Sharpened Hooks: The Cursed Throne of the Sun

The kingdom's treasury dwindles, because the court needs constant attention.  A mysterious wasting illness troubles the court; there is a sickness in the blood, and it cannot be stopped.  More troubling, the king is affected the worst by this mysterious ailment, and those who are closest to him are affected proportionately higher than the rest of the court.

Strangely, there is no poison in the food, and no magic upon him save that which keeps him alive.  It is almost as if some invisible force crept into the palace and damned the place.  There are whispers of ancient curses and foul deeds performed behind closed doors.

The mad architect who built the king's throne used some odd materials, including a strange metal he called "the Dross of the Sun God."  He claimed it was a byproduct of creation, and that the Sun God has graced this material with his glory.  The Drossmines are somewhat remote, but they still lie within the kingdom; they are rarely accessed because nobody has determined any practical purpose for Dross, and because foul rumors surround that place.

A Geiger counter would likely detect the problem.  The Architect is wholly correct about Dross, albeit with an animistic frame of mind.  The Dross is better known to us as uranium, and has heavily irradiated the king's court.  The cancer and radiation poisoning took so long to develop that nobody made the connection between the disease and the new throne.