"Crouched in the bushes, Sister Ristea panted. Her breath stank like a gourd rotting in the sun, and the blood-filled growths on her arm looked like just that. Unless she found help soon the repentant thief realized that she'd end up like the other floating corpses haunting the fields. She grit her teeth. With luck, she could be back in the cloister by nightfall and Mother Alda or the hospitilar might be able to save her. However, then the convent's best chance to get help would be lost. Ristea rubbed at her cloudy eye, cursed, and whispered an apology to her diety. Pressing on likely meant death, either from the rot consuming her body or at the end of a fey's wicked blade. A branch snapped behind her. On the lurking danger, Sister Ristea didn't hesitate. She whirled toward the noise, short sword ready. Her head swam. A bobcat, likewise infected with the strange contagion, slinked from the overgrowth. No, this was no simple feline. Intelligence glittered in...

A compact frame of mange and muscle, a bilge cat is trained by Fallowfield’s Lesionnaire to aide them in battle. Ridden with disease the intelligent feline’s skin is covered with blacked spots of rot and a wispy memory of hair. Tuffs of fur still hang from its face, and on the tips of of its long, swept-back ears. The cat’s eyes smolder a noxious orange at night and it blackened lips peel away from pitted teeth in a perpetual snarl. The creature can speak, its voice raspy and pained. Bound by Loyalty . Long before ruination came to the stretch of the Feywild known as Fallowfields the bilge cats, known by a different moniker now lost to the ages, swore an oath of kinship to the armies of the land. They fought alongside the noble fey against the Duke of Autumn’s End and likewise failed against the warlord. When the defeated army swore fealty to Lord Fallowfields the bilge cats’ geas demanded remained at their companions’ side, and the species has suffered greatly for it. The fey be...

Short and sickly, a lesionnaire wears armor encrusted with dried discharge from a myriad of festering wounds on which stray direflies feast. The fey carries a rectangular shield emblazoned with the crest of the Fallowfields; a human skull splitting open like an over-ripe pumpkin. Greasy, yellow hair spills around an angular face and pointed ears, its pale skin dotted with feverish flush and a sheen of cold sweat. The black-tooth soldier comes armed with a grimace and grime-caked short sword. If the blade doesn’t slay its prey, the sepsis will. Tithe of Suffering . Once, the Duke of Autumn’s End served a different archfey but the devious bastard overthrew his rival, claimed the land for his own, and dubbed it the Fallowfields. At first, the local army refused to accept defeat and waged a protracted guerrilla war against the usurper. However, as the land and lord became one sickness swept through all that lived there, even the ardent rebels. As scores succumbed the leaders surrende...

Encounter Premise: An abandoned building infested with mimics and the poltergeist who enjoys feeding them. Location: Threaded Needle Tailors, an abandoned shop of brickwork in the slums. Suggested Presentation: A party of adventurers can come to Threaded Needle Tailors for a variety of reasons. Perhaps an item or scrap of information they needed is rumored to once have been in the possession of the shop's owner, Emmerich Latch. Maybe they have received reports of people going missing near the structure, maybe even an NPC important to them. The abandoned building can be simply a piece of the scenery in the heroes' stomping ground that eventually draws their greedy eye. No matter the reason the creatures inside are all challenge rating two, and likely would be quite a hassle for a beginning party if too many are used. If the player characters are 5th level or so a horde of mimics should be an appropriate obstalce. If they are much higher a dungeon master might conside...

Cast from black iron the lip of this wide cauldron is ringed with corroded chains and ruddy smeared hooks. Within the vessel bubbles a noisome stew of amber and honey hew; fragmented honeycombs and rotting limbs occasionally crest the surface. Multifaceted eyes stamped into the metal twitch back and forth. When the boil spots a potential victim its eyes fixate on the target, its body lurches, and its hooked chains writhe akin to excited snakes. Pestilence Engine. A boil's primary function is to spread Harvest Rot wherever the Lord of Fallowfields' covetous gaze falls. Once established the cauldron travels from village to village as a rolling cloud of jaundice gas. Once established a new area the boil targets farms and camps on the fringes first, raising a bumper crop of bubonic drifters before moving on. Once the village, or even city, is under siege from the infectious undead the boil will drift into the slums and begin to putrify the city from within. The boil follows t...

Infected with Harvest Rot a victim manifests gangrenous buboes which look like orange gourds growing from their body. Without treatment, the buboes eventually rupture leading to other infections and death. However, the disease does not stop there. The bubonic growths continue and intensify, the sacs swelling with deadly blood and gas. The zombified creature is lifted up by balloon-like buboes, driven to seek out others and infect them. Sallow Fruit Harvest Rot, the disease which a bubonic drifter spreads, finds its origins in the Feywild. A blighted stretch of land known as Fallowfields ruled over by the Duke of Autumn's End. The honeycombed keep at the center of Fallowfields serves both as the archfey's seat of power and prison. In hopes of containing the bastard's contagion, the Duke's mother, the Solemn Harvest, fused the leperous fey to his throne. However, the Lord of Fallowfields will not have his ambitions denied. His agents spread Harvest Rot across the m...

A rockery crone stands taller than most men, though she appears frail with age. Her thin arms end in gnarled claws, attached to a torso both hourglass in shape and skeletal at the same time. What appears to be a cape is in truth a chitinous shell. The carapace protects bony orifices which serve as hagfisher nests. She usually wears a backless, but high-necked, grey dress embroidered with bones and teeth. Proud Bloodline. The hagfishers were not always treasured companions of the Waning Court. Swarms of the winged worms plagued the feywild. Many noble fey attempted to tame them, with little and often fatal luck. One day a commoner fey butchered and fed her children to a hagfisher swarm and took them in her as a replacement family. The dark act sealed a pact between the crone’s extended family and hagfishers. Every rookery crone proudly claims heritage to this infanticide. Loyal to the Gale. Long ago, the Howling Prince fell in love with a young fey woman being trained to beco...

Caught somewhere between an eel and an insect, hagfishers are the loathsome hunting ‘birds’ of the Waning Court. Born on iridescent wings these sinuous hunters swoop down on their prey with hooked claws barred. Hagfishers also bear a barbed stinger packed with poison. Their ‘faces’ are little more than a toothy maw ringed by nacreous eyes.. Viscous Spewer. As creatures of the Feywild hagfishers do not adhere to natural law. The most prominent, and disgusting, example of this is their binding discharge. When a hagfisher corners prey their handler wants captured alive, their elongated body swells before vomiting a mass of sticky gist onto the creature, restraining it for ease of delivery. Affectionate Anathema: Despite their horrific nature hagfishers are common pets among the Waning Court. They curl around their masters' shoulders and legs like a cat, wings buzzing melodies the dark fey find soothing. In turn, the waning spoil their vile companions. Some fey carve arcane pat...