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[crazyabe]

ALL of these options could be correct,
It could be a curse and disease - Like werewolfism, Brought about by a new god.

[Liquefied Spleens]

Right. We're heading to the east. Going through the economic hub of the continent isn't likely to end well with all this plague business. We'll find a bordertown in half a day's walk, I figure.
Considering the dwarves are turning people away, maybe it's left untouched?
Unlikely at best. If anything, they'll have been hit first in the initial waves of refugees. Even if there's no plague, it's likely to be a lawless wasteland.
Like it or not, it's on the road. Better get walking.
Would you mind cutting these restraints, then?  I won't run, you know.
I know you won't. If you do, I'll crush you like a grape.
With a nod of your head, Yunikki cuts the restrainers around her legs so she has a full range of movements again. She's dangerous beyond belief, but you know you're faster than her. The greater legspan should allow it.

You all start walking along the road, noticing that there are very clear signs of extreme traffic. The road is damaged beyond belief, and you even find a few supplies here and there. Things too heavy to take along, broken wagon wheels they didn't bother to take with them... Nothing special. The rest of your party just talks to eachother to pass the time at least a little. Sucy talks with "Francine", if you're going to call the other drider by her name, mostly about what they could do to help Yunikki. To both their credit, it seems things are rapidly moving along on that front. They both agree they need samples, but you lose interest soon. It gets a bit too complicated when they get into biology and chemistry. Sure, you know just about every part needed to keep something moving, but when it comes to theoretical metamorphical organs you're a bit lost. Biology wasn't a big thing for necromancers, it was more of an underlying science. You know dead things, not so much when it comes to keeping something moving under its own power.
Speaking of dead things...
Over there. What is that?
A corpse... But it doesn't look human. Stay here.
Let the immune go first, I say.
...You think it's a plague victim?

You walk closer to the still figure on the ground. It's hard to tell, really, with the cloak in the way. The fact that the legs are bent back and impossibly thin seems to imply that it isn't humanoid, though, so you're wary. It's too big to be kobolt. When you get as close as possible, you turn it over. There's a surprising amount of heft to it, but you eventually manage. It's...
Well, it looks like it was human, once upon a time. The eyes have become far too large for the still humanoid skull, taking up nearly half. A misshapen beak is forming out the nose and mouth, though it started rotting already. The teeth don't look like they belong. Some dirty feathers are also along the sides of him, and the figure has gone bald. Taking a close look, you notice that it was female, though it's hard to tell. The hips have gotten grotesquely wide, and the thighs looks like a parody, just suddenly skipping over to essentially bone talons. One leg was much farther along than the other... The arms looked relatively normal, other than the plethora of feathers that are forming. As to how she died, it's not hard to see. You find the crossbow bolt after a little searching, she was clutching it as she died. Right in the chest. It was a slow death, likely she bled to death while in shock. At least it didn't hurt much, then.
This is a plague victim, alright. Stay back, everyone.
Let me take a sample. Don't worry, I'll be very careful.
Sucy, help me confirm that.
Sure thing... At a distance, if you please.
Francine comes closer, though Hal already has his crossbow out. Good old reliable Hal. She takes one look at the corpse, and wastes no time getting her syringe ready. She stabs the plague victim in the heart, and only manages to get a small amount of blood (more like ichor, it's blackened!). She frowns a little, but it doesn't stop her. She goes around the body, stabbing it whereever she suspects she might find a pocket of blood. She eventually manages to get a full syringe, though it took longer than you would have liked. The body must have been here for days, but it's not rotten quite as much as it aught to be. Not that the smell is anything you won't describe as foul, you know your corpses. These things rot slow. There's something distinctly worrying about that.

After that, you take the syringe from your captive, and hand it over to Sucy, who proceeds to put it in a special compartment of her alchemy box. It looks a damn sight more secure than the rest of it all.
Do NOT give that bitch the chance to spray it on you or anything. I'm not leaving anything up to chance.
Good. Anything else?
You be careful with that.
Anything useful to add? She stares at you with the same sort of interest one would give a particularly mediocre tree.
You just roll the eyes and turn away. Fine, fine. Let the alchemists work, you get it.

After a fairly lengthy journey, you see the town in the distance. More specifically, you see a massive amount of smoke going up in the sky, drifting by the wind. The buildings themselves look to be on fire! You can see shapes running from one end to another, but you're too far away.

Run in there to help!
Whatever this is, people are going to need help. Better hurry!

Keep a distance, wait around.
It's horrible, but... if this is the plague talking, you can't risk the rest of the party. Better to wait until this hubbub dies down.

Go around.
There's a big open field to the right, and what looks to be a farmland to the left. It's plowed, but no visible plants yet. Better avoid this while thing.

Other

Basic Stats

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Level: 13
60/60
Stress: 0/70
Poison stings: 1/1
Restraint 3/3
Mana: 50/50
Corruption: 5/10
Thirst: Sated

Children
Adam 8/8
Alice 9/9
Cactus 10/10

Items and equipment

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Items:
450 gold coins
14 outfits
1 fancy outfit
Magic Cookbook.
10 rations
Equipment:
Bone scimitar
First Tome of Eternal Darkness
D-VA armor

Skills and spells

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Magic:
Resurrect vermin: Allows you to resurrect very small creatures such as rats(invests 2 of your max mana) (no mana cost)
Resurrect average beast: Allows you to resurrect creatures such as dogs, cats and other similar-sized creatures.(invests 7 mana) (no mana cost)
Resurrect Humanoid: Allows you to resurrect humanoid creatures. (Invests 10 mana) (Costs 14 mana)
Reshape minion plus!: Allows you to majorly change the appearance of your resurrected minions.
Control Undead: Allows you to attempt to control an undead that doesn't belong to you. (mana cost of 2 per second, unmastered)
Minion Vision: Allows you to see what a minion sees. The minion must have eyes.
Disintegrate undead: Delete a corpse you currently control.
Animate Piece: Allows you to animate just a piece of dead tissue. It requires your constant attention, and cannot act independently. (Drains 0 mana)
Graft: Allows you to use dead tissue as a replacement limb. Requires a lot of mana. (1 per second) (average limb takes around 20 seconds to properly graft)
Gather Soul: Allows you to make a soul visible. You could try putting it in a flame of some sort to keep it around. (9 mana)
Soul battery: Allows you to use a soul-infused flame as a small mana-boost. This snuffs it out, however
Undead flashbang: Allows you to blow up a minion for a flash-bang effect. (9 mana)
Stitch: allows you to close a wound and stop bleeding as fast as you can stitch. Costs zero mana, but requires something to stitch with.
Siphoning Cloud: Breathe out a cloud that drains the life from victims and gives it to you. Adds a LOT to intimidation (4 mana)
Smoke Cloud: Breathe out harmless but thick smoke. (1 mana)
Deathbolt: A bolt that hurts the body's connection with it's soul. Causes minor wounds to appear over the body as it attempts to compensate (1 mana)
Doombolt: A more powerful version of the above (4 Mana)
Pinworks: You can apply spells into a bone spike, relative to the size of the victim. You can also make traps if you use an offensive spell.

Companions
Tom(cat)
Pidgeotto (Pigeon)

Skills:
Claws: Your arm has been replaced with a powerful claw. This is BOUND to you, and cannot be removed.
Pride: You have a mind-controlling leech in your arm. This is so mindblowingly unethical/illegal it would put you in "kill on sight" status with a lot of organisations/people.
Broodmother: Once per day, you can sting something to create spiderlings, which are large, clever spiders that adore you by default. Your instincts cause you to be VERY protective of them.
Crossbow usage: Novice
Adaptation: You regenerate mana faster than most
Gun usage: Novice
Oral Fixation: Can cast spells spells from the mouth.
Draining: Can drain blood using fangs.
Major experience in blocking and swordplay.
Climber
Crafty: Bolas
Cooking skill: Excellent 
Corpse Cutting: Quite Decent. 
Animal handling: inexperienced.
Necromantic knowledge
Soul Sniffer

[Devastator]

If they're burning the town down, there's nothing much we can do to help.  It isn't like we've got a cure for the plague.  Lets go through the farm area, but try to kill one of the monsters with doombolts, take a sample, and break off.  We need a cure before we can do anything.

Also, we should think about stinging the next corpse we find.  Since spiderlings take on some traits from whatever we sting, it might be the key to creating immunizations, by generating something related to the plague elements but not strong enough to actually change people.

[DolosusDoleus]

Just finished bingeing the DD portion onwards. You guys work fast.

Go around. If we do run into any monsters take some samples, but don't intentionally put ourselves in danger.

[Egan_BW]

Let's try not touching this, and moving the fuck on.

[omada]

If they're burning the town down, there's nothing much we can do to help.  It isn't like we've got a cure for the plague.  Lets go through the farm area, but try to kill one of the monsters with doombolts, take a sample, and break off.  We need a cure before we can do anything.

Also, we should think about stinging the next corpse we find.  Since spiderlings take on some traits from whatever we sting, it might be the key to creating immunizations, by generating something related to the plague elements but not strong enough to actually change people.

+1 to everything, if the kids come hostile get ready to kill it, explain to the other kids beforehand that maybe it will not breed brothers, but instead something else, the kids are smart enough to notice

Oh, and take a peek at the creature's soul

[Devastator]

I think the body is dead, so the soul is gone.

That said, Death might have a way to drain away the extra magic, given that he apparently has access to alternate, empty, realms of existance.

[omada]

I thought about something

How much a wagon would slow us down? enough to screw with our sense of urgency?(all this stuff of "save our friend, save/kill our mother and return to save our land in a hurry) even if we only carry things that are light? we might get some more gold on the end and disguise ourselves as nice nomads/merchants

I know you are going to ask who will pull the cart

that's why I suggest to keep an eye for livestock and stables. even if we only find dead horses we can raise them to pull our(s) wagon(s) (of course, check if they don't have signs of being infected with anything)

and we will just have to stop a little to fell one wagon and retrieve the good wheels and use it to fix the next

Even if we vote against the wagon-stuff I still vote for us to find horses, the owners won't miss them because they're dead, but they would help our non-immune friends to get more mobility and don't slow us down or tire too much trying to catch our pace

of course we might set free other animals in the process, we aren't keeping them but we aren't letting them to die of hunger

(if people vote in favor of the cart and we don't find a horse, we don't need even exactly a horse, a zombie cow can pull it effectively and keep our pace)

[Devastator]

I can't see horses and livestock being plague-immune, unless it was designed only to attack specific species.

A wagon kinda would slow us down.  People move pretty fast, faster than basically all animals over long distances, and certainly faster than animals pulling carts.  You need carts to carry lots of stuff, but we travel pretty light.

Undead horses might change things a bit.

Lastly, well, there aren't going to be any normal travellers when there's a massive world-ending plague about.  You're either a refugee or you're holed up anywhere you can theoretically find safety.  In a pretty short time there aren't going to -be- any potential travellers, either.

[omada]

It said that it only affected the were-part of the sentient alliance maybe it don't affect the were part of the animals too? Is there a were part of animals?

[Devastator]

Maybe.  But if it's genuinely a highly contagious magical disease that infects several different species, how certain are you that it won't infect any species not on the approved list of targets?  I wouldn't count on currently-immune species remaining so, for one.  Or even post-transformation species not geting re-infected and becoming more extreme creatures in the future.

I don't think a horse or such would necessarily be infected, but it might be possible for one to be, say, a non-symptomatic carrier.  In fact, if I were spreading a magical plague, that would be the vector I'd use to ensure infiltration of many settlements and to create a store of virus to prevent it's elimination locally, should any location be lucky enough to defend itself against the initial wave of transformed creatures.

Lastly, I don't really think we can cure this plague, as it's creating flying creatures which will easily be able to infect settlements at vast distances away.. far faster than any foot-bound group can react, but we have to try, given that it'll kill every last mundane person out there in the process.  Maybe we can save a few lucky people that we were able to reach before their species were wiped out.

I'm not completely negative, but I think there are three necessities for dealing with this plague.  Firstly, there will need to be some kind of conventional solution so that mundane beings can protect themselves from the deaths caused by the disease.

Secondly, some magical solution will be required, as the plague has likely spread to a great distance from the source, and in creating flying beings, will continue to spread far faster than any purely conventional group can do.  Also, the vast increase in free magic will render the world eventually uninhabitable, due to constantly-changing living conditions.  You can't live if you feed yourself on magical ambrosia bushes, but next week they've been transformed into solid crystal.  If the world is unpredictable, nothing will be able to survive in it, nor will there be any meaningful life possible without at least some continuity of existance.  So some kind of magical counteragent is necessary, to assist with spreading the cure or defence a long way, as well as dealing with the follow-on effects of an increasing magical baseline.

Thirdly, this whole thing is too artificial.  Someone, or something, is going to be at the base of it, and whatever our solutions are, we need to take care of the enemy force at some point, as the cause for it could well come up with countermeasures to our countermeasures.  It doesn't have to be murder, it could be some other solution, but I'd expect whoever caused this is irrevocably changed at this point, and will either be hostile or dead.

[omada]

So there is a chance that we (sydney and francine) will be the carriers of the plague to the east when we get in contact with an infected..., damn

[Devastator]

That's possible.  Right now we know nothing, though.  I doubt we'll be bringing it into any safe place, though, as we aren't going anywhere where the plague hasn't been already, for instance.

[omada]

so... we are going east... I don't know if the plague reached them already

[Devastator]

Yeah it is.  City is on fire, after all.