The White Pestilence was an undead plague that afflicted Cannor from 1040 - 1053 when it was ended by the Aldresian Crusade. Its namesake was gained as one of the major symptoms was a deathly white pallor that would occur right before death (before the victim was shortly resurrected as a zombie). The event depopulated much of Cannor, and was a major cause in the rise of elves and the Silver Families.
Cause[]
It is said that the Sorcerer King's acolytes, Canrec the Defiler, had been working on the plague since well before the War of the Sorcerer King, even to the point that Canrec had used his findings from the pestilence to achieve lichdom shortly before war's end.
The first incident of the plague was recorded to be in Castanmark 3rd 1040, exactly 19 years after the end of the War of the Sorcerer King in the Corvurian city of Ravenhill, when an onlooker recalled a tale of a recently dead man "rising from the open grave and devouring the priest of Nerat".
Cure[]
Using samples and research gained from Canrec the Defiler's labratories, the famed elven mage and healer Garion the Wise and his apprentices managed to create a cure, which was quickly distributed across Cannor. The cure was able to prevent those who had recently been bitten from dying of the plague and becoming undead, but those in later stages of the affliction or already turned could not be saved. Unfortunately, the cure did not save those already afflicted.