Short Spell Plague

The Victims

Known for their strong attachment to family and community, Haflings comprise a major people group within the Republic of The Land of the Short located east of the The Spiral Mountains , and bordered on the west by the Tiny River with the human kingdom of Arryn. Since the first settlement of the Southern Wastes by Humans during the Fifth Wave after the Cataclysm, the relationship between humans and the short has been troubled. Humans are fundamentally aggressive due to their short life spans when looking for resources to grow and sustain their communities, and it is well documented that the residual humans who fled the Northern Wastes coveted the lands held by their neighbors, particularly the southern reaches where the hafling population resided in great numbers.

Once Lucky, Twice Cursed

From 1943 to 1967 AH, just 20 years after the last case of the Great Spell Plague, a plague infected the hafling population causing major disruptions across the Land of the Short. Haflings do not travel much, and during the earlier Great Spell Plague which devastated the other races of Arrhynsia, the hafling population was relatively unaffected as their people simply hunkered down in their small communities and effectively disappeared from the active population of the continent. Travelers who wandered into town were not sheltered or even acknowledged, and infection vectors of the hafling population with the Great Spell Plague were few and far between, carefully managed by local authorities.
Such seeming immunity was not the case with the Short Spell Plague. Though the symptoms of the disease were nearly identical, this version of the plague was specific to haflings – or so it appeared, and their survival approach that served them well during the Great Spell Plague seemed completely ineffective with the Short Spell Plague. Only the races of the Short (haflings, pixies, gnomes and sprites) even caught the disease, and it manifested most virulently in haflings who almost always died of it, while other races rarely if ever did so. Humans, dwarves, elves, and orcs all seemed completely immune.

Symptoms

Those haflings who were infected developed horrible pus-filled boils that erupted both on the skin and on internal organs. The boils were accompanied by a high fever and convulsions, hallucinations, bleeding from the eyes, ears and nasal orifices, and eventual death. Common hallucinations included visions of dead relatives and the specter of the death raven who it was believed came to collect the souls of those who died of the plague. Non-hafling sufferers frequently experienced the external boils and high fevers which often caused permanent scarring, blindness and deafness, but appeared not to develop the boils on internal organs, and seemed not to be subject to hallucinations. Recovery to a regular workable quality of life (and consideration that the sufferer was not contageous) took two to six months.

Treatment

Typically entire families were infected, and there was little to be done to treat victims beyond relieving the worst of the symptoms as they progressed to death. Cold baths to reduce fever seemed to be most effective pallative treatment, but the government soon barred any access to free flowing water in an attempt to keep the disease from spreading. As the virulence of the disease became evident, terror filled the hafling population, and rough and ready approaches to limit the spread of the disease were employed. Homes with infected individuals were sealed, until no one in the house remained alive, then the homes were burned to ash with the bodies of the unfortunate victims left inside with all their possessions. When a community found an infected individual or family in their midst, they were immediately isolated. It was an extremely bad sign – it was common for entire communities to fall to the disease once a single case in the town was found, and the government moved rapidly to stop all travel to contain the disease and minimize it's spread.

Exposure

The method of transmission of this deadly disease was unknown, and never discovered, in large part because of its virulence. Those who might have been able to tell tales that would lead to an understanding of how this disease was transmitted died quickly after symptoms manifested. The gestation period of the disease was never understood. It is possible it was quite short, but it is much more likely that it was quite long, and the victims were asymptomatic and contagious during incubation. This would explain the inability of community leaders and medical professionals to pinpoint and isolate the means of transmission.
The lack of understanding of the exposure vector of the plague led to the widespread belief amongst haflings – and indeed among the entire Kingdom of the Short, that the Short Spell Plague was a magical spell created by humans specifically to kill the hafling population. Tension was high between the two races since they became uneasy neighbors during the Fifth Wave when the humans triggered the Cataclysm and lost the Northern Kingdom, turning their Arrhynsian home into the Northern Wastes. The surviving humans had been relegated to the lands south of the Draak'thor Massiff and when the humans outpopulated their new arid home, they began to press into hafling lands. The Haflings, alarmed by their aggressive neighbors, formed alliances and a central government with the other races of the short to provide for their common defense against the rapacious humans. When human populations were devastated by the Great Spell Plague, the short, and haflings in particular, gained an upper hand in the international political arena as they retained their military strength when other races suffered huge population losses.
The suspicions of the common man were difficult to counter, and though the accusations leveled at human wizards that they deliberately created the Short Spell Plague in an attempt to commit genocide of the hafling race, these accusations were unsubstantiated and remain so, though they are certainly possible given the similarity of the Short Spell Plague symptoms to the Great Spell Plague. These rumors are widely believed amongst haflings even today.

Fallout for Survivors

In those few infected communities where some individuals or even occasional families survived, the town was razed and burned by the neighboring communities to prevent the spread of the disease. A list of lost communities was kept, and survivors from these communities were ejected from the hafling population, set to wandering across Arrhynsia as they were considered tainted and were shunned. Interestingly, these survivors were considered extremely lucky - and that their luck that had saved them from the plague had now been used up, and they were now considered magnets for ill luck. A surviving hafling and their descendants – even those who had been traveling at the time of the death of their community – is never allowed to enter a hafling township and are termed “Crwydyns Children” and sent to wander the land as their goddess is believed to do.