Red Warmth Plague

The feeling of heat like the sun inside one's body, it must be terrifying and impossible to truly comprehend what is happening.

— Everam, Teller of Nimenra

Sickness can come in many versions and in varying degrees of magnitude. Dangerous diseases can hide as the slightest cough or shiver and end a life within weeks or torment them until they cry for death. One such disease of the last variety is the Red Warmth Plague that starts as a slight fever that can lead to a pained end through the hottest of flames from within.

Symptoms

A list of symptoms can be made from fever to the worst case of the internal heat death of organs. The last example is exceedingly rare, according to a mathematician and a physician that calculated through collected reports, there is one in a million chance of acquiring the symptom.
Fever and feelings of heat surrounding the chest area are the most common form of first manifested symptoms. Many can feel slightly fatigued or having difficulties in comprehending speech or confusion.

Urill 21st. I have begun to feel fatigued, all work is going slow and it is as if I take a lot longer to realise what people are trying to ask. I might have been overworked lately in the fields.

— Handwritten journal found in an abandoned village in Marlun

Type
Unknown

Origin

Natural

Cycle

Short-term

Rarity

Uncommon

Affected Species

• Necur/Demon
• Dwarf
• Human
• Tatarus

Explore Nimenra

As it continues into the second week, boils might start to appear on the skin that is skin coloured and filled with a transparent liquid. The heat inside increases and decreases in intensity while dryness in the mouth and body sweating is a common occurrence. Muscle pain, while rare at this stage, might set in through stiffness in finer movement in fingers and other joints. It is at this point people start to understand what they have contracted.

Urill 24th. I have begun to feel intense exhaustion at times and have had a hard time moving in the fields now. My wife and children have to do most of the work now, but our neighbours also have helped with our share of work. Mars, the neighbour's son, has also begun to feel the warmth around his chest.
Have begun to eat the remedy that Karresh gave me for the chest pains and numbness.

— Handwritten journal found in an abandoned village in Marlun

Into the third and fourth weeks, the pain starts to set in. Many that have survived the Red Warmth explained that the pain continues from the chest outwards in waves in the form of heat until one can feel it in their fingertips. The fatigue might have gone away but is replaced by the sensation of burns while outside in the sun if they can move from their bed. The person can also feel as if specific organs have caught fire from within and pain them. At this point, the internal heat starts to take its toll on the body and the sores from the boils bursting might start cases of external infections. In the end, this has a high possibility to kill the affected within seven to ten days.

Muri 4th. It would seem like Orios might come and take me, or perhaps one of Krakos' servants will do? The heat, it burns bright like a fire and as if the sun itself had reached inside me! I... I wish I would have just killed myself to hinder all this. Mars died just a few days ago and my little daughter... If this is my last written word and to the one finding this.
Burn our homes.

— Handwritten journal found in an abandoned village in Marlun

In the most extreme cases, sunlight sensitivity occurs and some that get sunlight exposure during this period get burned very, very easy, so much in fact that heat boils starts forming in no less than an hour of sun exposure. Some have recorded rare cases where people burst into flames from the inside, panic overwhelming them and the people surrounding them.

For all Necur species, the heat can be so extreme that fainting and immobility more commonly occur with lack of concentration and inability to understand what's happening around them. Human can reach these extremes as well but also dies more often before reaching the point of concentration loss and awareness. For Humans, it also might be more deadly overall, but death through pure exhaustion at this point is a possibility for all affected species. For as hardy as Dwarfs are, they face the same consequences.

Prognosis

The disease has claimed many victims over thousands of years and no cure has ever been able to solve it. Death is most likely of all but there are people who have survived and according to some Necur physicians, developed an immunity to the disease. This has led to some small grains of hope for an eventual solution and treatment of it so that the death toll can be bought down. For now, there is a high likelihood around 75-85 % chance of dying.

Affected Groups

While no one is safe from this dangerous and contagious disease, it hits the poorer population the most and hardest. No one has determined a real pattern of people first infected, the variety goes from old and young but most are working outside of those first infected. In Orfordwhelm, some schoolers point out villages close to the Telamirein Forest as notably affected.