Afflictions

If you’ve drunk tainted water from a huldra’s body-choked well, inhaled a cloud of spores from a creeping mold, or developed an infected cut from a goblin’s shit-covered dagger, you become afflicted.

Afflictions—be they poison, disease, infection, addiction, or otherwise—are essentially countdown clocks to doom. Each affliction has a number of stages, each with a specific effect.

• Most afflictions have increasingly negative effects for each stage.

• Some afflictions—notably drugs—have positive effects at their early stages.

• Some afflictions have death at their final stage.

When you gain an affliction, you immediately gain its stage 1 effect.

To track your progress with the affliction, draw a circle. Draw as many sections as there are stages of the affliction. Color in the first section with hatch marks.

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For example

Afflictions automatically progress to the next stage at the end of each Camp Phase.

Curing an affliction

To cure an affliction, take the Rest and Recover action during the Camp Phase (p. 137). During this action, you’ll burn charged Bonds. One stage of the affliction is cured after a certain number of charges are spent.

Burned charges are cumulative. For example, if a stage of an affliction is cured for every 3 charges spent, you can burn 1 charge over the course of three Camp Phases to cure a single stage.

The GM determines the number of charges needed to cure a stage of a particular affliction. Players are not told this information up front, but a well-worded lore bid might reveal these details. When Resting and Recovering, you tell the GM how many charges you are burning and hope for the best. Burned charges cure the most severe stages first, whether or not the affliction has progressed to that point. To represent a cured stage, color a section of the circle in black. You will never experience the effects associated with a cured stage. The affliction is completely healed when all stages are cured. 1/6 1/6

For example

Certain things are healthful for curing an affliction:

• Some afflictions have very specific cures (e.g., the poison of a basilisk can be cured by the gallbladder of a basilisk).

• Bezoars and leeches (available at the Omphalic Market, p. 164) give charges for healing.

• The Life spell (Appendix A, p. 225) reduces an affliction by an entire stage, perhaps curing it entirely.

Afflictions progress to the next stage at the end of each Camp Phase unless the stage above it has been cured. Essentially, afflictions progress clockwise, but are cured counter-clockwise.

In summation

• Your affliction begins at stage 1.

• During the Crawl Phase, you have the opportunity to search for healing items or chirurgeons to help your recovery during the Camp Phase.

• During the step 1 of your next Camp Phase, you can Rest and Recover to burn charges in an attempt to recover from the affliction. These charges can come from charged Bonds or healthful items. These charges go towards curing the final stage first (sections are blacked out on the affliction clock in a counter-clockwise manner).

• At the end of the Camp Phase, your affliction progresses one stage (clockwise on the affliction clock). If the stage beyond it has already been cured, you remain at your current affliction stage.

• If you cure the stage that you are already on, your affliction regresses by one stage.

Example afflictions

Here are some “common” afflictions to use as examples. GMs can tweak these to create any manner of gross old disorders for their players.

Giant rat venom

A green rat the size of a dog, covered in buboes, welts, and goiters, bites you. It only gets worse from there.

Stage 1: The wound turns ugly: green and fetid. It begins to stink, but there are no other effects.

Requires 1 charge to cure.

Stage 2: You feel like hot garbage. You become permanently Exhausted (p. 12).

Requires 1 charge to cure.

Stage 3: Your lungs are filled with green mucus. Every time you test fate, you take a Piercing Wound after the test is resolved.

Requires 2 charges to cure.

Black honey

A thick molasses that tastes so, so sweet. It’s like meth and speed had a terrifying demon baby. You act preternaturally fast while on the honey.

Each time you take black honey, you are re-exposed to the affliction. If you’ve previously cured stage 2, erase the marking in the stage 2 section.

Stage 1: If you’ve recently taken black honey, you may choose to draw 5 cards during an encounter instead of 4. If you do so, you spit out 1–4 teeth.

Requires 5 charges to quit.

Stage 2: You’re jittery and sweaty. Your Cups score equals 1 and you suffer disfavor on all tests of fate that require fine motor control.

Requires 1 charge to calm down to stage 1.

Ghost lotus

The seeds of the ghost lotus rewrite pathways in the user’s brain. The feeling is incredibly addictive. Habitual users of the lotus (called lotusphages) become very strange and otherworldly: their personalities change, their memories become distorted, and they have trouble distinguishing between the waking world and dreams.

Stage 1: You experience euphoria. This effect cancels out any effects that hamper your ability to sleep.

Requires 1XP to recover from stage 1. No charges are otherwise needed.

Stage 2: At this stage, you lose the ability to understand representative thought. Paintings and illustrations are just blobs of color. Words are meaningless lines on paper. You cannot read. You cannot write. You are also immune to illusions.

Requires 2 charges to cure.

Stage 3: You become lost in a waking dream. Rewrite one of your motif descriptors. For example, if you have the “Romancing Swordsman” motif, replace “Romancing” with another word (e.g., Ambitious, Addled, Drowsy, Sadistic, etc.).

Requires 1 charge to cure.

The great contagion

“Oh Mythrys, do I have the red welts? I have the red welts don’t I? I’m going to die. Tell Mama I love her.”

Stage 1: Your skin breaks out into red whorls that are very painful to the touch. You take a Piercing Wound.

Requires 2 charges to cure.

Stage 2: You take Critical damage.

Requires 2 charges to cure.

Stage 3: You die.