Mirebone
"The sound of his leg snapping never left me. Like stepping on wet twigs after rain.”
Mirebone is the bog’s quietest weapon, a sickness born in the still waters where light goes to drown. Found along the fetid whisping reaches of The Bog of Lies and the reed-choked inlets of The Hungering Marsh , it seeps into those who drink, wade, or feast on what the water offers. It is not fire, nor curse, nor magick, only rot with a hunger for bone. The afflicted do not waste away; They sink from within. The skeleton softens, bends, and eventually collapses in a series of wet, muffled snaps that echo faintly beneath the flesh. The bogfolk say you can tell who’s marked for it by the way they pray, sitting down, never kneeling. Because once you hear the crack, there’s no core left to hold you up.
Transmission & Vectors
Mirebone spreads through bacterial infection contracted primarily from stagnant waters in the Bog of Lies, Hungering Marsh, and the river deltas that feed them. The organism thrives in still pools where carcasses rot, carried by silt, shell, and decay. Its most common vector is the meat of Great Snails, whose tissues act as slow, nutrient-rich hosts for the bacteria. Yet it is not the snails themselves that are feared, it is the water they drink and the mud they trail, for the sickness seeps into everything that lingers too long near the marsh’s breath.
Infection occurs through:
- Drinking or washing in contaminated waters.
- Eating marsh meats (especially snail, frog, or bog cattle) undercooked.
- Open wounds exposed to floodwater or bog soil.
- After flood seasons, whole villages fall quiet, their wells bubbling with sickness that smells faintly of rust and rain.
Causes
The disease is caused by Osteovora stagnalis, a bone-eating bacterium native to bog sediment. It thrives on calcium, leeching it from living hosts to fuel its own soft colonies. Once inside the bloodstream, it settles in joints and marrow, secreting a mucous enzyme that turns the internal skeleton into sludge. Boiling kills the bacteria only after prolonged heat; the poor rarely have enough fuel to try. The marsh remembers their bones just as it does the beasts, folded, silent, and sinking.
Symptoms
Early Stage (1-3 days post-exposure):
- Dull pain in joints and jaw.
- Unexplained fatigue or heaviness in limbs.
- A faint taste of iron or “wet stone” in the mouth.
- Swelling around knees, wrists, and shoulders.
- Audible grinding or soft cracks when moving.
- Teeth loosening, nails softening, posture collapsing.
- Severe deformation of the spine and limbs; victims begin to stoop or crawl.
- Ribcage caving inward, respiration becomes gurgled, shallow.
- Bones snap like damp wood beneath the skin.
- Sudden, silent death by internal collapse or suffocation as chest caves in.
Treatment
There is no cure, treatments, primitive as they are, involve:
- Boiling boglark resin and salt to cauterize wounds.
- Drinking strong lime-water to “stone the bones”, often fatal.
- Binding limbs with iron braces to delay collapse.
Prognosis
Always fatal once symptoms reach the bone. Death is usually slow and silent, though some victims burst vessels during final collapse, drowning in their own blood as the ribcage folds. Survivors of partial infection are crippled for life, their limbs warped and brittle as dried reeds. The disease leaves no clean corpse, only a sagging husk, bone slush pooling in the belly. Though very rare, once caught, 90% of all cases are terminal. A slow, horrifically painful crawl to the end.
Sequela
Those who survive initial infection often experience:
- Chronic deformity and reduced mobility.
- Persistent bacterial dormancy, reactivating during wet seasons.
- “Marrow fog”, headaches and mental dullness from bone fluid toxicity.
- Phantom cracking sensations in joints, especially near rain.
Affected Groups
Most common among:
- Marshland fishers, great snail-herders, and wood-cutters amid the bog.
- Peasants in floodplains without boiled wells.
- Pilgrims who cross the Bog of Lies without blessed salt.
- Children who bathe in the Hungering Marsh shallows.
Hosts & Carriers
- Great Snails remain the most common edible carrier, though the bacteria infects nearly any wet-blooded creature that drinks from bog water.
- Frogs, snakes, and carrion birds can carry dormant bacterial film on skin or feathers.
- Human remains are dangerously contagious for several days after death; the bones continue dissolving, seeding nearby water with rot.
Prevention
- Boil all water until it screams.
- Avoid marsh meat unless blessed, salted, and burned clean.
- Bury refuse and the dead above the floodline.
- Rub lime or ash on exposed wounds when wading through bogs.
Epidemiology
Mirebone epidemics track the rhythm of Everwealth’s floods. When the Hungering Marsh overflows, the disease rides the tide into lowland wells and flooded villages. The Bog of Lies serves as its breeding ground, where warmth, rot, and stillness conspire. Trade barges unknowingly ferry the bacteria northward, carrying it in barrels of brine, hides, and snail flesh. The infection never truly ends, it ebbs, hides, and waits for the water to rise again.
History
First recorded outbreaks occurred in post-Schism Everwealth, when the marsh expanded over sunken towns and barge workers began collapsing mid-haul. Chroniclers described the dead as “folded men,” their bones “gone soft as stew.” In 431 C.A., a fishing colony along the Hungering Marsh vanished in a single season, leaving behind huts filled with melted shapes and piles of limp bones. The Ferry Watch of Axebreak instituted the first “Marsh Boil Edicts” soon after, every pot of water to be boiled, every snail shell broken before sale. Even now, during flood years, entire villages kneel on the docks and listen for the sound, that first, wet crack that means the bones have started to go.
Origin
Natural
Cycle
Short-term
Rarity
Extremely Rare
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