Spirit combat and animals

[Manu]

I had an idea... Why do disease spirits attack humans? Why not doing a covert possession (or even full possession) on animals (like horses, donkey or even chicken, sheep, ...). it is a lot easier (they should have very low spirit combat) and as they are close to humans, it is easy to contaminate. And every animal infected that dies (it can be quick) creates a new disease spirit.

[Austin]

1 hour ago, Manu said:

Why do disease spirits attack humans? Why not doing a covert possession (or even full possession) on animals (like horses, donkey or even chicken, sheep, ...). it is a lot easier (they should have very low spirit combat) and as they are close to humans, it is easy to contaminate. And every animal infected that dies (it can be quick) creates a new disease spirit.

Because disease spirits aren't intelligent enough to do so (they have no INT characteristic).

But that just begs the question—why don't Mallia shamans do this?

I suspect the answer is "something something wyter fighting disease spirits in the tula." I don't know enough to speak more authoritatively.

[Akhôrahil]

Surely some disease spirits do this to animals? That’s how we get epidemics among the herds. But only some disease spirits can do this, and many of those instead don’t affect people, or at least not as badly.

Lords of Terror even has disease spirits for plant life, with a Malia shaman who has learned how to handle such spirits.