The Chromatic Chord

Inherited Rot

The Rotting Crown's lineage-poison, which runs down a bloodline so that heirs age decades in years, repeat their forebears' failings, and die of old age young, while their house rots around them.

Overview

Inherited Rot is the sickness of a family that cannot let its past die. The heirs grow old before their time. Grey hair comes at twenty, the hands knot at thirty, and they make their grandfathers' mistakes while knowing exactly what they are doing. Meanwhile the house rots around them, from the larder to the crypt.

Cause

The Rot comes from the Rotting Crown, a Cast-Out of Terra that dreads every yielding of rule. Promising the old and the heirless to keep the line alive, it drives a curse down the bloodline, carried in the blood and in the Pattern the line inherits, so that the grandson pays for the grandfather's sin. Its Rot Field speeds decay in everything near it, the living included. The Crown's black mould marks the houses it holds, and the ancestor's will often rides the heir as one of the Possessing Ancestors.

Who It Strikes

Heirs of any people that keeps a line: royal houses, landed families, clan chiefs, rich craft families. An Elf or Dwarf heir greying within decades is plain to all; among Humans it passes for bad blood. Children of the line are struck as they come of age. Spouses who married in are not, though they age in the house's rot while the Crown stays.

Signs and Course

  • The house. Food blackens a day early, signet rings tarnish green, flowers wilt by evening, and black mould creeps into the cellar and the family crypt.
  • The heir. Hair greys, skin loosens and spots, joints ache, and teeth go, all at a pace of years where it should take decades.
  • The turning. The heir starts to stand, speak, and decide like a dead forebear.
  • The end. Death of old age, often in the twenties or thirties for a Human. Inside the Crown's own field it can take hours.

Contagion

It passes down the blood, to every child born into the bound line, not between neighbours. A foster child does not carry the curse, though anyone under the Crown's roof ages faster while it stays.

Treatment and Its Limits

Healers can ease the ageing body with willow for the joints, warm rooms, and soft food for failing teeth, but nothing they do gives the years back. Spells that bind blood, preserve, or extend life turn under the Crown's influence and deepen the Rot. The blood rite of the Inheritance Knot, which binds a trait or burden into a line, is the nearest mortal working to the curse, and a house that has used one is suspected first.

What helps is succession. The heir must set the inheritance down and refuse the ancestor by their own name, with no other's title. Next comes something with no ancestors: a seed in fresh soil, a child raised free of the family's debts, a house founded rather than inherited. When the Crown leaves, the mould can be dug out and burned.

Mortality

Most bound heirs die young of old age. A line the Crown holds long may end altogether. Heirs who set the inheritance down in time stop ageing early, but they do not get back the years already spent, and many stay grey and stiff for life.

Lore and Belief

Families call it the old blood or the family weakness. They read black mould in the crypt as restless ancestors, or as a blessing on the line. A possessed heir is praised as the very image of the old lord. Farmers say that if the rot begins, one should plant something, and here they are closer to the truth than most lore.

In the Medieval Era

Inherited Rot is rare and lives in the great houses, where succession quarrels, debts of honour, and long feuds give the Crown its openings. Physicians to noble families see the early greying and blame marriages between cousins. Now and then a younger child founds a new house, renounces the name, or plants an orchard on fresh ground, and outlives every elder sibling.

Where It Appears

In the Writers’ Guide

See Also