BROMAX's Pestilence

A plague that grows.

Rats carry it. The sick cough it onto each other. Every death feeds it. Left alone, the Pestilence climbs from a few diseased rats to a world where the dead walk, villages fall and the land itself sickens, until the Pale Rider comes for you.

Pestilence is a plague survival mod in the spirit of Scape and Run: Parasites, rebuilt around a medieval plague and made hard but fair. Every threat is telegraphed, announced and readable, and the normal plague never blinds you or hides combat behind screen effects. Above all, you can fight it back down: cures, pyres, quicklime and fire all push the Pestilence back.

🧪 An experiment: Pestilence is a test of what Claude Opus 5.5 (Anthropic's AI model) could build. The code, models, textures, structure, guidebook and tests were made by Claude, directed by BROMAX. This is a Beta, so please report anything strange!

☠ The Pestilence rises

The Pestilence is one world-wide tide, measured in Plague Points. Sickness, plague deaths and rising corpses feed it, and it creeps up a little every day. Cures, burned bodies, destroyed nests and slain bosses push it back. Each new phase is announced by a tolling bell.

🐀 Diseases & the physician's craft

• Six diseases: bubonic, pneumonic, septicemic, dysentery, the Rot and the Sweating Sickness. Each has its own symptoms and its own remedy, and Theriac cures them all. People recover; animals die.

• Diagnose before you treat with the Physician's Kit, then brew the right remedy at the Apothecary Table. Some remedies need a fire nearby.

• Five herbs grow in the wild and can be planted: garlic, rue, sage, wormwood and rosemary. Dry them on a Drying Rack.

• Lancets, leeches and a censer of burning herbs, plus the beaked Plague Mask and the full Doctor's Garb: wear the whole set and nothing can touch you.

⚰ The dead don't stay dead

Plague-killed animals and villagers leave corpses, and unless you deal with them they rise. Burn them on a pyre, slake them with quicklime, bury them, or carry them off in a shroud.

🌫 The Forms

From the Outbreak, the plague begins to gather. Afflicted that have killed, standing together, stop and smoke for a few seconds, then melt into a Miasma Clot. Corpses left lying in a heap can do the same. Clots drift together and take each other in until they condense into a Form:

• Gnawing Mass: rats holding one shape. Wound it and it breaks apart into more rats.

• Choking Shade: a hooded column of foul air. When it draws a long breath, step aside.

• The Blackened: quick, soot-dark, and its touch saps your strength.

• Mouldhusk: a fungal husk whose spore bursts spread the Rot.

Forms grow from Lesser to Greater to Pestilent by killing. They harden against whatever keeps hurting them, so change weapons or strip them with fire, lightning, smoke or consecrated steel. Hurt one badly near a nest and the nest sends help. Fire breaks a coalescence, so burn your dead.

🏚 Nests, the Blight & villages

• Rat Warrens, Plague Pits and Miasma Wells grow through four stages and seed more. Destroy them to relieve the pressure.

• The Blight withers grass, leaves and crops around nests. It's fully reversible and never touches your builds. Quicklime and Herb Braziers cleanse it.

• Villages catch the plague house to house. Quarantine them with Plague Crosses, and find the Physician villager, who trades remedies and treats the sick. A saved village rewards you; a fallen one becomes a place of the dead.

👑 Bosses

• The Rat King is crowned when a warren reaches its final stage.

• The Gravewarden lies sealed beneath the Lazaretto.

• The Pale Rider arrives at nightfall in the final phase. Kill it and the Pestilence ends.

• …and something worse, if you choose to call it. The Blackblight is a secret, opt-in final phase with its own boss and a ten-stage sickness whose tenth stage kills.

⚔ Arms & charms

• The Pyre Torch, Quicklime and Fumigation Bombs.

• The Consecrated Cleaver, which grows holier with every good deed.

• The Bone Saw, the Censer Flail and the Gravedigger's Spade.

• Charms: the Pomander, the Rat-tail Bracelet, the Physician's Monocle (see who is sick), and the Plaguebane Amulet. They're worn in Curios slots, or the offhand without Curios.

🌾 Farming feeds the plague

Every harvest adds to the Pestilence, and big fields and granaries draw rats. Feeding yourself carries a cost.

⚖ As grim (or as gentle) as you like

• Config presets: Vanilla+ stops at the Outbreak at half pace, Standard is the full plague, and Grim is faster, more contagious, and the sick don't get better on their own.

• At every phase rise, the host or an op can click Halt the Pestilence here. You can also use /pestilence halt and /pestilence resume at any time.

• Almost every number is configurable.

📖 A Physician's Treatise

An in-game guidebook (with Patchouli) covers every disease, remedy, creature and system, plus 18 advancements to work through.

Requirements

• Minecraft 1.21.1, NeoForge 21.1+

• GeckoLib 4.9+ (required)

• Optional: Patchouli (the Treatise), Curios API (charm slots), Cold Sweat (fevers raise your body temperature, and overheating brings the Sweating Sickness)

Made for, and part of, the Sovereign 202 modpack, but it works on its own.

Beta notes

This is the first Beta. Every system is in and checked by an automated test suite, but balance is still being tuned, and it uses vanilla sounds for now. Feedback on pacing (how fast the phases climb, how hard the Forms hit) is especially welcome.

Commands

/pestilence shows the phase and Plague Points. /pestilence halt [phase] and /pestilence resume are for ops or the singleplayer host. Ops also get points, phase, infect and blackblight.

License

MIT. Use it in any modpack you like.