Diseases in Glorantha

[WindSerpent]

On 5/19/2019 at 6:51 PM, Sir_Godspeed said:

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.

I was going to say something like this. Seems like it might be reasonable to assume that certain sorts of things can attract disease spirits. You could pick one up maybe by drinking stagnant water- say the disease spirit was hanging out there for some reason. And maybe a similar disease spirit might come by to hang out with it, so it might spread, but usually a CA priestess or a shaman or what-have-you would send it packing before it got the chance. You probably wouldn't expect an epidemic from one person happening to bump into a disease spirit. Unless, maybe, your clan is thoroughly snowed in for weeks and all the healers are for some reason unavailable.... (ooh. Sounds like the starts of a good horror story, there.)

But, under the assumption of one possession = one victim = one disease spirit, I would imagine your 'common' outbreak would have to be more along the lines of: something happens to clan or land -> creates bad vibes -> bad vibes echo around spirit world -> disease spirits are attracted to the source like squirrels to a birdfeeder -> bad vibes get worse because people are sick and unhappy and maybe dying -> feeding frenzy.