Biting Madness

Ailment

Kind	Illness
Cause	Something unseen in the spittle of a sick beast, carried into a wound by its bite
Strikes	Any people that breathes and bleeds, and dogs, foxes, bats, and herd beasts; the Wrought are spared
Contagion	By bite or by spittle in an open wound; not by breath or touch
Mortality	Nearly always fatal once the signs show; many of the bitten never sicken
Treatment	Washing and burning out the bite at once; nothing known once the madness shows
Regions	Widespread wherever dogs are kept and foxes and bats are common

A madness passed in the bite of a sick dog, fox, or bat, which waits weeks in the body, then brings dread of water, rage, and death.

Overview

Biting madness comes in a beast's teeth. A dog that turns strange, a fox that walks into a yard in daylight, or a bat found on the ground at noon may carry it, and whoever it bites carries the fear for a season afterwards. It is feared beyond its numbers, because it cannot be turned once it shows and it changes a person before it kills.

Cause

The madness lives in the spittle of a sick beast and enters with the bite, or through a scratch or old wound that the spittle reaches. What passes is too small to see. It travels slowly inward along the body's nerves, which is why a bite on the face or hand turns sooner than one on the leg, and why so long a quiet time can pass between bite and sickness.

Who It Strikes

Every people that eats, breathes, and bleeds can take it. Herding and farming households, who live among dogs, take it most, and children worst, bitten on the face and hands. Trolls close the bite but not what entered with it. The Wrought are not taken. Among beasts it runs in dogs, foxes, and bats, and passes from them into cattle, horses, and sheep, which sicken but seldom pass it on.

Signs and Course

The bite heals ordinarily. Then nothing happens, for a few weeks or for a season, and the waiting is its own torment.

The first sign is at the old bite: itching, burning, or a creeping numbness. A day or two of fever, headache, and low spirits follows. Then the madness proper begins. The sick grow restless and fearful, cannot sleep, and start at light and noise. Swallowing becomes a spasm, so that the sight or sound of water, or the offer of a cup, throws them into choking terror; this water-fear is the sign everyone knows. Some rage and strike out, some bite, and some only lie in fear. Within days come fits, drooling, weakness, stillness, and death.

Contagion

It passes only in spittle, almost always by a bite. A sick person can pass it by biting, which happens rarely. It does not pass on the breath, by touch of skin, or in food.

Treatment and Its Limits

The only help comes before the signs. A bite is washed hard and long with water, wine, or strong lye, and burned out with a hot iron or with Cauterize, which scars badly. A healer may wash it deeper with Cleanse Wound. Priests pray Cure Affliction over the bitten in the waiting time, and many of those never sicken, though no one can say whether the prayer or the luck of the bite spared them.

Once the madness shows, nothing known turns it. Nerve Quiet eases the spasms for a while, at the healer's cost, and the dying are kept in a dim, quiet room and bound if they rage.

Mortality

Many bitten by a sick beast never fall ill, and a clean, burned wound does better than a neglected one. Of those in whom the signs show, almost none live.

Lore and Belief

Village wisdom reads it as a poison of the mind that the beast passes on, and some say a mad beast is one that a curse or a passing working has struck. The water-fear is taken as proof that the madness hates what is clean, so the dying are sprinkled with blessed water, which only deepens their terror. A sick dog that turns on its people is put down at once, and in bad years every stray is killed. A fox that does not run from people is driven off with stones, whether it is taken for a mage in fox-skin or for a carrier of the madness.

In a mad-fox year villages pay a bounty on every fox brush, and fold-villages still tell of the boy who killed a mad wolf at the fold gate with a hay-fork and was bitten doing it, and the vigil the whole village kept for him through the season of waiting.

In the Medieval Era

The biting madness is met in every countryside, a few cases a generation in a district, more in years when foxes are many. A household meets it first with a hot iron at the hearth; the folk healer comes after to wash and dress. Where a shrine is near, the bitten keep its vigil until the season of waiting has passed. Healers of the Vital Magic schools are seldom fetched for a case that has turned, since they can only ease it.

Where It Appears

Dogs and Hounds (the sick dog that turns on its people)
Foxes
Bats (the bat found on the ground at noon)