Plague
The plague was worse than the bubonic plague was for Europe since that only had a 75% death toll. At the start of 'The Underground', Prince Kiet come back to Vixinte and find it deserted save for seven survivors. As the capitol city, Vixinte likely had a population in the hundreds of thousands if not millions.
The plague was genetically engineered, but got away on them, and any natural immunity to the plague was at such a low occurrence as to be virtually useless to the survival of the species. Due to the previous regime's ruthless nature, it wouldn't be hard to believe that quarantine methods including 'shoot-on-sight' orders would have been employed, therefore it is safe to conclude that the plague was nearly impossible to quarantine.
The most likely characteristics for the disease would be airborn transmission (ie. an infectious person breathing, coughing, or sneezing on someone), a very quick breeding phase in the newly infected (probably less than a day), a longer infectious period (four to eight days) with very few if any symptoms (no worse than a minor cold), and lastly the deadly phase. Such a plague would spread like wildfire throughout Vixinte with people largely being unaware that anything was wrong. If there was no public announcement made about the release of the virus, people would likely assume it was 'just some bug going around'.
Meanwhile, visitors to the capitol would get infected and bring it home with them, and people leaving on vacations, business trips, and the like would do the same. Vixinte had something similar to the international airport, so for several days you'd have infected people unknowingly traveling all over the Fox empire. Luckily the Foxes were pretty much like the Soviet Union with regards to their borders or else the Foxes on Avistary might also have died. Only places that didn't get a large influx of people on a nearly daily basis would have been spared, and even some of them might have had deaths if someone from the big city decided to go visit the folks back out in the country.
The weeks following the plague must have been a truly hellish nightmare with massive urban expanses turned into giant, stinking mausoleums. Imagine the fear in the hearts of country folk as word reaches them the only safe way possible - in the form of broadcasts by Foxes who know they are going to die. Some country Foxes don't even monitor broadcasts, so they'd need to hear from neighbors or else find out for themselves when they venture into town and find not a living soul in it. Hopefully the plague will have died out by then or else they too will suffer and possibly spread it further. Imagine the reactions of the other races to the news and the speculation about whether any Foxes survived at all. Most of all, imagine how this would affect even the overly curious Blue Foxes opinions of biological weapons.
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