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Patreon backer Rafe brings you this special episode all about monsters who spread like -- or by -- a plague. 

The Pamphlet of Pantheons is now available for order at Rook's Press and Four Rogues Trading Company! Or buy a digital copy at Itch or Drivethru.

Thanks to Ray Otus for our thumbnail image. The intro music is a clip from "Solve the Damn Mystery" by Jesse Spillane, used under a Creative Commons Attribution License.

Comments

Anonymous

Thanks James, great episode - I like the idea of turning House, M.D. into House, D&D! Lovely insight about the ‘slow infector’ stories being about individual tragedy, (like Strahd, or Lon Chaney’s Wolf Man), whereas the fast infectors like The Walking Dead zombies are about society. You mentioned the disease itself could be the monster, and now I’m thinking about a monster disease that forms a growing, intelligent network - the more people it infects and turns into its zombie-like vectors, the more intelligence it gains. Starting as a non-intelligent disease, it grows first to animal intelligence and then begins reasoning, and develops the goal of infecting the entire world so that it can ascend to godhood! Hmm, what if a variant mutates and forms a competing intelligence - would the diseases be allies, or viciously try to stamp one another out? Maybe the variant is a psychopathic, faster infector that creates much more aggressive ‘rage zombies’ that quickly burn out and die - it’ll never reach the critical mass to ascend and just spreads as fast as it can to retain its insane intelligence. The original disease is being beaten back as the variant out-infects it and kills off the population - might the PCs ally with the ‘lesser of two evils’ and ally with the original disease to defeat the more urgent threat, perhaps hoping to find a clue about how to defeat it?

monsterman

I like the idea of PCs allying with a virus to prevent a more dangerous virus -- maybe even working out how to use the original disease as a form of inoculation. You don't get a lot of weird genetic engineering in D&D but in some of the gonzo-er settings I don't see why not!