The Chromatic Chord

The Falling Sickness

Fits that throw a person to the ground, stiff and jerking, from birth, after a blow to the head, or after a working that the mind resisted, and that no healer can cure.

Overview

The falling sickness drops a person where they stand. They cry out or go silent, fall stiff, jerk, and lie dazed, and then rise with no memory of it. It is common enough that every village has known someone with it, and strange enough that every people has a story for it.

Cause

Fits come from a fault in how the mind drives the body. Some are born with it, and it runs in some families. Some take it after a blow to the head, a birth that went hard, or a high fever in childhood. Magic can bring it as well. The body can move only so much energy (see Biological Affinity), and a working pushed too far can end in muscle seizure or a convulsive aftershock (see Costs and Side Effects). A mind that fights a working of command, such as Sleep of Compliance, can be thrown into a fit, and a few of those so struck go on having them.

Who It Strikes

It strikes any people that thinks and breathes, and children and those with old head wounds most. Mages who overcast take it more than others. The Wrought do not have fits in this way; their failings of pattern are their own (see Pattern-Fray).

Signs and Course

Some feel a fit coming: a smell that is not there, a rising in the stomach, a strangeness in the light. Then they fall. The body goes rigid, the breath stops for a moment, and the face darkens; then the limbs jerk in hard, rhythmic spasms, the jaw clenches, there is froth at the mouth, and the bladder may loose. Soon the jerking slows and stops, and the fallen lie in a deep, snoring sleep. They wake confused, sore, and tired, often with a bitten tongue. Lesser fits are only a blank stare of a few heartbeats, a twitching hand, or a wandering that the person does not remember. Some have fits every few days, some once in years. A fit that does not end, or a second that follows before the first has passed, is the danger.

Contagion

The falling sickness is not contagious.

Treatment and Its Limits

During a fit the watchers clear the ground, cushion the head, loosen the collar, and roll the fallen on the side when the jerking stops. Nothing should be forced between the teeth. Households keep those with the sickness away from fires, wells, and heights. Herbs for sleep and calm are given, and some lessen the fits a little.

A healer's Nerve Quiet can ease a fit or calm the spasms of one that will not stop, at the healer's own cost, and Breath Recall can bring back breathing that does not return. Neither prevents the next fit. Fits brought on by magic sometimes fade as the caster rests and recovers; those from birth or an old wound do not.

Mortality

The sickness seldom kills in itself. Those who have it die by falling into the fire or the water, from a height, or under a cart, and now and then of a fit that will not end. Many with it live long lives. Frequent fits over years can dull the memory.

Lore and Belief

Many people take the fallen to be possessed and call a priest; a few have suffered Exorcism that found nothing to drive out and left them exhausted. Others read the fits as a gift of sight and listen for prophecy in the words spoken on waking, and some households of Augury mages keep the fallen as seers. In the Basins the moon is blamed, and fits are counted against its phases. Those with the sickness are often barred from oaths, smithing, and the sea, and those who are thought seers are sought out.

In the Medieval Era

The falling sickness is met everywhere, cared for at home, and seldom brought to a healer except when a fit will not end. Mage schools know the fits that follow overcasting and watch their students for them; houses of Dominion know the danger of a resisting mind and do not always care. Priests are called more often than healers, and wiser priests decline to drive out what is not there.

Where It Appears

This ailment grows out of the following pages and chapters:

See Also