Death Rot

"It always starts small just a scrach, a slight change in skintone. Within no time it starts to grow and scraching starts to feel like it's comming from under your skin, which looks ash grey and if you dare to scrach it you will be left with your skin under your nails as a part of your skin falls off as if picking up an apple thats past its experation date."

-Dr. Scorpio, on the disease called "Death Rot"

Origin

Originating from an abandoned experiment, by a necromancer, it originated in a town called Rawa. In its pure form, it resembles grey dust that sticks to living tissue, animal, or humanoid. Since then it has spread to the neiboring towns.

Transmission & Vectors

It is transmitted only by touch. It does not need to be in direct touch for the disease to take root. When its host dies, if left unattended the body would start to break down into a pile of heavy dust which is the carrier of the rot.

Symptoms

Stage 1
1. Skin irritation and scratchiness.
2. Skin discoloration, changing to a dark grey.
Stage 2
3. Numbness in the previously scratchy areas
4. Expansion of the grey areas.
5. The infected areas skin and later muscle tissue being easy to remove or falling off.
Stage 3
6. Loss of memory, headaches, disassociation.
7. absence of pain.
8. Loss of appetite and extreme exhaustion.
Stage 4
9. Death.

Treatment

Dr.Scorpio has found that burning the grey dust is a valid way to get rid of the carrier.
If there is a patient already infected by the disease, they can be cured by cutting off the sick region, if plausible. In the cases of deeper infection or infections that can not be removed (the lungs, heart, or brain getting infected) there is no cure and it is recommended that the patient makes peace with the fact of death.
Altho Dr.Scorpio has made "The Fire Cure'' prototype, that might be used for this illness.

Hosts & Carriers

It is carried by a humanoid or animal, that themselves are sick. If the animal carrying it is known to have strong scales or shells, it will work on the intestines and organs, leaving a shell full of grey dust. Animals and currently a singular person can survive the sickness. It requires the inner body temperature to reach 60°C+.
In the case of Rarejak the barbarian, it was said that after gaining the sickness he raged out at the outcropping of Baluarti and slaid many soldiers, he was engulfed in fire from a mage and dowsed in mortar and miraculously survived, he is currently imprisoned in the dungeons of Baluarti, as the onely person to without transplantation survive the death rot.

Prevention

1. Do not get in contact with anything that could be the carrier, or used by a carrier.
2. If you believe that something was used by a carrier it is to be burned or put into flames for a while.
3. If contact must be made, it is suggested to use thick gloves, previously submerged in water, and later burned.
4. Breathing the same air or being around a dying patient is not directly dangerous, for the sickness does not spread through the air.

Cultural Reception

All who are found to have the sickness are avoided and in extreme cases locked in their houses and burned alive. Others sources have mentioned that people that contract the sickness are revered as dead from that point on.

Type

Supernatural

Origin

Mutated

Cycle

Chronic, Acquired

Rarity

Uncommon