Rot

Symptoms

First starts with red skin patches spread across the body. Followed soon after by a reduced sensation of touch, pins and needles in the hands and feet. Joint pain develops across the body. Eventually leading to complete numbness, with weakness in the hands and feet. The red patches become disfiguring skin sores and rapid hair and weight loss follows. During which time dry eyes and reduced blinking lead to blurred vision and eye damage. After years of progressively losing strength, mobility, and the ability to feel, the afflicted begin to suffer from organ failure. Rapid decline follows, with the final organs to fail being the heart or lungs.

Affected Groups

Any and all are susceptible to this terrible disease. Though it is most prevalent in large towns and cities where the population is packed closely together in small areas. Affecting the poor and unclean most of all.

Cultural Reception

Feared and misunderstood by a population for whom disease cuts short their already limited lives, it is understandable that communities do not know how to deal with the afflicted. Believed to be a hereditary disease, a curse, or a punishment from the gods for transgressions in previous lives. Rot patients are stigmatized and shunned, traditionally suffering banishment from family and neighbors.
The sick end up in hospitals built far out from towns and cities, often on the main road where there is passing traffic. These hospitals are overseen by the Church of the Great Mother and receive a monthly delivery of dried bread and cheese. In order to sustain themselves, the rotting beg for alms and trade, a part of this trade is offering to say prayers for the faithful. Since they're believed to have travelled the afterlife already. They are cast out of society but treated with respect.

Type

Bacterial

Origin

Natural

Cycle

Chronic, Acquired & Congenital

Rarity

Common

Affected Species

• Human