Lionheart Timeline #7 @ RPGVault

The seventh installment of the Lionheart timeline, which chronicles the famine in Europe, the Black Death plague, and the Campaign of Joan of Arc, is now online over at RPGVault. A snippet:

The plague came to Europe from Asia via the Mongol invasion in 1346. Mongol invaders, already plague-ridden, had laid siege to Kaffa. To make the best of a bad situation, they catapulted their disease-ridden dead over the walls. The Genoese traders there panicked and fled back to Sicily, taking the Black Death with them.

The famine and the overcrowding of the population centers made a perfect breeding ground for the plague. It spread across the continent, killing roughly a third of the human population.

Through this, the Inquisition held fast to its 1343 decree forbidding magical association with spirits or otherwise. Many Wielders appealed to the courts to allow them to practice their magic to cure the diseased population only to find themselves imprisoned or worse. The divine wielders within the Inquisition were either swamped or too busy ferreting out rogue wielders to greatly assist the population, and as a result, many commoners died. Ironically, many of the imbued were more resistant to plague, so while purebloods died around them, the population of the tainted actually grew.