Disease and Flesh Magic

Although there are no better masters in the black art of disease warfare than the Sload, efforts have been made especially in Eastern Tamriel to copy and build off their work. Diseases, being magically-propagated viruses, had the advantage of being rapidly spread to many hosts with only a small initial introduction. The first experimenters were the Hist, prompted by the wild success of the disease-curses spread by the Sload among the races of men and mer. Their research was quickly sped on by their access to the innumerable poisons and natural sicknesses which plagued any visitor to their lands. The second to follow in their footsteps were the Dwemer, who attempted to combine it with their sciences of tone and golem-fabrication and the flesh magicks of their western cousins, the Ayleids. The third were humans, especially in the crypts below Winterhold and Windhelm and to a lesser extent in Cheydinhal, but their understanding of the Dwemer texts was so perfunctory that they made no effort at all to experiment with the original root form of the magic: disease propagation. Instead, they only studied the Dwemer alchemy and flesh magic which allowed them to exploit some effects that sustained disease had on cadaver golems.

Although the Dwemer science of uniting many people to gain perpetual life as an alchemically-stabilized disease-infested golem had theoretically worked on souls, there seemed to be a key part of the ritual missing, expunged from all records. Researchers were therefore forced to fall back of the primitive method of sewing together the body parts of sacrificial victims and capturing their souls to imbue into the final creation. Normally, it is impossible through any means to imbue a soul back into the body of its host, or any other body for that matter. However, if the body parts of many individuals are sewn together, infected with the correct diseases, and administered with the proper alchemical salves and concoctions, it is possible to perform a bastardization of the original Dwemer ritual and unite the souls of the individuals in the amalgamated cadaver.

This is what Calixto had planned for his sister. Unwilling to watch her soul be swallowed by the Void, he captured it at the moment of her death and dismembered her body in the Ayleid fashion to form the core of a flesh golem. His next step was to acquire body parts, so he performed a string of murders among the women of the lower class, capturing their souls and later pilfering their graves for corpse pieces. If he had stitched together enough body parts and filled enough soul gems, a necromantic shock would have sufficed to awakened his creation. Sustained unlife in this fashion, however, is normally impossible to maintain without an impractically powerful influence from Oblivion. Channeling this level of magicka in perpetuity is simply beyond the means of any mortal, be he ever so turgid with necromantic secrets and artifacts. The only way to make the golem self-sustaining is to balance it on the knife’s edge of poison and antidote by the careful administration of disease curses and alchemical salves. If prepared correctly, the self-negating forces will interact with the imbued souls and act as a surrogate energy source.