Flesh, when wounded, mends again to flesh, and bone, when broken, mends again with bone – or so it should be.

Not everyone is so fortunate. An extremely rare disease, an unfortunate few are cursed to have their wounds fill in not with revitalized, if scarred, flesh, but with bone itself, filling cuts, sores, and even muscle torn from wear with solid and painful bone. While this begins as a discomfort and inconvenience, in time or with severe injury it becomes much more.

Bone fills joints, fills the spaces between organs, everywhere if left unchecked, resulting in greatly impaired movement, pain at any jostle of one’s insides. Only careful, agonizing, and dangerous removal of the bony growths can keep the progression of the Lock at bay.

The alternative is either an eventual grisly demise as one’s insides are replaced by cancerous bone growth, or complete immobility of the afflicted, trapped fully aware in a body fully capable of feeling the pain of its ongoing transformation. The Lock has its origins with a curse cast upon a cruel and wretched king in a bygone ancient land, thereafter spread by inhalation of dust from the bones of the king and those later exposed.

Such exposure remains its primary vector of spread, especially among graverobbing adventurers who know not the history of the tombs they raid. A humanoid so exposed must succeed at a DC 13 Willpower save or be cursed. Someone so cursed must make a Constitution save any time they recover hitpoints.

On a fail, half the HP they should have recovered is removed from their maximum hitpoints until the curse is lifted, or by exchanging 1 Agility to reset their HP maximum. Such reduced Agility points are lost until the curse is lifted or restored by surgery as below. Only be lifting the curse, whatever means that may be, can these effects be permanently resolved.

Surgery through a DC 20 Medicine Skill Check can restore 1 Agility to the Character, though failure further reduces Agility by 1.