Creatures/DiseaseCarriersInTheDark
By Mr._Sluagh
Deep within the dark, nameless reaches of Nexus' sewer system, there is a place which the city's human inhabitants have forgotten. The corridors in this strange, unhallowed place twist into insane, shifting patterns and ancient, arcane objects float in the putrescent water while feral, degenerate man-beasts lurk in the unnaturally deep shadows. Maintenance crews have been forbidden to visit it and all but the most foolhardy workers are loathe to violate this dictum, for tales of mysterious deaths and unnamable horrors within this region are as abundant as stars in the sky. The workers have become even more wary of it of late, for unaccountable disappearances have been becoming ever more frequent and whispers that the forbidden zone is growing circulate daily.
Meanwhile, in the sunlit, aboveground portions of Nexus, superstitions of a somewhat different sort circulate. In the slums and ghettos that mark the most wretched and squalid aspects of a great city, the sick and the hungry pray for a swift, merciful end to their slow, excruciating suffering. Thus, when a citizen's spirit has been broken, when he lies, weeping pitifully in an alleyway or ailing miserably on his deathbed, he will often call out to the Merciful Ones, the Slayers of Pain, the Bringers of the Good Death to come to them in the night and gaze at him with their feral, rat-like faces and touch him with their clawed, bony fingers to infect him with the Kind Plague, a rare disease which kills within a few days, alleviating all pain and inducing a calm, euphoric sensation within the victim until its end. Some of the stories give the rat-people Robin Hood-like traits, claiming that when a noble or a merchant becomes too greedy and arrogant they will be visited by a Slayer, who will give them a single warning to change their ways and then, if they do not comply, will visit them again on the following night and afflict them with the Kind Plague while they sleep. Indeed, when an aristocrat's rise in wealth and power is unusually fast or her tactics are particularly callous and diabolical, her peers will often comment that she is "baiting the rats".
Recently, however, things have turned sour with the Slayers. In the last few months, their horrid, feral faces are being seen more and more often in the city and at the same time, the Kind Plague has become an epidemic, infecting people at random and without avoiding those who still desired life as it once did. The Nexans send prayers and offerings to the strange and terrible spirits constantly, pleading for an end to the plague, but thus far there is no end in sight.
