The plague started in the southern kingdom several years before the events of Gaia's Retaliation. Several hunters reported sightings of mysterious mushrooms all across the great forest of the southern kingdom. A group of alchemists and mages declared them as nontoxic, but inedible. Although the phenomenon of the sudden appearance of a new kind of mushroom was considered unusual, it was first accepted and mostly ignored.
Months later, villages close to the great forest began to report occasions of sudden attacks of wild animals. The government of Menethrand, the largest city of the southern Kingdoms responded in sending out several groups of hunters that should reduce the population of potentially dangerous animals in the outer areas of the great forest. Two months later, a pack of giant wolves attacked one of the bigger settlements around the forest. The group of hunters that were sent to control the rising aggression of the local fauna spoke about mysterious clouds of gas in the forest outskirts. Since then, nobody has ever entered the inner parts of the great forest, as the gas, soon to be described as highly toxic spores, spread out all over the forest and the surrounding landscapes. By the time the first crops died, most of the hunters that entered the forest to decimate the population of aggressive animals suffered from a sudden and mysterious desease. The older ones of them died a couple of days later. The skin of the younger ones slowly began to turn pale and rot away. Soon after, they became aggressive and attacked the clerics trying to cure their illness and killed three of them at several places all across Menethrand before the local city guards could react. The plague quickly turned into an epidemy.
One month later, Menethrand was at the edge of a civil war, as thousands of citizens fled over the Grand River to Ankhmaron. Little is known about those poor people that were left behind in the grand escape. Some say they died of thirst, as the water supply of the capital was soon poisoned by the spores, others say they turned into mindless abominations.
Over the next season, the Grand River proved to be a secure natural protection of the northern countries from the spores, until the winds shifted and traders began to report attacks of wild animals all across Ankhmaron...
When the first adventurers from the northern independant kingdoms arrived, Mytargas, the capital of Ankhmaron, was already in flames...
