Creeping Death

I don't think I've seen a sight more saddening than Okinaga when the Creeping Death was at it's peak. The streets were littered with the dead and the dying, people vomiting blood as they collapsed to the ground. Most houses had their doors bolted and their windows boarded up, and those that didn't had swathes of the infected piling in, hoping to find food, medicine, and perhaps comfort in each other if they weren't able to scavenge anything. Those who were uninfected or immune (such as myself) were begged for help and a cure, and when we did not help they turned to violence to try to get even the smallest thing off of us. I lost a longtime traveling buddy that day in the midst of the panic and the mania that it all created, I just wish it could have stopped sooner.

-An excerpt from the autobiography of a ronin, who died in 9756AC

Transmission & Vectors

Initial infection of humanoids can happen two ways. It can be contracted via a snakebite from a snake infected with the Creeping Death, putting the disease directly into the bloodstream and leading to symptoms surfacing slightly quicker. It is much more commonly contracted from contact with other humanoids usually either via a prolonged amount of time in skin to skin contact (at least 10 minutes) or any contact with their bodily fluids. Humanoids can infect humanoids within a day of contracting the disease, before becomes at all evident that they have a disease.

Causes

The disease was originally placed upon the earth by Woshikkano (God of Pestilence) in 9490AC, and it is said to have made contact with snakes in a valley somewhere in the Tokugawa Mountains. It's first exposition to humanoids was estimated to be around 9530AC, however this number is heavily debated. The bacteria can spread in cold and medium temperature conditions, but it has trouble surviving outside of the body once it is exposed to temperatures around 30C.

Symptoms

The Creeping Death progresses in four phases and so do its symptoms. Incubation: no symptoms present themselves in incubation, aside from with the extremely vulnerable who get hot sweats Early Symptoms: profuse sweating, bouts of coughing, and stomach pain Harmful Symptoms: coughing up large amounts of blood, severe stomach pain, a large drop in body temperature. Additionally, infected begin to feel paranoid and become slightly more aggressive and frantic in their thinking. Final Symptoms: by this point the infected have lost over a third of their blood from coughing and their thinking has become involuntary, most people will die within a few hours of the final symptoms manifesting. Boils, the inability to feel pain, a desire to cannibalize, and the rapid deterioration of muscle and bone mass.

Treatment

The only true cure to the condition that is known is purification, a holy process which can be achieved in many ways, but all of them require a large investment in either money or time (such as seeking a pure grove, finding the lone blue flower that grows there, and boiling it into tea made of purified water). The symptoms can be slowed but not prevented if the infected is put in large amounts of heat, and the symptoms can be additionally delayed by brewing medicinal tea. About 30% of people are naturally immune to it, and during the time of the place research was being done with these people to see if they could help, but nothing came of it as the plague ended before a breakthrough could be made, even after 100 years of experimentations.

Prognosis

The condition progresses in four stages: incubation (no symptoms), minor symptoms, harmful symptoms, and deadly symptoms. See symptoms for the symptoms of each stage. Incubation starts the instant someone comes in contact with the bacteria, and ends when the first symptoms begin too manifest. This typically takes between 3 days and a week. Minor symptoms present themselves and remain minor for between a week and a month, depending entirely on the stamina of the infected (the more stamina the longer it takes to progress). Harmful symptoms last for around a week, at the end of which the infected is usually dead. In the cases that the infected is not dead by the end of harmful symptoms, they reach final symptoms which will usually kill the victim within the day if not within the hour.

Prevention

The spread of the condition can be prevented by staying in hot regions, with temperatures of at least 30C. For additional protection the only thing one can do is to isolate themselves from others, particularly big cities, and make sure not to get bitten by snakes.

History

It first was brought to the earth in 9490AC by Woshikkano (God of Plague) and was thought to have come into contact with snakes in a valley in the Tokugawa mountains. The first contact with humanoids was said to have happened around 9530AC, though there is some debate over this date. From there it travelled from the Tokugawa Mountains to the Hideyoshi Mountains via Aarakocra and moved inwards to Misuto Lake. It reached Edo and Okinaga within the same year - 9602AC, the beginning of the plague. From then until 9724AC the plague was in almost every city and many small towns outside of the Senpei Desert, the only region completely untouched by the plague. Even the usually reclusive orc tribes somehow contracted the plague, apparently due to a cultist of Woshikkano making a year long journey all while having the plague, but few believe the story. As of the modern day, the plague is over and the disease is mostly extinct, only surviving in snake filled valleys and the occasional child who gets bitten and contracts it. The repercussions from the outbreak, in the years following the plague, were massive and a select few villages are still recovering from its effects.

Type

Bacterial

Origin

Divine

Cycle

Short-term

Rarity

Uncommon