Blights

Roots of the Gulthias Tree

Legends tell of a vampire named Gulthias who worked terrible magic and raised up an abominable tower called Nightfang Spire. Gulthias was undone when a hero plunged a wooden stake through his heart, but as the vampire was destroyed, his blood infused the stake with a dreadful power. In time, tendrils of new growth sprouted from the wood, growing into a sapling infused with the vampire's evil essence. It is said that a mad druid discovered the sapling, transplanting it to an underground grotto where it could grow. From this Gulthias tree came the seeds from which the first blights were sown.

Dark Conquest

Wherever a tree or plant is contaminated by a fragment of an evil mind or power, a Gulthias tree can rise to infest and corrupt the surrounding forest. Its evil spreads through root and soil to other plants, which perish or transform into blights. As those blights spread, they poison and uproot healthy plants, replacing them with brambles, toxic weeds, and others of their kind. In time, an infestation of blights can turn any land or forest into a place of corruption.

In forests infested with blights, trees and plants grow with supernatural speed. Vines and undergrowth rapidly spread through buildings and overrun trails and roads. After blights have killed or driven off their inhabitants, whole villages can disappear in the space of days.

Controlled by Evil

Blights are independent creatures, but most act under a Gulthias tree's control, often displaying the habits and traits of the life force or spirit that spawned them. By attacking their progenitor's old foes or seeking out treasures valuable to it, they carry on the legacy of long-lost evil.