The Tainted
Although The Great Evil was eradicated by the masters centuries ago, a magical force known as the taint was left behind, hiding in the dark corners of the realm, feasting upon the sins of its people and corrupting those in its path.
What is Taint:
Taint is a sentient force of magic taking the form of a black ooze. It has a mind of its own, is its own separate entity from everyone else, it cannot be controlled and it is not easy to destroy. Once it is inside you, it is even more difficult to remove.
The Goal of Taint:
The goal of the Taint is to seek out those with corruption in their hearts and damn them to become one of the Tainted. In doing this, the taint will control its host and seek to destroy the good in the world.
When Encountering the Taint:
The Taint is its own sentient being, it goes where it wills, and does what it wants. It will tend to seek out those with corruption in their hearts, thus those who are Chaotic Neutral and any sort of evil will find themselves more susceptible to being tainted than one who is of good alignment.
The Taint cannot pass water, so The Taint and Tainted only exist in Tarinfell. No one knows why the taint cannot cross water, but records show that the ooze or the tainted person will stop at any water source and flee. This caused quite the uproar when it occurred on a plane in the 1960’s when a Tainted tried to escape this anomaly by taking a plane out of Tarinfell.
It is important to remember that Taint is not a disease, and it is not a curse like Sirenism or Lycanthropy, thus it cannot be transferred to another through a bite or a touch. In fact, once the taint is comfortable in its host, it is rare that it will even leave that host unless under great circumstances, for instance, its host is about to die or they find that there is more use to be had from a different host.
As such, there is no dice roll involved in transferring Taint to another, it is consent based only. This means that it is entirely up to the player if they wish to become tainted, furthermore, once taint is transferred to another host, the person who was originally inflicted with the taint will no longer be inflicted and will undergo the same horrible, awful, and wracking pain that is involved with taint removal.
Becoming Tainted:
The process of becoming one of the Tainted is not a pleasurable or exciting thing to endure. You as a player in every sense of the word are possessed and in the process of becoming a monster. The uncomfortable process leads to very traumatic results; it is not a triumph, and it is not an untapped power. It is purely a loss of your own will to do as you please, as you become a vessel to be defiled by The Taint.
The process of becoming one of the Tainted is not an instantaneous thing, in fact, you may not show real symptoms of it until it is far too late to do much about it.
The Process:
Stage 1: The victim will begin to hear voices in ones head. Perhaps if comprehensible, the voices will try to push the victim to do evil acts.
Stage 2: The victim will begin to sweat profusely, clammy hands, the voices will get louder, they might find themselves hallucinating, seeing nightmarish, horrid things.
Stage 3: The physical process of becoming Tainted will begin, one might notice protrusions starting to form, maybe skin scaling over or rotting as an example. The voices will become extremely prominent. Lucidity will begin to fade, and the victim might begin to suffer from bouts of memory loss.
Stage 4: The physical process will continue getting worse and more deformed as the time wears on. The victim will develop a horrible putrid smell to them. The mind will begin to be completely overcome and moments of lucidity will be few and far inbetween. Those who have alternate forms will find they are no longer able to shift and will be stuck in their humanoid forms.
The Physical manifestations of The Taint:
The Taint is an unpredictable and sentient force of magic. The results of the physical manifestations of the Taint may vary from person to person but will always have physical consequences of some kind. We will leave the creativity of your new tainted appearance to you, but just bear in mind that there has to be something highly noticeable (i.e. a new set of horns on a human, scaly skin on an elf, tentacles sprouting from someone’s back) and that these physical manifestations can not grant any kind of meaningful use or extra bonuses.
Final Product:
The final product of the Taint fully taking control of its host is function as a possession, the body is completely uncontrolled by the person, their mind clouded and locked away by the Taint. At this point it becomes very difficult for the Taint to be removed from the host without killing it in the process as the taint is very deeply embedded. To get to this point will take between a week to a month depending on the character’s fortitude.
Curing the Taint:
The process of curing the taint solely depends on the severity of it. If caught at its earliest stages, it can be removed with a spell called “Banishment,” used with 3 post rounds due to the strain needed to remove the Taint. When this spell is cast, The Taint will escape the body through every hole it can find and try to take another host, breaking bones on its way out. The feeling the victim will have as the taint is removed is like their skeleton being pulled out of their body through their nostril.
The second way is for when later stages of the taint take form. It is a horribly painful exorcism to pull the demon out. It must be done by a Cleric, and must happen in some kind of sacred or holy place wherever that may be. The experience will have the same agonizing feeling of ones skeleton being pulled out of their nose. If the Taint is embedded within the host, the host will need critical medical attention afterwards.
Should the Taint be left to fester within its host for too long, it will embed itself too deeply to remove without killing the victim. When this happens, the choice becomes to live forever as Tainted or die.