerful lich and the leader of the Red Wizards of Thay. Perturbed by the death curse's disruption of the flow of souls into lich phylacteries, Tam sent his lieutenant (and also lich) Valindra Shadowmantle to Chult to claim the Soulmonger for Thay or to destroy it otherwise. With her was an expedition of Red Wizards including Dyrax, Thazma, Yamoch, and their leader, Zagmira.
Soon, the death curse was seen as a plague and was the talk of taverns across Faerûn. While in some cases there was a general panic among the populace, in others it led to derisive jokes at the expense of the wealthy adventurers and their patrons who could afford resurrection services and were now suffering for it. Those afflicted with the curse flocked to places of healing (for example, the Cathedral of Helm in Helm's Hold was soon filled with them), but the priests and healers could do nothing to halt the decay of their bodies.
Within two tendays of the onset of the death curse, the Harpers also managed to obtain the name and general location of the Soulmonger from a lich—rumored to have been Szass Tam himself—and they provided this information to interested parties on the Sword Coast, including the archmage Syndra Silvane, who made plans to teleport a party of adventurers directly to Chult. Independently, the lich Makos determined Chult to be the source of the curse, and arranged for heroes from Neverwinter (said to have included Minsc, Celeste, and the Hero of the Sleeping Dragon Bridge) to travel there, bankrolled by an afflicted half-orc noble named Morga Longlived. Likewise, a group of champions out of Daggerford chartered a ship to Chult in pursuit of the curse's cause, and would delve into the jungle guided by Azaka Stormfang. Soon, a large number of adventurers from across Faerûn had descended on Chult and several Faerûnian factions—including the Harpers, the Emerald Enclave, the Lords' Alliance, the Order of the Gauntlet, and the Zhentarim—sent operatives to the Chultan city of Port Nyanzaru to purge the region of the death curse. At this time, the machinations of a yuan-ti cult of Dendar were mistaken for having a connection to the death curse, leading these factions to work together to intercept an artifact known as the Dreamer's Amulet, which was erroneously suspected of being related to the curse. 
The Harpers—particularly their ranking agent in Port Nyanzaru, Soggy Wren—would continue to take a leading role in seeking out the cause of the death curse by forging alliances with local Chultan tribes and with Port Nyanzaru's Ytepka Society. Following a tip from the cleric Alfin Biscop, the Harpers were also the ones to discover the effect of the death curse on the flow of positive energy to Toril after they sent the warlock-artificer Rokh Manti on an expedition to the Positive Energy plane.
At some point after the end of that summer, the Chultan druid Qawasha received a vision while in the ruins of Mezro in which he felt himself whisked to the Tomb of the Nine Gods where the personalities of the nine trickster gods told him their history and showed him the Soulmonger. He came to believe that only by destroying the device could Mezro be made able to return to Toril. Having learned the location of the Tomb during his vision, he and his companions—Kupalué, Samrith Vess, and Zara—made plans to travel there and end the death curse. It was said that Qawasha may have also fought against the death curse alongside the likes of Artus Cimber, Dragonbait, Asharra, and Birdsong.
The death curse blighted Toril for over six months until adventurers finally succeeded in shattering the Soulmonger, destroying the atropal, and defeating Acererak, thus not only ending the death curse but freeing the remaining souls trapped within the Soulmonger.
===Aftermath===
Although the death curse was lifted, all was not well as long as the remains of the Soulmonger and of the atropal remained in Chult. The lifting of the curse also emboldened some evil groups, such as Dendar-worshiping yuan-ti, the Red Wizards, the Blackwater Three, and demon princes like Dagon and Orcus.
The first threat to the people of Chult came shortly after the atropal's destruction when a piece of it—which came to be called "the Cyst"—was used by an aarakocra shaman named Ullal to raise his son, Zuccass, from the dead. This resulted in both of them becoming twisted and determined to overrun Port Nyanzaru with Chult's many undead, which had become increasingly aggressive as a result of the Cyst's growing power as it fed on the lifeforce of sacrifices. When their undead besieged the city, the defense was coordinated by Hawkdriver Mazugulak while the "Fat Knight" Alastar Bol arranged for a party of adventurers to attack the Cyst's resting place in the ruined city of Matolo.
Subsequently, obyriths in service to Dagon also acquired a remnant of the atropal, and attempted to use it to sow chaos and cause tsunamis across Chult. Around the same time, a Dendar-worshiping yuan-ti anathema named Kress'voon invaded Orolunga and attempted to recreate the death curse with an artifact known as the Death of the Sun, which worked similarly to the Soulmonger but with a much smaller area of influence.
Concurrently, Szass Tam's aspirations to capture the power of the Soulmonger were not assuaged, and he sent his agents—including multiple zulkirs—to collect shards of the artifact from across Chult and to absorb their power into special opal pendants. At one point, this led them to clash in a three-way battle at the Peaks of Flame with both the yuan-ti forces of Ras Nsi and the demonic forces of Orcus, who also sought the shards of the Soulmonger. Tam's ultimate goal soon shifted to using the artifact's power to release Dendar from her prison beneath Chult, as he had been fooled into believing that Dendar had visited him and his servants in their dreams. He believed that in exchange for releasing the primordial, she had promised to fulfill her purpose to end all life on Toril but then to leave the Red Wizards as rulers over the undead world. In truth, this was a ruse devised by the lich Rhaugilath, who had been manipulating Thay, the yuan-ti, and the forces of Port Nyanzaru since even before the destruction of the Soulmonger in order to claim the power of the artifact for himself and thereby break free of his servitude to the Shadow King Larloch. When Tam put the final stages of his plan into motion by sending the zulkir Ethra Dralas to the Maze of Ubtao, Rhaugilath set in motion his plan to trick the Thayans and a party of adventurers into clashing over the opal pendants for the final time.
==Notable Individuals Affected==
* Alfin Biscop, a retired adventurer and cleric of Torm from Neverwinter.
* Jessamine, one of the merchant princes of Port Nyanzaru.
* Morga Longlived, a half-orc noblewoman from Waterdeep.
* Ras Nsi, a yuan-ti warlord and former bara.
* Syndra Silvane, a retired adventurer, merchant, and archmage from Baldur's Gate.
* A nobleman from Daggerford who hired champions to find a ring of regeneration in hopes of saving himself.
==Appendix==
===Notes===
===Appearances===
===References===
Category:Magic
Category:Curses
Category:Plagues
Category:Events in Omu
Category:Events in Port Nyanzaru
Category:Events in Chult
Category:Events on the Chultan Peninsula
Category:Events in Faerûn
Category:Events on Toril
Category:Events in the Outer Planes
Category:Events in the Inner Planes