Heat Sickness

Overview

Heat sickness is what follows when a body takes in heat faster than it can let it go. In its common forms it is the cramp and faint of the harvest field and the forge. In its worst form, the burning collapse, a worker who has stopped sweating falls and does not wake. Every people that works in summer knows the signs, and every caravan master in the deserts watches for them.

Cause

The body cools itself by sweating. Hard work in sun, in the glare of a forge, in still hot air, or under armour drives heat up; lack of water and salt stops the sweat. Once the body's heat climbs past what it can bear, it stops cooling itself at all. Bodies made for cold, such as the natives of the Frost-Bound, are hurt even by sudden ordinary warmth, and a fire can burn and shock them.

Who It Strikes

It strikes harvesters, haulers, and soldiers in summer, smiths and smelters, desert crossers, and the old and very young in a hot spell. Dwarves at the hot forge levels take it, and in the deep holds much of the hottest labour falls to the Wrought, who do not take it. Orcs, who bear short water, cross the dry country better than most. Kobolds, who seek warm air, bear warmth gladly but tire of true heat like anyone. Water peoples out of water suffer heat and drying together (see The Drying Sickness). Mages of Crucible Magic risk fever and heat damage from their own workings.

Signs and Course

Heat cramps come first: hard, painful knots in the legs, belly, and arms of someone sweating heavily at work.

Heat faint follows if the work goes on. The sick are pale, clammy, and drenched, with a pounding head, nausea, and a weak, fast pulse; they grow dizzy and may fall. Brought into shade and given water, they mend within hours.

The burning collapse is the danger. The skin turns hot, red, and dry, and the sweat stops. The sick grow confused, stagger, rave, or fit, and then fall senseless. Unless cooled at once, they die within hours; some who wake are left slow of mind.

Contagion

Heat sickness is not contagious.

Treatment and Its Limits

Shade, rest, and water are the cure for the lesser forms, with salt in the water or salt food eaten with it. The collapsed are stripped, laid in shade, and wetted and fanned, or put into a stream or trough, and cooling matters more than anything else. A healer's Siphon Fever draws the heat into nearby water, and can chill a child or a weak patient too far. In the field, Canopy Shade lets harvesters work through noon heat, and Draw Thirst gathers what moisture there is, though little in desert noon. No working undoes a mind already harmed.

Mortality

Heat cramps and faint seldom kill. The burning collapse kills perhaps one in four or five of those it takes, more among the old and those found late. A hot harvest costs a few lives in most districts, mostly the old and the overworked.

Lore and Belief

Harvesters say the sun strikes those who work bareheaded at noon, and wear broad hats and wet cloths. In the deserts the burning collapse is laid to the hot wind, or to the old powers of the salt flats: crossers of the Glassbelt Interior say that out on the old sea floor the air drains the moisture from the lungs. Forge workers hold that a smith who stops sweating has been taken by the fire, and pour water on the anvil as well as on the man.

In the Medieval Era

Heat sickness is common in summer harvests in the Confluence Basins, at the forges of every hold and town, on the shade-sanctuary routes and caravan wells of the Glassbelt, and on the dry crossings of the Windscar Expanse. Field work stops at noon, crews rotate at the forge, and caravans travel by night and rest in shade by day. Few call a healer for the lesser forms; for the burning collapse there is rarely time.

Where It Appears

• The Frost-Bound (heat sickness as a hazard of the plane)
• The Glassbelt Interior (air that drains the moisture from the lungs)
• Nature Magic: Canopy Shade (harvesters in noon heat)
• Costs and Side Effects (Crucible fever and heat damage)