Wounds, Healing & Infection¶

"A potion gets you back on your feet. It does not unbreak the arm. Drink if you must - but find a healer before that gash on your leg turns sour, or you'll be limping into next week." - Sister Maelis, Temple of the Dawn

There are two different kinds of hurt in Ghelmyon, and they are mended in two different ways. Most new players only notice the first one - the HP bar - and are surprised when a fight leaves them limping for days. This article is the reference for both, and for the thing that punishes you for ignoring the second: infection.

For healing during a fight, see Combat 101 ▸ Healing mid-combat. This article is the wider picture - what to do after the blade comes out.

At a glance¶


Two systems	HP (the bar) and Wounds (lasting injuries) - separate
Restore HP	Bandages, potions, salves, healing spells, rest, food
Close a wound	Treatment - `tend`, a healer, a temple, or enough rest
Wound severity	minor → light → moderate → severe → critical
Wounds do	Stat penalties (by body part) until treated or healed
Untreated wounds	Fester - worsen over time and can become infected
Infection	Slower to heal, heavier penalties - "see a healer"
Disease	A separate, contagious layer - herbalists treat it

HP vs. wounds - why your potion didn't fix everything¶

HP is the bar. It's the immediate "how close am I to going down" number. Drop to zero and you're knocked out or worse. HP comes back quickly and from many sources.

Wounds are lasting injuries to a specific body part - a gash on the arm, a cracked rib, a deep puncture in the leg. A bad hit can both take HP and leave a wound. Wounds don't care about your HP bar: you can be at full HP and still be hobbling on a wounded leg. They impose stat penalties and stick around until something actually treats them.

Think of it this way: HP is the bleeding you stop now; a wound is the damage you have to mend.

Restoring HP (the fast layer)¶

All of these top up the HP bar. None of them, on their own, closes a serious wound.

Bandages - restore HP and stop bleeding. The reliable no-resource option; carry several.
Potions - healing potions restore HP by tier. Fast, but they cost coin.
Healing salves - herbal salves soothe and restore; cheaper than potions, sold by herbalists and some faction vendors.
Healing magic - a cast heal restores HP for mana. Two classes are built around it:
- Clerics heal more efficiently - divine favor makes their healing spells cost less, and the right path boosts healing potency. The party medic.
- Paladins get Lay on Hands - a signature heal that restores a chunk of HP, and gets considerably stronger on the protector (Sanctifier) path.
Rest, sleep and food - HP returns while you're not fighting. Sleeping a night is the cheapest heal there is.

A Mage or Wanderer can learn a heal spell too - it's just that Clerics and Paladins do it cheaper and harder.

Wounds - the lasting layer¶

When a blow lands hard enough, it leaves a wound with a severity:

minor → light → moderate → severe → critical

Two things decide how much a wound hurts you:

Severity - higher is worse, and the stat penalties scale sharply. A light wound is a nuisance; a critical one is debilitating.
Where it landed - body part matters:
- Head / vitals - dulls Perception and Intelligence (you fight and notice things worse).
- Torso / core - saps Strength and Constitution.
- Arms - wreck Strength and Dexterity (your attacks suffer).
- Legs - gut Speed and Agility (you move and dodge worse - and in combat, turn order is Speed-based, so a leg wound can cost you the initiative).
- Hands / extremities - chip away at Dexterity.

These penalties stack across multiple wounds and last until the wound is treated or fully heals. This is why a "won" fight you walked away from can still leave you a much weaker fighter for the next one.

Treating wounds - your options¶

Field medicine - `tend`¶

Anyone can attempt first aid with the tend verb - on yourself or on a companion. With the Medical skill it becomes a proper procedure: clean → stitch or splint → bandage, each a skill check. The better your Medical skill, the more reliably each step lands.

Full success closes the wound outright.
A botched step still helps - the wound drops a severity tier and heals faster - but it isn't fully closed.
Harder steps (suturing a deep cut, setting a broken bone) need a higher Medical skill before you can even attempt them.

Field medicine works anywhere - the roadside, a dungeon, a back alley. It's how the self-reliant (and the underworld) patch themselves up between a fee-charging temple and the next fight.

Healers and temples¶

Professional healers - temple clerics, town healers - perform the full procedure instantly and reliably for a fee that scales with the wound's severity. Temples are the gold standard: you'll get an unhurried, narrated treatment and walk out mended. If you can pay and there's a temple nearby, this is the safe choice for a severe or critical wound.

Herbalists¶

Herbalists sell the consumable side - salves, poultices, antiseptics - and are the people to see about illness (below). A good poultice is cheap insurance on the road.

Rest and sleep¶

Time heals - slowly, and only when you're not exerting yourself (fighting or hard travel pause healing). A night's sleep clears minor and moderate wounds. But severe and critical wounds do not simply sleep off - they linger until they're properly treated. Don't plan to nap away a critical injury.

Buying supplies (factions & the underworld)¶

Most factions don't run a clinic, but they stock the means: temple and allied vendors carry blessed bandages, healing potions and salves; herbalists carry the herbal line. The underworld's answer to a knife wound is the same as everyone else's when there's no healer to hand - field medicine and a bought bandage, no questions asked.

Infection - the cost of ignoring a wound¶

Leave a wound untreated and it doesn't just sit there: it festers. Each passing stretch of time, an untreated wound has a chance to worsen a severity tier, and the worse it already is, the higher that chance. A neglected cut creeps from moderate toward critical on its own.

Push a wound to critical and leave it, and it can turn infected - hot, swollen, and noticeably slower to heal (roughly double the recovery time), on top of the already heavy penalties of a critical wound. The game tells you plainly when this happens: "the area is hot and swollen - you need a healer." Take that as the instruction it is.

How to stop it: treat the wound before it festers. Any proper treatment - a tend, a healer, a temple - marks the wound as cared for and stops the infection clock. A bandage on the field, a poultice from a herbalist, a night's rest for the lighter stuff: all of it buys you time. The mistake is doing nothing and walking it off, because untended wounds only ever get worse.

Rule of thumb: light/moderate - bandage it and rest. Severe - tend it or find a healer the same day. Critical - temple, now.

Disease - the contagious layer (briefly)¶

Wound infection is personal. Disease is the other thing - a contagious illness (fevers, a wasting cough and the like) that spreads between people in a town. It runs its own severity ladder, and the worst outbreaks can put a quarter under quarantine. You treat disease at a herbalist, who rolls their craft against how bad it is - chronic or unfamiliar strains are harder to shake. Keep your distance from the visibly sick if you'd rather not find out first-hand. (Disease is its own subject - a fuller guide is for another article.)

Quick reference - "I just got hurt, now what?"¶

Situation	Do this
HP low, no lasting wound	Bandage / potion / rest
Light or moderate wound	Bandage + a night's rest
Severe wound	`tend` it (Medical) or see a healer today
Critical wound	Temple / professional healer, now
"Hot and swollen" / infected	Healer immediately - it won't self-mend
Feverish, others sick too	That's disease - see a herbalist
No coin, no healer	`tend` with Medical skill + a bought bandage