Here's a parasite I came up with to mess specifically with the fey. Elves in particular. Hopefully I'm not the only psychopath that finds deep glee in tormenting them!

I had to cut out the cure, some of the lore, and the end notes to get under the 10,000 character limit, so check out the website if you're looking for the rest of the info or for more fun parasites.

Enjoy!

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THE ASHMAKER

The ashmaker parasite is a rare thing, and, thank both Holy and Unholy alike, it strikes the fey and only the fey. This, however, is a small blessing; infected fey wander far and wide, and in their wake they leave only smoke and fire and ash and death.

Every year the world passes through a region of space, a path where an ancient crumbling planet from the dark outer orbits, once rich with feylife, fell towards the sun. So long ago did this planet pass that little is left but a thinning field of rocky debris. These space stones are rich with strange materials, substances utterly alien to the planet we know as Holm, and one of these strange materials is the ashmaker germ. These stones fall to the land below during the month-long Allight Meteor Showers, where the sky is lit with a thousand falling and burning meteorites of impossibly wild colors, some bearing that very same germ, to find purchase in water or food or naked flesh.

Only those unafraid of looking to the heavens with truly open eyes, eyes lit from behind by divine chemistries or mystical powers, know the awful truth of these meteor showers. The gawping masses know nothing of the ashmaker's celestial origins and think of it as a simple seasonal madness, a demonic obsession, pyromania, arsonophilia. An oppressive and perverting "bug".

The individual parasites themselves are microscopic fungal worms, similar to the common cryptosporidium parasite. They infest the lungs, the eyes, and the gastrointestinal tract. They seem to flourish when the host is surrounded by fire, when their lungs are filled with smoke and ash.

There is more.

We know that the ashmaker comes from the heavens, but it seems to operate outside the bounds of strict materialism. Those that study it often abandon the quest, frustrated and disturbed. Haunted. The ashmaker is a type of biological parasite. Yes. But there are hints gleaned from its victims that it is more. That it is the sum total of its biomass and the ash it creates. Little is known, less is understood.

The Thing That Feeds, whatever it is that the parasites are enslaved to, has been seen in fragments by the Divine Chemists. They say it does not care about those that live here, that it does not wish to participate in our biosphere. It exists in the shadow of our biosphere. Some call it the Throat of Ash. Some call it the Greyslime. It is said to be a world unto itself, a parallel world that would see ours reduced to cinders and poured down its gullet. The Thing That Feeds looks upon our universe with mountains of greedy, tumorous eyes. The Thing That Feeds does not care that we think ourselves valuable and worthy, think ourselves sentient, think ourselves more than electric meat. It laughs at us. It hides from us in plain sight. It occludes the wide hidden pathways of the ancient forests like a huge invisible blood clot.

The Thing That Feeds will see the world burn, and it will use the god be-damned fey as sparks to set every farm, fortress and forest ablaze.

CONTRACTION/INCUBATION
Every year for a month the Allight Meteor Showers rain the seeds of the ashmaker parasite down upon the earth. The seeds sometimes land on a meteorite as big as a melon, but more often they are no larger than a simple fruit fly when they pierce the skin. Direct meteorite-to-skin transmission is quite rare, however. More often, ashmaker is contracted by drinking contaminated water or eating food prepared with contaminated water. Once the parasite has gained access to its host, it will require anywhere from three to seven days to incubate.

PROGRESSION/SYMPTOMS
Infestation begins with respiratory symptoms (coughing, shortness of breath), fever, headache, and visual disturbances including blurred vision, dimmed vision, and hallucinations. Victims soon develop pica, finding ash and cinders ever more appetizing. Next they exhibit a widening spectrum of psychological disturbances including pyrophilia, psychotic violence, and pyromania. Once the infestation reaches its terminal stage its victim will stop at nothing to spread fires, eat ash, and inhale smoke. They will try to burn down trees and buildings (the bigger the better) with equal joy, and often their final moments are spent dancing rapturously in the flames, singing into the smoke through a mouthful of cinders.

EFFECTS
Victims of the ashmaker become resistant to pain, fire, and smoke inhalation, which is a vital adaptation since they are drawn to those things like moths. Their vision can pierce the thickest smoke. Their hands and forearms are nearly immune to fire and heat. While highly resistant to the wages of flame, they are not truly immune. In their final moments, before succumbing to the conflagration, they appear as scorched horrors; hairless, lipless, the fluid from their burst eyeballs baked onto their ash-streaked faces.

IDEAS TO PLAY WITH
The ashmaker parasite seems to connect the mind of its victims with the mind of the Thing That Feeds, a sort of interdimensional hungry god. What would this connection feel like to an infested player? How would it feel as it grew in bandwidth?

How can you describe the gradual slide into madness to players as they either witness it in a party member or as they experience it first-hand?

Meteor showers (such as the Perseids), while most visible at night, still fall during the day.

Victims of ashmaker see a gradual increase in their resistance to fire and smoke. Use this to give them clues that they've been infested.

Victims of ashmaker see a gradual increase in their desire to eat ash. Eventually it becomes a ravenous hunger, but it will begin with small, even subconscious actions, like licking a spent match, or putting a piece of charcoal in their mouth to "test for clues".

Ashmaker is more often transmitted by contaminated drinking water than by micrometeor impact.

PLOT HOOKS
The gnome quarter of town seems to be rioting, and the smell of smoke is on the wind. Someone better get in there and check it out before the whole city goes up in flames.

One of the younger elves living somewhere in the Skyforest has been talking about how they're not afraid of watching the Allights, how they dare the heavens to even try to afflict them. The Allights begin in three days, and if he's caught out in them, there's no telling what'll happen.

There are rumors of an alchemical laboratory, buried in the foothills of Mount Dyr. It seems they've been sending agents and golems into the nearby settlements, and whither they go, the fey disappear in the night, never to be seen again. A town thinks this is where their prized pixie jester disappeared to, and they want to hire a band of heroes to go and get her back, pronto.

An agent saying he works for an alchemist in a hidden lab contacts the heroes and tells them a tale of a meteorite that landed in yon desert that's been claimed by a group of "holy men", no doubt a cabal of devil-worshiping fey-hating witches that seek to undermine the very foundations of the world! He wishes to hire the heroes to retrieve this priceless stone by any means necessary and hie it back to his master for a generous reward.