Wet-Year Rots

Overview

"Wet years rot them," the terrace farmers say of their roots (see Root Crops), and the vine-growers of the folds say the same of their grapes. The wet-year rots are several blights that come together in a long wet summer: rot at the root, blight on the leaf, and grey rot in the grape bunch. They are ordinary and expected, and they are often taken for something worse.

Cause

Each is a living growth too small to see that thrives in wet and warmth. Root rot works in sodden soil where water stands around the roots. Leaf blight grows on leaves that stay wet for days, spreading down into the root. Bunch rot grows on grapes split by rain and packed tight in the bunch. A dry season stops all three; a warm, wet one feeds them.

Who It Strikes

Turnips, carrots, parsnips, and the other roots of terrace and garden; the greens, onions, and peas of garden crops; and the grapes of vines. Raised, stone-picked, well-drained beds and hard-pruned vines suffer least.

Signs and Course

Root rot. Leaves yellow and wilt in wet ground though water is all around. A root lifted is soft, brown, and stinking at the crown, and a whole row may go in a week.

Leaf blight. Dark, water-soaked blotches spread on the leaves after rain, with a pale fur beneath in the mornings; the tops blacken and collapse, and roots dug later rot in store from the patches it reached.

Bunch rot. Grapes split in late rain, then grey with a soft fur that puffs dust when touched; the bunch shrivels and sours on the vine.

Contagion

Rain-splash and wind carry blight from leaf to leaf and bed to bed; wet soil and running water carry root rot down a terrace. In store one rotten root rots the ones it touches.

Treatment and Its Limits

Growers fight it with ground and air. Beds are ridged and drained, roots are lifted early in a wet autumn and stored dry and cool in stone, the rotten are picked out and burned, and vines are pruned hard so that the bunches dry. A grower can do little once a wet summer has set in.

Rot Balance drives decay towards dead matter and away from the living, so that root blight recedes while compost ripens; it is a redirect, not an end to decay, and the rot returns when the working is not renewed. Like every Nature working it draws on the soil and the caster, and forcing it across a valley in a wet year is not cheap.

Mortality

Most wet years cost part of a crop; the worst cost most of it. Roots are the store that keeps where grain would spoil, so a rotten root year falls hardest on the households that rely on them through winter.

Lore and Belief

Rot is the one blight farmers expect, and blame mostly on the weather. Its danger in belief is what it is taken for. Black, soft rot spreading across a field is feared as the Mould Trail of the black mould that follows the Rotting Crown, and blue rot in timber is taken for an omen of Xylos and its Root-Hosts. Usually it is only rot. A grower can tell the difference: wet-year rot follows water and stops when the rain does; the Mould Trail does neither.

Witch-finders do their best trade in a wet year, when a field gone black can be laid at a neighbour's door and the neighbour burned before the next rain.

In the Medieval Era

The rots come every wet summer to the Dwarven valley terraces below the holds of the Ironspine, to the canopy gardens and forest floors of the Elves, and to the vine terraces of the Leeward Folds. A rotten root year sends more roots and grain up to the holds from below, at a price. Nature casters who keep Rot Balance on a lord's or a hold's beds are hired every wet season, and a village that cries Mould Trail over ordinary rot is a common nuisance to those who must go and look.

Where It Appears

• Root Crops
• Vines
• Nature Magic: Rot Balance
• Root-Hosts
• the Writers' Guide chapter The Schools of Magic