Be advised: You can use this content right now, as-is, but you'll be missing out on the bizarre glory that is Penicillin vol 2.
It has Plague Eater (a single facet of the glut of inspiring content) done right with gorgeous art and wild layout. It's a masterpiece and you need it. Grab a copy of the PDF, and a copy of volume 1. Happy Solstice!
It takes a moment- Jellied, attenuated seconds clawing through the haze of fever- To determine if the woman approaching your bedside is real. She is, and her eyes are kind.
Her movements are smooth and precise, observed detachedly through the heat shimmer of your illness. She presses a kiss to your forehead, grasps a fistful of hair with one gloved hand, places the other splayed over your nose and mouth, and pulls-
Deep in your chest something resists, digging barbs into your heart, your lungs, gouting sparkles of pain as she drags its coils out from your flesh. She brings her hand from your mouth to hers, trailing a mass of fine strands. Green-black and wetly iridescent, like beetle wings spun into thread. She gorges on it, drawing out yard after yard and slurping them up like noodles.
With each foot extracted, shards of lucidity rasp at the edges of your inflamed mind and congeal. Your breath comes easier. Your trembling chills subside. When she finishes her eyes glimmer with an edge of mania, a shadow of the fever she took from you. She takes a breath, coughs lightly into the back of her hand, then leans forward to kiss your brow again.
"Be well."
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A Plague Eater heals the sick by drawing out illnesses and containing them encysted within their own bodies. The ritual required to consume disease is simple and can be learned by anyone so long as they find a teacher or detailed instructions.
Plague Eaters may consume as many different diseases or cases of the same disease as they like.
Consuming a disease takes as long as a short meal, completely heals the patient, and stores the disease within the Plague Eater. Stored diseases aren't contagious and the Plague Eater can't die from them, but a stat of their choice is reduced by 1 for each disease they hold. They also suffer an attenuated version of the symptoms (1/4 strength) that accumulates. Healing 2 people of different diseases will cause the Plague Eater to take 2 stat damage and feel a quarter of the symptoms of each disease. Healing 4 people of the same disease will cause 4 stat damage and the Plague Eater will suffer the full brunt of the disease's symptoms.
Plague Eaters can use their stored diseases two ways:
The can vaccinate others, granting immunity to any of their stored diseases. Every vaccination causes them to feel more symptoms. One quarter each time, after 3 vaccinations of the same disease they feel full symptoms.
They can inflict diseases on others. When a Plague Eater inflicts a disease it's expelled from their body. They lose access and immunity to it, regain a stat point, and all of the immunities they granted for that disease end. The disease becomes contagious again. They can only inflict a disease on creatures that can normally catch it.
The only way for a Plague Eater to recover their lost stat points or decrease the severity of their symptoms is by revoking immunities they've granted or purging themselves by inflicting diseases. They don't recuperate naturally from stored diseases and outside healing has no effect.
If a Plague Eater dies their stored diseases die with them, harmlessly contained in the body forever.
If a Plague Eater gets sick, actually contracting a disease instead of consuming it through their ritual, they will feel completely fine. All symptoms from their stored diseases will vanish and they'll begin to take 1 damage to their lowest stat each day. When that stat reaches 0 the Plague Eater disintegrates into an infectious dust, releasing all their stored diseases to be spread as an airborne vector. This can be averted by getting treatment or by inflicting all of their stored diseases on others.