Blightlord

[Lestat]

Homebrew Exaltation - Blightlord

Champions of Nurgle, mad scientists who have become their own patient zero, parasites that feed off the living: Blightlords take many forms but are given one name by the masses, a scourge. Their bodies are fetid yet resilient, their pathogens cruel to their foes and kind to their friends. Blightlords are their disease. It binds their allies together and rips their enemies apart. Blightlords are paternal beings, looking upon their infected as they would their children. The head of a group of infected is often called the Father or Mother of the disease. These heads of family however are capable of bringing entire Spheres to their knees whether or not the plagued decide to become comrades or succumb in the streets.

While it is incomprehensible to the uninfected Blightlords and their family are happy and at peace. The connection between the infected is strong, and breeds mutual trust. Their disease is a gift and gifts are meant to be shared. There is no other way to convince the uninitiated than to infect them directly. Words alone are unlikely to describe what can only be felt. However not everything can be solved with disease. Ignorant or not the majority of Spheres across the Great Wheel deny the gift, and alliances with the uninfected are as critical to a Blightlord as it is anyone. Though such alliances are often made from a safe distance, a Blightlord is a true agent of chaos no matter what God they serve.

Powers:

Unclean One: You are Diseased and can never be cured. You suffer none of the unwanted effects of Diseases, and you are immune to toxins, poisons, and drugs. Whenever you would suffer Blood Loss you instead lose one Rot as long as you have any remaining.

Plague Father: You and your Diseased allies make a family. Your family can heal one another without penalty, and regain hit points naturally. You may spend Rot as a Half Action to reach out and restore wounds to yourself or a family member, or to give them the benefit of a Regeneration spell if they remain Diseased for the duration.

Festering Touch: When you wound or heal a target with a spell, feat, power, or attack you spent Rot on they must succeed on a Constitution test against TN 10 + 5x Rot spent or become Diseased. You may spend a Rot to add the Toxic property to an attack or spell, the TN to resist is increased by your Sickness.

Real Bad Medicine: If you would be healed by a non-Blightlord or equivalently filthy healer you instead take as many wounds. If you would be cured of your Disease you instead take a rending critical wound to an appropriate or random location as your body falls apart.

Power Stat: Sickness
The power a Blightlord wields begins internally. They are their own patient zero, and their primary experiment. If a disease is not good enough for a Blightlord it is not good enough to share with the rest of the world. As a Blightlord's Sickness grows their pathogen becomes more and more impossible to deny until their gift is known throughout the entire Great Wheel.

Resource Stat: Rot. You have an amount of Rot equal to three times your Sickness plus the greater of your Intelligence or Constitution. At the end of each scene you regain 1 Rot for each non-minion non-bystander that was freshly infected. If you achieve a mass infection of a populace you regain all Rot.

Sickness	Power Gained
★	Epidemic - When a creature ends its turn next to you or a creature with your Disease they roll 1d10. On a roll equal to or lower than your Sickness they become Diseased.
★★	Disgustingly Resilient - Your Disease causes you to gain +1 Resilience. You may spend a Rot to numb a family member giving them this same Resilience, and removing all other benefits and penalties from all Diseases affecting them beyond being unhealable by non-family members.
★★★	Pandemic - Your Diseases always infect minions and their squad without needing to roll dice. Diseased minions are rendered useless against you and your allies.
★★★★	Soul Contagion - Your Diseases cannot be cured without a stunt, and Diseased characters gain one level of disposition towards you.
★★★★★	Great Unclean One - Your Disease causes you to ignore one wound whenever you would suffer any. This cannot prevent wounds suffered by being healed by a clean one, and the ability is removed for one scene if you would be cured of your Disease by a stunt.

Blightlord Plague Assets

Festering Anger
Your Diseases also cause the target to become Frenzied while in combat, and become irritable and quick to anger outside of combat. On their turn they may attempt to take actions as if not Frenzied for a round by passing a TN (15 + Sickness) Willpower test. You suffer none of the ill effects of this perpetual Frenzy.

Ghoulish Withering
Your Diseases also cause the target to become gaunt and emaciated losing -2 size (minimum 1), and are perpetually dazzled with hunger. You suffer none of the ill effects of this thinning, do not change your Resilience from this size loss.

Gray Sight
Your Diseases also cause the target to become Blind past point blank range, while gaining the ability to perfectly see into and interact with the Umbra. You suffer none of the ill effects of this disease.

Spell Plague
Your Diseases also cause the target to roll Psychic Phenomena when they become infected or cast a spell, and spells they cast gain an extra raise. You suffer none of the warp effects created this way, and this disease does not cause your spells to always cause Psychic Phenomena.

Vile Bloat
Your Diseases also cause the target to swell up gaining +2 size, and their speed is halved. You suffer none of the ill effects of this swelling, and are as nimble as ever gaining +4 static defense.

[Lestat]

Blightlord:
The Pestilent

Blightlord Physical Features
Blightlords by and large are not very attractive, at least not by any normal denizen's standards. Some Blightlords deal with more subdued pathogens, but in order to achieve their level of virility most Blightlords visibly ooze with pus, pockmarks, and unsightly scales and rashes. Many Blightlords cover their body in things like bandages, cloaks, and suits of armor in order to hide this fact. Their physiology is in a constant medical emergency that manages to still function, akin to a messy table covered in papers that only the owner can sort. Attempts to fix a Blightlord's problems only bring the system crashing down killing them near instantly when exposed to advanced medicine.
Most Blightlords have little to no control over their physical appearance, however some have received cosmetic surgery in order to appear closer to normal. These procedures are often expensive, and temporary in actual effect, the true flesh hiding under the implants becoming fetid and rotten without control. Most cybernetics implanted in a Blightlord have no recoverable value as their internal servos and mechanisms bind and fuse with the decaying flesh of its host. Anyone who even attempts to wear such a soiled implant would surely contract their supernatural disease. While there is nothing that rules out more beautiful Blightlords from existing the truth is hidden somewhere behind cosmetics and pure fantasy.

Blightlord Tells
As a Blightlord spends Rot the air grows foul and passerby begin to cough and exude surface level symptoms. At one Rot spent the skin on your flesh distorts either with some kind of rash, growing pustules, or tumors, those present to see the Blightlord's flesh may make a TN 20 Perception test to notice this. At two to three points spent some of the weaker of stomach likely would have vomited, and it becomes apparent that some kind of supernatural agent is at work. At four to five points spent the full symptoms of the Blightlord's pathogen are clear, and people flee the scene in terror. At six points and beyond the immediate area is likely to be entirely cleared out, with only muffled coughs echoing in the distance.

Becoming a Blightlord
The vast majority of Blightlords are protected by the Chaos God Nurgle. Without his blessing the extreme viruses festering inside their bodies would kill them. Followers of Nurgle have a strong community system, and there is often a line of lineage each Blightlord can track down to find where their origins come from. Often Paragons of various races transform into Blightlords when they are close to succumbing to one of these supernatural diseases. Other times Chosen of Nurgle beseech their God to let them become direct carriers of his gift and focus on spreading his glory rather than simply crusading in his honor. Whether by accident or by intention all Blightlords of Nurgle learn to get along.
Other Blightlords however rare as they may be do exist. Mad doctors from technologically advanced societies are the most common, though there also exist highly evolved strains of fungus and alien parasites that much like a Swarm become Exalted as a group, and create an ego to represent their collective will. Alternatively when these infectious entities take over the body of an Exalted, often Paragons, they use their powers in the manner of a Blightlord. While these rogue Blightlords often do not worship Nurgle they quite often serve his will. All Blightlords empower Nurgle even if they desire to oppose him.

Playing a Blightlord
Blightlords always have a target on their back, and need to strike a balance between flaunting their power and keeping themselves covert. Nearly every community in the Great Wheel is comprised of disease prone mortals, and every one would blast a Blightlord out of the sky before they even get a chance to make landfall. Once a Blightlord has safely infiltrated a given Sphere it is still not over, they act as the head of the snake, should a disease of theirs break out there is little purpose quarantining individuals for as long as the Blightlord lives the plague cannot end.
Of course not all Blightlords have an insatiable desire to spread disease, but as there are no Vampires that refuse to drink blood, and no Werewolf that refuses to turn, there are no Blightlords who have disdain for the gift they carry in their bodies. Holding back and choosing discretion is a purely pragmatic decision. A greater concern however is those incapable of partaking in the gift. Prometheans, Modrons, automated weapon platforms, and other inorganics are the bane of Blightlords and often require tentative alliances to overcome. This is where the more composed Blightlords prevail where others find only death.

Blightlords in Game
Blightlords seek to spread the plague, and affect as many as they can, both friend and foe alike with their dynamic pathogen. This makes them excellent bombardiers to spread their disease to multiple injured at once, clerics to heal their allies, and general battlefield controllers. There is an element of chaos to a Blightlord, and it is inevitable that there will be times your disease backfires. Whether that be the party face being accidentally infected, your double edged diseases helping the enemy more than they hinder, or a runaway foe causing an unwanted epidemic: always be in communication on how you intend to employ your disease and sometimes whether you should employ it at all.
Be ready to be able to fend for yourself as a Blightlord. Too much reliance upon your diseases will make you unable to function alone, and against an immune foe such as a machine. While it might sound counter-thematic consider becoming a healer in order to cure diseases you unintentionally spread, or acquiring some longer ranged attacks or spells to limit exposure. An unfettered Blightlord can cause great havoc for both your enemies and your allies. Of course this might be a devious Malal plot, but try and not make it too obvious.

Blightlord Culture
Blightlords are hated Exalts. To those without their disease it is utterly incomprehensible how one could live as such a fetid being and find enjoyment from infecting others with such a repulsive fate. Chosen of all other Gods than Nurgle can find little to no common ground with them as their infection often brings a conversion to Nurgle with it. Paragons of all races fear the diseases Blightlords bring given how many Blightlords were once Paragon of their races like them. Prometheans are a terrifying presence for Blightlords as they are alien to their nature, and even promises of alliance are not made with full faith. The only thing more terrifying than a blatantly immune Exalt such as a Promethean is a covert one, the idea that a Werewolf could spring from a crowd of infected and entirely shrug off their pathogen's effects is among the greatest paranoia. Only the most devious and cruel of other Exalts can get along with Blightlords, many of them doing so from a safe distance.

Adapting Blightlords
All Blightlords are involved with perfecting, and spreading infection, but the way this infection manifests itself is open to various different thematics. Some examples include a Blightlord Necromancer who uses his Walkin' Dead as unliving hosts to spread both disease and undeath, a technological genius who has become his own patient zero and delivers his contagion through vials and syringes, a devoted priest of Nurgle who conjures plague from the warp, a fungal infection given sentience, or an alien parasite that propagates itself through the flesh of the living.

[lanugo1984]

I just have one question because it isn't super clear to me.

When you refer to making targets "diseased" what does that actually do? Does your personal disease actually do anything at first, or do you pass on all the diseases you've received to the target? Or is it the diseased condition?

[Lestat]

Diseased is a condition. Pg. 262 Book 1

DISEASED
While Exalts are immune to the vast majority of diseases, there are some supernatural afflictions that can still knock them on their arse. While Diseased, a character cannot recover hit points. Most supernatural diseases have their own effects in addition to this base condition.

Your assets and powers modify any disease you have ownership of. If you were to contract a special unique disease from an outside source, likely only being another Blightlord's disease as there is almost no content that creates diseases, you would have to determine whether or not it counts as "your disease" for those assets and powers to modify them. I would say any disease created by another that infects you would not be "your disease", but you would still ignore their negative effects via Unclean One not specifying it working only on a certain kind of disease. The only reliable source of Disease is Contagion from Toxigenesis, and like any source of disease that can be categorized as "your disease" it would gain all the effects from this Exaltation.

[Amanojyaku]

Comfortably Numb feels very... uncomfortably worded. Should probably start with "Gain +1 Resilience," and then describe what it does for your sickbuddy?

[Lestat]

Comfortably Numb is now phrased as an activated power to enforce you intentionally freeing them of suffering, and it is also phrased in such a way that it causes them to ignore the benefits and penalties of ALL diseases should they encounter diseases with unique effects that are not your own.

4/2/2021 - Blightlord Assets are now Blightlord Plague Assets, noticing how all core assets have a "named theme".
9/18/2021 - Festering Anger now gives a Willpower saving throw to act as if not frenzied for a round instead of automatically allowing them to take a wound, and point of fatigue to act as if not frenzied for their turn only. It might have well have been Fire Plague before since if you really can't suffer the action lock it was no worse than that.
3/22/2022 - Comfortably Numb renamed Disgustingly Resilient. Fevered Whispers changed from improving disposition by one step among diseased characters, and being able to spend a Rot to converse with a character infected with your disease for one round to Great Unclean One which flatly subtracts one wound from all sources excluding via healing damage, and can be suppressed for one scene if they would be cured of their disease through a stunt.
4/9/2022 - True Contagion renamed Soul Contagion. The bonus disposition among diseased characters has been moved here. I realized much of the Blightlord's narrative power is tied to both weakening the enemy prior to conflict, but also turning their less loyal citizens against them. I dislike smushing more than one concept into a power, but the rename helps both powers mesh, and True Contagion could feel like a wasted power to those who are not challenged on their disease's permanency.
7/10/2023 - Added the ability to spend a Rot to add the Toxic property to an attack or spell to Festering Touch, the Toxic property has a higher TN equal to Power Stat. I didn't really want to use the Toxic property anywhere, but there was no default powers that let you spend Rot for a spell, so spellcasters couldn't infect others before getting a homebrew spell like Contagion from Toxigenesis.