Lungspore
“He ran. We told him not to. But he ran, gasping, coughing. By the time we caught him, his mouth was full of cotton and his lungs hissed like a forge. We didn’t even need to vote. The torch was already lit.”
When folk speak of plagues in Everwealth aloud, they whisper of Lungspore in fearful murmurs. They do not cry, for fear of drawing breath. They do not linger near its name, lest it rot the air, and come for them. It is not a slow curse or creeping pestilence. It is fast. It is foul. It is final. A spore-born death sentence that offers no time for prayer, no grace from the gods. It finds the lungs, wraps them in a filamentous rot, and spreads like wildfire inside flesh too soft to resist. The infected gasp, stumble, and fall, each breath a cloud of soft, death-soaked cotton that clings to air, skin, and soil alike, eating, spreading, over and over. Wherever they die, death lingers. Every footstep in a contaminated space kicks the spores anew into the world. Some speak of the sound it makes, like breathing through wet wool, or sighing from the mouth of a drowned man. Entire villages have been razed and salted for a single case. Infected are not buried. They are not mourned. They are burned. Sometimes still begging. Sometimes already collapsing into bloom. No cure exists. No quarter is given. And if it breathes... it burns.Transmission & Vectors
Airborne fungal pathogen. Lungspore spreads rapidly through inhalation of microscopic spores. Once established in a host, these spores multiply in warm, moist lung tissue, producing thick, fibrous fungal networks that rapidly colonize the respiratory system. When the infection reaches critical mass, the lungs expel great plumes of pale, cotton-like spore clouds, often during a victim’s final gasps. These clouds settle into soil, cloth, and skin alike, and are easily stirred into the air by even a gentle step or sigh. Contagion is at its peak in warm, stagnant air or humid conditions. Shared airspace, especially in taverns, bathhouses, or slums, poses extreme risk. The disease is viable for hours in still air and days when clinging to damp surfaces or hair.
Causes
Lungspore is believed to have originated deep in the moss-choked fungal valleys of old Tarmahc, but The Great Schism ruptured its bounds. Now, fungal hotbeds buried beneath ruined cities and crypts act as breeding grounds, awakening the dormant rot with each tremor, flood, or grave-digger's shovel. The infection is fungal at its core, but carries a sinister resilience suggestive of magickal mutation, resisting fire, light, and most known purification rites unless applied in extreme, lethal doses. Some scholars speculate the disease was once cultivated, weaponized as an alchemical deterrent by pre-Schism warbands. Others insist it is a Tulpa of suffocation itself, born of mass fear in a time when the air grew thin and screams echoed through buried ruins.
Symptoms
- Persistent dry cough, increasing in frequency and wetness.
- Shortness of breath, shallow respiration, and a feeling of ‘gravel in the chest.’
- Rapid development of thick, fibrous tissue along the bronchial lining.
- Pale fungal tendrils visible at the back of the throat within 2-3 days.
- Fever, hallucinations, and a sensation of drowning while dry.
- Expulsion of soft, cottonlike spores from mouth and nose by day 4-6.
- Death typically occurs from asphyxiation, heart failure, or internal rupture.
Treatment
- None proven. Folk remedies include saltburn inhalation or spiritvine draughts, ineffective and often lethal.
- Extreme heat exposure (such as being sealed in a blast chamber or flame-prayer oven) has delayed symptoms, but not reversed them.
- Surgical intervention is impossible due to internal mycelium mesh.
- Fire remains the only reliable form of containment. Victims are burned, living or dead, often on sight, without trial or confirmation. Even false positives are considered necessary losses.
Prognosis
- 98% fatality rate.
- Survivors (extremely rare) exhibit permanent, deep, lung scarring, chronic coughing, reduced stamina, and psychological trauma.
- Full-body fungal colonization within a week if untreated.
Sequela
- Mycelial fusion of lung tissue to ribcage.
- Chronic coughing fits triggered by dry air or dust.
- Sporadic minor spore expulsions during sleep for survivors.
- Known to trigger panic disorders in exposed caretakers.
Affected Groups
Miners, grave-clearers, southern foragers, scavenger bands, and traders using jungle-crossing routes are at greatest risk. Lower-class city dwellers, especially children, living in notoriously cramped/unsanitary conditions with poor ventilation, often bear the first wave of exposure.”
Hosts & Carriers
- No known animal hosts.
- Fungal mats can grow on clothing, in tools, and along the throat of recently dead infected.
- Reanimated corpses and improperly buried dead have triggered reinfections.
- Spores remain viable on wood, skin, or canvas for up to 11 days. Entire plague cart convoys have been lost to wind shifts.
Prevention
- Copper-wire masks, ritual ash scarves, or wax-sealed nostril plugs.
- Vigilant pyres at all border villages.
- Fire-cleaning of all tools, wagons, and weapons returned from quarantined zones.
- Total silence around any corpse found coughing, regardless of perceived warmth.
Epidemiology
Lungspore outbreaks are historically devastating. The disease does not simmer, it ignites. Every recorded outbreak begins with a trickle and ends in blood, ash, and abandonment.
Most notable historical outbreaks:
- The Moondusk Collapse: an entire ruin-colony of 4,000 folk were sealed underground after the infected reanimated mid-cremation, blurring then line between living and dead too closely to take any chances.
- The Boulderrain Bloom: a sporecloud rode the valley winds for three nights, claiming four villages before sunrise on the fourth.
History
The first confirmed outbreak of Lungspore dates to the early Civil Ages, roughly 80 years after The Great Schism, when a northbound caravan returning from the southern ruins entered the city of Opulence bearing more than salvaged relics. Among its ranks were three children, sickly and pale, coughing soft threads into their travel cloth. They were thought to have caught a common fever. By the time the first one collapsed in the city square, it was already far too late. Within days, dozens were infected. Within a week, hundreds. Airborne and nearly invisible, the spores clung to clothes, crept through alleys, and seeped into the breath of every passerby. Market stalls became deathbeds. Prayer halls became pyres. In an effort both panicked and brutal, the crown ordered mass burnings too contain it after quarantine measures had failed them. Districts were blockaded and fire poured through the streets. Entire tenements were immolated, infected or not, with screaming occupants inside, it spreads so rapidly they had no other choice. It lasted thirty-one days. Over six thousand were confirmed dead or purged. The soot still streaks the sealed catacombs beneath the city built to house the infected dead, where carts of charred remains were entombed, unblessed, unnamed, often along those pushing the carts in a sacrificial act to bury it, each remembered still in the residue of terror it stained into history. Since that day, Lungspore has never been considered a mere illness. It is an ecological aberration, a naturally-evolved predator of the lungs, its mycelium fine as breath, its reproductive cycle perfected through the churn of damp decay. No magick fuels it, no curse gives it motive. It is fungus in its most remorseless form: opportunistic, adaptable, and insatiably reproductive. Researchers of The Scholar's Guild believe it may have originated in the flooded southern wetlands near The Hungering Marsh where rotting mammal corpses and dense, stagnant Everwealthy bog air created the perfect fungal crucible. Indeed, soil samples here from long-abandoned southern plague sites remain uninhabitable to this day despite spores from infected hosts oonnly surviving for several weeks outside of the body; Disturbed once, and the white dust still rises. Across the centuries, minor flare-ups have occurred here and in other cities with larger population centers such as Catcher's Rest or Newforge where avoiding spread is difficult to be sure, almost always traced back to scavengers, refugees, or illegally trafficked textiles from the area. Each time, the response is swift and absolute. Confirmed infections are burned, not healed. Suspected ones vanish under cloaks and torchlight. Entire villages have emptied overnight on mere rumor of Lungspore. And for good reason, because by the time you hear the first wet cough, you're already breathing it. Reports of white-capped moss or “breathing soil” near southern cave-mouths trigger travel bans and conscription quarantines. In Everwealth, no plague, not even Glasspox, strikes more fear into the public’s heart.
Cultural Reception
- Folk consider infected already dead.
- Some hedge-faiths claim the spores are the breath of an ancient buried god trying to speak.
- Priests are the only ones permitted to touch the infected in many districts.
Origin
Natural
Cycle
Short-term
Rarity
Extremely Rare
TB but worse :P
Now you're getting it lol.