Undead Virus

This microscopic magical organism cannot be seen, not even through detect invisibility or eyes of minute seeing. Detect magic finds it, and detect undead does too, but only while it is active. Over weeks it turns its host's body to putrid slime, rotting the organs away and leaving a zombie-like wreck of the kind called the Rotting Men.

Sages suspect it is an offshoot of the shadow virus brewed by the wizard Orsolan Vey. Others blame an undertaker from a gloomy forested domain who dabbled in forbidden lore to bring back his dead wife and wiped out his own village in the attempt.

Dormant, the virus waits. When it touches bare skin it wakes and invades. The victim saves vs. spell at -2; on a failure, the infection takes hold and begins killing tissue. Once active it dies in open air, so touching someone already sick passes nothing on. A victim who makes that save must immediately save vs. death magic, and failing it makes them a carrier, harboring the dormant virus and able to infect anyone with a mere touch.

For six hours nothing shows. Then a mild fever starts, with hot, itchy skin, and it climbs steadily. Within a day the victim is bedridden with a fever above 40 degrees Celsius and peeling skin. After two days of this the temperature falls, and it keeps falling. This is not recovery. Numb dark blotches appear, focus slips, and the victim loses 1 Dexterity every other day, though never below 3; the virus seems to keep its host mobile on purpose.

On day five the flesh visibly rots, sloughing off with a foul stench, and Charisma drops by 1 per day down to 3. Once it bottoms out, the mind begins to go: Intelligence falls 1 point daily as memories and thoughts decay, though the victim keeps a feral cunning (Wisdom). This is a Rotting Man. Frightened neighbors usually try to destroy such a creature, which only frees the virus among them; those who still have some wits often flee into the wilds.

When Intelligence reaches nothing, the final stage begins. The body keeps rotting, plainly suffering yet incapable of dying, for weeks or even months, shuffling aimlessly. Anyone cured at this point is a mindless, barely mobile horror and usually dies within 1d4 days anyway. At the end the victim collapses into a pool of reeking slime with only bones left, and that slime is thick with dormant virus, ready to start over at a single touch.

Heal, raise dead and resurrection all destroy the disease. Cure disease kills dormant virus but cures the sick reliably only within 24 hours of infection; each 12 hours beyond that lowers its chance by 10% (90% at 36 hours), and after six days it is useless.