Granary Mould

Ailment

Kind	Crop blight
Cause	Moulds that grow in grain stored damp or warm, helped by rats, weevils, and leaking roofs
Strikes	Stored oats, barley, wheat, malt, and flour; then the people and beasts who eat the spoiled grain or breathe its dust
Contagion	Spreads through a heap from a damp pocket and from sack to sack; does not pass between people
Mortality	Loses stores far more often than lives; mouldy bread and fodder sicken, and now and then kill the weak and the beasts
Treatment	Drying before storing, turning and airing the heap, dry raised floors; Circle Against Rot, Salt Ward, and Pest Bar
Regions	Widespread wherever grain is stored; the granary country of the Confluence Basins most

The mould and heating of grain put away damp, which spoils a granary from inside and sickens those who eat the bread or breathe the dust.

Overview

"Rats and mould take a granary from inside," the basin saying goes (see Grain). Granary mould is the quieter half of it: grain put away damp heats, cakes, greys, and spoils, and a store kept against the bad year turns out to hold nothing when the bad year comes. What survives the mould can still sicken the household that bakes it.

Cause

Moulds, living growths too small to see until they bloom, grow wherever stored grain is damp or warm. Grain carted in before it has dried, a leaking roof, a floor that draws up wet, or a heap packed too deep sets them going, and a growing mould makes heat and damp of its own, so that one wet pocket spreads through the store. Rats and weevils open the grain and foul it, and the mould follows them. It is not the field growth of the ear that makes burning bread, though both end in the bread.

Who It Strikes

Oats stored damp go mouldy fastest; barley put away damp heats and spoils; wheat, malt, flour, and hay go the same way more slowly. Of those who eat or handle the spoil, the old, small children, and horses suffer most. Halflings, who can smell a damp grain bin across a storeroom, are seldom caught by it, and Goblins eat mouldy bread with less harm than most.

Signs and Course

A store going bad smells first: musty, then sour. The heap feels warm to a hand pushed into it, and a sweat of damp beads on the inner sacks. Then the grain cakes into lumps, and grey, green, or black fur shows where the damp was worst. By the time the mould is seen, the heat has run through much of the store.

Mouldy bread or porridge gives a sick stomach, vomiting, and a day or two of misery, and eaten for weeks in a hungry winter it leaves the eaters weak and yellowed. Those who turn and sift mouldy grain breathe its dust and cough for days after. Horses fed mouldy oats or hay colic and can die.

Contagion

The mould spreads through the store, not between people: from a damp pocket to the heap around it, and from a spoiled sack to its neighbours. A granary that has once held mouldy grain holds the next harvest's spoil unless it is swept, dried, and aired.

Treatment and Its Limits

Dry grain kept dry does not mould. Farmers dry the sheaves in the stook, store on raised floors with air beneath, turn and air the heaps, and keep the roof sound. Spoiled grain goes to the pigs, or onto the fire when even they will not take it.

Warders and healers keep useful workings. Circle Against Rot slows mould inside a marked store but does not purify a store already taken. Salt Ward keeps rot and vermin from food stores, and Pest Bar keeps out the rats that bring the damp (see Rats and Vermin). Each needs renewing, and none dries a wet harvest.

Mortality

The mould kills a winter's bread far more often than it kills a person. The deaths come after: a village that loses its store eats what is left, mould and all, and the old and the small go first. Most who eat mouldy bread recover within days.

Lore and Belief

Basin villages say a damp granary "sweats" and call the mould the grey. A short count on the threshing floor is laid at the rats' door before anyone is accused. Some hang a sheaf of the first harvest over the granary door against spoiling, and many think the mould comes in on night air, which is why they keep granary doors shut in the very weather that needs them open.

A granary-keeper whose stores go grey is suspected of selling the grain and blaming the mould, and more than one has been beaten or driven out by a hungry village before the truth was known.

In the Medieval Era

Every village of the Confluence Basins keeps a granary against the bad year, and every wet harvest puts it at risk. In the Headwater valleys a barley store below a Dwarven hold is part of the hold's own stores, so mould there is felt uphill. Ships carry it on humid voyages, where surgeons ward their medicines with salt. Warders who lay Pest Bar and Circle Against Rot on village stores are among the most ordinary paid casters of the countryside.