Famine Sickness

Ailment

Kind	Illness
Cause	Too little food for too long, then the illnesses a starved body cannot resist
Strikes	Children, the old, and the poor first; Giants and Trolls badly; Goblins, Dwarves, and Ogres bear hunger best; the Wrought do not eat
Contagion	Not contagious in itself; the sicknesses that follow it pass readily
Mortality	In a true famine, many of the young and old; more die of the following sicknesses than of hunger itself
Treatment	Food, given slowly; broth and gruel first; rest and warmth
Regions	Widespread; wherever a harvest, a river rise, or a supply road fails

Starvation and the swelling hunger, with the fluxes, fevers, and coughs that follow a failed harvest and kill more than hunger alone.

Overview

Famine sickness is the long work of hunger on a body: the wasting, the swelling, and the weakness that opens the door to every other illness. It comes after a failed harvest, a failed river rise, a siege, or a road cut in winter, and it is the oldest dread of every farming people.

Cause

A starving body burns its own stores, then its own flesh. Its vital reserves sink with it (see Lifeforce), so that it can neither resist sickness nor heal. Children fed on thin gruel without milk, meat, or beans may swell rather than waste. In a famine the fluxes and fevers that a fed village shrugs off become killers, and crowds on the roads and at the town gates spread them.

Who It Strikes

Hunger falls first on children, the old, the poor, and those without kin. Giants, who need large and reliable food, suffer early. Trolls can regrow almost any wound, but starvation still threatens them, and a hungry Troll cannot mend. Goblins bear long hunger better than most and eat almost anything; Dwarves bear scarcity; Ogres are built for hunger, though hungry strength is a danger of its own. The Wrought do not eat.

Signs and Course

The first weeks bring hunger pains, then a dull, grey weariness. The starving grow thin, cold, and slow, and their tempers short; the skin dries and loosens, hair thins, and the eyes sink. Many stop feeling hungry. In the swelling hunger, children's bellies, faces, and legs puff with water, their skin peels and darkens in patches, and their hair turns thin and reddish, so that a swollen child can look fed to a stranger. At the last the starved lie still, and a flux, a cough, or a night's cold ends them.

Contagion

Hunger is not contagious. The fluxes, coughs, and fevers that follow it are, and they pass through famine crowds swiftly (see The Summer Flux and Camp Fever).

Treatment and Its Limits

Food is the cure, and it must be given slowly. The long-starved who are given a full meal can die of it within days, the heart failing; broth, thin gruel, and milk come first, then soft bread and pulse, over a week or more. Healers know this from hard experience and fight hungry families over it.

Magic can do little. Healing moves lifeforce, and a body without food cannot hold what it is given: a healer's strength spent into the starved drains away again, and a starved healer cannot safely heal at all. Workings that speed crops, such as Harvest Blessing, help next year's harvest, not this winter's dead.

Mortality

In a true famine, many of the young and old die, and more of them of the following sicknesses than of hunger alone. Survivors who starved as children may stay small and weak all their lives, and a mother who starved may bear sickly children.

Lore and Belief

Famine is read as the gods' displeasure, and the peoples of the Serath corridor pray to Anvelle the Harvest-Mother for the fields and Serovan the River-King for the rise. Court augurs read famine signs. Ogres keep the memory of the Long Hunger (c. 195,000-c. 160,000 BR), when hunger-bands turned on others and the first hearth-houses made it custom that the vulnerable are fed before the strong; Ghessa the Hearth-Mother was born of that need.

In a famine year the roads fill with bandits who were farmers the year before, and granaries are guarded with spears; the songs of the hungry years are songs of raids on the lord's stores and of the outlaws who fed whole villages from them.

In the Medieval Era

Famine comes in the bad years rather than every year. In the Lower Serath a failed spring rise means hunger and no town can do anything about it; in the Confluence Basins, where levies demand a second harvest, tired land has begun to fail. Villages keep granaries against the bad year, and their loss to blight or mould turns a hard year into a hungry one. Lords may open stores or hold them; the faiths feed what they can at the oath-houses. Ogre camp custom still feeds the vulnerable first.

Where It Appears

The Long Hunger (the upland famine and hearth-weight)
The Lower Serath (a failed rise means hunger)
Lifeforce (starvation depletes vital reserves)
Trolls (starvation still threatens them)