Tiny update

I've redesigned the sadness dreamlings Core Emotion racial trait, as the old one didn't really make sense mechanically. Hopefully this version is more useful.

Religions of Kerebra: Pisteis

Like so many aspects of human culture in Kerebra, the origins of the Pisteis religion is shrouded in mystery. Perhaps the Pisteic faith was an inevitability in a world as calm and peaceful as Kerebra once was. It is the oldest religion in Kerebra, that much is certain, and Pisteis temples, shrines and monasteries are found all over the plainslands in every hamlet, village and town. Pisteic monks provide education to the faithful, minister to the sick and dying and preach to the public, and are often the pillars entire communities rest upon.


The core tenets of Pisteis are contentment, detachment from material things and pacifism. It is as much a philosophy as a religion, and Pisteic monks love debating the more esoteric aspects of the faith, especially in regards to the relationship between humanity and the Worldmind. To the common practitioners of the faith, Pisteis provides a set of guidelines for living a good life of virtue and happiness. It is also a source of consolation and comfort when life turns difficult, especially in dealing with death and grief. Followers of Pisteis do not believe in an afterlife or reincarnation, but instead a process they refer to as sublimation, in which the consciousness of the deceased dissolves and becomes a part of the Worldmind, in essence becoming a part of the consciousnesses of every other living being.


Pisteis teaches that all living things are connected through their own natural psionic power. Emotions are not simply expressions of ones own state of mind, Pisteics say, but a reflection of all emotions felt by all creatures in Kerebra. This means that negative emotions such as grief and anger don't just belong to the individual, but are symptoms of communal pain; likewise, an individuals strong negative emotions will influence all things, and a community will suffer.
This is why Pisteis teaches contentment. By distancing yourself from your negative emotions and instead embracing your life as it is now, you are not only helping yourself but everyone around you. To a Pisteic, there is no greater act of love and charity than to simply be content.
When Pisteics preach detachment, it is an extension of the tenet of contentment. The faithful recognize that attachment to the material world means attaching oneself to impermanent, transient things. Things will break and people will die, and the pain and grief this causes reverberates throught the Worldmind affecting every living thing. Instead, Pisteis suggests acceptance of the inevitable end of things. Once you accept that nothing material lasts forever, you can embrace contentment and contribute to the health and happiness of your community.
The tenet of pacifism follows naturally from the first two tenets. Commiting and act of violence means hurting yourself and everyone around you after all, and such acts will spread pain through the Worldmind to every other being in Kerebra. This pain will infect everyone, causing more damage than the act of violence in itself ever could. The only way to be truly content is to be non-violent.


The clergy of the Pisteic faith is made up of priests, who usually maintain temples or shrines and tend to a community, and monks who belong to one of several monastic orders and work out of monasteries dedicated to contemplation and worship of the Pisteic philosophy and ideals.
A Pisteic priest is responsible for the spiritual wellbeing of a congregation of faithful, as well as tending to a temple or shrine. They serve as confessors, spiritual guides and councillors to a community of worshippers, and are usually looked up to as figures of authority who have a lot of influence not just spiritually but also judicially. Many priests, especially in smaller villages and towns who don't have a large council of elders, often serve as impromptu judges whenever there is a civil dispute to settle. Since most communities in Kerebra don't have proper laws or legal officials, whenever people have grievances or problems that require mediation a priest usually steps in to offer their opinion. In most communities Pisteis is the dominant faith, which means that Pisteic priests usually gain a good deal of experience in legal matters. It's not unusual for a temple to maintain a written record of rulings made by priests going back decades or even centuries. This means that different communities may have wildly differing legal practices. The Exceutores Justitia have on numerous occasions attempted to implement a codified set of official laws, but so far their efforts have only borne fruit in the larger towns where they maintain a permanent presence. Executor Knights still enforce these laws all over Kerebra, which can sometimes lead to conflicts with the Pisteic priesthood.
The monastic orders of Pisteis are not official organizations in any real sense, but have arisen organically around the various monasteries of Kerebra. Over the years particularly large monasteries have formed sister communities, and today a number of these orders maintain monasteries all over Kerebra.
The life of a Pisteic monk revolves around meditation and the reading and writing of religious texts. Pisteis has no saints or prophets, but a number of respected monks have penned religious literature that is regarded as holy by the monastic orders. Such texts are often meditations on specific topics of the faith, including the three tenets, the relationship between the conscious and unconscious mind and the nature of the Worldmind. Dreamdiving is another treasured topic among monks, and many great works have been written over the religions history which are now the prized possessions of monastic libraries across Kerebra.
Monastic life is usually very structured, and based on routine and ritual. The details vary from order to order, but usually the day is divided into hours devoted to sleep, meditation, eating, reading, copying and illuminating religious literature and a few hours dedicated to private activities such as calligraphy, martial arts or a craft of personal significance to the monk. This structured life allow the monks to forget the concerns of their physical existence and focus on achieving contentment and enlightenment.
Many of Kerebras greatest Dreamdivers come from the Pisteic monastic orders. These Dreamdivers are highly usually respected individuals both in their order and monastic culture as a whole, and their names invoke respect and admiration among all pisteic clergy all over Kerebra. Dreamdiving as practiced among Pisteic monks involves deep meditation and huge mental effort, and the secrets of this esoteric craft are detailed in cryptic manuscripts and philosophical koans that an initiate must meditate on in order to unlock their true potential as Dreamdivers. Those initiates who never manage to master this art are never shamed for their failure, but many monks have left the monastic life after realising they will never be counted among the orders great Dreamdivers.
Some monks choose not to devote their life to a monastery, but instead live as itinerant monks travelling on foot from village to village, living off alms and the hospitality of the people. These monks have dedicated their lives to the tenet of detachment, forsaking worldly goods and property to live a simpler life of introspection and travel. Such monks are almost universally welcomed by Kerebran communities, and can expect to find a roof and food wherever they go. In return these monks offer blessings and sagely advice, but most of them also wish to contribute by taking on physical labour for the duration of their visit. Many a barn has been raised with the help of an itinerant Pisteic monk.


Among common folk, Pisteis is treated less like a philosophy and more as a personal faith. There are holy days when the community arranges festivals and celebrations, some of which are large and festive affaires while others are more solemn and personal rituals. The relationship between the faithful and the Worldmind is to a large extent what defines common religious Pisteic faith. Sublimation, the process by which the consciousness of the departed dissolves and melds into the Worldmind is afforded a special place in religious celebrations. Most communities celebrate a day of the dead, which goes by many names in different communities. Some towns call this celebration the Rememberance, while other communities use different names such as Spiritsnight or Kinsnight. This celebration is a lively and festive occasion where the departed are remembered, and usually involves the ritual consumption of holy water or blessed items of food to represent the sublimation of the departed into the shared subconscious of their family and friends.
Another important celebration is the harvest festival, which occurs several times a year following the harvest cycles. This is usually a private celebration with friends and family, often involving a large shared meal.
The holiest days of the year are birthdays, which means that religious gatherings take place fairly often. On a birthday, the community will gather at their temple or shrine, and the priest will hold a special sermon and bless the celebrant and their family. These birthday celebrations are closely tied to the harvest cycles, and a family with a birthday before a harvest cycle will often plant their most desired or valuable crop so that it coincides with the highest number of birthdays. A harvest blessed by multiple birthday celebrations is said to be especially fortunate and to produce especially good produce.
Other minor celebrations include a day of animals, where communities give thanks and gifts of special food to their livestock and draft animals, the blessing of the household which is a small celebration that blesses a family residence to ward off evil thoughts and emotions, and the Fourteenthnight which takes place every two weeks and is a nightly gathering of drinking and merriment to bolster the spirit and open the mind to positive thoughts and feelings. Many children are concieved at Fourteenthnight celebrations, and most such unions are blessed by the local priest before they sneak away into the night to make love in the grass beneath the stars.

Tiny update

I've made some slight adjustments to the shardborn and dreamling entries, adjusting some rules text to make it less ambiguous and adding a racial trait to the shardborn to reflect their close relationship with Kerebra.

Humans of Kerebra

The most numerous inhabitants of Kerebra are humans. These people have lived in the fertile fields and rolling hills of this world for as long as even the oldest shardborn can remember. As far as anyone knows, there has never been a time in Kerebras history when it was not inhabited by humanity.
The humans of Kerebra vary significantly in appearance for some unknown reason. Skin tone ranges from fair to dark brown, and every shade in between, even though the size and climate of Kerebra would normally suggest much less variation. Kerebrans don't consider this odd in any way. For them it's simply the way of things.
Likewise, hair color is very varied. Both fair and dark hair is common, and some individuals and families even have much more striking hair colors like vibrant green or blue, or even bright red or pink. The reason for this variance is not know, nor is it something most Kerebrans even think about.


In the central plains, where the climate and temperature is most stable and comfortable, humans have built their villages and towns. Farms dot the landscape, and large portions of the plains are tilled fields and bountiful crops as far as the eye can see. These villages and towns are for the most part small, tight-knit communities where everybody knows everybody. The largest towns have a few thousand inhabitants, and most of these communities are made up of artisans and craftsmen who trade their services for grain and produce to the surrounding villages and farms. These towns are also the religious centers of Kerebra, and the largest temples of the three faiths draw pilgrims from all over the land for holy days and religious festivals.
Most peoples lives revolve around their trade. Farmers produce food and goods for their own consumption and to trade with neighboring communities for goods and services or for money.
Kerebra has an economy based on barter, supplemented with coins made from precious ores mined from the crystal mountains that lie at the heart of the plainslands. The mining towns that produce most of the metal and crystal on Kerebra mint coins from gold, silver and copper to trade for food and goods from neighboring communities, and these are some of the largest towns in Kerebra. The coins minted in these mining towns are accepted as currency all over Kerebra, and even the smalles hamlet on the outskirts of the Gravewood will trade in these coins.


All of the knowledge and skills of the human artisans and tradesmen of Kerebra comes from the Worldmind. Without the knowledge dredged forth from its depths by the Dreamdivers, arts like metalworking, weaving and animal husbandry would be all but unknown and humanity would be in a much more primitive state. It is from the Dreamdivers that the knowledge of mining and minting coins for currency originate.
This is also the reason why the people of Kerebra were able to produce weapons and armor to defend themselves aganst the first attacks of the horrors of the Rot. After it became apparent that the Rot was spreading and that peoples lives were at risk, Dreamdivers delved deeply into the depths of the Worldmind to find solutions, and they came back with the knowledge and skills to craft arms and armor.
Scholars among the Dreamdivers suspect that all knowledge on Kerebra once came from the Worldmind, and that once humans lived naked as animals until they first Dreamdived and learned how to tame the land, clothe themselves and build shelter from the elements.


Perhaps the one word that describes humanity better than any other is "social." Wherever they go, humanity forms societies that bind different individuals together in companionship. This is no different in Kerebra. Humans have close relations to the other races of the world, for the most part positive, and many shardborn, dreamlings and voor are integral parts of human communities.
Of the three, the dreamlings have perhaps the closest ties to humans. Dreamlings need humanity in two ways which bind the two races inextricably together. They depend on humans to breed, born as they are from the dreams of humanity; and they also require dreaming humans to feed themselves. Its not wonder, then, that dreamlings live in and around all human settlements. Many dreamlings feel a close connection to the human that dreamed them into being, and for the most part these humans share the sentiment and keep the dreamling around as a strange combination of friend, child and pet. Dreamlings will often leave their adopted home for extended periods of time, but sooner or later they almost always return to their "parents."
Walking down the main street of any town without stumbling on a curious dreamling is very rare.
The voor, on the other hand, have almost no ties to human settlements, yet they are drawn to them like moths to a candle. Humanity fascniates voor endlessly, and during their active periods most voor gravitate towards human settlements to learn and experience these strange, fascinating creatures. Many voor will try to insinuate themselves into social circles and communities, trying theis best to figure out the minutae of human interaction and asking endless questions about human relationships and emotions. While this can annoy others to no end, the voors motives are genuine curiosity and a deep desire to belong. Humans that recognise this and try to accomodate the voor will find themselves with close, lifelong and steadfast friends.
Of the non-human races, the shardborn are the ones who interact with humanity the least. Or, thats how it used to be until quite recently. With the forests of the gravewood completely lost to them, the shardborn have been forced to settle in the plainslands at the heart of Kerebra. This has brought them into close contact with humans, who have mostly recieved them with open arms as humans so commonly do.
Most shardborne see all of Kerebras creatures as holy and worthy of their protection, but humanity especially have earned their respect and even love. Humans for their part find shardborn odd, even disturbing; shardborn seem so strange and other, and they behave so coldly and distant that many humans find it difficult to trust them. The shardborn recognize this, and many attempt to earn trust and build relationships by offering their aid in guarding and protecting the farms, villages and towns close to their own settlements. In this age of darkness such offers are almost always recieved with heartfelt thanks, which is why the relationship between humans and shardborn is quickly growing into something enduring and strong.

Shardborn Culture and Society + Stat Redux

Heres an update to the Shardborn race thats less broken and abusable! I loved the old racial traits, but they just opened up too many opportunities for powergaming. Hopefully this is more toned down.

Shardborn are mysterious creatures with strange bodies and seemingly cold, emotionless minds. The body of a shardborn consists of a floating torso of semi-transparent flesh with a circular hole in their chest where a faintly glowing crystal hovers, a floating head with vaguely human features and disconnected arms and legs that float at the shoulders and hips seemingly unattached to the main body. The flesh of a shardborn is almost see-through, but cloudy, looking almost like glass containers filled with pale mist. Shardborne have pale, muted skin color ranging from green to purple and pink, and the floating crystal in their chest cavity matches this color in a brighter hue. Their faces look rough and almost unfinished, as if an artisan started carving a crystal but stopped midway once the face had basic features. They have no hair of any kind on their bodies and are genderless and androgynous.

Shardborn feed by absorbing the ambient energy of the Worldmind that emanates from the natural crystal formations that are common all over Kerebra. This energy is absorbed by their body and drawn into their chest crystal, which is both the repository for the energy that sustains them and the receptacle which hold their minds and souls. All shardborn can manipulate this energy by concentrating and physically touching their crystals, a process which can subtly alter the flow of energy through their bodies to augment their physical form.

Many humans believe shardborne are immortal, static creatures; they are wrong, but not by much. Shardborn do in fact age, though at a significantly slower rate than humans, and new shardborn are created as the old ones die. But shardborn minds are eternal and undying. When a shardborn dies, either of old age or by accident or violence, their flesh dries up and crumbles to dust and all that remains are their central crystals. These crystals contain the essence of the shardborn, and a new shardborn will form around this crystal if it is properly cared for. Individuals who care for these crystals do not have the same role as human parents, and though their relationship to the newly formed shardborn shares some similiarity with human families there are significant differences. These caregivers relationships to the newborn is more akin to teachers and mentors, and while there is usually mutual trust and friendship these mentors will often only remain loose aquaintances once the new shardborn has been guided through their initial confusion and have mastered the ways of their people.
A newly born shardborn forms an adult body around their crystal core. The "newborn" shares the personality of their previous incarnation, but only inherit some of the memories of their predeccessor; the new shardborn considers their previous incarnation as their parent, and treat these legacy memories as the lessons their parent has taught them through their former life.

Fresh shardborn may remember friends from their previous life, and since their personality closely matches their parents many humans are completely unaware that their former friend has passed away and believe they have simply changed or perhaps suffer from some form of amnesia. Some shardborn try to explain the situation, but many simply don't bother.

The shardborn are the enigmatic messengers and defenders of Kerebra. For as long as there have been humans in this world, there have been shardborn to shepherd them and keep them safe from harm.

They kept mostly to themselves in those days, only rarely emerging from the forests to give aid and offer advice from the Worldmind to people in need. There were no dangers then, and Kerebra was a safe haven for all her children, so at most the shardborn emissaries would offer healing to victims of unfortunate accidents, or help rebuild a farm struck by fire or particularly bad weather. 

As the Rot grows greater, the shardborn change. They feel the pain of Kerebra reverberating through the Worldmind, and are driven to act. For the first time, the shardborn take up arms and embrace their role as defenders of Kerebra and her people.

Shardborn culture is based on reverence for the world itself. They are the only people who worship Kerebra as a god, a fact that most humans find strange and often a little disturbing. Kerebra never answers their prayers, or indeed speak to them at all, but they are firm in their faith that She is indeed alive and loves all Her children equally. This religion has never gained popularity outside the shardborn race, mostly because it is incompatible with the Pisteic faith. Some among the Enkéfali feel drawn to the shardborn faith, but they are few and such views are not encouraged by the rest of the Enkéfali church.

In the past, the shardborn built great temples of psionically charged crystal harvested from the deep woods to honor Kerebra and practice their faith, but the Rots spreading corruption has driven them out of their former homes and into human lands and such ancient temples now stand in shadow, dark and corrupted. Many shardborn have sworn to reclaim their homes and temples from the Rot, but those that venture into the woods rarely return. Nevertheless this quest drives many shardborn, who often approach the Purple Knights or the Executores Justitia seeking membership in an effort to gain allies who share similiar goals.

With the loss of their woodland homes, the shardborn have been forced into human lands. A century ago they were an uncommon sight, but now their numbers have grown significantly and encounters between humans and shardborn have grown increasingly commonplace. They often prefer keeping to their own kind, as they have always done, and a number of shardborn communities have sprung up in between human villages and towns. As shardborn interact with humans, dreamlings and even voor, many of them come to respect and even admire the other races of Kerebra in a way they never had a chance to when they simply acted as emmisaries and protectors. For the first time, shardborn are involving themselves directly in the lives of the other races, and are becoming a part of the shared culture of Kerebra where they once were outsiders looking in. Many find added motivation in this evolving bond to continue their mission as Kerebras protectors even in the face of the spreading darkness.

To a human or dreamling, shardborn seem emotionless and aloof, sometimes even arrogant. They seem to have no strong feelings about anyone or anything, and this can give the impression that shardborn are disconnected from the world or that they simply do not care about anything or anyone. Nothing could be further from the truth. Shardborn care deeply about Kerebra and every one of it's inhabitants, and they are capable of strong, intense emotion. They feel not only their own emotions, but pick up background emotion from the Worldmind as well every time they feed. In a way, their emotions encompass not only their own feelings, but the emotional state of every living thing in Kerebra. This can be incredibly intense, which is why many shardborn learn to compartmentalize their feelings and suppress these invading emotions. But this also means that the shardborn are deeply tied to humanity and the other beings of Kerebra, which is a strong motivational force for many of them. They are the guardians of Kerebra and her people after all, self-appointed protectors by mandate of their faith in Kerebra as a divine being.

Racial Traits:

+2 Constitution, -2 Charisma: Shardborn half-crystal bodies are tough and durable, but their emotionless demeanor make them seem cold and aloof.

Outsider (Augmented Humanoid, Native): Humanoids with the Outsider (Augmented Humanoid, Native) subtype

Medium sized

Normal Speed

Darkvision: 60ft.

Birthed By Dreams: Shardborn gain a +1 natural armor bonus to their AC. When they activate their Mutable racial ability, the shardborn may choose to lose this bonus in exchange for a +1 racial bonus to either Fortitude, Reflex or Will saves. The next time the shardborn uses it's Mutable racial ability, they may choose to add this bonus to either a different save or gain a natural armor bonus of +1 again.

Dreamskilled: The shardborn gains a +2 racial bonus to any two skills of their choice. When activating their Mutable racial trait, the shardborn may select two different skills for these bonuses to apply to, losing the old ones in the process.

Inhuman Form: Though humanoid, shardborn are clearly not human and their bodies don't conform to human standards. Shardborn must have armor and items of clothing specially made or fitted to their alien bodies, and they must pay 50% extra for these items and adjustments.

Mutable: A shardborne may take 10 minutes to reshape the flow of ambient psionic energy that flows through their bodies. Doing so grants the shardborn a +2 bonus to any one physical ability score (Strength, Dexterity or Constitution). The shardborn may do this a number of times per day equal to half their Hit Dice, losing the bonus to the previous attribute in exchange for the new one.
Alternately, as a full-round action, the shardborn may spend 1 power point and two uses of this ability to grant themselves a single +4 bonus to any one physical ability score. This effect lasts until the beginning of the shardborns next turn, after which the shardborne loses any bonus granted by this ability and instead gains a -2 penalty to the affected Ability Score for a number of turns equal to twice the duration of this ability.
The shardborn may augment this ability. For every additional power point spent, this effect lasts for one additional round.

Naturally Psionic: Shardborn gain the Wild Talent feat as a bonus feat at 1st level. If a shardborn takes levels in a psionic class, they instead gain the Psionic Talent feat.

Psionic Aptitude: When a shardborn takes a level in a favored class, they can choose to gain an additional power point instead of a hit point or skill point.

Shaped of Crystal: As half-crystal beings, shardborn are vulnerable to sonic attacks. Shardborn have -2 on any Fort save made to resist sonic spells, powers and effects, and take 50% more sonic damage.

Sustained by the Land: Shardborn do not need to eat or drink and are immune to penalties and effects related to hunger or thirst. All shardborn must spend at least one full hour per week in physical contact with one of Kerebras natural crystals to gain sustenance. Going more than seven days without absorbing energy in this way causes the shardborn to gain one negative level per day spent in starvation like this. Touching a natural crystal immediately removes these negative levels. A shardborn who gains more negative levels than their HD is killed.

Languages: Shardborn begin play speaking common. A shardborn with high Intelligence may choose a number of different languages from the ones available in Kerebra.

This is Kerebra

Welcome!
Click here for an introduction to this blog and the world of Kerebra!


This is my blog ork+pie, which is dedicated to my ongoing work with my psionic campaign setting for Pathfinder 1st Edition, Kerebra.

So, what is Kerebra?
Kerebra is a world unlike any other. It is a sentient plane, a divine being and the home world of a few unique races. It is a world that was once an innocent utopia, home to peaceful humans, enigmatic shardborn, childlike dreamlings and weird voor. But Kerebra is being invaded by a corrupting sickness called the Rot, which has infected not only the world but it's inhabitants with corruption and evil.
For the first time in Kerebras history her people know violence, crime and hatred.
Only her bravest heroes can fight back the dark, discover its source and cleanse the world of this evil.
One of the core themes of Kerebra is lost innocence. This world used to be paradise, and everyone who lived here knew only joy and contentment. There are no kings or lords, no castles or kingdoms, not even any governments or formal laws. War, crime and conflict were completely unknown to Kerebrans, and they still struggle to understand these concepts and don't yet know how to respond to them.

I began working on Kerebra a few years ago, mainly as a thought experiment: What would a Pathfinder world where the only magic is psionics look like? Being a huge fan of Dreamscarred Press and their third party material for the Pathfinder roleplaying game, I just knew I had to build that world.
After that initial idea, the world started taking on a life of its own. It grew inside my head, and after a while I knew I had to put thoughts to paper just to be able to remember it all. At first I was only writing this down for myself, but as the project grew and I started developing rules addons to accomodate some of the concepts I had in mind, I started feeling I should share this with more people.

If you like what I'm writing, feel free to comment and let me know. If you have any ideas or suggestions for me I'm happy to hear them. Any such input is an enormous help for me with this project, and I appreciate it immensely.

Have fun, and enjoy the world of Kerebra, The Sapient Land!

The Rot

A corruption is spreading throughout Kerebra, a vile darkness that taints the vibrant beauty of the plane and infects living things with contagious darkness and evil. Dreamdivers have plumbed the depths of the Worldmind for answers, but their search has been fruitless and the people despair. There seems to be no cure or remedy for this spreading corruption, which the scholars among the Dreamdivers have named the Rot.
The Rot twists all it touches. It started in the outskirts, the deep forests that surround the inhabited lands of Kerebra, and few had heard of it except as rumors and scary tales of nightmares made flesh told around campfires and as cautionary bedside stories for children. But that was generations ago, and now the threat is very real.
Before the Rot, Kerebra knew no conflict or evil. The land was blessed with bountiful harvests, and war was completely unknown. The shardborn were simply peaceful and enigmatic emmisaries of the Worldmind in those days, and dreamlings frolicked carefree in the glens and clearings of the deep woods. People lived in peace.
This has all changed now. The deep woods are no longer safe, and only the bravest of the Purple Knights dare to enter those dark, tainted places. The tranquil peace of Kerebra has been shattered, and monsters stalk the night.
The influence of the Rot spreads every day, spreading like a contagion. For the first time, people come into open conflict with one another. Dark tempers flare, and where violence was once unknown it is now a part of everyday life for many. It seems as if the Rot has infected the collective human mind. Dark emotions have taken root in humanity, manifesting as dark deeds that shock and disturb the people of Kerebra to whom such things was completely unknown mere generations ago. Even the innocence of the dreamlings, so dependant on humanity and shaped by the human psyche, has been tarnished. Rotten dreamlings, spawned of corrupted human nightmares, have become more and more common with every passing year. There are even rumors of rotten shardborn, but no one can verify the truth of these stories.
What is true is this: The Rot is spreading faster and faster every year. The Purple Knights know this, and they are redoubling their efforts to curb the threat and find its source. The Executores Justitia are hard at work as well, but without unifying social structures or even real laws, their efforts are not as successful as they would claim. The Vigiles of the Executores try to patrol all human settlements in Kerebra, but their resources are stretched very thin and new Rot-influenced people surface and commit dark deeds every day. Even worse, the people are starting to push back against the iron hand of the Executores. Their methods are brutal and direct, and few appreciate yet another source of violence and fear in their lives.


Everything touched by the Rot falls to its corruption eventually. The deep woods have already been thoroughly corrupted, and the trees, plants and animals there are dangerous and threatening. Trees seep poison and grasp with claw-like branches at intruders, and animals half-dead and mad with unnatural hunger stalk the tall, black grass. The natural crystal formations of the forest, which once provided enchanting light and emanated the soothing energies of the Worldmind, have grown dark and dull, radiating only cold and void.
But not all Rot corruption is so conspicuous. The Rot takes hold of human minds as well, turning innocent people into violent degenerates, psychopaths and, eventually, killers and monsters. This corruption is slow at first. A dark thought, a wicked impulse or emotion. Perhaps an unkind word slips past friendly lips, or a moment of greed or envy leads to a minor act of theft or cruelty. But this is just the beginning; what is to come is much, much worse. As the Rot takes hold, people change. Jealousy, avarice, greed, hatred, these dark emotions grow and consume. The Rotten are driven to darker and more cruel acts, and their bodies slowly change. Their bodily fluids turn black and poisonous, their skin grows leasions and sores, eventually taking on a purplish hue resembling bruising. As they change physically, they seek out dark places where their true nature might go undetected, and from these shadowy corners they plot greater and greater malicious acts until they eventually grow so bestial that they lose all thought and become as bloodthirsty beasts. It's no wonder the Executores Justitia, who have studied the Rotten extensively, act so hastily and with such force to even the slightest hint of Rot influence among the people.


As the Rot spreads, the people grow desperate. Something must be done if Kerebra and her people are to survive, but no one seems to have any answers.