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It has been confirmed that when adventurers are wounded by especially dangerous or ‘corrupted’ void creatures, wounds can be infected with void pebbles. Furthermore, void pebbles have been proven to be a strong enough source of void energy to corrupt its victims. Void corruption is and has continued to prove fatal.

For future clarity, this condition has now been formally coined Abyssal Decay and Reanimation Disease, abbreviated as ADRD.

Symptoms of early ADRD begin with fatigue and a high-grade fever, and wounds with void pebbles present will not close. Said wounds are hot to the touch. Confusion and altered mental status are also common symptoms, similar to sepsis in earlier stages. More advanced symptoms include an overwhelming feeling of doom, a feeling like one’s blood is boiling or burning, as well as auditory hallucinations. This is what adventurers have begun to colloquially refer to as ‘hearing the Call of the Void’, or simply, ‘the Call’. Aggression, fainting, and falling comatose are common at this stage.

If you notice you or others are experiencing the symptoms described above, seek medical attention immediately. Void corruption is and has continued to prove fatal. If the void pebbles - or any other source of corruption - cannot be extracted or purified, death is guaranteed. Those who hear the Call and resist long enough to be given medical attention can be saved, but oftentimes it will be too late. The few who've lived to tell the tale report experiencing visions of being in pure darkness, and hearing voices singing and coaxing them to give into their bodies' wishes to die. ADRD works especially quickly on those already very close to death - usually from injuries on the battlefield - promising them painless, eternal rest. But, we warn you, the Void lies. It will break you until either your mind cannot resist the Call, or your body shuts down. It is an excruciating death. But it is only a death of the soul.

The final stage of corruption is reanimation, the dark magic taking the corpse of the adventurer to use as its own. The body rises again - sometimes minutes or even hours later - to kill as it had been killed, corrupt more hosts, and continue the cycle of spreading void energy. Colloquially referred to as "fallen", this husk does not recognize who they once were, or any of their allies, and will simply follow the corruption's urge to kill. Interestingly enough, the body appears to retain muscle memories from its past life, making fallen adventures formidable foes that take much more effort to put to rest. Extreme caution is still advised around the fallen, and slaying a former Castle Village resident or adventurer cannot be done without the explicit, documented permission of this Guild.

It has also been recently discovered that this disease is a danger to other species besides humans and human-like monsters. A report from Jadu followed corrupted serpents around the Crimson Badlands for several days to track their behavior. He witnessed a corrupt serpent biting a Badlands serpent several times. An hour later, that same Badlands serpent began flying in odd directions, acting sickly. When he approached to investigate, it had fallen to the ground and was declared dead. While taking measurements for documentation, the dead serpent reportedly began to twitch, its scales turning pitch black, and its tendrils warped into pseudo-horns. Given time to fully transform, it soon looked identical to a typical corrupted serpent.

Vivisection reports described fresh-looking bite marks the serpent had on its body, and two void pebbles present in those wounds. The report also commented on how the serpent thrummed with void energy. Upon slaying the serpent, an additional void pebble was collected. Its body also disintegrated like that of a void creature. It was claimed that, if what Jadu had witnessed was previously a Badlands serpent, it could not have left the extra pebble behind unless it had grown in the serpent’s body during the corruption process. More studies regarding Badlands serpents and their behaviors after being directly exposed to void energy for prolonged periods of time hold similar findings. The astonishing and rapid transformations these monsters undergo when they are corrupted by void energy are unprecedented, and may suggest an innate weakness in serpents that this branch of dark magic takes advantage of to proliferate.