Cold-Bite

Overview

Cold-bite is the peoples' word for everything the cold does to a body, from the itching chilblains of a damp cottage to fingers frozen white on a mountain pass and the slow fading of a traveller who sits down in the snow. Everyone in the cold countries knows someone missing a toe.

Cause

The body makes its own heat, and cold air, wind, and above all wet clothing draw it away. When more goes than is made, the hands and feet are given up first: the blood draws back from them, they chill, and at last they freeze. If the loss goes on, the whole body cools until it cannot keep itself awake. Hunger, exhaustion, and strong drink hasten it.

Who It Strikes

It strikes whoever is caught out: travellers on closed passes, herders, soldiers in winter camps, and the poor in unheated houses. Kobolds feel cold badly and suffer most. Orcs bear cold nights better than most, the fat-layered Kavari bear cold water, and Ogres are built for cold. Trolls regrow frozen flesh slowly and painfully, if they are fed. The Wrought take no cold-bite.

Signs and Course

Chilblains come in damp, cold houses: red-purple swellings on toes, fingers, and ears that itch and burn when warmed, and crack if scratched.

Frozen flesh begins with stinging, then numbness. The skin turns waxy white or grey and hard to the touch. Warmed, it swells, blisters, and burns with pain; if it was frozen deep it turns blue, then black, over the following days, and dries and shrivels until the dead part falls or is cut away.

The creeping chill of the whole body begins with hard shivering and clumsy hands. Then the shivering stops, which is the worst sign. The cold grow confused and sleepy, stumble, and often throw off their cloaks as if they were hot. They lie down to rest and do not rise.

Contagion

Cold-bite is not contagious.

Treatment and Its Limits

The cure is shelter and slow warming: wet clothes off, dry wool on, a shared blanket or bedroll, warm drink, and a fire. Frozen flesh is warmed in water no hotter than the hand can bear, never rubbed with snow or held to the flames, and the burns of thawing are worse if it freezes again on the road. Blackened toes and fingers are left until the dead part shows itself and then taken off by a bone-setter or surgeon; cut too soon, the wound rots (see Wound Rot).

Ghessa the Hearth-Mother heals frostbite and chills by drawing the cold into herself, and grows weak and shivering if she heals too many. Healers can warm a body with stored heat, and Living Equilibrium can spread the vitality of a stranded party so that no one of them fails first, but the cost falls on all. No working restores flesh that has died.

Mortality

Chilblains kill no one. Frozen flesh costs fingers, toes, ears, noses, and feet far more often than lives, though a rotting stump can kill. The creeping chill is the killer: in the Ironspine, exposure takes more travellers than anything that lives in the mountains. The survivors keep stumps, numb and aching hands, and a lifelong sensitivity to cold.

Lore and Belief

Mountain folk say the cold is gentle at the end and the frozen dead smile. The urge to undress is read as the cold's lie, and a guide is taught to strike a companion who says he is warm. Ogre camps keep Ghessa's hearth and say she sits beside any who fall asleep by it; Frost mages are said to carry the cold-bite home with them, and their hands are watched.

Pass songs remember the guide who carried a frozen child down from the High Scars inside her own coat and lost three fingers doing it, and the raiders caught by a storm in the pass they meant to ambush, found in spring still crouched behind their rocks.

In the Medieval Era

Cold-bite is met every winter in the Ironspine, where passes close and a hold can be cut off for a season. It is as common in the Stormcrown and High Scars, and on the open winter roads of the Windscar Expanse. Guides carry spare wool, keep their parties moving, and let no one sit alone. Chilblains are the poor's ailment of every damp lowland winter. A Frost mage's cold-damage and the deadly cold of planes such as the Frost-Bound are other matters (see The Freeze).

Where It Appears

• The Ironspine (exposure on the passes)
• Kobolds (feel cold badly)
• Ghessa the Hearth-Mother (heals frostbite and chills)
• Costs and Side Effects (frostbite as a side effect of casting)
• the Writers' Guide chapter How Magic Works