Frost Blight

> "They say a soul is the fire of life... what happens when it freezes?" **--Mountain Warden Aliuis, *A Padfoot's guide to the Mountains,* 896 AE.**
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## Overview

Frost Blight is a rare soul sickness that can only be contracted in the mountains and lands of Ardorserii . There have been rare fabled stories of people in North Hold dying from a similar disease, but modern physicians have not been able to verify the reports. Frost Blight is a sickness that affects the soul, by realigning the soul's natural element. Once frost blight realigns a soul, the soul is out of sync with the body and the body slowly begins to decay much like a tierii would wither. There is no official confirmed cure for frost blight short of divine intervention, however there are treatments that have proven effective.

## In Depth

Every soul as it grows in alignment with the needs of the body its attached to and becomes aligned to one of six aspects: Fire, Water, Earth, Air, Light, or Darkness. Serii can beceome attuned to any of the elemental aspects (Fire, Water, Earth, or Air) and Dorii can become attuned to either of the oculus aspects (Light or Darkness). Each soul is custom tailored to provide the needs each individual spark of life requires. Frost Blight is a magical sickness that realigns a soul's natural aspect to be aligned with frost. No natural living body is able to sustain itself on such a soul and slowly withers much like a tierii slowly dying from not having a self-sustaining soul. Unlike a tierii, someone afflicted with Frost Blight can't consume other souls to live, as two souls can't occupy the same body without the use of powerful profane divine magic.

Phsyicans and arcanists believe the cause for Frost Blight and why it can only be contracted in Ardorserii is the country's married history with Tierii and magical wars and castatrophes involving the northern Earthfire and that some of the mountains are so magically and spiritually imbued that an unprepared adventurer exploring through the region might have their will over come by the climate and they contract Frost Blight due to either a lack of willpower or a conflicting ideology to the weather and climate. It is well reported that the most fiery ambitious souls are the most susceptible to contracting frost blight.

## Symptoms

Frost blight incubates over a week's time before any symptoms start to show. The first symptoms manifest as a strong common cold. Many suffering from Frost Blight described it as the "bone chills." No matter how hard someone tries, once afflicted with Frost Blight they will always feel unnaturally cold to the bone. The body reacts and spends all of its energy trying to raise its temperature to no avail. This results in excessive sweats and a high fever. After the body exhausts its energy the temperature of the body plummits and the victim experiences intense exhaustion. During this stage its not uncommon for limbs of the body to stop functioning and if exposed to extreme weather, freeze and fall off. The final symptoms of Frost Blight are a slow bitter cold march towards death.

## Stages

### Afflicted

The afflicted takes 1d8 frost damage whenever exposed to unpleasant or unnatural cold weather.

### Aligned

After the body has spent a sufficient time fighting off the affliction, it eventually succumbs as the soul aligns itself to the element of frost. After this point the target can no longer rest comfortably and gains one unremovable level of exhaustion every 1d6 days.

### Blighted

Once the target has three levels of exhaustion pieces of the body and soul can freeze over. If the blighted takes frost damage, the blighted must make a constitution saving throw dc 15 or lose a random limb. The limb is treated as petrified, if a target fails this saving throw by 5 or more their entire body is frozen. Their body dies but their soul is petrified.

## Treatment

Depthfire Weed has been said to be able to cure Frost Blight but the plant is incredibly rare and only cultivated by the upper priestesses of the chantry of Unity . No one is certain where the priesthood acquired the plant, Arcanists rumor that it can only grow freely in the deep sea trenches of the Warm Water Straights. Which most conjecture that Umia, Ascended Goddess of the seas , would be the only one able to pick the plant.

Burning a bundle of seed lilies twice a day has proven to stall the progression of Frost Blight. Additionally, the restorative properties of Alyan River water have been theorized to be an effective treatment against the disease, however, the dorii of Alyan keep the secrets of how to effective use Alyan river water well guarded.