Festerhearts (5e Creature)
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Festerhearts[edit]
- Festerheart Farmhand
- Festerheart Foreman
- Festerheart Livestock
- Festerheart Mayor
- Festerheart Poacher
- Festerheart Reaper
- Festerheart Sower
Festerhearts are created by eating food contaminated by a curse known as the Festering, which gradually warps the minds of those who eat it and drives them to evil. Festerhearts outwardly resemble the individuals they used to be before they were transformed, except they have horrible dark welts on their chests, just above their hearts, which have become shrunken and blackened. Their appetites become gluttonous and they barely think twice about eating anything, even rotten food or the flesh of sapient beings. Worse, they become obsessed with spreading their curse, so they look for opportunities to secretly contaminate storehouses or distribute cursed food. The most dangerous outbreaks of the Festering occur when farming communities are affected, as any crops they grow are entirely fouled.
For most afflicted with the Festering, the changes beyond the iconic welt are strictly mental, however, those worst affected become festerhearts. Their mouths become unnaturally wide and their teeth become longer and sharper, their bodies become tougher and stronger and they become immune to poisons of all kinds.
Curse of the Druids. Many scholars agree that the Festering was first spread by wicked fey creatures, but bards tell a much sadder tale. In the distant past, a circle of evil druids was destroyed by a band of wandering heroes. Before the druids were wiped out, they performed a dark ritual that imbued a single seed with all their hatred and spite and then planted that cursed seed.
In the years that passed, that seed grew into a tree, which eventually came to bear fruit. A group of villagers from a nearby town found the tree and were enticed by its fruits, which hung from every tree branch. They ate the fruits, then brought them back to their home and shared them with the others who lived there. The malice of the druids, which lingered within the tree for countless years and even into the fruit that the villagers ate, corrupted their minds and made them just as evil as the druids. Supposedly, they planted the seeds from the tree that drove them mad and sold the fruits to other towns, thus spreading the Festering.
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