Sahira's Plague

The powerful enchantress behind the plague that wiped out 80% of the human race

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## Sahira The Enchantress

After starting life in the fire plane Sahria quickly discovered that she had innate magic ability, and her understanding of how magic works was unparalleled. Whatever she didn't already know she learnt, and as her knowledge grew so did her strength. Her existence always managed to split those present, half would adore her: wanting to know her, wanting to learn from her, and the other half hated her due to their own jealousy.

However amongst these gazes of obsession and jealousy was one of love. A single Drow known as Relonor T'sesz, he was a mage that knew much, he knew more than Sahira in most instances. And that was how the two of them began. He studied alongside her and she alongside him, they bounced theories off of one another, and aided in discovering new application of magics. They spent hours hunched over musty old tomes enjoying the knowledge, and enjoying the time they spent together.

Relonor and Sahira were wed.

Between them they had more knowledge and greater understanding of magic than many of the highest mages. Instead of encouraging the couple's study the mages felt that their pride was being attacked.

Feeling the upset amongst the higher ranks Sahira and her husband left, and headed for his home town in the underdark; there they lived together for many years practising their magic. Towards the end of Sahira's life Relonor couldn't bare to be parted with her; he had so much of his life left to live and he wanted to share it with his wife.

And so between the two of them, they looked into finding a way to lengthen her life so that together they could be the strongest mages to have ever lived.

After ten years of research they managed to find what they were after, a ritual that could extend a life passed it's natural end. But over these ten years, rumours had spread of what they were doing: "Forbidden magic", "Blood Magic", "Dark Magic".

The two prepared for the ritual, quickly gathering what they needed and drawing out the appropriate runes. Sahira stepped into the centre of the runic circle they had drawn on the floor and Relonor began to speak the incantation. The runes began to glow and a vortex of magical energy erupted out of the ground, sealing Sahira into the circle. It was working. Once the incantation was complete the pair waited, according to their calculations the vortext around Sahira would continue for thirteen hours.

It was at some point during these thirteen hours that the pair fell asleep and a group of humans discovered their ritual. They got the jump on Relonor who had been sleeping soundly. Slowly and brutally they killed him, mocking Sahira's desperate screams as she struck the inside of the vortex. Her temper flares and the inside of the vortex bust into flames, her Genasi heritage consuming her. The humans ran.

Sahira was left staring at the mutilated corpse of her husband for another 4 hours.

## The Plague

After her husband's death the enchantress grew mad with rage and her lust for revenge grew. Her grief of the incident had blurred the features of the individuals responsible, and her hated shifted from those few to the entire race. The humans were at fault, and she was going to make them pay for it.

### **Development**

With her newly lengthened life Sahira no longer feared death, she had all the time in the world to erase an entire race from the world. She began thinking on the easiest way to destroy an entire race with no way to stop it from happening. There was no answer in spell books: there was nothing wide spread enough, nor specific enough for what she needed, there was no answer in religious texts: the resurrection of a god would cause the whole world to fall which was pointless. Then she turned to medical journals.

She looked into the spread of every pandemic that had ever been recorded. She looked at mortality rates, and how quickly these diseases killed their hosts. Her disease would need to incredibly infectious in order to spread quickly while the hosts are still alive. The most lethal diseases can no longer spread if there not enough hosts to spread it.

It took her six years to develop an incredibly lethal disease that had the appropriate delay between infection and death that maximised the number of humans exposed.

### **The Spread**

In a little over a year 80% of the human population were infected with the plague, and dropping like flies. If a human was infected with the plague they were sure to die. There was yet to be a story of recovery, every human that contracted the disease died. The first human to contract the disease was a young boy that lived in a small farming town. He had a big family, that worked a live stock farm. Their days were incredibly busy, everyone pitched in and worked. To make ends meet the family never take a day off, and when one of them gets sick it affects the entire farm.

And so, when the young boy insisted on helping the disease spread around his big family. On market day the asymptomatic father went into town and spread it to the rest of the town. The disease quickly spread from there. By selecting a small farm town as the starting point Sahira ensured a quick infection rate with slow discovery.

### **Prevention**

As soon as it was discovered that this disease was a serious threat to the human race it was decided that the humans needed to be put somewhere that the disease couldn't infect them. The Elves in Amran Edhil began working on a project, the mages gather in the sister town of Llyn and get to work on the creation of a pocket dimension. Every human is screened for the disease and once confirmed as clean ushered into the new dimensional space.

The others were sent to a town that had been converted into a sort of hospice. It is known that there is no cure, but there were ways to make those infected a little more comfortable.