Dragon Sickness

Inside of every dragon is a biological engine. When it revs to life, the dragon has the strength to tear through city walls as if they were cardboard, gains the ability to flap their wings hard enough to fly, and most importantly, can produce a breath weapon that utterly devastates any enemies or prey they have. When this breath weapon enters the air, countless becquerel's flood the atmosphere. It irradiates everything, regardless of contact. Infected by alien radiation, the laws of reality themselves huck and heave as they're envenomed and melt.

Such is the origin of Dragon Sickness--the plague that has consumed the world.

Once, the Blessed Land was the home of a dozen environs. A complex ecology thrived here that enabled the Old Opal Kings to continue their divine hunts. Dragon Sickness is what brought this curtain down. It wasn't the falling shards of the moon or the ridiculous arms race to slay wyrms or the demonic pacts made or the extremes that the gods went to. All of that paled to dragon breath.

Everyone has it. Those who venture out into the ash have it worse. It makes one greedy. It makes one lustful. It makes one slovenly. It takes the doubts and fears and problems a soul has and turns them into defining traits. Your motivations are replaced by desires to sin. You love your wife no longer but now you lust for her. You don't want children out of legacy but instead just to say you have children, and so you horde them, steal them, amputate them to make them yours. Dragon Sickness inspires violence in a thousand different ways for it brings the mind under the shadow of the dragons themselves.

This has physical effects . Dire Wolves succumbed to Dragon Sickness partly, hence their forms and powers. Same for the spotted hyenas and the remaining nature spirits and their plants. Those who succumb to it fully change irrevocably. They begin to grow scales, their eyes turn gold and their pupils long, they begin to speak the lost draconic language and a madness nests in their brain. It is through Dragon Sickness that Drake Saints are born. It is through Dragon Sickness that Tiamat and Bahamut were created.

Inside the city walls, the Gods fend off the worst of the radiation. That is why plants still grow there, and the people have yet to fall. Outside, in the ash, it leaches into your body. Gatherers often retire not from wounds or traumas but from growing too sick themselves. They know if they don't, they may wander off deep into the dunes and become something else.

Dragon Wives are particularly vulnerable to this. This is why their rites and meditations are so thorough--to purge it from their souls. Should a wife ever succumb she becomes a being that even the gods cannot handle. Fear these Burned Widows, and flee them should you ever meet one.

For every 24 hours spent in the ash, make a save vs polymorph. On a failure, gain 1 point of Dragon Sickness. Once you have enough points equal to your Constitution score, roll on the Dragon Sickness Table below. If you gain enough Dragon Sickness points to double your Constitution score, you become a Drake Saint or, if you're a Dragon Wife, a Burned Widow, and lose your character.

d6	Your Sickness is...
1	Nightmares plague your mind every night that you aren’t sleeping with something you covet around you. You cannot receive benefits from any rest until you hold that thing and sleep with it.
2	When wounded, your blood turns into liquid gold that hardens along your flesh. Take an extra 1d4 damage from all damage sources.
3	When someone steals, takes, or borrows from you, you become consumed with hatred towards them that cannot be reasoned with.
4	You become paranoid of what others want, and how it can get in the way of what you want. This is a problem that must be handled!
5	You become physically sick when not close to something you cherish. Lose all strength, dexterity, and constitution modifiers until you are close to it again.
6	One of your flaws is now exaggerated. On reroll, it becomes worse. On third reroll, it utterly defines you.