Corvis the Corruptor

Purity can only be achieved through pain. Body and mind must be purged of weakness. Only then can one know the true love of Lumaya. Only then can one truly serve her. Or so the renegade known as Corvis the Corruptor insists. Clad in the beaked mask and the grim robes of a Sacred Order battle-surgeon, Corvis wanders Teleria, spreading the gospel of purity-through-plague. Wherever he goes, sickness and death are sure to follow. His mask weeps fumes of decay, and the great sword he bears drips with tainted effluvia. In his wake, he leaves towns and villages consumed by maladies that no doctor or priest can hope to allay. If there is any truth to his claim that those who survive his deadly gifts are destined to serve Lumaya in some fashion, not even his former compatriots in the Sacred Order can say. Corvis’ origins are lost to rumor and hearsay. Some insist he is not a man, but a pestilence that walks – a servant of Siroth, unleashed to punish those who follow the tenets of Lumaya. Others believe him to be a man suffering under a malign curse, doomed to destroy those he tries to save. But among the leaders of the Sacred Order, it is known that Corvis was once one of their own. A doctor and an alchemist of no small repute, Corvis had found his faith late in life and had joined the Sacred Order as a humble Novitiate. He was accepted and dispatched to an isolated mission in the Lost Isles, where sickness was rife and it was thought that his skills might be of some use. Not long after his arrival, a strange illness struck down the inhabitants of the mission, claiming many of their number. The afflicted were wracked with fever, their flesh covered in boils. The few survivors were left disfigured wrecks. Corvis worked like a man possessed to combat the disease, but every day brought new cases and new deaths. Soon, even the Mother Superior of the mission fell ill and had to be confined to her bed, where she ranted and raved about the illness being a curse from Lumaya. Nonetheless, Corvis prayed to the Goddess every waking hour that he wasn’t writing in his journals or tending the sick, hoping for some sign that might lead him to a cure. But as the days dragged on, and more bodies were consigned to the pyres, his faith curdled into obsession. Corvis began to believe that perhaps the Mother Superior was right. Perhaps Lumaya’s lack of reply was surely a sign in and of itself. That the sickness was not a natural affliction but a test of faith and will. A test that only he had passed; for was he not healthy? One of the few unaffected by the rampant fevers and convulsions that gripped the rest? Their faith had been wanting, and so they suffered, and in suffering they might well be purged of their weakness. But what of those who hadn’t endured the sickness? They were not like him, he knew. He had been in close proximity to the sick, and not caught the illness. The others who were unaffected had kept their distance, avoiding contact with the afflicted. He realized that they too had to be tested, else what was it all for? In the days that followed this revelation, Corvis concocted a plan to test those who were so far unscathed. He collected samples of pus and bile from his patients and added them to the mission’s food and water supply. Soon, the entire mission was gripped with an even more virulent strain of the fever. More deaths followed, until the few survivors were forced to send for rescue. When a relief ship arrived at last, it was too late. Every inhabitant of the mission was either dead, or a broken lunatic. All save Corvis, who was nowhere to be found. But he had left his journal behind. And when its contents were read, the Sacred Order immediately began a vain search for the former Novitiate. He was never found, though they still hunt him, dispatching their agents to scour Teleria for any hint of his comings and goings. It is not known what fate they intend for him, though it is probably not good. Of late, it is whispered by some that Corvis has been seen in Kaerok, Aravia, and even Ireth. Regardless of the location, the story is always the same… entire villages and towns consumed by a strange sickness, of fever and boils, and a wandering doctor who records the suffering in his journal. Those few who survive, broken in both body and mind, claim to have been blessed by Lumaya… and purified of their weaknesses by Corvis the Corruptor.