Scourge

A **Scourge** is a period of time when fiends find and corrupt one of the Deceivers, ancient draconic creatures slumbering in the depths of the earth, transforming it into an Archfiend that then leads their hordes to attack the surface world. The world has seen four Scourges to date; with the last one occurring four centuries ago.

## The Scourge

There isn't a unified consensus about what the Scourges really are, or why they happen. The predominant belief that originated in the Ministry is that Scourges are the punishment of the Watcher upon the magisters of old who breached, and tainted, the Golden City, and that the Archfiends are the Deceivers once worshipped in ancient Adamantium tainted by the corruption of the fiends. Grey Order scholars believe that the Scourge is a spiritual corruption that pervades all that it touches, and that all Archfiends must be destroyed in order to stop any future Scourges. The dwarves don't care what a Scourge is, or what causes it, as long as it can be stopped for good.

A Scourge is distinct from the occasional fiend raids, in which the fiends are few, scattered, and disorganized on the surface, plaguing the Underways almost exclusively. These grand tunnels, constructed by the dwarves at the height of their empire and extend throughout subterranean Morgaea, are almost entirely controlled by fiendish hordes, and have been ever since the First Scourge. A particularly strong or clever alpha can lead fiendish warbands to cause great devastation on the surface even when an Archfiend is not active in the world, and can even corrupt the lands those warbands attack with their fiendish corruption at a lesser scale, but if the leader is defeated, the warbands will disperse and the land will slowly heal.

Scourges advance in a progression that the Grey Order understand relatively well. However, their scholars remain uncertain about the precise "rules" under which Scourges operate. Does an Archfiend's presence cause and spread the Scourge, or is it the hordes of fiends that invariably travel with them? Does it take all Archfiends a similar amount of time to reach the surface? What would happen if an Archfiend were left unchecked forever? Even for the gaps in their knowledge, the Grey Order uses what they do know to carry out their vigilant work. The following is what is known of the common progression of a Scourge.

### Anatomy of a Scourge

A Scourge starts when the fiendish hordes discover one of the Deceivers and infect it with their taint, raising it as an Archfiend. The Archfiend then proceeds to unify the will of the fiendish horde, and commands it to surge to the surface and spread across the lands, destroying all in their path. Usually, the first sightings of fiends are in the outskirts of civilization, with outlying farms and villages being attacked first by small warbands. Victims not killed outright are dragged underground to be eaten or turned into breeders. Fiends inflict disease upon people, animals and vegetation. Their tainted blood defiles the very soil and water, rendering entire regions infertile for many years. However, at this stage of a Scourge, many people will still believe that is just a random fiend incursion.

As time passes, and the presence of the horde in the surface grows, the fiendish warbands become whole armies that will travel on open roads across the countryside. Those armies will launch raids against larger and larger settlements, even important and well-defended cities in the central lands of a given kingdom or country. More powerful fiends can be seen within the armies, such as emissaries and ogres. Mutant creatures such as scourge wolves and bereskens will plague the wilderness. The skies become dark and ominous, although occasional rains can occur from time to time.

By the time the Archfiend has reached the surface to lead the seemingly unending horde, unnatural dark clouds shroud the sky, providing shelter for the sun-fearing fiends. They obscure the sun in the daytime and the moon and stars at night, and form a perpetual storm that can be seen from afar. Soundless violet lightning sometimes flashes at the eye of the storm. The black clouds offer hardly any rain, that evaporates as soon as it reaches the ground, and the rivers run dry. These conditions alone lead to deterioration of plant life, including forests, crops and seaweeds. Ghouls and other weird mutants run rampant through the wilderness, with twisted animals turning fierce, and carnivorous, and the tainted land itself becomes capable of infecting the weak or unwary with the Scourge disease.

The Scourge's corruption will follow the Archfiend as it travels the lands, expanding especially swiftly from the lands where the tainted deity lairs. Children and livestock born under the Scourge clouds tend to be small and weak, often deformed and susceptible to disease. The Scourge affects even adult people, and individuals may become ill for no reason.

The only way to end a Scourge is to slay the Archfiend that started it, and the only ones who have ever managed such a feat have been Rangers of the Grey. For this reason, the order accords legendary respect throughout most nations; though, their presence in some nations, such as Nordain in recent decades, is weakened by local political struggles and the centuries that have elapsed since the Fourth Scourge.

Once the Archfiend is destroyed, the fiendish hordes under its command will flee underground to search for another Deceiver that can be turned into another Archfiend. The skies clear immediately after the death of the Archfiend, and the weather returns to what is normal for the season. The land can take months, or even years, to recover, depending on how hard it was hit by the Scourge. Some areas will never recover. Examples of such locales are portions of Netheren that have been so ravaged by two Scourges and are now deserts. Scourge-infected animals will begin to breed again, giving birth to non-mutant offspring, although it will take some time for animal populations to reach the levels they had before the Scourge started. Some degenerative diseases born of the taint may persist and spread long after a Scourge is over, however.

Some Rangers of the Grey believe that, if left unchecked, the Scourge will ravage the world, though they can't know for sure. They also believe that fiends have grown more and more violent with each successive Scourge.

## History of Scourges

### First Scourge (800 - 992 AE)

*Main Article: First Scourge*

The Ministry teaches that it is the hubris of men that brought Fiends into existence. The mage rulers of the Adamantium sought to usurp the Golden City created by the Watcher, but were cast out, twisted with corruption and returned as monsters; the first fiends. In their depravity they sought the Deceivers, and, finding Vemon slumbering deep within the earth, began the Scourge. The dwarves are less inclined to believe such a history; to them, the fiendish hordes simply appeared one day and have been their bitter enemies ever since. Some dwarves do suggest that the humans are the reason for their existence, though not necessarily magisters specifically.

Whatever happened, the result was catastrophic. Morgaea was nearly overrun and the dwarven race nearly exterminated; to this day only Ondrathum and Nar-Lodahr still stand against the fiends. Only with the founding of the Grey Order in **-305D** (890 AE) was the tide turned. Even then, it required a hundred years until Vemon was finally slain at the Battle of the Silent Steppes in **-203D** (992 AE). The Adamantium was left severely weakened, and was subsequently overthrown by a mass movement led by the prophet Sibylla.

### Second Scourge (1A05 - 1A95)

*Main article: Second Scourge*
Patemis awoke in **1A05** and the Second Scourge began, with fiends coming out of the mountains in all corners of the continent. They slaughtered the entire cities of Lougrick and Wesslow in Netheren before the Grey Order finally got the word out. The Freemarks and Maudet were hard-pressed to defend themselves, but the Rangers of the Grey, and the armies under Emperor Volantus, made the difference. Just over ten years into the second Scourge, the Maudesians won several battles, including the hard-fought victory at the Battle of Umberland. As the Maudesians and the Grey Order shared continued victories, the Scourge wound down to its last battle in Alepool. The Rangers destroyed Patemis, and the fiends were routed for the second time.

### Third Scourge (3A10 - 3A25)

*Main article: Third Scourge*
The Deceiver Biamut arose in **3A10**, and the fiendish hordes erupted in the central lands of Morgaea. Swarms of them engulfed the Adamantine cities of Narbonal and Byrantium, and the Maudesian cities of Armesans and Montelleau. The Grey Order in both countries were able to quickly organize a defense and despite heavy losses in the besieged cities, the fiends were pushed back, proceeding to ravage what would later become Anderlay as well as the Freemarks and the length of the Mirantha River. Pressure from Greyhold convinced Maudet and the Adamantium to unite against the hordes, but neither would consent to aid the besieged city-states. After fifteen years of conflict, the armies of Maudet and the Adamantium joined the Grey Order at Hunteron. Biamut was destroyed, and the fiendish hordes in attendance were slaughtered in one of the bloodiest battles in history.

### Fourth Scourge (5A12 - 5A24)

*Main article: Fourth Scourge*
The Fourth Scourge began when the Archfiend Xurteus arose just as the Ministry's Crusades during the Fifth Age against the Adamantium ended. The fiendish hordes appeared in great numbers in the southeast and southwestern regions of Morgaea. They overran Lysadore, the Freemarks, Ghallen and Netheren. Maudet and the Adamantium were beset by smaller numbers and managed to drive the fiendish hordes back into the Underways; despite their victories, the Adamantium, bitter over the Crusades, refused to send aid to northern Morgaea, while Maudet only contributed a token force to combat the Scourge.

In **5A20**, the elven Ranger of the Grey, Erenod, led an army of Netherfolk and Rangers of the Grey to Lougrick and broke the siege. They then marched to Alepool where they formed an alliance between the minor rulers of the Freemarks. This united army marched south, eventually ending the Scourge at the Battle of Ayesmare. Erenod sacrificed himself, having slain Xurteus in single combat. So many fiends were killed that many imagined they would never return. The fact that the dwarves had to continue to repel fiendish warbands from their borders was increasingly ignored by surfacers; excluding the Grey Order.