Carrot scales

Carrot scales is the name given to a peculir and potentially serious dietary issue which occasionally arises in Oluz and Halumay, the two northernmost of the Eleven Cities that surround the Sea of Jars.    

Signs and symptoms

  The first symptom of carrot scales is a discolouration of the beds of the fingernails and toenails, which turn a pale green, darkening over days or moons to a deep, dull olive colour. this discolouration gradually spreads down the fingers and toes. By the time it has reached the palms of the hands the nails have usually flaked away, and greenish blotches are appearing on the patient's forearms and calves. These blotches spread, thicken and toughen, eventually developing into scabby, scaly growths which have been variously compared to tree bark, lizard scales or the dessicated skin of a corpse. In advanced cases these patches can overwhelm entire limbs. These limbs, it is noted, suffer no loss of strength, and indeed sufferers report an increased ability to lift and carry, but one rendered moot as the flesh is so tender and painful that exerting themselves, sometimes even to walk, becomes impossible.  

Cause

  Carrot scales has long been known among the rural folk who farm the narrow stretch of arable land surrounding Oluz and Halumay. These people attrbute the condition to a clear but pecuiiar cause - the consumption of root vegetables, specifically those grown too close to The Empty Quarter to the south of the city, or those watered by the small number of streams which flow out of that distict. Members of the Brotherhood of Rooks have investigted this suggestion and found it to be fairly accurate. Occasional indulgence in such crops appears to be harmless, but frequent consumption - more than one or two meals a moon - will produce the initial discolouration, and a steady diet of such fare (as a family eats its wy through the product of a harvest, for example) will result in the rapid advancement of the case.   Carrot scales are not, it should be noted, caused by eating root vegetables in general. The condition is unknown on the Alluvial plain, where such crops are eaten fairly regularly. The location in which the crops are grown appears to be the cause. Even vegetables grown in areas around Oluz and Halumay isolated from the Empty Quarter can be consumed safely. Kitchen gardens maintained by well-heeled folk in the cities themselves, for example, often produce crops of carrots, onions and garlic, which are something of a feature of urbane cuisine. This has led to an interesting inversion of the dynamic found in southern communities, where root vegetables are often grown as stock feed and eaten by people only if nothing else is available, thus becoming associted with poverty. In northern cities, the consumption of root vegetables is seen as a dainty and aristocratic practice, a point furthered by the fact that urban dwellers tend to favour smaller, sweeter varieties of these crops.  

Treatment

  The basic treatment for carrot scales is to abjure the crops known to cause it. If caught in the early stages and addressed in this manner, the condition might resole itself - colouration fading to a healthy hue - in as little as a moon. Advanced cases take much longer to address. Whereas a regular diet of tainted vegetables might result in crippling symptoms in as little as two or three moons (that is, the amount of time a family might be dependent on a tainted harvest), it might take a year of careful nursing to restore a bedridden patient to health. In such cases, the scaly patches will shrink and disappear, and the nails will regrow, though faint greyish scars - easily overlooked in poor light but clear to the observant eye - will persist for life.   Farmers in the north tend to abjure root vegetables as a precaution and associate the evidence of carrot scales as signs of a community malaise rather darker than poverty. The Brotherhood of Rooks, given to contemplation of wider questions, take the existence of the condition as evidence of something sinister and unnatural in the Empty Quarter. What that might be, few have the resources to investigate.