"...No... at least, not that I'm aware of," said Ethlyn. "It seems to have happened before the monster appeared. Some of the people who passed through Pessiria Forest developed strange markings like the ones these people suffered."

But the forest had been strange, full of eerie sounds, and more than one townsperson had vanished and been found later in a grisly state, at the mercy of the robed cultists that had summoned the monster from the ground. "I had thought it more like a curse--that the monster's servants had chosen specific people to afflict. But maybe it was more random than that. Still... is it even possible to spread a disease deliberately?"