The Stiffening, Stiffen death

The stiffen death is the feared result of untreated and infected wounds. All the clans fear the stiffen death more than any other disease for all have bore witness to its horrible effects on friends and family. The Stiffening spares no one and anyone can fall prey to this wretched illness.
It is thought the illness is caused by unclean or untreated wounds in the skin. Many a warrior has won the battle, only receiving minor scratches from the blade of their foes only to succumb to the stiffen death a few days later..
The symptoms begin with a fever, then stiffness around the neck and jaw with difficulty swallowing. These normally present themselves after three to ten days of the infected wound and worsen until gradually the victims jaw becomes completely locked, at this stage it is rare for a patient to survive any longer than two days as the muscle spasms spread from the jaw throughout the entire body causing the victims body to contort into a rigid arch. Such is the progression of the condition that most victims choose to take their own lives while they are still able. 
The banduri healers have tried to combat the disease for centuries believing there to be a link between the stiffen death and the symptoms of poisoning by hemlock dropwort. The healers treat their patients with wolfsbane since it is thought to relieve the symptoms of toxic death by hemlock, although none of their patients have survived the treatment to date and most folk are fearful and unwilling to undergo the treatment, choosing a quick death by their own hands rather than a slow death by poisoning. 
The smertae use the stiffen death as a weapon of war, the wretched scum mark their arrows with colour to distinguish between the poison tips they prepared. Red  is the colour of shaft for an arrow tip of stiffen death. They prepare these arrows by allowing a cadaver to rot away, and when the carcas is at its most putrid they grind down the fleshy parts to make a paste, this they mix with excrement and leave to ferment. The stench is unbearable to common folk. They dip their arrows tips in this and mark them in red as to not confuse these arrows with any other, as they never use red arrows for hunting game save they themselves consume flesh tainted by the stiffen death. If it seems a marksman may not make a clean kill against an advisory they will fire a red arrow in the hope to graze or cause mild injury, their foe may well escape the encounter but after a number of days they will surely fall victim to the stiffen death. In this way the red arrows of the smertae are feared more than any other weapon of poisoning. Such is the smell of these weapons that the smertae are mocked for their stench from carrying them.

Type

Bacterial