Grey Plague

Whilst The Empire of Belyos is favoured with a particularly pleasant and fertile land, allowing for bountiful crops and year-round temperate weather, it is not entirely immune to all the natural disasters that afflict the world. One of the worst is disease, and one of the more frequent, and virulent diseases is known as Grey Plague.

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Transmission & Vectors

Imperial scholars blame the Grey Plague on a combination of 'bad air' and poor hygiene, and theologians and priests tend to blame a lack of sufficient piety towards the gods. Like a lot of illnesses, its main primary vector is a reservoir of largely immune animal hosts, who occasionally allow the ailment to cross into the human population.
In the case of Grey Plague, the vector is rats, or more specifically, the fleas that are carried upon rats. Infected fleas jump from rat to human, carrying their infection with them, and once a human catches the disease, it can be spread via droplets in a carrier's cough or sneezes.

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Symptoms

The initial symptoms of Grey Plague are a fever and a cough, which tends to occur within a day or two of first infection. Within a week, this has progressed into a general lethargy and extreme tiredness, with a paleness of skin and hollowing of the eyes. It is this 'grey' appearance of the afflicted that gives the disease its name. If the strain is a particularly virulent one, then most victims simply waste away, unable to summon even enough energy to breathe.

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Treatment

Aside from the occasional divine intervention, there is no known treatment for Grey Plague, and one can only hope that the symptoms are not severe. So long as the patient does not die, most people recover within two weeks of first symptoms and display few long-term conditions. Various traditional treatments exist, from herbs and poultices, to isolation and sequestration of the ill. Ironically, it is the latter treatment that does the most to prevent further transmission, although this is purely through chance than any formal knowledge.

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Prognosis

The severity of the disease appears to vary wildly depending on the outbreak. Scholars are at a loss to explain this variation, but hypotheses exists that state it may be due to regional differences, or the general health of the population at the time. It certainly seems that healthier and more robust individuals often have the best chance of survival, but this is not guaranteed.

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History

The Grey Plague has been with humanity for the entirety of written history and probably long before then as well. In the age of the Empire, it frequently occurs, sweeps through the population of a region and then dies back, only to re-emerge somewhere else a few decades or so later.
Since the unification of the Empire under Til-Yaltur, Grey Plague has struck eight times, with varying effects.

1780

The first epidemic of the new Empire, centred around the uplands of Imbar. Most likely to have be brought by raiders from the Lake Plateau region, it was one of the more virulent strains, and quickly spread through the still vulnerable Empire killing 1 in 12 of the population.
Mortality rate: 30 - 39%
Estimated number of deaths: 1.3 million (7.9%)

1788

Most epidemics don't manage to spread throughout the entire Empire, and the plague of 1788 affected only Keltas, suspected to be due to the increasingly insanitary conditions in its slums. A few cases were reported in the ports of Iren and Hoat, but paranoid harbourmasters in both ports prevented ships from Keltas from off-loading until they were sure there was no disease.
Mortality rate: 30 - 39%
Estimated number of deaths: ~167,000

1809

The section of Belyos known as Downside has always been associated with the poorer residents of the Imperial capital and, as such, tended to have more disease outbreaks. The plague of 1809 swept through the area, but quick-thinking guards closed off that part of the city and thankfully it was contained.
Mortality rate: 30 - 39%
Estimated number of deaths: ~36,000

1819

The late 1810's were already shaping up to be a bad time within the Empire; Til-Taranor's wife, Incredia was killed in 1817, with the blame laid firmly on Nexites in a failed attempt to sir up trouble between Incredia's home state of Lorsund and its neighbour, Arall. 1818 saw one of the worst famines in Imperial history with over 1.3 million estimated deaths from a total population of just under 19 million. Then, in 1819, plague swept through the land onto an already vulnerable population. Whilst its mortality rate was lower than previous plagues, it was far more infectious.
Mortality rate: 20 - 29%
Estimated number of deaths: ~1.86 million (9.8%)

1848

With 30 years passing since the previous epidemic, some had unwisely thought that the risk of plague has vanished from Imperial lands, thanks to general improvements in urban hygiene (most notably the increase in the number of public baths). In 1848, a small outbreak in the Downside region of Belyos changed that. Small by plague comparisons, and contained within the slum, it still reminded people that Grey Plague was still around.
Mortality rate: 30 - 39%
Estimated number of deaths: ~73,000

1877

In 1874, Til-Adver announced a grand crusade into Sakamohr. The official reason was that intelligence indicated a resurgence of unity in the southerners and this was to stymie any potential invasion. In reality, Til-Adver was looking for a distraction from troubles at court, and previous incursions into Sakamohr had been quite profitable. The invasion was lacklustre and expensive, with the Sakamohr people melting into the wilds and refusing to engage. Even the city of Cheingo was all but deserted, and the crusading force returned almost empty-handed. Almost, as in 1877, returning soldiers brought with them Grey Plague, and the Great Death that followed saw almost one in five of the Imperial population die from the disease. Population levels have still not recovered from the plague, 29 years later.
Mortality rate: 30 - 39%
Estimated number of deaths: ~4.7 million (19.6%)

1881

The Plague of 1881 saw one of the lowest mortality rates of any plague so far, but also the most virulent, with almost everyone who came into contact with an infected person picking up the disease themselves. It started in the Keltas city of Rodess, and spread to many of the port cities and towns of the Empire, and even to the northern continent.
Mortality rate: 0 - 5%
Estimated number of deaths: ~290,000

1899

The last major outbreak of Grey Plague was in 1899, when the disease spread, once more, through the Downside district. It was less virulent than previous outbreaks, but still as fatal and, usual, it was contained by the simple process of cutting off the district.
Mortality rate: 30-39%
Estimated number of deaths: ~39,000

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Type

Bacterial

Cycle

Chronic, Acquired