An excerpt from “The Histories” by the Bard Keto

Dragon Blight:

The very turning of a land ruled by a dragon into something as corrupt, covetous, and violent as the beast itself.  

We are fortunate in these times to see little of the lands of the Silver Kingdom or the Provinces so afflicted.  However, even in my years I remember when it was not so.  There was a time when green grass was only found in little sanctuaries across the land, as rare as a peaceful Fey.  What makes Dragon Blight I don’t truly understand, though I think it could be as simple as people manifesting the very oppression they live under.  Why there would be sanctuaries then I wouldn’t be able to say, though optimistically I’d state that it’s because people always hold to pockets of hope and peace.

The effects of Dragon Blight I am well versed in.  The drying of the land, rolling fields that extend to the horizon like a green sea are replaced with harsh ironweed, the land singing a painful song as leafs brush against one another.  Each plant capable of stripping flesh from bones simply by walking through them.  Worst yet is what Dragon Blight  does to the creatures of the land.  While a cow or a horse brought into a blighted land will not fully convert, patches of skin may grow scales, horns may grow, temperaments will worsen.  Creatures which give birth in a blighted land create the true dangers.  Sometimes Sisters bless and the calf or foal will come out like it parent, only slightly marred by the blight, but without such luck and grace what is born is a scaled, ferocious, and vicious monstrosity.

A Kerc is born.

Kercs, the cursed dragonkin of all sizes and shapes, born not just from cattle but any creature wild or tamed which is unfortunate enough to try and bring a life into this world.  So it is that a Dragon Blighted land can give birth to the ravenous swarms of Kercs that seek to slay and consume any other living thing in the land, and further push those boundaries and bring death.  Thus it is that where a Dragon resides there will always be Kercs.  However, therein also lays their weakness, if it can be called that.  For the effects of Dragon Blight are linked to the dragon that created it.  Slay the Dragon and the grass will grow, the docile mare will return freed from her scale and horns, and the hordes of Kercs?  They simply wither and die away.  Unless you are the Last Landian, Slaying a dragon is no easy feet but it is the quickest way to remove the corrections and hazards which it creates.

One lingering question then, Kercs are born from animals unlucky enough to give birth in a blight land.  What then is born from a Hunai, Aenesi, or even Oneidi that makes such a mistake?  Those are how the devious and massive Hagercs are made.  The creation of one I have never seen, but the Last Landian has warned me that the mother does not survive such a birth.  Possessed of the same blood lust of their animalistic kin, Hagercs as the greater dragonkin possess intelligence and minds like the peoples they spawned from.  Tied to the will of their dragons, and overseeing the actions of the Kercs about them, Hagercs create the difference between a mindless horde and an army capable of crushing the greatest defenses.

So let’s keep that in mind if any of you adventures bed up when traveling in blighted lands.