Queen Forfallen

Queen Forfallen: Rust-Riddled Pirate Queen

One of the most influential victims of the supernatural rusting curse throughout the Moonshae Isles is the pirate queen known as Queen Forfallen. She plies the seas in the largest and best-defended ship in the Moonshaes, the prize of her armada, which she's strengthened with rusty metal plates and filled with a crew of bloodthirsty Rusted berserkers (see this chapter). Queen Forfallen is a strong human woman with long, red hair. Although the rusting curse has transformed most of her extremities into metal, she's thus far resisted the weakening corrosion that the curse typically imparts to its victims. Her crew insists that her unquenchable thirst for plunder keep her hale.

History: Few know Queen Forfallen's background. She prefers to keep her focus on daring deeds as the most renowned pirate queen in the Moonshae Isles. But "Queen Forfallen" is the moniker adopted by Renauta, daughter of Olfgaut, and sister to Norland's jarl, Olfsvenn. Renauta learned of the Rusting and embraced the curse as a path to strength and prowess. Queen Forfallen maintains clandestine communications with her brother, and they occasionally feed one another helpful information. Olfsvenn hopes he can steer Forfallen back to her name and role as Renauta, but Forfallen prefers her new identity.

Personality: Queen Forfallen has a personality as powerful as her metal-clad muscles. She has a commanding voice well suited to carrying across a ship-to-ship battle and a firm, blunt demeanor that potential allies find hard to resist. Her growing network of supporters attests to her diplomatic skills and the shrewd mind behind her bold demeanor. She speaks to the scoundrels, bandits, smugglers, and others who live outside of Norlander society, promising coin and glory. More insidiously, she encourages the Rusting as a path to power, not debilitation, and those who crave her strength seek out infection. Forfallen has done more to spread the curse than anyone else in the Moonshae Isles. As with all victims of the Rusting, Forfallen feels a strong desire to despoil natural places. She's been able to keep this desire in check, instead turning her energies to building alliances with other pirates and people afflicted by the Rusting, but she feels no remorse about deforesting old growth for ship's wood or using ore wrenched from idyllic hills.

Queen Forfallen is a notorious pirate leader in the Moonshae Isles. Originally a Norlander named Renauta, she succumbed to a mysterious magical plague known as "the Rusting," transforming her into a metal-skinned berserker who commands an army of similarly afflicted raiders.

Key Lore and Background:

• True Identity: Renauta was the sister of Olfsvenn, a Northlander leader who eventually claimed the throne of Norland.
• The Rusting: This affliction turned her flesh into living metal, physically fusing her weapons and gear to her body and dramatically altering her Norlander values.
• Rise of the Pirates: Rather than succumbing to the disease, she embraced it and banded together with other afflicted Northlanders to form a fearsome pirate fleet known as "the Rusted".
• Strategic Alliances: Based out of Ruathym and Iron Keep, her fleet became a prominent sea power. She even received secret support and resources from her brother, Olfsvenn, while he officially maintained loyalty to the High King.

How the Rusted Operate: Queen Forfallen transformed traditional Norlander aesthetics into a terrifying aesthetic of her own. For instance, where normal sailors used nautical rope knots, her crew utilized chain knots that fused directly into their metallic skin, making them incredibly strong and fearsome combatants. Her forces terrorized the northern waters and used Ruathym as a safe harbor to offload their ill-gotten goods in exchange for fresh crewmembers and supplies.

Rusted: The rusted are creatures that have succumbed to the magical disease known as the Rusting, and have transformed into semi-intelligent constructs driven to destroy nature and spread the curse that created them.

Description: Nearly any living creature can become rusted. They remain recognizable, but are made of an animate, rust-colored iron that sheds toxic flakes. Becoming rusted is believed to greatly increase a creature's lifespan, however most rusted grow steadily weaker with time as their bodies corrode. They eventually crumble into dust.

Personality: Rusted creatures' minds are hollowed out by their transformations. While they maintain some semblance of their old personalities and intelligence, including the ability to speak, they discard any formerly held values or traditions and some become prone to mindless rages. They are compelled to despoil and pillage the natural environment by an innate hatred for untouched nature and an innate joy in destroying it. Many abhor all living things.

Combat: Rusted are stronger and more powerful than they were before their transformations. Given their iron composition, rusted are unaffected by poison and fatigue, and they cannot be petrified. Larger creatures have skins so thick that weapons bounce off of them.

Society: Rusted are most often encountered along the coasts and in the forests of the Moonshae Isles where they can readily inflict harm on the natural environment. They are known to chop down forests, open old mines, poison wells, and dredge wetlands purely for the sake of causing ecological damage, although they are also motivated to harvest the treasures that they find along the way. Some have the mental capacity to lead others or to negotiate trade deals. On land, rusted humans, giants (known as behemoths), and beasts rampage through the forests and seek to spread the Rusting to moonwells. At sea, they outfit ships with rusty metal plates, turning them into mighty warships known as rusted hulks. Larger monsters, such as the draconic rusted wyrms, use their incredible powers to boil streams and oceans, destroying habitats and reefs. By the turn of the 16th century DR, they could be found pillaging the natural resources of Alaron, Moray, Oman's Isle, and Snowdown, or haunting the waters off the coast of Norland.

History: The Rusting appeared on the Moonshae Isle of Snowdown in the late 15th century DR, and as of the turn of the 16th century DR, a great many rusted (mostly Northlander berserkers) had banded together as raiders and pirates in service of Queen Forfallen. They operated out of Ruathym, where they actively recruited new aspiring rusted, but also had bases at Iron Keep and Farview, where they harvested resources to fuel their war machine.

Notable Rusted:

• Axenwright, a pirate captain and self-proclaimed jarl of Iron Keep as of the turn of the 16th century DR.
• Kel, a rusted Northlander berserker.
• Renauta, who was better known as Queen Forfallen.

The Rusting: The Rusting is a magical disease and curse that has afflicted the Moonshae Isles from the late 15th century through the turn of the 16th century DR. It transforms plants into metal and creatures into constructs known as "rusted".

Acquisition: The Rusting is a manifestation of the harm experienced by the Earthmother, patron deity of the Moonshae Isles, when the isles' natural environment is destroyed, polluted, or raided. The Rusting manifests in areas where ecological damage is present and is actively harming the Earthmother, regardless of whether the damage is purposeful or an unintended by-product of civilization. Activities such as the overfishing of seas, clearcutting of forests, strip-mining of mountains, draining of wetlands, damming or redirecting of waterways, or general overpopulation, pollution, and industrialization can cause the Rusting to manifest. Creatures can contract the Rusting by being in close proximity to lands and waters afflicted by it, even for as little as a single hour, or if they are injured by a rusted creature. It can infect any living thing, not only humanoids and beasts but also including celestials, dragons, fey, giants, and monstrosities. Constructs and the undead are not affected by the curse. It is speculated that fomorians are somehow connected to the Rusting as they tend to emerge from the Underdark wherever the disease spreads.

Effects: The first signs of the Rusting are intense fatigue, hacking cough, and a thin, coarse plaque of iron that begins to grow over the body, starting around the eyes. This iron plaque plates the infected individual's joints and slows their movements. If exposed to any moisture, the iron rusts quickly into a gray and orange metallic coating. As it spreads over the following days, the fatigue and exhaustion become more acute. After as little as six days, the victim can succumb to the disease as their body turns to animate iron and their mind is destroyed. At this point, they have become a "rusted" version of themselves, and are compelled to despoil or ravage the natural environment around them, thus perpetuating the curse. Eventually, rusted creatures crumble into dust.

Environment: The Rusting transforms green vegetation into scrap metal and dust. Trees whiten and die or else become covered in iron with their leaves turning to rust. The curse can rapidly spread over wooden structures and causes rocks to disintegrate. Contaminated waterways develop a metallic smell and rust-colored tint. If the Rusting manifests in open water, it creates a phenomenon known as a rusted sea where the water is coated in a thin oil that has a foul chemical smell and is hazardous to aquatic creatures. These areas can drive whales to beach themselves and are attractive to rusted sea monsters. If a moonwell becomes contaminated, it transforms into a glistening and stinking pool of black oil, which injures the Earthmother as a bleeding wound would injure a mortal. The spread of the curse causes the goddess constant suffering. Aberrations and undead tend to be common in places affected by the Rusting. While the connection between these monsters and the curse is unclear, places suffused by the curse seem to spawn these monsters.

Treatment: Infected creatures and individuals can be cured of the Rusting by removing the curse (e.g., via the remove curse spell). It is also possible to fight off the disease naturally. However, it is irreversible once the victim has transformed into a rusted. Rusted wooden structures, such as ships, can be burned to prevent the curse from spreading. The Rusting is known to disappear from lands and waters where environmental damage is addressed or reversed. This might require cleaning up or ceasing polluting activities or halting lumbering operations. Druids are said to be able to protect places against the Rusting if they are able to directly tend to them, and they work alongside rangers to keep moonwells safe from the contagion.

History: The Rusting was foretold by a satyr seer in ancient Sarifal approximately two thousand years before it manifested. This prophecy claimed that a "mysterious curse" or "howling disease" would be spread by a "beast lord" and could destroy "two worlds" unless High Lady Ordalf of Sarifal died to stop it. The prophecy was sufficient to frighten Ordalf into fleeing the Material Plane for centuries, with her only returning when she sensed that the time for her necessary sacrifice was approaching. The curse echoed and perpetuated the ecological damage that had been perpetrated by Amnian colonists on the island of Snowdown throughout most of the 15th century DR. Their decades-long resource extraction activities had been hugely polluting, from digging mining pits to cutting down forests to contaminating ponds and redirecting waterways into polluted wetlands, all of which were overseen by the vampire Erliza Daressin. The Amnians were finally driven out in the 1480s DR when the forces of House Kendrick and Sarifal allied against them, however when Princess Tarilyn Kendrick slew Lady Daressin, the vampire used her last breath to utter a curse that sparked the Rusting. The Rusting first appeared at the only moonwell on Snowdown, which had long been abandoned after the Amnians had driven off the druids who had once cared for it. Attempts to contain or repair the Rusting failed spectacularly, and the situation was made much worse when a dam burst along the Harloch, depositing pollution and runoff from the isle's mines all across the lowlands. Snowdown was soon regarded as little more than a blight on the Moonshaes. In the following decades, fomorians, rusted bandits, undead, and aberrant monsters stalked the island while famine gripped its remaining inhabitants. Peoples of the Moonshaes regarded the disease as insidious and strange, and it forced some folk to flee their homes. However, a few saw the transformation into a rusted as a chance to acquire power and longevity, and so intentionally committed violence against the land in hopes of spreading and acquiring the curse. As of the turn of the 16th century DR, many such individuals were followers of the pirate leader known as Queen Forfallen and had established bases for themselves at Iron Keep on Oman's Isle and Farview on Moray. From these sites, they chopped down forests, reopened old mines, and dredged wetlands, seeking to find treasures and to expand their pirate fleet of rusty ships. The Rusting also arrived on the island of Norland following years of pollution and overfishing of the Bay of Norland: at the port of Rogarsheim, the curse infused the water, infected ships, and spread across the timbers of the piers, occasionally ensnaring a dockworker. In the Year of the Shining Mythal, 1501 DR, deforestation, pollution, and use of alchemical fertilizers led the Rusting to appear on the southern shore of Alaron at Kythyss, where it spread from the town harbor up the Bregonshire coast and into Rushdown Wood, threatening a moonwell. It had also reached the Dernall Forest further north on the island, and from there, rust-tainted water had seeped into the Feywild. On Norland, the rusted Tvarstoldt tar pits in the Jotunhammer Mountains had begun to spawn foul monsters, and fomorians worked to thwart any attempts to heal the land. On Oman's Isle, the rusted pirate Axenwight strove to harvest the natural treasures and to corrupt the isle's moonwell. The only one of the Moonshaes where the Rusting had not yet arrived was Gwynneth, where the high concentration of moonwells meant that a Rusting outbreak could prove fatal to the Earthmother. Once it was clear that the Rusting was the disease that High Lady Ordalf was destined to stop, it became apparent that she would need to give her life to empower potent magic that could cure it.

Rumors and Legends: It is feared that a contaminated moonwell could be used to summon a terrible rusted form of Kazgaroth, who would be able to spread the curse instantly to anything it touched.