Fouled Shellfish

Overview

A mussel holds whatever its water holds, and fouled shellfish carry the sickness of the shore into the pot. The coasts know two kinds. The black-water sickness is new and growing, as the water at some river mouths of the Tidelace turns black and sour. The rust water is old, a numbing poison of certain summers. Both fall hardest on the hamlets that live closest to the shore.

Cause

Shellfish feed by drawing water through themselves and keep what it carries. Near some Tidelace river mouths a fouling carried down by rivers from inland is turning the water black and sour; shellfish from it sicken those who eat them. What the fouling is, and where inland it begins, no one can say: the sounding houses chart where it spreads but not what it is. The rust water is different. In some warm, still summers the sea along a stretch of coast turns rust-brown or dull red, and the shellfish feeding in it take up a strong poison that boiling does not destroy.

Who It Strikes

Those who gather and eat shellfish: the old and the young of the coastal Human hamlets, who gather on foot; Gnomes, whose diet is of the sea; and Thaluren who gather on the reefs. The small, Gnome and Human children alike, sicken soonest on rust water.

Signs and Course

Black-water sickness comes within a day: cramps, vomiting, a foul purge, and a fever that breaks in two or three days, leaving a weakness that can last weeks. Those who keep eating from the black water sicken again, and worse.

Rust water acts within the half-hour. The lips and tongue tingle, then go numb; the numbness spreads over the face and into the fingers, and the eater feels light, as if floating. In a bad case speech slurs, the limbs grow weak, and the breath falters. The turning point comes within a day: one who keeps breathing through it is well within a few days.

Contagion

Neither kind passes between people. A beach that is fouled fouls everyone who gathers on it.

Treatment and Its Limits

For both, the first help is to empty the stomach. Purge Poison drives the poison out and is most at home on a shore, being fed by water and bodily flow. A rust-water case whose breath fails can be held by Breath Recall until it passes, at real cost to the healer. Nothing yet cures the black water itself. Maris of the Tides is struggling to purify it without draining her own power or killing what has adapted to it, and until she or someone finds the cause, the only sure treatment is not to gather there.

Mortality

Black-water sickness seldom kills a grown eater, though it can kill the old and infants by the purge. Rust water kills a few in every bad summer, mostly children and the small, and almost always within a day; those who live keep no lasting harm.

Lore and Belief

Hamlets say a shellfish that will not close when tapped is dead and thrown back, and a beach the gulls leave alone is poisoned. Some call the rust water Maris's grief and leave gifts at her shrines until it clears; others call it a curse of the deep. The black water is blamed on the inland peoples, on a broken oath upriver, or on Maris's failing strength, and the coast argues about it at every shrine.

Wreckers who plunder a ship on a rust-water shore are said to die of the shellfish they eat while they wait for the next wreck, and the hamlets think it fitting.

In the Medieval Era

On the Tidelace Coasts the hamlets nearest the black water no longer gather near the mouths, and are the first to haul up empty nets. Elsewhere shellfish are a daily food and a trade good from the harbour quays to the Soundchain Roads and the reefs of the Tidebound Reaches. The harbour families say who may gather, and in a rust-water summer a harbour closes its beaches on its own word. The Tidelore Hospice of Maris of Surging Magic, famous for its healing arts, takes in black-water cases from the hamlets.

Where It Appears

• Shellfish
• The Tidelace Coasts: Tensions
• Lady Maris of the Tides
• the Writers' Guide chapter The Tidelace and the Soundchain Roads