Teredahar History & Mythology - Dragonblight

No force in history is more powerful than disease. In real-world history disease is a far more effective killer than battle and war. The same is true in Teredahar. Disease is inescapable, and no disease has had a greater impact on the world's history than Dragonblight.

Dragonblight is a rapidly-spreading airborne fungus that grows on and under the scales of most lizards. If allowed to grow, the blight secretes chemicals that cause the scales to become brittle and break off prematurely. Most lizards shed scales often enough that the blight's effects do not cause any significant harm. Dragons, however, live so long and grow so slowly after reaching adulthood that they cannot regrow scales fast enough to keep up with scale loss caused by the blight. As the blight spreads, dangerous gaps in an afflicted dragon's scales begin to open up. Dragonblight itself is not deadly; rather these scale gaps leave the dragon vulnerable to injury or infection which eventually prove deadly.

It is believed that Dragonblight was brought to the Dragons' homeworld Prime when the Teredahar continent was conjured. The Elves of Tan'Rar built Teredahar by intentionally merging several Shards drifting in the Void into Prime. Elvish scholars suspect that the Dragonblight fungus came from one of these shards. Regardless of where it came from, it first infected dragons and drakoni during their wars on Teredahar.

The infection spread quickly through ranks of drakoni footsoldiers and their true-dragon masters. It takes weeks for an infection of dragonblight to start showing symptoms. The delay meant by the time its effects were first noticed among the forward troops the blight already had already spread to the Home Islands and had much of the high command in its sights. Rampant dragonblight infections proved disastrous for the dragon forces, causing the collapse of their occupation of Tan'Rar. Efforts to eradicate the fungus from the Home Islands were unsuccessful. Untimately, more than three-quarters of dragons over 150 years of age and nearly all of the Acnient dragons died in the following millennia. Drakoni, who can resist the blight's effects, became the ruling class of dragon society. Their culture eventually replaced that of dragons in the draconic-speaking world.

Gameplay Notes

• Dragons. Are. Rare. There's less than a handful of great wyrms left in the world. Most dragons don't live through adulthood. 
• Blighted Dragons have reduced natural armour and physical stats depending on how advanced the blight's damage is. 
• Advanced dragonblight leaves the sufferer open to other diseases. Common secondary symptoms of dragonblight are blindness, lethargy, and insanity. 
• Surviving wyrms seclude themselves from other dragonkin (Dragons, Drakoni, Lizardfolk, etc.) who can carry blight spores and disease without knowing it.
• An example, Kezzadraz the Desert King is a blue great wyrm who secludes himself inside a cave overlooking the Drakoni city of Voltac. Nobody has seen him in years. He only allows select personal handlers into his presence and rumor has it his mind is going.

Next Time

This concludes Dragon Week. Bit of a downer ending, I know, but the Drakoni have a rich culture that carries on the dragons' legacy. I've got articles planned that will explore their culture in exquisite detail and I guarantee it will make them stand out from other races like the Dragonborn of D&D.

Next week will premiere the second new article-series of 2015: Cities in-depth, wherein I'll describe one of the major cities of Teredahar complete with notes on its architecture, layout, culture, and a stat block for use with Pathfinder.