The Magic Blight

The Great Blight -- otherwise known as the Herbam Blight, the Great Pestilence, the Great Mortality, the Black death -- was generated in a freak lab accident involving diseased wheat by Provencal maga Tethys of Tytalus. Tethys' role in the disaster is known only to Vardian's Tomb. The Order of Hermes has developed many panicked ideas to deal with the blight.

Forms currently blighted

 * Herbam (as of 1345)
 * Corpus (1350)
 * Auram (1355)
 * Aquam (1360)

Upcoming blights, according to research

 * Imaginem (1365?)
 * Terram (1370?)
 * Vim (1375?)
 * Animal (1380?)
 * Mentem (1385?)
 * Ignem (1390?)

Effects of Blight

 * All sites that used to produce blighted vis, of any realm, no longer do so.
 * Blighted vis can no longer be purchased in the Vis market.
 * Any blighted vis that spends a month in a Magic aura will wither and die. It is possible to move the vis back and forth between aurae to allow regular labwork.
 * Any blighted vis used for spell casting calls for a Stressed die, even in cases that used to require a regular die.
 * All creatures of magic might of a form that is blighted will suffer the effects of (Form) blight if they stay in a magic aura.
 * Every magic aura has created a miasma the size of that aura. The miasma is is odorless, invisible, silent, intangible, and has no taste, but can be perceived with second sight. The miasma does not have might or Magic Resistance. It is casting a perpetual 0 penetration effect on anything it touches. The miasma cannot pass through solid objects, and is moved by the wind.
 * Miasma can be targeted with Auram spells with Vim and Form requisites. When dealing with spells that target miasmas, one target: Individual is a miasma the size of an acre of land. In the 13th century, an acre of land is the amount of land an ox can plow in a day, or a plot of land 22 yards wide and 220 yards long. Adding a magnitude would affect a miasma the size of 10 acres of land (220 yards by 2,200 yards), adding a second would affect 100 acres of land, and a third 1,000 acres. Spells targeting larger miasmas, like those derived from most covenants, need to be increased by two magnitudes to affect the miasma. An aura’s strength has nothing to do with the miasma’s size.
 * The covenant’s Aegis of the Hearth spell doesn’t stop the initial miasma from generating, but it does prevent other miasmas from being blown into the area it protects.
 * Magic regiones generate miasmas just like Magic auras. Inside a regio, however, winds won’t blow the miasma away, nor carry a new miasma into the regio. Regiones are trapped air, in a sense, and do not interact with mundane winds.
 * Formulaic and spontaneous Blighted Form spells only work if the caster uses vis when casting, one pawn per magnitude of the spell. It must either be the Form vis or the matching Technique vis. The used vis still supplies the regular +2 bonus to the spell casting total. Enchanted items and rituals work as normal.
 * From this point on, any lab work that includes a Blighted Form can only be completed by expending vis during the process. Since laboratory work is half investigation, half application, it costs 1 pawn of vis for every two magnitudes (10 levels) of final effect, in addition to the number of pawns of vis the season’s activity would normally require.
 * Blighted forms cannot be used in Certamen.
 * No Miasma are created after the original generation. Eventually the miasma will be blown away across the sea, but they can linger for years or even decades, bringing new outbreaks of disaster.
 * Herbam Blight effect: Living plants caught in an Herbam blight contract sun scorch, a fatal plant disease.
 * Corpus Blight effect: Living humans caught in a Corpus Blight contract the Great Corpus Pestilence, i.e. the Black Death, a critical phlegmatic disease.
 * Auram Blight effect: A large-scale version of Room of Stale Air (ArM5, page 128), anyone standing in an Auram miasma has difficulty breathing and suffers a –3 penalty on all rolls involving physical activity. For each round a character exerts himself, the player must succeed at a simple Stamina roll vs. an Ease Factor of 6 or the character loses a Fatigue Level.
 * Aquam blight effect: The miasma's spell-like effect destroys any water that the miasma touches. Water in lakes and seas is replenished from the same larger body of water. Rivers will have portions of them destroyed, but once the miasma moves on new water coming from the river’s source refills the river.