Poozen

Poozen is a cursed magical artefact.

It has no known purpose, no apparent mechanism, and no discernible function except to inflict mass death in a manner so grotesque and final that most Magisterium scholars refuse to describe it without several layers of euphemism, wine, denial, or all three.

The artefact colloquially known as Poozen came into the possession of the Magisterium Golden Fleece several decades ago, after being recovered from the Cursed Region in the far Northern Kingdom. The name itself is crude onomatopoeia: an approximation of an indistinct sound some early observers believed they could hear emanating from the object — something like Prwrzrw, though later accounts disagree, and several witnesses who attempted to describe the sound became unwell.

Warning: This object is potentially catastrophically dangerous. It belongs to the small class of magical artefacts against which no known, hypothesized, ritualized, martial, divine, psionic, or metaphysical defense appears to exist once activation begins.

Triggering Poozen

Poozen has been activated several times, always with horrific and catastrophic consequences. The exact conditions of activation remain uncertain, but recorded incidents suggest several probable triggers:

• ignoring, concealing, or neglecting the artefact for an extended period;
• loud noise in its proximity for more than several minutes;
• displays of strong emotion near the artefact;
• prolonged study or observation;
• physical attack against the object;
• moving, throwing, shaking, or transporting it too quickly or irregularly.

These triggers are not mutually exclusive. Worse, they may not be causal in the ordinary sense. Poozen appears less like an object with switches and more like a thing that becomes offended by attention, neglect, noise, interpretation, fear, curiosity, stupidity, and possibly furniture.

This makes containment annoying in the same way that a dragon made of plague and bureaucracy would be annoying.

Description

Poozen weighs approximately 0.9 kilograms. It appears to be composed of a metal analogue resembling aluminium: dull, pale, and slightly wrong under most forms of light. Its central body is a solid rectangular mass, surrounded by melted, angular, irregular protrusions, as if a more coherent object partially liquefied and then remembered it hated geometry.

It has no visible controls, inscriptions, seams, hinges, channels, glyph sockets, invocation plates, or intentional points of interaction.

Prolonged observation tends to induce subtle dizziness, discomfort, irritation, and an increasingly unpleasant sense that one is either very thirsty, very ashamed, or standing too close to an invisible animal that has decided not to forgive you. At the first sign of such sensations, all observers are to cease examination immediately and withdraw without discussion.

Discussion is attention.

Attention is bad.

Being clever about this has killed people.

Emergency Protocol

Any person who suspects they may have been affected by Poozen must immediately flee to one of the prepared stone receptacle cells adjacent to the current containment chamber.

They must not approach others.

They must not seek comfort.

They must not explain themselves.

They must not attempt farewell, confession, apology, prayer circle, romantic closure, heroic last words, wizardly countermeasure, clerical inspection, bardic witness, or group hug.

The effect propagated by Poozen is highly contaminating. The correct response is immediate isolation.

Each stone cell contains a sealed goblet. The goblet contains a fast-acting, painless poison, estimated to kill in under fifteen seconds. This is not cruelty. It is mercy. Death by poison is considered, by every surviving expert familiar with Poozen, the decisively preferable alternative.

Those affected bear one final duty: prevent the spread.

No one should witness their end.

No one should remember them like that.

Activation

When Poozen activates, the consequences are almost always fatal. Only a few individuals have ever escaped its earliest stages, and those few did so by fleeing immediately, incoherently, and without the smallest attempt to understand what was happening.

The artefact has been triggered seven times that the Magisterium knows of. In every documented case, activation followed some perceived provocation by sentient observers.

At onset, victims may experience subtle and fleeting discomforts: thirst, nausea, vertigo, choking warmth, itching, irritation, a sour or lactic smell, an almost-remembered unpleasant memory, mounting frustration, sudden sadness, or an inexplicable sense that nothing matters.

This last symptom is especially dangerous.

Over time, the effect deepens. It typically reaches maximum destructiveness roughly thirty minutes after onset. A steadily mounting despair accompanies the physical symptoms: not dramatic terror, but a sinking, rancid indifference. Victims cease to care. This apathy appears to override even True Love, True Faith, military discipline, maternal instinct, personal ambition, divine mission, and other things poets like to pretend are structurally load-bearing.

They are not.

Poozen has opinions.

Area of Effect

The initial area of effect appears to operate mostly by line of sight, extending roughly thirty meters, though confined rooms, crowds, echoes, and shared perception may broaden the affected zone. The effect seems to “try” to spread. It does not always succeed, but no containment officer should take comfort from this.

Anyone who perceives the object, or perceives someone already affected by it — by sight, sound, smell, magical sense, telepathy, or other conscious awareness — is at grave risk.

Animals exposed to the effect usually enter acute hysteria and attempt to flee. They seem somewhat more capable of escape than sapient beings. Conscious observers, especially those with self-awareness and interpretive intelligence, are far more likely to be caught.

Those who know what Poozen is and recognize the early signs may have a high chance of escape if they flee instantly. However, panicked retreat can itself spread the effect to new observers.

Thus the recommended procedure is simple, elegant, and miserable:

Run away from everyone.

Symptoms in Victims

Within five minutes, affected individuals typically suffer discomfort comparable to a severe migraine. Shortly afterward they lose meaningful agency. They become unable to respond coherently, follow instructions, or resist the progression of the curse.

They complain, mutter, curse, whimper, laugh, twitch, plead, or stare.

They lose control of bodily functions.

Witnesses report that victims in this stage “smell horrible,” though this phrase is considered inadequate. Their appearance takes on an unhealthy, unkempt, filthy, intensely irritating quality, as though every minor human unpleasantness has been sharpened into a weapon.

Different victims express different psychic wounds. Old frustrations surface. Grief boils up. Shame becomes audible. Latent madness flowers. Marital resentments, childhood humiliations, failed ambitions, and petty grudges may all appear, braided with nausea, dread, and bodily collapse.

This is one of Poozen’s cruelties: it does not merely kill people.

It makes them small first.

Cognitive Hazard

The active field is an extremely virulent cognitive hazard. Observers at a distance who perceive the ongoing effect may also become affected, though often after a delay.

No known person has survived the active area of effect for more than seventeen minutes.

Exposure beyond twelve minutes carries an estimated mortality rate of ninety-nine percent.

Those under the curse deteriorate not merely physically, but existentially. Reports describe an expanding state of dread, ache, misery, disgust, despair, and ontological discomfort so severe that language becomes a shabby little bucket trying to carry the ocean.

Around the fifteen-minute mark, bodies begin to distort. The area of effect becomes optically opaque, as if filled with mist, vapor, or dirty white noise. Directly observing this opacity is itself dangerous. Theoretically, so long as adjacent observers consciously acknowledge that something is happening, the effect may continue propagating into new targets indefinitely.

This possibility remains untested for the very sensible reason that everyone who tried to test it became residue.

Resistance

Poozen reduces functional intelligence. It affects humans, elves, demons, dragons, intelligent spell-effects, undead, monsters, summoned entities, and most known forms of embodied or semi-embodied consciousness.

The only beings to show even minor resistance are those possessed of extreme psionic discipline, profound faith, or extraordinary martial control. Even then, resistance is measured only in extra minutes — enough time, perhaps, to flee.

It is not enough time to win.

Teleportation, augury, scrying, telepathy, remote viewing, astral projection, ritual containment, divine inquiry, and sympathetic investigation are all presumed capable of spreading the effect under the wrong conditions. In practice, such magic tends to collapse into white-noise chaos before producing useful results.

One documented case from Coobal involved two people linked telepathically by an enchanted item. One was inside the affected town, pregnant with child. The other was a day’s travel away, fishing trout beside a river. The effect propagated through the link and erased both individuals completely.

This remains one of the more politely worded incidents in Magisterium records, which is how one knows it was abominable.

Final Result

After less than an hour of destruction by white noise, the effect subsides.

The affected area is left in shambles. Devices, machines, tools, instruments, mechanisms, and lesser magical items are destroyed. Doors, latches, windows, cranes, carts, clothing, furniture, and small architectural fittings are reduced to scraps, rags, fragments, and debris.

It resembles the aftermath of a riot, except for one thing:

There are no corpses.

No blood.

No bodies.

All people, souls, undead remnants, spiritual patterns, and metaphysical signatures within the affected area are functionally disintegrated. Close inspection reveals only faint patches of grey-brown, foul-smelling grease, sometimes containing hair. In one incident, a rotten human molar was recovered.

Victims are destroyed in body, mind, soul, essence, pattern, and recoverable identity.

They are not dead in the ordinary sense.

They are gone in a way death would probably object to, if death had a union.

The final subjective experience of those consumed by Poozen is conjectured to be hellish beyond words: an unspeakable ennui of despair, disorientation, filth, pressure, irritation, humiliation, and pain stretched across a distorted inner duration. Compared to this, a day of torture would be considered the lesser end.

Some scholars classify the phenomenon as a particularly vile form of Pattern Decay. Victims swell, bulge, distort, and lose coherence. Limbs warp. Facial expressions freeze into confused despair and seething discomfort. Portions of the body separate into uneven globules, shreds, and floating organic debris. Eventually the victims flow into one another as a fog of matter that may remain partially conscious until the final collapse.

Then nothing remains but filth.

Aftereffects

The curse does not end cleanly.

Even the memory of those destroyed by Poozen decays. Victims are forgotten more quickly than they should be. When remembered, they are often recalled through haze, confusion, misattribution, irritation, or inexplicable dismissal. They may be remembered as less kind, less beautiful, less important, less specific than they were.

This secondary effect is among the cruellest known properties of the artefact.

Attempts to scry or reconstruct events within an affected area produce only foulness, sadness, an indecipherable ache, and failure. The event leaves a metaphysical hole in time and space.

One does not investigate Poozen.

One looks away from the hole and tries to remain the sort of person who can still be afraid.

The Death of Shmee

Apocryphal

In the year 2912, some five centuries hence, the Arch-Magician and notorious pest Shmee waged a long campaign of vengeance against the Kingdom, inflicting centuries of suffering upon millions. Shmee was known to “test” his spells on unwilling populations, eventually becoming an arch-fiend of considerable ingenuity, cunning, and cruelty.

His last act of experimental playfulness was allegedly to test Poozen in the town of Coobal.

At the time, Coobal was hosting the Festival of Hooves. Its ordinary population of roughly eight thousand had swollen to more than eighteen thousand gentle souls gathered in celebration: merchants, dancers, diplomats, children, lovers, pilgrims, farmers, priests, musicians, and families. It was a market, a potlatch, a civic festival, a diplomatic meeting ground, a place where marriages were arranged, peace was toasted, good omens were interpreted, and Civilization made one of its rare convincing arguments for itself.

Shmee, naturally, saw a laboratory.

He cast numerous defensive spells upon one of his lieutenants, then compelled him through ensorcelled mind-control to enter the town bearing Poozen. Shmee himself took position on the roof of a farm roughly a kilometer away, equipped with food, drink, instruments, and a telescope, as if attending theater. Shortly before installing himself there, he murdered the farm’s owners.

The activation began in the town square.

At first there was only confusion.

Then came a strange wailing from the gathered crowd.

Sensing something amiss, Shmee cast a protective spell.

Then another.

Neither helped.

Within fifteen minutes, the town and its festival were engulfed in extreme suffering. The effect spread rapidly from person to person and outward toward the outskirts. Only five people are believed to have escaped, one on a panicked galloping horse.

Shmee, convinced of his own imperviousness — history’s most dependable clown-shoes prelude — continued observing through his telescope. He tried to understand, with all his considerable intellect and all his idiotic vanity, precisely what Poozen was doing to the people of Coobal.

This was sufficient... The effect reached him.

Shmee attempted to retreat, stumbled from the roof, and broke a leg. He crawled perhaps thirty meters, infecting his bodyguards and apprentice in the process.

If the story is true, and most serious scholars believe that it is, very little remained of the diabolical miscreant except what one source describes as “half a glass of stinking brown earwax and some rags.”

This is widely regarded as one of the few recorded cases in which Poozen displayed something adjacent to comic timing.