The Addle

Ravenna had been plagued by cultural and religious wars. It was a continent in transition. A war between the lesser Gods had ravaged the continent for over 100 years until a decade ago when the war ended as quickly as it had erupted. The war hadn't gone well for either side and so many lesser Gods had been killed that the remaining finally reached an agreement out of fear that there would be none left if the war continued.   The citizens of Ravenna began rebuilding. Conflicts arose over boundaries, governments, cultural, and religious differences. The ten years since the war ended had been fraught with danger of every kind. Groups of criminals had sprung up from the the lesser wastes in the east after Tavotch had been destroyed by fire magic. Those who survived had nothing and they became more feral than human in their desperate attempts to survive. When the feral formed a union of criminals, they branched out into the rest of the continent leaving mayhem behind wherever they went.   In the north, people were dying because of the scarcity of potable water. Those who lived in the middle of the continent had their woes but none that compared to the lesser wastes and the north. Would be leaders began forming allies and planning towns and cities. As these towns and cities grew, villages were incorporated and the various city coalitions formed an alliance agreeing to defend any members who were under attack.   There were hundreds of smaller holdings throughout the continent where people were getting by through farming or transporting goods to the north or south.   Little if any communication had come from the smaller islands off of the coast and the governors and rulers of the mainland all but forgot about them in their assumption that they were surviving on their own as they always had.   Trade between the islands and the coastal mainland proved this to be the case but nobody knew exactly what the conditions of the island surivors was.   As the continent settled down somewhat, a new terror entered the midst of even the most protected allied cities. A disease that had been named The Addle suddenly became common knowledge. Nobody knew how it spread or what caused it. A person who got the Addle was affected in the mind. The Addle seemed to eat away at a person's mind leaving only their body in control. And sometimes those bodies did extraordinary things. They ate live cattle. They killed innocent picnickers. Some who had the Addle were quite docile but couldn't speak. Some did strange things. One rumor that had passed all the way from the lesser wastes to the northern ice mountains told the tale of a young man who did nothing but rub himself all over, repeatedly, like a cat grooms itself. The young man couldn't stop touching himself. He was kicked out of every village for exposing himself to anybody who happened by. Children were terrified.   The addled had no goals or thoughts for the future, the past, or their loved ones. They only acted out strange physical acts as if their bodies had perhaps been set free of their minds and were only following what they had always wanted to do. The most dreadful things were whispered about between adults out of the childrens' hearing. Many of the addled creatures, for they seemed more like creatures than people now, tried to couple with anything they came in contact with. Whether it was a barn door, a hapless stock animal or one of thier children, it seemed to make no difference to the addled. It was embarrassing to watch and frightening to encounter. Men, women, and animals were all accosted. Many of the Addleds' victims successfully fought the person off but some were unable to. For it was observed that some of those afflicted with the Addle appeared to have super human strength.   Healers of all the major healing houses on the continent were hard at work trying to find what humor seemed to be causing this and none of the healers had seen sucess. It was thought that the disease had first arisen somewhere in the south and spread and had slowly moved its way up the nation. An entire village outside of a major protected city had been taken over by the Addle. Every single family that lived there had it. The gates of every village, town, and city was locked and guarded at al times.   People were overheard saying they would rather die of consumption than the Addle. At least they would still be human when they died.   One night while talking about the Addle, three mages, Fenton, Gregory, and Mendel discussed the merits of the traditional medicine. Physicians had been treating patients by discovering which of their body humors was out of alignment and augmenting that particular part of the body with a regimen holistically given over the course of weeks. In the case of the Addle, not one person who had it had been cured. One of the mages suggested that perhaps magic would cure the disease. They asked themselves if the malady was a magical one that only magic could treat and that is how the Three Mages New Hall of Healing came into existence.