Khemonga

Khemonga is a disease originating in the Western Woods. Khemonga is highly transmissible and often fatal.

Symptoms

Early symptoms of khemonga include lightheadedness, nausea, and stomach cramps. Excessive drooling, fatigue, and severe weight loss accompany the middle stages of the disease, in which the affected individual seems to waste away no matter how much food they eat or how much energy they try to conserve. Early death from starvation is common in smaller individuals, such as children and gnomes. The affected individual's ability to recover from wounds or fend off other infections markedly declines; many khemonga deaths are from secondary infections or blood loss. Three to eight months after initial symptomatic onset, multiple organ failure results in the patient's death.

Treatment

Treatment of mid-stage or late-stage khemonga requires an intense divine or druidic ritual that involves binding the patient to a bed or cot with leather and feeding them a healing broth cooked with sage and quartz. Intricate prayers are intoned over the patient at sunrise and sunset for seventeen days. Even with this intensive and costly treatment-- which is exceptionally difficult to perform in a nomadic tribe-- the recovery rate is only sixty percent.

Prevention

An inoculation against khemonga, effective both in non-infected populations and in individuals in the early stages of the disease, was discovered in Y1077 by the Cleric Sen. The inoculation involves creating several small puncture wounds (usually on the upper arm) and applying a poultice made from the kidney of a bear or wolf for several hours. A basic invocation of divine healing, performable by even the least experienced acolyte or village shaman, is said over the poultice just before it is removed. After this treatment, the early symptoms of khemonga fade within a week, and the patient is immune to any khemonga infections for at least two years.
Thanks to Sen's work spreading the inoculation techniques across both orokh and nuél-orokh tribes that were particularly affected, infection rates have fallen to near-nonexistent levels. Healers believe khemonga will be fully eradicated by Y1125.

Type

Viral