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Plague (The Great Moax)

There are malignant intelligences between the stars. On the howling abyssal winds they soar, to descend like carrion birds upon the hapless worlds of men. Their passage, ofttimes invisible, serves as a harbinger and a precursor of their demonic masters, who bid their servitors siphon the life from the cosmos' inhabitants as they do to the suns themselves. Yea, all about us loom omens of the impending apocalypse, when the suns will finally flicker and die, and from the spaces between the stars will fall the demon-legions, to disport amid the ruins of the Pancreator's chosen.

Certes it is that those who scoff at the pious' accounts of demons have never found their world visited by the Great Moax, the Ravener, the Scourge of Suns. I could list a thousand other names, uttered in horror by the hapless victims of a thousand ravaged worlds; but, lest I mystify the reader, I shall simply state that this demon manifests as a disease, an illness, a plague of unsurpassed virulence and uncertain cure.

Plagues aplenty infest the stars, true; but none so hateful, none so relentless as the Moax. Accounts of the Moax's passage taint the pages of countless codices, tales of continents turned to necropoli in one lunar cycle's time; legends of entire peoples dropped lifeless amid decaying fields; stories of garden worlds reduced to endless expanses of crumbling gray rock. Neither stellar expanses nor Amalthean prayers can check the spread of this cancer, which has decimated the worlds of men since the early Diaspora, and its recent resurgence can only be interpreted as an omen of the doom that the Shadow's demons would have engulf us all.

Upon arrival on a world, the Moax displays a sentience, indeed, a cunning. It lies in wait, purposefully haunting inhabited areas, and can be transmitted through nearly any vector. Ingestion, inhalation, contact with living or dead victims, merely being in the same vicinity, any or all of these can spread the plague, as can a thousand other methods besides. Nor is there any reliable defense by which the Moax may be resisted. Staves of oko-wood clutched in deliquescing fingers; pinches of noma-powder dusting the undersides of swollen tongues; the hedge-cures of a thousand worlds: all lie withered beside their erstwhile practitioners.

The Moax is exceptionally abhorrent, for though it is immediately and irrevocably fatal, it is neither painless nor quick. An index of symptoms, while loathsome, might help the wary reader recognize an infected area and thus hopefully avoid the loathsome illness that laid her fellow humans low.

The first signs of the Moax's presence are a dizziness and loss of coordination, as the demon invades the psyche and unleashes its assault on the victim's soul. Loss of vision is next, as the inner soul flickers and dims under the Moax's onslaught. Would that blissful release follow immediately anon; but alas! the victim has only begun to suffer.

The joints begin to calcify and swell, and agonizing pain gnarls the victim's extremities into things resembling Pyrian cacti moreso than limbs. Nor does this initial pain mark the terminus of the victim's suffering; nay, the demon has only begun its cruel sport. A series of purplish blotches discolors the skin, as the Moax marks its own, and as the disease progresses these maculations spread and swell, until the victim's entire epidermis is livid and violet.

A strange duality occurs, as the demon within dries the victim's orifices to withered holes, akin to those on the visage of a Suteki mummy, while simultaneously bloating the victim's extremities into sausages of stinking yellow pus.

The victim's moans and sobs, I am told, are most piteous, made all the more so by nightmarish hallucinations that begin to bedevil him, as the cerebral cortex dissolves and the myriad minuscule threads connecting the various regions of the brain fray like ikju-weeds in a strong wind. Anyone with a trace of mercy or human compassion can do naught but rush to succor the devil-plagued wretch, or at least to end his suffering.

Alas, this is just what the Moax anticipates! For this stage, the second instar, as the Amaltheans dub it, is when the demon is at its most fecund, and the plague thus at its most virulent. The lustful demon impregnates its host with pustulent cysts, which froth and bubble to and through what shreds remain of the epidermal layer. These seeds of foulness are most contagious, most easily disturbed, and thus it is that the hapless victim spreads his infection to the ones most dear to him.

After the bursting of the pustules and the contamination of the entire vicinity, the enervated victim at last enters the third and fatal instar. The demon's lust to procreate transforms into a ravenous hunger, and so the Moax begins to devour its host from the inside out. The victim's innards and bowels rupture and desiccate, finally liquefying altogether, and this effect quickly consumes the muscles and bones as well. Finally, when the skin itself deliquesces to a viscous paste resembling the trail left by a grik-slug, the sated demon departs the victim, who at last expires.

And thus even proper burial is stymied, for, though the Moax does not prove contagious at this stage, how does one inter a mass of seething pus, or perform the last rites without gagging at the deceased's stench?

As if this were not sufficient horror, occasionally a few proximate individuals are spared the Moax's kiss, that they may lament the demise of their families, their cities, their very world.

Yea, O my feuding brethren, aroint ye to this invisible enemy, this sentient weapon more malignant than any stratagem of your rival. That the Moax walks so strong is surely a sign that the end times are nigh, and that the final Armageddon between Light and Shadow is soon to be fought. If ye must make war, let your battles be earthly mirrors of the celestial struggle, and turn your weapons against the Adversary that would engulf us all.
