The Story......So Far.

My name is Marek.  I died on May 28th, 1656 in Naples, Italy during a devastating plague.  I was brought back the next day, though it felt like a lifetime.​

This plague was different than past sicknesses. Because even though the victim would be lying in bed, slowly dying while unconscious, the real "battle" was taking place somewhere else. For this plague not only infected the body of the victim but their "spirit" as well. In fact, infecting the spirt was it's main goal. It would transform the infected spirits into terrifying creatures and abominations. Though on rare occasions it would transform their spirit into something else entirely. 

That's what happened to the man that I've come to know simply as "The Doctor", even though he can barely be described as "a man" anymore. He's the one who brought me back to the world of the living and turned me into an "Extractor". Those that survive the plague are left with interesting long-term effects. Like the effects of the sickness, the after effects differ vastly from victim to victim. For the Doctor, it left him permanently transformed into a nightmarish wraith. For me, I became immortal. 

Once a person becomes infected with this sickness, they fall into a deep sleep.  Over the course of a few days their spirit begins to turn into a wraith-like creature. This wraith lives in the realm between the living and the dead. That realm is always around us and it is where ghosts and hauntings come from.  As the sickness within the victim grows stronger the wraith begins to grow strong enough to affect our world, similar to a poltergeist. If the victim dies before the plague is extracted the wraith then becomes a completely physical creature and a danger to anyone around it. 

The "extraction" process of the sickness can only be done by an Extractor, since they have the ability to interact with the wraith's realm while still remaining in our physical world. Using a specialized syringe that's usually concealed in the top of a walking cane, they must extract the sickness from the wraith itself, instead of the physical victim. The extracted plague is transferred into small specialized glass bottles that are then added to the vast collection of The Plague Doctor's Apothecary.