Giving Your Players Parasites: Rust Mites
-from the Book of Wretchedness-
THE MITE TO DEVOUR EMPIRES…
Lorryia Ferrovoryia: Smithsbane, steeleater's itch, minerot…rust mites…
In nature the humble rust mite is unworthy of remark. Sprawling colonies of the microscopic creatures spend their days as a thin mat of slime and rust, covering exposed iron ore deposits and slowly reducing them to drying red sludge. Given enough undisturbed time, the rust mites of the world would reduce the bounty of the hills to so much ocher waste, but thanks to the impurities of native iron, predation, hard winters, and lashing storms, their feasts are kept in check.
Protected from the elements and surrounded by exquisite and abundant ferrous metals, rust mites finding themselves in a farmer's shed, a castle, or a city blacksmith's shop spend their short lives in a prolonged debauch of feasting and breeding. The mites spread plague-like, quickly devouring nails, hinges, chains, bolts, fittings, blades, arrow heads, and armor. They can reduce a defending army to a horde of smock-wearing, stick-wielding, bug-bitten commoners, just as easily as they can reduce a forge city, the beating heart of an empire, to red ash.
Legend tells of a place, far to the East, from whence the first rust mites came to the New World. There, on a sand-blasted slab of alabaster granite are chiseled these words:
Hark, Stranger, and Marvel! The Iron Monster before you is but My Smallest Vassal, and if ye stood at the foot of yon Fortress as ye stand at My Black Warrior's Feet, ye would know that the Works of Emperor Ulyarich, The Iron Emperor, Touch the Heavens and Blot Out The Sun!
Beyond this ominous stone the corpse of a forgotten land lies, buried beneath a deep shroud of rust that touches the horizons, unbroken.
GAMEPLAY
CONTRACTION
Contracting rust mites requires direct contact with either live rust mites or their eggs, both of which are so tiny as to render them invisible without a powerful magnifying lens.
Rust mites are attracted to iron, iron alloys, and non-meteoric magnets, moving towards them at a speed of 1 foot per minute. Rust mites can only affect ferrous (iron-containing) equipment and equipment components, such as iron and steel. They can not affect gold, silver, copper, etc.
Objects that survive contact with rust mites (leather armor, wooden handles, arrow shafts, cloth bags, etc.) will be covered with microscopic rust mites and rust mite eggs. Mature rust mites will starve to death if they do not feed for 4 days. Rust mite eggs can remain viable for anywhere from 10 to 1,000 years.
Rust mite rust is saturated in dead rust mites and innumerable dormant eggs and should be avoided at all costs.
INCUBATION: d6+6 hours to reach critical mass and to manifest effects.
PROGRESSION
During their incubation period, rust mites remain hidden on their host, laying eggs.
After the incubation period, rust mites appear on ferrous equipment as an expanding patch of slime and rust. As rust mites prefer dark, protected environments, this typically occurs out of sight between the metal plates and the leather pads of armor, or inside the scabbard of a sword.
An infested player must pass a Hard [DC 20] passive perception check to detect infestation of non-handheld equipment during its incubation period. This DC drops by 3 immediately after the incubation period ends and for every hour thereafter.
An infested player must pass a Moderate [DC 15] passive perception check to detect infestation of handheld equipment during its incubation period. This DC drops by 3 immediately after the incubation period ends and for every hour thereafter.
For every hour after the completion of the incubation period, the rust mites will afflict another ferrous piece of equipment.
If infested equipment is placed in a container with other ferrous items and then completes its incubation, all pieces of equipment in the container are considered infested.
For every day after the initial infestation, rust mites will infest and cover another 2% of their host's skin as a crusty, rust-colored rash, often made to bleed from frantic itching. This patch will rarely exceed 30% of their body's surface area, but if left untreated and unmolested, rust mites will happily cover their host from head to toe.
SYMPTOMS
As is common with parasitic infestations, people playing host to rust mites become hyperpruritic, or "extremely itchy". They will react to normal bodily sensations, such as cloth rubbing on skin, or hair brushing the neck, as if it were an insectile assault, often seen to slap and scratch at themselves as if beset by invisible mosquitos.
As the mites infest the skin, traveling between their hatching grounds and their feeding grounds, they will ruin the superficial layers, creating a dry, rust-colored, scab-like patch. This patch will slowly grow as the infestation progresses, and will exude a strong smell of salt, bleach, vinegar, and peroxide, all components of the rust mite’s steel-eating slime.
Contrary to popular belief, rust mites neither drink blood nor feed on their hosts. In truth, while they are certainly a disturbing creature to live with, particularly for those beings that fancy themselves “heroes”, or those that live by the sword, they are little more than a nuisance, and are no more lethal than leafhoppers.
EFFECTS
Rust Metal: Immediately upon completing their incubation period and for every hour thereafter, the following effects occur:
An appropriate metallic weapon will suffer a permanent and cumulative -1 penalty to damage rolls. If its penalty drops to -5, the weapon is destroyed.
An appropriate metallic armor will suffer a permanent and cumulative -1 penalty to its AC. If its penalty drops to -5, the armor is destroyed.
An appropriate metallic or metal-bound shield will suffer a permanent and cumulative reduction of its AC bonus by 1. If its bonus drops to +0, the shield is destroyed.
An appropriate metallic item, including iron spikes, arrow heads, grapnels, will be rendered useless after one hour, and will be considered destroyed.
Every 2 hours rust mites are able to reduce a 1-foot cube of appropriate metal to rust. This doubles every six hours.
Unpleasant Presence: Characters that have been infested by rust mites suffer a -1 penalty to all Charisma stat and skill rolls that require another character to have a positive opinion of the character, including persuasion, deception, and performance.
CURE
Neem oil, extracted from Neem seeds from the Neem tree, all found in great abundance in the land of Neem, will effectively repel and kill rust mites. This oil can be difficult to find and expensive to buy, but when liberally applied to ferrous metals or to hosting flesh it will stop an infestation dead in its tracks, killing mites and eggs alike. Mixing neem oil with lamp oil or burning logs soaked in neem oil will produce noxious fumes that are lethal to rust mites.
Pine tar is a more readily available means to repel rust mites and will serve as a sticky, impassable barrier to the little devils. Miners and blacksmiths use pine tar to draw thick concentric rings around their various wares and claims to protect them from the terrors of the mites.
A quick way to cleans ferrous metal equipment of rust mites and their eggs is to lay them in a fire. Intense heat will kill both, and so long as the item is not left in the fire for too long, this will not harm the temper.
Those with the coin to spend would be wise to avail themselves of a meteoric lodestone to protect themselves and their metallic belongings. These rare, strange stones repel rust mites as if by magic, creating a sphere of exclusion that allows a person to rest at ease knowing their equipment is immune to the conquests of rust mites in the same way truly magical items are.
LORE:
It is unclear which came first, the rust mite or the rust monster, but it is likely that they are related to one another. Scholars are keen to remark that the end product of their actions are similar (vis-a-vis rust), but where the rust monster feeds on the rust itself, rust mites seem to gain sustenance from the process of creating the rust itself.
Rust mites in the more prosperous and advanced kingdoms of the world have more or less been eradicated by heavy use of various broad-spectrum pesticides. As a result, many of the larger population centers of the world are also somewhat poisonous to other living things such as other parasites, vermin, birds, domesticated animals, and humans.
While it may seem that rust mites are a global affliction, their actual geographic distribution is quite limited, finding them most prevalent in warm, mineral rich environments.
Many of the New World blame rust mites, at least in part, with the destruction of the Old World, and in many ways they are right in this. Where once stood metal towers, the rust mites left red slag. Where once the workshops and armories overflowed with mind-boggling weapons and technology, the rust mites left detritus that was devoured, naked, by time. Where once the mighty engines of war slumbered, there is little more than glittering glass winking from beneath deserts of rust.
IDEAS TO PLAY WITH
Invading armies have been known to send vanguard agents to spread rust mites to armies and cities they seek to overcome. This is somewhat uncommon, however, as the rust mites will just as happily disarm both sides and the use of rust mites reduces many plunderable resources to trash.
PLOT HOOKS
The players are tasked with infiltrating a war camp to spread rust mites on the evening before a battle. Pray they dont loose their tiny charges prematurely.
Someone sold the players a fake meteoric lodestone and sent them on their merry way into rust mite territory. Turns out rust mites are drawn towards normal terrestrial magnets like an obese archduke is drawn towards mince pie. Now its payback time. Or is it?
The players are tasked with delivering a vial of rust mites to or across the Mighty Iron Bridge. It goes without saying that the Bridge's garrison will use any means necessary to keep rust mites as far from the Bridge as possible.
A wealthy neem oil merchant is having their caravans intercepted and plundered. The characters, tasked with finding the last caravan, come across a thoroughly ransacked caravan, the last dying guard's final cryptic word... "Hesstiball..."
The players, tasked with tracking down an evil necromancer, follow the trail to the edge of the Bloodsand Desert, and stand before the Iron Emperor's tablet. The trail continues straight towards the desert's horizon.
There are those cults that feed loose metals and graven images of crudely refined iron to the lorryia ferrovoryia as burnt offerings to their nameless gods. It would be a shame if the players crossed these heathens.
NOTES
Actual rust mites do exist, but they get their name from their coloration and have no true anti-materiel abilities unless one is equipped with an array of citrus fruit.
Neem oil is real too, and actually does seem to be an effective anti-parasitic and insecticidal agent.
CLOSING
Listen, you know it and I know it: stripping your players’ characters of their ferrometallic belongings can be a horrible thing to do. Then again, it also offers them the chance to be truly heroic. What attire, after all, is more heroic than nudity?
Think of a movie you love where the hero is stripped of his equipment, yet prevails.
Here, let me help you: Army of Darkness. Remember the scene where Ash is thrown into The Pit and has to fight deadites with nothing more than his wit, his left hand, and his chin? Remember the tension in the scene as he wanders carefully through the water, waiting to be attacked at any moment? Remember holding your breath as he held his, echoes reflecting off of the dark stone? Now imagine that he had landed in the pit fully armed and ready to rock. Tension? Gone. Scene? Forgettable.
Would Mad Max have been Mad Max if he wore powered armor everywhere he went? How often is Snake Plissken armed with little more than a bunch of goofy doodads and his serpentine cunning? Thomas Jane as The Punisher nearly dies before he kills a Soviet Murderbeef with a set of stairs. Uma Thurman as Beatrix Kiddo slaughters armies of gangsters and assassins in Kill Bill, wearing little more than a yellow jumpsuit and the blood of the slain. King Leonidas doesn’t wear a shirt. NEITHER DOES CONAN. Martin Blank (from Grosse Pointe Blank) wears a business suit and kills his nemesis with a television. A goddamned television.
What am I getting at?
A hero has to be more than their equipment. A tough guy still has to be tough when he takes his armor off. If you want to give your players a chance to let their characters really shine, you have to be willing to put them in compromising positions. You have to be willing to kick away the crutches of armor and weaponry.
Just make sure you don’t destroy equipment for no reason. And certainly don’t let players think you’re destroying precious gear out of spite. If you must use rust mites be sure you’re using them as a tool to set up the next scene, as a device to enrich the players’ experience. Players can always spend (imaginary) gold to buy new (imaginary) armor, but an unforgettable story is priceless.
Everything that you do should serve the story, should advance the plot, should give the players something to smile about when they lay in bed and dreams overtake them. Keep that in mind and rust away.
Okay, that’s it for now.
Until next time…
Be creative. Have fun. Get weird.
