Diseases in Glorantha

[galafrone]

Hi all

a simple question. In your glorantha, the sources of all the diseases are spirits ? or you can contract a disease (say the flu, tiphis, cholera etc.etc) also from "mundane" situations ?

and if yes, how do you resolve the disease ? as a spirit disease ? and the cure ?

will you allow healing spirits to help the ill character ?

thanks

[David Scott]

12 minutes ago, galafrone said:

a simple question. In your glorantha, the sources of all the diseases are spirits ?

Yes, see Malia in the Bestiary.

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or you can contract a disease (say the flu, tiphis, cholera etc.etc) also from "mundane" situations ?

Personally I’d say no.

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and if yes, how do you resolve the disease ? as a spirit disease ? and the cure ?

Spirit combat drives out the disease.

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will you allow healing spirits to help the ill character ?

Yes. See the bestiary..

As an aside, in HeroQuest Glorantha, I associated all the mortal diseases with Malia’s death rune spirits.

the minor diseases, from cults of terror with her darkness rune spirits

the plague with her chaos rune spirits.

we had lots of disease in my game a few days ago. Cured by summoning a cult spirit, controlling a cult spirit to fight the disease. When no one had the appropriate rune magic or treat disease skills.

have a look here for some guidelines https://basicroleplaying.org/topic/9599-breaking-possession/?tab=comments#comment-141203

 

[soltakss]

I play you can catch diseases mundanely. However, the effect is that a disease spirit grows within you.

Cure (Disease) and Cure All Disease used to be Runespells and should come back.

RQ2 had Treat Disease, which could stop a disease.

Helaoing Spirits should be able to drive out the Disease Spirit and heal the character.

[galafrone]

if the diseases are all spirit-driven, there can't be epidemics in my opinion. The Same spirit can't "enter" the whole population, hence the glorantha vision of illness should be really different from our (earth-like) vision. Right ?

I am more prone to think as Soltakss .. but even there, the idea of a spirit disease growing in you as a result of a mundane illness is somehow weird.

[Ian Cooper]

30 minutes ago, galafrone said:

a simple question. In your glorantha, the sources of all the diseases are spirits ? or you can contract a disease (say the flu, tiphis, cholera etc.etc) also from "mundane" situations ?

No. In the past we have had descriptions of Broo infecting material by defecating and urinating on it, and processes to decontaminate materials. If you can contaminate and decontaminate a material item, it is not solely spirit possession that provides disease.

I would maintain that spirits tend to be the source of patient zero in an outbreak. in Hero Wars material Greg often suggested that the gods provide protection to their worshipers from disease, and I believe that this implies protection against hostile spirits. So your clan wyter, or local friendly godlings will try to protect against wild disease spirits. If this fails, perhaps because the community has offended the god, or perhaps because the disease spirit is too powerful, I think that a disease spirit can infect a patient zero.

Of course contact with a broo or other diseased creature might lead to someone becoming infected and bringing disease into a community. The broo themselves gain their illness from voluntary infection by disease spirits, which does them no harm as they can only be carriers.

Once that person is infected, if the disease is contagious, they will spread it by contact with bodily fluids.  I think that lack of hygiene aids in the spread of an existing disease, but that the origin, the patient zero, was always infected with a spirit  People resist this disease because they are healthy or weak as per RQG p.154. As per those rules, a person dying from disease would generate a new disease spirit.

I think that the rules about hygiene are not obvious to most Gloranthans because it has no impact unless a patient zero, infected by a spirit causes an infection that then runs riot due to the lack of hygiene. I am sure that anyone with the Treat Disease skill is aware of the lack of hygiene issue in the spread of a disease.

[Sir_Godspeed]

Maybe we can conceptually separate the Disease Spirit and the Disease as cause and effect, as it were.

Or maybe the Disease Spirit spawns a "mini-me" for every new person that turns ill, as a sort of hive-mind. Maybe there's a "Disease Spirit Prime" in patient zero. Maybe not.

I'll admit, I have no idea, just throwing out some ideas for play.

[Joerg]

I would support the "hive entity" disease spirit theory for ease of aligning it with the concept of infection by infectious material. Whether the spirit is attracted by miasmas that corrupt stuff around them to increase their presence or whether disease is just a fermentation process of miasma that results in a spirit entity doesn't matter much.

Contact with infectious matter or people (i.e. carriers of disease spirits) doesn't automatically bud off a disease spirit. It is almost like the disease spirit steals its magic from the prospective victim.

[The God Learner]

Perhaps various nastiness, left behind by broo or otherwise, acts as a mini-shrine to Mallia and attracts disease spirits?

 

[David Scott]

1 hour ago, soltakss said:

Cure (Disease) and Cure All Disease used to be Runespells and should come back.

Cure All Disease RQG page 325

Fight Disease RQG page 328

1 hour ago, soltakss said:

RQ2 had Treat Disease, which could stop a disease.

RQG page 182

1 hour ago, soltakss said:

Helaoing Spirits should be able to drive out the Disease Spirit and heal the character.

RQ bestiary

[David Scott]

1 hour ago, galafrone said:

if the diseases are all spirit-driven, there can't be epidemics in my opinion. The Same spirit can't "enter" the whole population, hence the glorantha vision of illness should be really different from our (earth-like) vision. Right ?

There's only one real epidemic disease and that's plague. It's the only one not defeated in the God time. The others can be defeated, but with enough infected places an equivalent of an epidemic can start. I ran the scenario "A Darkness over Runegate" a few days ago and this is its theme. The disease splinters and effects large numbers of peoples who are exposed to a range of contamination.

In real world shamanic cultures (on which RQ disease is based) this is exactly what happens. A tiny intrusion overwhelms the defences of the individual and needs removing.

Read through the disease section starting on page 154. It covers all of this. Even if you don't regard disease as an spirit, it still needs defeating to remove it.

 

[galafrone]

Thanks david

[galafrone]

but reading again page 154 i get "an adventurer can be exposed to disease in many ways. Disease spirits are the most common way" (implying not the only one)

so even if the rules states that in glorantha bacteria, virus or genetics aren't disease sources, you can get one not only from disease spirits.

If you get one from a source different from a disease spirit, at the death of the host a disease spirit is created

[Sir_Godspeed]

4 hours ago, David Scott said:

There's only one real epidemic disease and that's plague. It's the only one not defeated in the God time. The others can be defeated, but with enough infected places an equivalent of an epidemic can start. I ran the scenario "A Darkness over Runegate" a few days ago and this is its theme. The disease splinters and effects large numbers of peoples who are exposed to a range of contamination.

In real world shamanic cultures (on which RQ disease is based) this is exactly what happens. A tiny intrusion overwhelms the defences of the individual and needs removing.

Read through the disease section starting on page 154. It covers all of this. Even if you don't regard disease as an spirit, it still needs defeating to remove it.

 

If the illness of an individual can be tied to, say, passing by a source of miasma or spiritual impurity, breach of a taboo, mood imbalance, someone else casting the evil eye and so forth and so on, then the illness of a large group of people (ie. an epidemic) can reasonably be extrapolated from there, in my opinion. 

Some spot on the tula has been infected. The tribe broke a spirit treaty. A high-ranking member did something that backfired on everyone. Enemy clan did it. Nearby hostile entity (trolls, wild witch, elves, etc.) did it. It doesn't have to be made very complicated.

[galafrone]

yeah but i can understand the infection (even if there arent viruses and bacteria per the rules) but.. how can a troll or an elf spread a plague ?

[PhilHibbs]

4 minutes ago, galafrone said:

yeah but i can understand the infection (even if there arent viruses and bacteria per the rules) but.. how can a troll or an elf spread a plague ?

If you have an evil spirit hanging around causing trouble, why not bribe or cajole it into going and attacking your enemies? I seem to recall that this is an option in a malign spirit encounter in KoDP.

[gochie]

We definitely play that you can catch a cold if you don't sleep, walk in cold rain for days, etc. Also broos, as stated above, carry infections/disease that aren't spirit-related.

[soltakss]

If you pick up things despoiled by Broo then you can be exposed to a disease.

Mallia used to have Cause Disease as a runespell, not sure if it still does.

 

[PhilHibbs]

[soltakss]

Thanks Phil.

Is the Gods and Goddesses book out yet? I haven't seen the announcements.

[PhilHibbs]

18 minutes ago, soltakss said:

Thanks Phil.

Is the Gods and Goddesses book out yet? I haven't seen the announcements.

No, that's from the Bestiary under the Broo cults.

[DucksMustDie]

A question (probably a stupid one, pardon me)

A disease master of Mallia casts Carry Disease, say blotches, to a willing broo. The broo can infect people, weapons, gear, loot by touch, right? What about the poor hapless human he infects with the blotches, can he continue the merry thing by infecting other people and objects with his touch (or piss, feces, whatever) or does it end with him?

Edited November 1, 2021 by DucksMustDie

[David Scott]

33 minutes ago, DucksMustDie said:

A question (probably a stupid one, pardon me)

There's so such thing as a stupid question – but if you don't ask – you stay stupid for ever, so always ask questions 🙂

33 minutes ago, DucksMustDie said:

A disease master of Mallia casts Carry Disease, say blotches, to a willing broo. The broo can infect people, weapons, gear, loot by touch, right? What about the poor hapless human he infects with the blotches, can he continue the merry thing by infecting other people and objects with his touch (or piss, feces, whatever) or does it end with him?

Victims of major disease are covertly possessed by Disease spirits (page 370). So if an untreated victim dies of the disease, it will be lingering around the corpse and can attack any within range. Unless infected with more than one disease, there's no transmission until death. Broos infected using carry disease clearly spawn the disease within, allowing multiple infections. There's no limit to what they can infect this way, but I would say they have to consciously do it.

The minor diseases work the same way, but unless the victim dies there's no transmission. So sniffles and sneezing are not contagious, but blotches and thunder lung could be. Thunder lung clearly spawns multiple spirits when the victim bursts.

Cause (disease) is effectively the caster acting as a disease spirit.

Disease spirits may also naturally cluster. See page 154, Contracting a disease:

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they may be attracted by pollution, sent as a curse or by an evil cult, or simply present for other reasons. Broo always carry one disease or another, and areas such as swamps and some old ruins are plague spots. During wars, long sieges often provide breeding grounds for disease.

So a victim could be the centre of a cluster, attracted for reasons of a curse or as above. Transmission is a story hook in this case.

[Alex]

48 minutes ago, David Scott said:

The minor diseases work the same way, but unless the victim dies there's no transmission. So sniffles and sneezing are not contagious, but blotches and thunder lung could be. Thunder lung clearly spawns multiple spirits when the victim bursts.

If you want a "compatibilist" reading in which diseases are all still caused by (are identical with, really) spirits, but still work in the sort of infectious way RW ones do, the obvious fix is to have them bud (or breed?  what an image!) inside living victims, then waft off to others.

[AndreJarosch]

3 hours ago, David Scott said:

Unless infected with more than one disease, there's no transmission until death.

The minor diseases work the same way, but unless the victim dies there's no transmission. So sniffles and sneezing are not contagious, ...

And this is a good thing to be aware of. 

Child mortality in Glorantha is by FAR less than in real world. 

Ine of the reasons couples in the real world had so many children (except not having very efficient birth control) is that a couplbe needed at least 2 surviving children, so that they could be cared for in old age. Most poor families had 4 to 10 children, and with a child mortality of up to 60% it was nessessary to have so much children to make it more likely that 2 or more reach adulthood, can marry, and teir families take care of you. 

I Glorantha, with diseases not as contagious as in our world, and with healing magic widely available, there is no need to have so much children. 
That is the reason that all the NPCs described in the books have only a few children, and not a dozen or so. 
Totally makes sense!

[Akhôrahil]

1 hour ago, AndreJarosch said:

Child mortality in Glorantha is by FAR less than in real world. 

If this is the case, the table for child survival in the RQG rulebook doesn't bear it out. You can do the math, and child mortality to 15 for Free families comes out at about 50%, which is reasonably close to the historical numbers, and far lower than almost everywhere in the modern world.

Edited November 1, 2021 by Akhôrahil