The Red Boil Plague
Hook
Cattle at the Two Brothers Creamery are covered in red biological growths that Vidic says caused a plague one hundred years ago.
Evidence
- The herd appeared sickly even at a distance.
- Vultures gathered over the fields.
- Carver detected no magic in the red growths; they are biological.
- Vidic recognized the boils and connected them to a century-old plague.
- Cattle deaths were already rumored when the party arrived in Rivalis.
- After one cow died, the boils sloughed away as mobile red-and-black matter.
- Rage grabbed the matter, failed to resist its effect, and watched it merge into his skin.
- The growth flared with sudden pain when Carver found an unusual vial of religious blood in Ablander’s quarters.
Open questions
- What organism or disease causes the boils?
- How does Vidic know the history of the old plague?
- Why has the disease returned now?
- Can it infect halflings, humans, dragonborn, tabaxi, or other animals?
- What is now happening inside Rage?
- Is it connected to the donated cheese mold, Lamordian soil, or an unrelated threat?
Next steps
- Examine a boil or collect a protected sample.
- Ask Wendell when the cattle first became sick.
- Search local or Eternal Order records for the earlier plague.
- Avoid eating or distributing contaminated dairy until transmission is understood.
- Examine, isolate, or cure the growth within Rage.