The Karana Plague was always something I remembered fondly from live. It was active when I started playing the game in 2001 and as all of my characters back then were from Qeynos I spent a lot of time in the zones that were effected by it.
Fast forward 12 years and I discover P99 and my love for classic EQ starts all over again. However when I started in 2013, I could not find any information on the internet about this Karana Plague and the majority of the people who I asked if they remembered it in game had no idea what I was talking about. I started to wonder if this was some sort of event that happened on my server only or if I was actually crazy and had just imagined the entire thing.
Then one day I had returned from one of my extended breaks of p99 and by coincidence I was passing through North Karana when I noticed the message "your skin feels itchy". Excitedly I look up to the sky and notice it is green, turns out I was not imagining this afterall.
So the reason for this post is that I am trying to piece together all the information I can to do with this event before it is finished. I believe it will end once the Chardok 2.0 patch goes live and as far as I am aware that patch could drop any day now so I want to try and see or do as much of this stuff as I can before it is too late. Here are some of the things I have found so far, but please I encourage anyone reading this to add anything and everything that they might think relates to the Karana Plague event.
- The event was triggered by the awakening of the sleeper? I have read this a few places around the internet saying that is what triggered the event during classic. I was not actively playing when the sleeper awoke on p99 can anyone either confirm or deny if this happened on our server?
- Plane of Disease? I have seen a few posts that suggest this entire event was supposed to be a lead up to the release of a Plane of Disease but then the idea was suddenly cancelled before the event ended. How much of this do you think was rumour/hearsay? PoD did eventually get released in the PoP expansion, but I like to try and imagine what a classic era Plane of Disease would have looked like.
- Rude individuals? According to some very old eq posts some NPCs called Rude Individuals popped up around qeynos and would harrass players that passed by them. After a few weeks they turned into Loathsome Individuals and their camps spread out into qeynos hills and some new quests opened up that involved them, gnolls bandits and all sorts of other things. I don't know if any of this is true or if its a load of crap. I did manage to find a screenshot of a rude individual on allakhazam and there some interesting comments to be read below it. Can anyone confirm or deny if this ever happened on live or here on p99?
- The Prime Healer's Bulwark! I was running through EC tunnel when I saw a human druid wearing a plate BP that I did not recognise. Upon stopping and asking him what it was he showed me The Prime Healers Bulwark and told me it was a gift from the gods for curing the plague in the Karanas. Speculation as to whether the curing event and reward will happen on p99, what do you think?
- Quests!? I know of a few quests that seem directly related to the plague. The bread shipment quests will apparently be removed once the event ends, will the rabid wolf and bear pelt quests from Qeynos also be removed? Does anyone know of any other quests or NPCs that will cease to exist when the plague is gone, please list them here!
TLDR: Trying to gather up as much info and lore about the Karana Plague before it is gone.