The True Game

Who: King Willem and other npcs
What: Muse about the spreading plague
Where: In the palace
When: After dinnertime
Rating: G

( King Willem was displeased. There was a plague spreading through his domain, the source of which he could not determine. )

The sickness made its way into the city seemingly overnight. No one could pinpoint its initial origins. It could have been brought by travelers, by newcomers to the city, by merchants, traders, pawns or anyone who came and went from town to town within the Sapphire Domain. It started with aches and pains, congestion and exhaustion. When it struck the family of Bertam Ashdown, he shrugged it off. His wife had minor healing talent, enough that illnesses didn't last long in their walls.

But she couldn't heal them. Her ministrations only seemed to exacerbate the illness in their eldest child, and young Nash grew weaker, unable to help his father transport wood to and from the surrounding areas. Betram felt the tickle in his own throat only days later himself, but he kept it quiet. The last thing anyone needed was rumors of a sickness a healer couldn't heal. At the same time, Bertam found himself looking for a true Healer, or one with a stronger talent than his wife had. It could just be beyond her capabilities, he told himself, but something in him caused him to worry. The fear that this was not a normal illness at all.

He went out that night, cold still in his throat, and visited the Rusty Bucket. Three days later, five more men from that locale were also ill. Within two weeks, the population of the sick had tripled, and rumors began. Plague some whispered, citing the symptoms as flu-like. Others spread the more fearful rumor: no healer had been able to quell the disease yet.

The strangest news came from those who had been sick for longer than a week: it was beginning to affect their talents, and that was what began to spread real fear.