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Disease & Plague

"A festering wound is your own affair - yours to tend or yours to lose. A fever is everyone's. It walks from hand to hand and house to house, and by the time the coughing starts, half the lane has already breathed it in. Come to me early. Some of what I can name, I can mend." - Mistress Aldreth, herbalist

The Wounds & Healing guide draws a line between two kinds of hurt and promises that disease is its own subject. This is that guide.

A wound infection is personal - your neglected gash turns sour and only you suffer for it. Disease is the other thing entirely: a contagious illness that doesn't care whose wound it was. It rides from person to person through a town's web of acquaintance, runs its own severity ladder, and at its worst can shutter a quarter behind a quarantine line. You don't tend it with a bandage. You see a herbalist.

At a glance
What it is A contagious illness - spreads between people, not just within one body
Vs. wound-infection Infection is personal and stays with you; disease moves through a town
Known strains A spreading fever (Marsh Fever) and a wasting cough
Spreads by Contact through the web of who-knows-whom - friend to friend
Resisting it A Constitution check - the hardier you are, the more you shrug off
Severity ladder A 1-to-5 scale, from a common chill up toward true plague
Quarantine Bad outbreaks pin the sick to their homes for the day
Who treats it A herbalist, rolling their craft against how bad it is
The catch Some strains have no known cure - only the symptoms ease

Disease vs. wound-infection - what's the difference?

It's an easy confusion, because both can leave you feverish. The distinction is where the sickness comes from and where it goes:

  • A wound that festers is a complication of an injury you already carry. It's hot, it's swollen, it heals slowly - but it is yours. It can't jump to the person standing next to you. See Wounds & Healing for that whole layer.
  • A disease has no wound behind it. It's a thing in the air and on the hands - a fever someone carried into the tavern, a cough that travels the boarding house. Catch it, and you become a carrier yourself; the people you know are now at risk because you are.

Rule of thumb: if treating the cut would fix it, it's a wound. If the whole lane is coughing, it's a disease.

How disease spreads

Illness in Ghelmyon doesn't drift randomly. It travels the same web of acquaintance the town's gossip rides - the threads of who knows whom, who works alongside whom, who shares a roof. A fever that takes hold in one household reaches first the people closest to it, then their close contacts, and so on outward.

Two things shape how far and fast a strain travels:

  • Reach - some illnesses pass only by close contact (you'd have to share a room), while others carry a hop or two further, reaching the friend-of-a-friend.
  • Catchiness - not every contact catches. Each exposure is only a chance to fall ill, so a strain seeps through a town gradually rather than felling everyone at once.

An outbreak begins seeded in a handful of people at one place and grows from there each day as it walks the web. Left alone, it burns through a community over weeks; the more contagious the strain, the wider the eventual ring.

Catching it - and shrugging it off

Exposure is not the same as illness. When a disease reaches you, your body gets a say: it's a Constitution check. Constitution is your hardiness - your resistance to poison, exhaustion and exactly this kind of contagion. A strong constitution shrugs off exposures a frailer person would succumb to.

Like every check in the game, this is roll-over - you roll against a difficulty set by how virulent the strain is, and your Constitution lowers the bar you have to clear. Tough characters save against infection far more often than sickly ones. Nastier diseases set a higher bar, so even the hardy can fall to a real plague.

You can also carry more than one illness at once - a marsh fever and an early cough are an unlucky but entirely possible pairing, each running its own course.

An honest note on scope. Today the disease layer is largely a living-world simulation: outbreaks ripple through the town's populace - neighbours sicken, herbalists get busy, bad outbreaks trigger quarantines - as part of the world breathing around you. A deep, always-on path for the player to catch and suffer every strain personally is still being built out. So treat this guide as the map of how illness works in Ghelmyon's world, with the player-facing surface still filling in. Keeping clear of the visibly sick is good sense regardless.

The severity ladder

Every strain sits somewhere on a 1-to-5 severity scale:

  1. A common chill - a nuisance, easily shaken.
  2. A spreading fever - uncomfortable, contagious, but treatable.
  3. A wasting illness - serious, lingering, and slow to release its grip.
  4. A grave outbreak - bad enough to bring the quarantine down (see below).
  5. True plague - the kind that shutters a city. Reserved for the worst the world can throw at a town.

Severity does three things at once: it makes a strain harder to resist when you're exposed, it makes it harder for a herbalist to cure, and at the top of the ladder it triggers the town's emergency measures. A common chill is an afternoon's misery; a grave outbreak reshapes the district.

Two strains you'll hear named

  • Marsh Fever - the everyday spreader. Mid-ladder, genuinely contagious (it reaches a hop beyond close contact), but a herbalist knows the cure. Run its course and it passes on its own in a few weeks; see a herbalist and you can cut it short.
  • The Wasting Cough - nastier and stubborn. It spreads only by close contact, but it's chronic: it doesn't simply burn out and pass. Worse, its cure is not yet known to the herbalists of Ghelmyon. The best they can do is ease the symptoms while the search for a true remedy goes on. If you hear a deep, settled cough in a boarding house, give it room.

Quarantine - when a town locks down

When an outbreak climbs to the upper end of the ladder, the response stops being personal and becomes civic. The affected people are pinned to their homes for the day - schedules suspended, the usual comings-and-goings cancelled, the sick kept off the streets to slow the spread.

For you, that means a quarter under quarantine looks and behaves differently: the herbalist who'd normally be at her stall may be shut in; the patrons who'd fill the tavern are home behind their doors; the rhythm of the district goes quiet and wary. It's the world reacting to its own emergency. Wait it out, route around it, or if you've the skill and the stomach - go and help.

Treatment - the herbalist's craft

Disease is the herbalist's province, not the temple's. Where a temple cleric closes wounds and a paladin lays on hands, it's the herbalist who knows which root breaks a fever and which tincture settles a cough. (Temples and clerics are still your people for wounds - see Wounds & Healing and the Temple faction.)

When a herbalist treats you, they roll their herbalism against how bad the illness is. The same roll-over rule applies: the herbalist's skill lowers the difficulty, and a higher-severity strain raises it. A village hedge-witch might fumble a serious fever that a master herbalist would clear on the first try. So:

  • Find the most skilled herbalist you can for a serious illness. Skill is the single biggest factor in whether the cure takes.
  • A failed treatment isn't the end - a herbalist can try again. For stubborn or chronic strains, expect to come back more than once while their craft grinds down the difficulty.
  • You pay for the consult, not the cure. A herbalist charges a fee scaled to how grave the illness is, whether or not the treatment takes that visit. Worse strains cost more to treat.

When there is no known cure

Some illnesses - the Wasting Cough chief among them - can't yet be truly cured by anyone. A herbalist will still see you: they'll brew what they can to ease the symptoms and buy you comfort, but they'll tell you honestly that the real remedy eludes them. That's not a failure of skill; it's a gap in the world's knowledge, waiting to be closed.

The Herbalist class itself

If you want to be the one with the cure, the Herbalist class runs deepest here. Its Healer specialization is built around the bond between plant and flesh - restoring allies and resisting toxic effects, with a standing resistance to poison and disease. A healer-herbalist is the surest hands in a sick house. See the Herbalist class guide for the full path.

Staying well

There's no elaborate prophylaxis to learn - just sensible caution:

  • Keep your distance from the visibly sick. Coughing, feverish, flushed - that's your cue to give space. Most contagion needs contact.
  • Build Constitution. A hardy character resists exposure that would lay a frail one flat. It's the same stat that carries you through hunger, thirst and fatigue, and it pays off here too.
  • Don't linger in a quarantined quarter without reason. The lockdown exists because that's where the illness is thickest.
  • Know your herbalist. Before an outbreak, not during it, is the time to learn who the best herbalist in town is and where they keep their stall.

Quick reference - "I'm feverish, now what?"

Situation Do this
Feverish, and others nearby are sick too That's disease - see a herbalist, not a temple
One festering wound, no one else ill That's wound-infection - see Wounds & Healing
Caught a treatable fever (e.g. Marsh Fever) A skilled herbalist can clear it; or rest it out over weeks
A deep, settled cough that won't pass Likely chronic - a herbalist eases it; a true cure may not exist yet
Herbalist's treatment didn't take Come back - try again, or find a more skilled herbalist
A quarter's gone quiet and quarantined An outbreak's hit the danger line - route around it or wait it out
Want to be the one with the cure Roll a Herbalist, take the Healer path

See also