The Chromatic Chord

Remnant Contamination

The chill, dread, dulled senses, and draining weakness that cling to the living who work among the restless dead, handle necromantic residue, or are fastened on by a hostile remnant.

Overview

Gravediggers say the cold gets into you and stays. Remnant contamination is that cold: the residue of the dead clinging to the living who handle them. In its mild form it is a trade's ailment, a dulled nose and a gloomy temper. In its strong form a hostile remnant fastens on a living person and feeds.

Cause

The dead leave traces, and most soften and disperse (see Resonant Continuity). Some cling. The cause is that clinging residue adhering to a living body. It comes in three ways. Failed Trace work and failed Necromancy throw off ghosted residues and plumes of death-adjacent contamination (see the school failure signatures in Costs and Side Effects). Long practice among the dead wears it in slowly: necromancers grow fascinated with death and lose smell and touch. And a strong hostile remnant, formed where death was sudden or unfinished, can attach to the living and drain their energy and sanity. The pestilential fluid of Corpse Burst carries both rot and remnant shock.

Who It Strikes

Those whose work is among the dead: necromancers, trace casters, tomb-keepers, gravediggers, plague-pit workers, battlefield burial crews, and undertakers. Then those who live where a remnant clings, and mourners who will not leave a grave. The grieving and the exhausted take it more easily.

Signs and Course

The mild form comes over months. The worker feels cold in warm rooms, sleeps poorly, and loses keenness of smell and touch. Moods sour into gloom; talk turns to death; some feel drawn back to the graves on their days off.

A plume from a failed working comes at once: a cold that stops the breath, nausea, a smell of damp earth or old blood, and a feeling of being watched, lasting for days.

An attached remnant gives the worst course. The victim chills and weakens a little more each night, dreams the remnant's last feeling, fear, rage, or grief, and starts to wake with it. Lamps lean towards them; small things move near them. The turning point is whether the remnant is broken: once it is gone the victim recovers within days, but left in place it drains them on into madness or death.

Contagion

It does not pass from one living person to another. It is caught from places, bodies, and things: a contaminated tool, a burial shroud, a house where a remnant clings.

Treatment and Its Limits

The first step is distance from the source. Trace Magic unties weak remnants gently with Release Knot and quiets a chamber with Funeral Sleep, which is not full exorcism. Sanctified Consecrate Ground makes a burial place resist remnants, if it is kept up, and Exorcism drives an attached remnant out of a person, at a heavy cost to the host. Necromancers seal sites and cordon plumes. Afterwards, rest, warmth, sun, and food restore the drained.

Contaminated goods are burned or sealed. Herbs, salt, and lamps kept burning help the household more than the patient. Nothing gives back the long-dulled senses of an old necromancer.

Mortality

The mild form does not kill but stays with old workers for life as dulled senses and a gloom. An attached remnant can kill the weak, the old, and children, and leaves its survivors with dread, poor sleep, and sometimes a gap where the remnant's feeling sat.

Lore and Belief

The deathbed trades have their own customs: washing in running water after a burial, never eating at a graveside, burning the shroud-maker's scraps. Many peoples believe the dead person has come back for the victim, though a remnant is not the dead person but their last feeling gone hard. Some say a gravedigger's dulled nose is the dead's gift to those who serve them.

Battlefield strippers who take boots and rings from the dead before the burial come home sickest of all, and the old soldiers' saying is that a dead man's ring weighs more than his sword.

In the Medieval Era

Remnant contamination is a known hazard of the burial trades and of practising necromancers, and the careful schools mark plumes and rope off sites; a lord judging a necromancer may have a reader say whose working fouled a grave, if he wants more than suspicion. Plague years make it common, as pits fill faster than rites can be said. In the Hushvale it is the daily risk of every traveller.

Where It Appears

See Also