The Changing Fever

Ailment

Kind	Dark Entity blight
Cause	The protean spores of Qzoth, the Becoming, which set living flesh changing and never let it stop
Strikes	Every living people, beast, and plant; the Wrought are spared the flesh-change; nurses, kin, and those downstream most often
Contagion	By contact, on wind and water, and from the infected themselves; no ordinary filter stops it
Mortality	Almost none who take it remain themselves; the lost become Flesh-Hosts rather than corpses
Treatment	No cure; fire, burning what changes, covering skin and mouth, sealed wells, holding one's form in mind
Regions	The Wrongwood, in the Headwater Marches, when its burned ground is broken, and along the roads of the infected

The plague of Qzoth's protean spores, a crawling rash and fever that sets the body changing without end until the sick are no longer one creature.

Overview

The Changing Fever is the sickness that runs ahead of the Bloom. It begins as a rash and a fever like many others, and then the body starts to change and does not stop. No one nurses a case through it, and the sick become the next source within days, so it is feared above the ordinary plagues.

Cause

The fever is the work of the protean spores of Qzoth, the Becoming, a Beyonder for which form is a lie. Too fine to see, they set whatever they settle on changing, past anything the body could become. A case left to run ends as one of the Flesh-Hosts.

Who It Strikes

It takes anything that lives, so cattle and orchard trees sicken beside the household, and it does not choose between peoples. The Wrought, whose bodies are worked material, are spared the flesh-change but carry spores on their frames like any cart. The first to sicken are those who touch the sick: mothers, nurses, washers of the dead, and villages downstream of a stricken one.

Signs and Course

The rash. Raised, warm-coloured patches that itch and then move, from wrist in the morning to elbow by noon.
The fever and the joint. Within hours the fever climbs and a joint bends where none should be: a finger with one knuckle too many.
The change. Within hours more the sick are unrecognizable, bones lengthening, a second mouth opening, organs shifting under thinned skin, and they are awake through it.
The end. Within days the body is no longer one creature, and what lies in the bed begins to take in what it touches.

Contagion

The spores pass by touch, wind, and water, and above all from the infected, since every change buds new spores. Bedding, a well the sick drank from, and a field they crossed all carry it. No cloth, sieve, or settling jar stops it.

Treatment and Its Limits

No herb, tonic, or surgery cures it, and healing magic makes it worse: a working of growth gives the change more to use and raises growths instead of closing wounds. Fire clears the spores, and Purging Flame can burn a changing patch out of a body caught early, at heavy cost, killing the patient if the change cannot be cleanly separated. A healer may draw a Circle Against Rot round a house, which slows a weak spread but cannot stop a strong one.

The spores fail where form is held perfectly still, so the sick are told to recite their name, kin, and purpose and hold that shape in mind; a flawless gem or a written oath keeps a small pocket clear. Those who cannot hold their form are told to end their lives before they become something else.

Mortality

Of those who reach the extra joint, almost none are themselves a week later. They seldom die in the ordinary sense; they are lost into the Bloom, and what remains must still be burned. The few burned in time at the rash keep deep scars, sometimes a hand that never moves right again.

Lore and Belief

Most who meet the fever have never heard Qzoth's name and take it for a god's punishment on a sinful town. Some wear a written name against the skin; holding one's form in mind helps, but the parchment alone does nothing. Fever country casts out anyone with an extra joint, rightly and sometimes wrongly, and watches children born with a crooked finger all their lives.

Bounty-takers who are hired to hunt a changed one in the hills are paid double and burn their gear afterwards, and the fever country tells of the hunter who found his quarry was his own brother.

In the Medieval Era

The fever is rare. It rises only when someone digs or ploughs the burned ground of the Wrongwood, once or twice in a lifetime, and most people know it only as the tale of the town that burned itself, the valley's last town in the Qzoth Incursion (c. 4,000-c. 3,500 BR). Where it breaks out, a community covers every bit of skin, wraps its mouths, seals its wells, burns whatever begins to change, and turns strangers back at the bridge. The plague healers of the Red Mercy Hospices of Vital Magic come to such towns as burners more than healers, and those who light the pyres pray to the Steward of Purifying Fire, who burns the disease without hating the sick.

Where It Appears

Qzoth, the Becoming (the Spore Cloud, Travel Notes for Mortals)
Beyonder Spores (protean spores; the folk name)
Flesh-Hosts
The Qzoth Incursion (c. 4,000-c. 3,500 BR)
The Wrongwood
The Headwater Marches (Land and Hazards)
the Writers' Guide chapter The Basins and the Marches
the Writers' Guide chapter What Waits Outside

In the Writers’ Guide

Unnatural Afflictions The Medieval EraThe Blights of the Dark Entities
The Basins and the Marches The Medieval EraThe Headwater Marches
The Living World A Bestiary of CaeldonWhat Comes from Outside
Beyonder Spores A Bestiary of CaeldonUses and Dangers, Lore and Belief