Title: The Festering Crown
Domains: Plagues, Sickness
Creators: Vorthar and Zoroth
Pantheon: The Nyx
Description
Morthar, the Bringer of Pestilence, is the fever that burns in the night, the cough that spreads through crowded streets, and the rot that claims even the mightiest. Born from Vorthar, the Dark Weaver’s desire to corrupt the body as well as the soul, and Zoroth, the Hollow Prince’s understanding of decay, Morthar is known as The Festering Crown, a deity who rules over all manner of disease and bodily corruption.
He appears as a gaunt figure wrapped in tattered, once-royal robes that seem to shift between rich purples and sickly yellows. His face is hidden beneath a crown of blackened bone and twisted metal, from which a perpetual miasma seeps. Where his feet touch the ground, the earth withers and pustules form. His hands, when glimpsed beneath his sleeves, are mottled with every disease known to mortalkind—yet he feels no pain, only the satisfaction of contagion spreading.
His voice is the wheeze of failing lungs, the rattle of death, yet it carries an strange comfort to those who suffer, promising that in disease, all mortals are made equal.
Followers
Morthar’s followers include plague doctors who have lost their way, desperate healers who embrace infection when their arts fail, and the diseased who seek to spread their suffering rather than cure it. His most devoted servants are the Pallid Congregation—those who have survived terrible plagues and now see disease as a divine gift rather than a curse.
Some worship him unknowingly: the physician who spreads sickness through dirty instruments, the merchant who knowingly sells tainted grain, the parent who refuses healing for their child out of twisted faith. Others serve him deliberately, becoming Plague Bearers who travel between settlements, leaving sickness in their wake like a twisted pilgrimage.
Rituals and Offerings
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The Fevered Communion: Followers gather in cramped spaces, sharing cups of water tainted with their blood and spittle, seeking to commune with Morthar through shared infection. The ritual is complete when at least half the participants fall ill.
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The Withering Garden: Devotees plant crops or tend gardens using soil mixed with diseased flesh, bones of plague victims, or their own infected bodily fluids, creating “gardens of decay” that spread blight to surrounding farmland.
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Offerings: Bandages soaked with pus and blood, the final breaths of plague victims captured in sealed vials, diseased organs preserved in unholy oils, and the medical instruments of failed healers.
Sigils and Symbols
Morthar’s symbol is a crown of thorns wrapped with wilted vines, each thorn dripping with a different colored pox or disease. The crown rests atop a skull whose eye sockets weep blackened tears. This sigil is carved into the doors of plague houses, painted with infected blood on the walls of failed hospitals, or branded into the flesh of his most devoted followers.
Additional Details
The Hollow Blessed, those marked by Morthar’s touch, bear visible signs of disease—boils, scars, missing limbs—yet possess an unnatural vitality that allows them to survive conditions that would kill others. They often become healers themselves, though their treatments spread as much sickness as they cure.
Morthar teaches that disease is the great equalizer—it cares not for wealth, status, or virtue. To him, a plague that brings down both king and pauper is a more perfect justice than any court could deliver. He whispers to the suffering that their pain has meaning, that through spreading their affliction, they participate in a divine truth about the fragility of mortal flesh.