Diseases and Afflictions:

In Everwealth, disease is as cruel and common as hunger, and often the quieter killer. While some afflictions are recognizable, fevers, plagues, wasting sickness, many are born of the kingdom’s ruined magick, poisoned landscapes, and broken infrastructure. The Ashlung Plague, a persistent killer among miners and forge-workers, causes the lungs to calcify and blacken from years of breathing soot and powdered bone, though some say it stems not from dust, but the presence of ancient hexed metals buried in the deeper strata. Then there is Witherblain, a seasonal rot of the limbs that turns flesh soft as fruit left in the sun, often traced to swampwater exposure or the bite of blood-thickened frogs. Both are treatable, in theory, but true cures are rare and prohibitively expensive, and most afflicted are left to be drained, salved, or stitched until they die or limp back to their labor. More terrifying still are the arcane afflictions, ailments not spread by filth, but by fractured reality. The Glasscough strikes those who live near magickal ruin, causing translucent shards to grow from their lungs and throat, each breath a razor. Spellburn Madness, contracted from long exposure to unstable relics or poorly warded wands, frays the mind until the sufferer begins to speak in tongues, see symbols burned into walls, or vomit ink. These afflictions often go unnamed or denied by local lords who fear panic or divine reprisal, and healers that dabble in curing them are watched closely by The Arcane Coalition, lest they grow too skilled, or too curious. For most, illness is endured in silence. Doctors are distant, priests are costly, and alchemists are unreliable at best. In slums and border towns, the afflicted often wear charms, bind themselves in salt-twine, or mutter pleas to the bones of long-dead saints. To be visibly sick in some regions is to be feared, pitied, or driven out, not for cruelty, but survival. And so Everwealth limps forward, sick in its marrow, held together not by medicine, but by the brutal persistence of those who’ve learned to suffer without end.