Parasite [Savage Coast]

These parasites deal no direct combat damage; each works through its own special method. Anyone who survives an infestation should earn experience points for it, more for the lethal ones and less for those that are merely annoying. Often the bulk of the reward comes from the adventures spent hunting for a cure. All are mindless, have no society, and adapt to wherever their hosts live, taking nourishment and returning nothing useful.

Resembling ordinary head lice, these live in a host's hair or fur and make the curse-warding red metal burn out faster. Roll percentile dice for the degree of infestation: at 50% the host consumes the metal half again as quickly as normal, and at 100% twice as fast. As a colony they can also teleport their carrier at random, as the displacing curse-born gift, up to three times a day. This usually happens when the host is in danger, as the lice try to keep it alive, yet it also strikes at random, occasionally at mortifying moments. Clearing them out takes costly ointments made with powdered red metal. Lyra birds eat them.

Too small to see without detect invisibility, these moths swarm into kegs of blasting powder to breed, eating the red mineral dust inside and spoiling the powder (roll percentile dice for how much is ruined). They leave once mating season ends. Their presence sets off chemical changes in what remains, so anyone moving an infested keg must save vs. paralyzation or set it off.

A full keg deals 10d6+10 damage to everyone within 10 feet and half that out to 20 feet, halved again by a save vs. breath weapon; scale the damage to the unspoiled fraction, so a half-spoiled keg deals (10d6+10)×½. The blast also burns away curse-warding metal worn by members of the curse-gifted orders within 20 feet, one week's supply per 8 points of damage, so a 22-point explosion costs two weeks' worth.

The deep southern jungle teems with thousands of nasty insects and parasites, every one venomous or armed with some potentially deadly defense. Phanatons living there can sidestep or disarm most of them. Nearly all yield an ingredient for medicines, poisons or antidotes, and some, prepared correctly, can counter the curse's deforming final stage or infestations such as the lice above, cardinal ticks and vermilia. They work best as adventure hooks. Examples include a small moth whose hallucinogenic dust convinces victims they can fly, though it also makes a remedy for the drawbacks of the flying curse-born gift; a small brown leech that drinks several hit points of blood each week but wards off the afflictions tied to the strength gift; and an aggressive, vivid green wasp whose sting requires a save vs. poison or death, and whose nest can be rendered into an ointment that cures vermilia.

This lethal infestation of burgundy, purple or ginger maggots is drawn to ripening grapes, where it lays tiny eggs. The eggs survive fermentation and hatch months later in the wine, or inside anyone who eats tainted grapes or drinks tainted wine. The maggots grow fast and devour their host from within unless proper medicine or magical healing intervenes; at the end of each day the victim must save vs. poison at -3 or die. Assassins have used tainted wine more than once. It takes its common name from the dog-folk, whose frontier kingdom produces most of the coast's grapes and wine, and future strains could jump to other crops: grain, rice, hops, potatoes, even scarlet pimpernels.

These tiny ticks can live on blood alone but prefer humanoids with curse-born gifts. They weaken or block those gifts without lifting the curse's other effects; roll percentile dice for the infestation level, and that figure doubles as the odds that any attempt to use a gift simply fails. One melee with a tick-carrier leaves everyone involved 5% infested, and the ticks multiply by 15% every time the host uses a gift. Non-humanoids top out at 50%. Removal needs the same expensive red-metal ointments; picking them off by hand costs a hit point for each 1% cleared, unless some rare jungle remedy is on hand. Carriers include bilge vermin, succuli, huge iron juggernauts, curse-gift trolls, crimson vixens and frog-folk. Lyra birds often feed on them.

Vermilia are glowing red flesh-eating bacteria, often mistaken for the harmless red mineral dust. They turn up on the rotting corpses of gift-bearing creatures, in company with red fungus and scarlet pimpernels, and spread only by touch. Living creatures avoid infection with a save vs. poison, with a -1 penalty per curse-born gift they possess. An infected creature takes 1 point of damage on day one, and the amount doubles daily after that (2, then 4, then 8, and onward) until cure disease or heal is applied. When feeding on undead or magical beings it acts as a +2 magical weapon. Undead are infected automatically but may save vs. death magic each day, penalized by that day's damage, to take none that day. Medicine against it can be brewed from vulturehound blood and from certain jungle pests, and fire purges infected remains.