The Great Plague

The Great Plague was a widespread magical virus that arrived shortly after Mystfall and killed about ninety percent of the human population. Until the The Great Plague hit, magic and Fey Folk were just legends. Despite the virulence and deadliness of the infection, humans still make up the majority of the population of the Material Plane. Both the Imperials and the Conthestani cultures are still struggling but slowly rebuilding after the The Great Plague and grappling with the meanings behind the emergence of both magic and the Fey races into the world.

Cause
No one knows what caused the The Great Plague. The Conthestani believe it was nature trying balance itself after years of exploitation and pollution. The Empire believes that it was because Sim, one of the three faces of NOS, held dominance in society for too long, that it was a sign for the war to end. The Fey believe a variety of things about the origin of The Plague. Some say it was a ritual gone wrong. Some say a ritual gone right. Some say that Faerie is responsible. Some think Dragon played a trick on the world. Some don’t care - they just arrived to this plane and The Great Plague was just a human problem.

Effects
The Plague affected the humans of the Material plane, as well as the creatures. 90% of the Human population died, and those who did not began to see some of their own people developing magical abilities, like the Fey, whose arrival coincided with the virus. In addition to making people sick and killing them, The Great Plague has changed people, plants, and animals in strange and terrible ways. The biggest impact was the ability to come back from the dead, one or many more times.

The arrival of the Plague also put a stop to the Hundred-Years War between the Imperials and the Conthestani. Instead, the human settlements came to a careful truce in order to stop the bigger threat of the Fey during the First Contact Wars.

Result
The Great Plague lasted a full seven years before dying out. It was never truly cured. No medic, priest, wizard or academic could ever find a way to get rid of it; it just burned itself out. It is theorized that those who are alive today are immune, but that has not been proven. The magical effects still manifest within humans today, as well as enabling the births of strange variants, and allowing those to access Faith and Psychic powers more easily. There is residual blame towards the Fey, due to their arrival coinciding with the Plague, but as it has since died out, that animosity has lessened.