Taint (Roleplay)
This article is about the Roleplay effects of Taint. See Taint (Power) for the mechanical Power.
In Shadow Accord taint is a malevolent, chaotic force which spreads like a disease from person to person. This malaise is a tendril of the force of the Wyrm with a goal to corrupt everyone and everything it touches. It is like a sickness of the soul, except much more insidious. Taint can also dwell in items that have been created with corrupted ingredients. If you get energy or health from a tainted person or tainted item, you will become tainted.
Perhaps, you'll feel a little sick at first, but once you've adjusted to it, it can feel even exciting or liberating. People who are tainted tend to lose impulse control and be quick to be angry and/or irrational. Why force someone to do evil when they're already capable themselves? The Wyrm revels watching brothers come to blows over a triviality, and then wonder, once cleansed, how much of their reaction was the Wyrm and how much was their own rage.
One of the ways taint defends itself from cleansing is through denial. Everyone has a bad day, after all, it doesn't mean that the Wyrm is manipulating you from the inside, right? If one is tainted, they will not believe they are tainted unless they are convinced by another.
Commoners who may encounter taint may think the tainted person is harboring an unnatural essence of malovelance. Ultimately taint is a corruption that makes it that much more easy to do bad things or give into darker impulses. An uneducated person could simply assume that everyone who is Tainted is a victim of some kind of foul play, or assume that every person that has it has been doing deals with demons or the Adversary Himself.
Those who don't know or understand taint may have a harder time not only knowing that they are tainted, but accepting the hows and whys of being cleansed. For example, an especially Christian peasant may panic and flee before getting into a "pagan" circle. In some cases, it may take some explaining or threatening to get past a vampire's wyrm-encouraged paranoia.
Vampires have a beast which is harder to control when tainted. The Wyrm gives strength to that darkness, and may effect the unliving in a variety of dangerous ways. Tainted Vampires act as though the control they maintain by following their Roads is slowly unraveling. They are quick to set aside philosophical principals for immediate gratification and their Beast is always close to the surface. It can cause Frenzy. Since Vampires can become tainted by feeding on tainted blood, some shifters have come to believe that Vampires are simply of the Wyrm because of how often they can be found tainted.
Wraiths are profoundly effected by taint. The Shadow part of themselves uses the taint in it's constant struggle to take over the psyche. It is common for Wraiths to fall to catharsis, or worse. The Pardoner's Guild must be vigilant to safeguard the Restless from this threat, and have their own means of cleansing taint.
Shifters are the quickest to understand what has beset them, as one of the sacred duties of the Gaian changing breeds is to find and cleanse the tainted...at all costs. Taint can be the most insidious and terrible to those who oppose it. Additionally, while Tainted, a werewolf is more likely to enter the type of Frenzy they know as the “Thrall of the Wyrm.” In this state, the werewolf Frenzying loses control of himself and commits unspeakable acts upon his victims depending on his Breed. These include desecrating and eating those who fall before him.
In some, cleansing can range from discomfort to agony, depending how much time the taint has had to do it's dirty work.
A player can choose to decrease their humanity/rage (or raise angst) scores if they are under the sway of taint too long. The Shifters make no mistake: it is this taint that will one day turn the war for the world away from the side of Gaia.
