The corruption at the McReady farm is encountered during The Great Popcorn Disappearance. It combines blackened corn, unnatural goo, altered animals, animated corpses, and a ritual that summons a shadow demon.
Observed effects
- Freshly animated, fatally wounded bodies load blackened corn onto a wagon attached to a mauled horse corpse.
- Ruffles changes after eating corn, returns oozing black, and retreats to the barn.
- Black goo coats the pig’s tunnel. A collected sample reaches toward its recipient and moves unnaturally along the container’s sides.
- Ruffles bears crystals that control him and produce an Eldritch blast. Four goo pigs surround him when the party reaches his pigsty.
- Breaking the crystals and making Ruffles expel a strange metal corn object returns him to being an exceptionally large pig.
The farmhouse also contains an illusion and an inverted symbol of the Jaded One. The account records these together without proving that every effect has the same cause.
The ritual and the vision
When RoBeert tries to destroy the metal object, a vision reveals a ritual in the cornfield and suggests a link with the Hand and something beneath the lake and mountain. He withdraws before the responsible entity can see him.
The party interferes with the ritual, weakening the shadow demon that is summoned. They use items, light, and positioning to prevent its escape and defeat it. The creature warns that it will not be the last and that darkness will prevail.
Open connections
The metal object may be connected to the strange shards found in cultivated fields, but that relationship has not been demonstrated. The nature of the goo, the identity of the presence below the landmark, and any connection to the recurring eclipses remain unresolved. Returning the corn to town does not establish that the corruption is harmless.