Bloodwhip

The Bloodwhip is a horrid disease that is known throughout Kadagard, but is far less spread than it use too be. Despite this, the Red Death is feared and the devastation it caused is still talked about, from the Karnica Stretch all the way up to the Wodenwood. The horrors of the plague it once was and how no one was prepared for it, still bare their scars on the continent even though most people are largely resistant to the disease, save small children.

Transmission & Vectors

The easiest way to contract the disease is through contact with the blood of a victim. When fresh blood comes into contact with an uninfected individual, they are infected within a minute, be it blood to blood or blood to skin contact. Skin to skin contact is also a definite way to get infected, especially areas like the hands and mouth. Coughing is another way to transmit the disease: only a sneeze or a cough can transmit the disease through airborne means, as the bacteria die very quickly while in the air.

Causes

It was once believed and is still by some, that the bloodwhip was created by the gods to punish them for a crime the mortals unknowingly committed. The actual cause is a bacteria that is known as the “Unseen,” which infect through contact, especially with blood. The blood of most living creatures provides the perfect home for the bacteria to brew and multiply, with the most desired balance of nutrients, moisture, and transportation through the body.

Symptoms

The disease is quick to show physical symptoms, notably coughing, fever, and vomiting. Each of these symptoms rapidly intensifies in severity, within a few days of contracting the disease, to ensure maximum infectivity. The minor hacks turn to violent coughing spasms within days, so intense they bring up blood from within the lungs: it was, in fact, the distinctly shaped splotches left from these coughing fits that gave the disease its name. The coughing and vomiting are often accompanied by each other, at this stage, resulting in moments of vomited blood. The fever intensifies, causing sweating so severe one is likely to suffer dehydration, and commonly the victim's blood is mixed into the water they sweat. This extreme rate of blood loss causes the heart to quadruple its normal rate of beating, causing rapid blood flow which results in intense flushing. The coagulation of bacteria in the lungs also contributes to the coughing of blood and cause breaths to be short, weak, and shaky. If not cured within 3 weeks of contraction, the victim dies of the disease, usually by the loss of blood, cardiac arrest, or respiratory failure.

Treatment

For twenty years, prayer was the cure for the plague and a very ineffective one at that. However, in the year 358, a cure for the disease was discovered in the north: in the forested cold of Brainey, it was found that the secret in curing the plague was in the Ælen Blossom. When the flower of the plant is mixed in water with ashes of the willow tree. the result is liquid that stops the bloodwhip in its track. It should take two days, but only after a full cup of the cure every hour those two days. If one does not live in Brainey or somewhere else in the north, such a cure can be increasingly expensive, with some doctors forcing the patients into debt and servitude for just one cup.

Prognosis

Early into infection, the disease is flu-like and unlikely to draw attention. The victim will go at most a few days without any serious development, allowing plenty of time for the disease to spread. The bacteria quickly attach themselves to any red blood cells available. Within at most a week and a half of infection, the disease strongly intensifies in severity: the bacteria begin to viscously attack the immune system, with dozens of bacterium dog-piling any white blood cells within the immediate vicinity. The bacteria also begin to coagulate and cluster within the lungs and clinging to the bronchi, causing the intense fits of coughing the disease is known for. The bacteria also attack the sweat glands of the body, causing the infected blood to be mixed into the sweat, and the intense rate of blood lose causes the heart rate to increase, to compensate. If not cured within three months of infection, the question of death is not if, but how. The most common deaths the disease causes are the loss of blood, cardiac arrest due to overexertion of the heart, and respiratory failure due to the bacteria on the bronchi.

Hosts & Carriers

While humans are the primary victim of the Bleeding Plague, they are far from the first species infected. If it were not for bloodsucking fleas and ticks, the disease may have quietly and uneventfully petered out of existence. However, as the parasites feed on blood, so they became infected and spread the plague to more people. One bite of an infected flea or tick is all the bacteria need to infect the body of a new host. The fleas and ticks helped the disease survived, but it was the rats they infected, which stood away aboard trade vessels and caravans, that allowed it to become a continent-wide plague. The rats brought the disease to all corners of Kadagard, for one bite transfers the disease, but the rats also brought with them the fleas and ticks that infected them. Soon after humans were plagued by the blight, it jumped hosts to their relatives; the Giants. Cross-species transmistion was a major issue during the Plague and is ever the problem today: an infected human can transmit the disease to an uninflected giant and vise versa.

Prevention

Mostly the people of Kadagard don’t need to worry about contracting the bloodwhip, as their ancestors who survived the plague most likely past down their resistance to the disease. Generally, only small children have to worry about contracting the disease, but for those how have no such resilience on constitution, or are of the paranoid or superstitious variety, there are certain ways to prevent infection.
The simplest method is to stay away from those infected and areas they have been recent. Staying out of contact with the infected is the best way for those who don’t have the means or time to get the preventive medications that would allow a person to resist the disease. The most common medicine is an ash and willow bark tea that should prevent the disease from taking out the white blood cells and attaching to the red. However, for those who can afford it, they say that Oracledust can destroy the disease before it even enters the body, however, these claims are dubious at best and at worst the powder likely to kill you before the disease will.

History

The bloodwhip has is the stuff of legends and the whole of Kadagard remembers the fear and horror when the small time disease became a continent-spanning plague, a time it was known as the Red Death. At first, the disease was limited to the island of Shlekahul , with it spreading at an unstoppable rate due to the high population density of the relatively small island. The bacteria probably would have petered out of existence as all the viable host died out, but the island was a popular stop for traders and merchants. As such, infected rats and the parasites they carried stowed away aboard their ships and were brought to infect the people of continental Kadagard, who had never known of such a disease and were completely unprepared.
With traders and merchants spreading the goods from the island all throughout the continent, so to did the rats spread from place to place and the disease covered half the southern reaches of Kadagard within a month and a half.

Cultural Reception

The Bloodwhip is feared by all the peoples of Kadagard and the devastation it wrought is unfathomable, some comparing it to that of The Crumbling. The disease is heralded by many as the ultimate punishment of the gods upon man and has been used by many a priest to convert the masses over to their represented deities. The history of plague is also used by religious organizations as a story of redemption, with the undertones of how faith and complete subservience in the divine is all humanity needs to survive.
For some, however, the very idea of the plague destroyed their faith in the divine. There are many who can’t conceive the idea of the bloodwhip existing in a world where any gods exist, or at least not ones who are caring, all-knowing, or all-powerful. While atheism had existed before it stuck, the plague is a major contributor to the sudden growth in their numbers, on Kadagard at least. Alternatively, there are those who don’t do believe in the gods, but events such as the plague have enforced the idea that the gods either care not for the world they made or are too weak to influence anything.
Regardless of religion, almost invariably view the bloodwhip as a dark chapter in the history of the world. The disease has been the foundation of many recent superstitions, and have altered many’s views on their own bodies. It can make one seem weak to think that such a small thing can so easily and mindlessly destroy what took thousands of years to plan and thousands more to build, as the bacteria did to many kingdoms. It is also used as an argument against exploration and foreign travel, for what would happen if they returned with a new strain of the plague or something new and so much more horrifying?

Type

Bacterial

Origin

Natural

Cycle

Chronic, Acquired

Rarity

Rare

Affected Species

• Giant