The Blighted
8-Bit fanart by King Bendix
Name: The Blighted
Creature Type: Afflicted Undead
Has Soul: Yes and No
Appearance:
The exact appearance of any given Blighted is dependant on two factors: A) what person or body got infected and B) where the blight itself struck the body. In most cases, the Blighted are reanimated dead bodies overgrown with crystals and gems. Vitreous protrusions from their limbs act as melee weapons while prismatic coatings act as their armour. Some do sport lances or swords made of glassen matter that replace their arms or hands, others have faces covered with the substance for protection. This kind of Blighted is the most commonly known.
However, if the blight infests a live person, where the appendages and gems grow depends on where the blight entered the body. In the case of Azarain Helath, a Dunmer scholar and proficient destruction mage, it crept up his head, across his chest and grew a vicious pole from a stump where once was situated an arm. Any person and any animal can become blighted and spread the glowing plague by injuring any other living organisms.
The gems that grow on and inside the bodies usually emit a purple-blueish glow, as do their eyes.
Abilities:
Passive: Prismatic Plague
If the Blighted injure any living thing or person, it, too, will become blighted. Depending on the overall severity of the wounds inflicted, transformation and death take more or less time to develop.
Passive: Soul Trap
Every Blighted possesses an inherent soul trapping ability that goes off with every injury inflicted and every fatal blow delivered. The trapped soul then gets transferred into one of the gems that the Blighted has grown on or in its body. These gems do act as soul gems, able to trap both white and black souls.
Crystal Strike:
The Blighted attacks with its grown melee weapon to harm or outright kill its target. This can be claws, swords, poles, lances or other things.
Flying Shards:
The Blighted throws forth a volley of versicolor shards at its target, slicing through skin and flesh thereby becoming embedded in the victim's body.
Special Abilities:
Depending on what kind of person the blight seized control of, if they were alive during the transformation, their soul gets trapped in their own body and some of their unique combat abilities become available for the resulting revenant. In the case of Azarain Helath, the Blighted developed the ability to obliterate his foes with a highly destructive beam spell that Azarain was capable of casting. Similarly, if the blight was to infect someone with outstanding dexterity the resulting undead will be highly evasive as well.
Backstory:
The Blighted are what happens when the Blight from the Stars touches any person, either dead or alive. When the great gem struck the Ayleid ruins of Malada, the crystalline pestilence spread throughout the burial chambers, infecting the corpses that were laid to rest. Upon sufficiently seizing control of the body, they were reanimated to be used as ravaging undead to spread the blight.
In a particularly notable instance, a Dunmer scholar had been infected with the disease after having lost a battle against the Blighted. Thereunto he slowly and painfully transformed into one of them to then rise from his deathbed and brutally assault his former associates.
His friends were able to despatch him in the ensuing combat. A day later, after his burial, his corpse rose again from his shallow grave and followed the call of the Necromancer into the dark crypt his kin would dwell in.
This creature first appears in:
The Necromancer Cycle - Part IV - The Blight from the Stars - Chapter III
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