Gift of the Chosen

Rare Disease

Lethality: High

Transmissibility: Medium

Infection and Outbreak: When 20 or more creatures have a form of Madness in a single settlement of 200 or more individuals, roll percentile dice at dusk each night. On a roll of 76-100, a ghost appears in port between dusk and dawn each morning. The ghost ship has the stats of a normal ship but is Ethereal. It is crewed by 5d4 Chosen Crewmates, 1d4 Chosen Boatswains, and 1 Chosen Captain. While a ghost ship is in the port or the settlement, a dense fog covers the whole settlement. This fog persists so long as the ghost ship is in port and cannot be removed by magical means. So long as this fog persists, creatures looking for the settlement must succeed on a DC 16 INT/Navigating check in order to find it.

Contagion: Any humanoid within 10ft of an infected individual while they are in a state of Insane Babbling or while proselytizing must make a DC 15 CHA check or gain one Madness symptom from the table below. Anyone who reads a scroll or tome infected with Gift of the Chosen must make a DC 18 CHA check or immediately become infected and make 3 madness table rolls. These tomes and scrolls are common within some cults.

Symptoms: 24 hours after infection, a creature must roll 1d6 and gain a permanent effect from the Chosen Madness table below. This roll must be repeated for every additional 24 hours of infection. If a creature rolls an effect that it already has, it gains no additional madness for that day. If a creature gains all 6 symptoms from the madness table, it is immediately transformed into a Chosen Crewmate.

1 - Uncontrollable Weeping/Laughing

2 - Terrifying Hallucinations

3 - Extreme Paranoia

4 - Masochistic

5 - Insane Babbling

6 - Blissful Delirium

Treatment: Curing Gift of the Chosen requires one or more DC 18 INT/Religion or INT/Medicine checks. An infected individual needs X successful checks, where X equals the number of Chosen Madness symptoms that they suffer from. A creature cannot receive more than 1 check per 12 hours. Greater Restoration and similar magic immediately cures the Gift of the Chosen without additional checks, and Lesser Restoration and similar magic counts as 2 successful checks.