Emile's White Hunger
Emile's White Hunger was a condition induced by consumption of a highly modified version of the traditional White Draught, devised and distributed by the mage Emile Bontater (aka Bontater the Fat) in the city of Klaractazum during the Time of Terrors.
Symptoms
The White Hunger is an ironic name, coined because it describes superficial symptoms which are the very opposite of hunger, so that the "white" hunger might be contrasted with true hunger. It begins with no more than the effects expected from the consumption of ordinary white draught. The desire to eat and drink recedes and a certain sharpness of mind and focus takes its place. Users of the white draught, even those who have been compelled by circumstances to employ it beyond the acceptable maximum duration of three to four days, report that eventually the effects wear off to be replaced with a ravening appetite that can no longer be suppressed. The drink simply loses its potency. Not so with Emile's White Hunger.
With the White Hunger, the body continues to consume itself, converting flesh and blood into fuel. The afflicted have no need or want to eat or drink, apart from taking a little water. Their eyes become blank and white, although still functional. Their bones begin to show and then the hard white part of the skull shows through an increasingly thin skin giving them a remarkable, half skeletal look.
Sufferers become very biddable, happy to follow orders and even obsessed with tasks they are given, as though this work replaces in some way the natural needs for bodily sustenance. This last phase of their life lasts for much longer than might be expected if it was charged only from their bodies, and appears to draw on some thaumatic quality ingested with the drug that gave them the white hunger. Although it eventually leads to enfeeblement and death, in the medium term, a victim can be employed as a willing and docile labourer and even sent into battle, although the effectiveness of such troops is limited.
In this way, though, Bontater the Fat was able to make what was virtually a zombie army to defend Klaractazum a tactic which worked only for five short years.
Treatment
When friends and family of those who had consumed the magical draught began to show up at the Covenant of Nourished Souls, attempts were made to restore normal bodily functions and eventually a successful cure was devised, but it was a difficult and time consuming occult spell and only the most skilled medical practitioners could deliver it. As a consequence the condition remained widespread and most often resulted in death. The afflicted patients themselves were mostly, and somewhat oddly, unconcerned about their fate, a form of resignation which could be classified as a symptom of the condition.
Prevention
Since the white hunger only affected those who drank Emile Bontater's drink, avoiding the condition was as simple as NOT drinking it. But that makes it sound easier than it was, at least to begin with. The population of Klaractazum was accustomed to occasional consumption of the "normal" white draught and when promised a better version, having no idea of the consequences, adopted it eagerly in 3497 APC under conditions of famine. Later, when the white hunger began to manifest itself it was not immediately connected with the drug that was being freely offered and city authorities squashed rumours to the contrary. It was only the Covenant of Nourished Souls who finally spread the word about Emile's White Hunger.
History
Klaractazum has always been a city where limited food supplies restrict the growth of the population and where famine is far from unknown. It suffered particularly badly in the age of the Long Famine at the end of the 2nd millenium APC and it was in the aftermath of this traumatic period that the Covenant of Nourished Souls was founded in the district known as the Houses of the Hungry.
In the spring of 3497 APC, the city was in conflict with an alliance of rag-tag forces from the Punished Plains to the north and west, united under the warlord Kinrip Wulgg, a fierce mage and proud leader who had set his people in conflict with the feared and oppressive ruler of Klaractazum, Emile Bontater, also known as Bontater the Fat.
Wulgg's tactics were similar to those which had been employed in the famous siege of Klaractazum many thousands of years earlier. He encircled the city and sought to starve it out. It was in this context that Emile Bontater offered his solution to the citizens. And in the short term, his drink which completely suppressed the natural appetite for food, did give a boost to the defenders, allowing them to survive the spring until relieving forces from Thermhow combined with the city military to break the seige. It was only slowly that the dreadful long term consequences became apparent to everyone, although Bontater himself must surely have understood them.
When Kinrip Wulgg returned at the beginning of 3502 APC with an even larger army, there was no second siege. The city surrended immediately and shortly afterwards Emile Bontater was executed and Kinrip Wulgg became the leader of an exhausted city.
Cultural Reception
In the popular imagination, this period of history and the condition itself are now often seen as a classic example of the horrifying behaviour exhibited by mages in power who had no real concern for the welfare of their subjects, something widely thought of as typical of the Time of Terrors.
Almost a thousand years later, Pamelle South's famous novel "In the Houses of the Hungry" would dramatise the internal conflicts in the city between Emile Bontater and the Covenant of Nourished Souls:-
A little water will serve if you can spare it. He'll have no more of your gruel and no more of your liquor. He craves them no more. He has the White Hunger now. Can't you see it in his eyes?Although Emile's White Hunger was never widespread, it gave rise over time to a metaphorical use of the phrase. To say that someone has the "white hunger" no longer has the old literal meaning, but is used to describe someone disconnected from society and obsessed with tasks others perhaps find odd or trivial. This might include those who on other worlds would be described as autistic.
Type
Physiological
Origin
Magical
Cycle
Short-term
Emile Bontater by DMFW with Midjourney
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