Afflictions

An affliction represents an unhealthy state, often caused by chemical, biological, arcane, or divine means — a disease, a poison, a curse. Every affliction runs through three phases: an Incubation Period, a Symptomatic Period, and an Outcome.

• Incubation Period — the time between contracting the affliction and its Onset. The affliction is present in the body (and possibly transmissible) but causes no apparent effect.
• Symptomatic Period — the time after onset but before the final outcome, when symptoms occur. Their level and impact may vary widely during this time.
• Outcome — the affliction’s ultimate conclusion. Depending on the affliction, this may be death, a lasting disability, a physical or psychological disorder, or complete recovery.

Accordingly, every affliction has an onset duration (the Incubation Period, from contract date to onset date) and an outcome duration (the Symptomatic Period, from onset date to outcome date), plus a healing-check period — how often the body’s Course Test is made.

Affliction vs. Trauma

An affliction and a trauma are the two kinds of lasting harm a character can carry, and they are easy to confuse. The distinction is process vs. state:

• An affliction is an ongoing, hostile agent acting on the Being over time. It has a source, a means of transmission, a course it runs (incubation → onset → symptomatic → outcome), a Healing Rate that its Course Test drives up or down, and a terminal outcome of death or cure. Diseases, poisons, and maladictions are afflictions: something is attacking the Being, and it will get better or worse.
• A trauma is a condition the Being is in — usually the result of harm or stress that it then carries and recovers from. Injuries, fatigue, fear, morale, shock, infection, aural shock, and the Pall are traumas.

The same event can produce both: a snakebite inflicts a poison/toxin affliction (the venom running its course) and, where it breaks the skin, an injury trauma (the wound). When in doubt, ask “is this an agent running a course, or a condition being carried?” — the former is an affliction, the latter a trauma.

Subtypes

An affliction’s subtype classifies it by the nature of the afflicting agent:

The subtype is descriptive: it does not change the Course Test or outcome machinery, which is the same for every affliction. It classifies the affliction thematically and governs which afflictions spread as contagious diseases — only Disease-subtype afflictions do. A maladiction is never contagious in that sense; it reaches a victim only by the arcane, divine, or spirit means its author specifies.

Transmission and contagion

How an affliction reaches a new victim is set by its transmission mode:

• Physical — airborne, contact, body-fluid, ingested, proximity, or by a vector (an insect or animal bite).
• Supernatural — by perception (sight or sound), or by arcane, divine, or spirit means.
• None — not transmissible at all.

A contagious disease also carries a Contagion Index (CI), from 1 to 5, describing how readily it spreads: the lower the index, the more contagious. When a character is exposed, whether they contract it is a success test against a target of CI × the character’s Endurance — a lower index yields a lower target and so a greater chance of contraction. Only Disease-subtype afflictions spread by exposure this way; poisons and maladictions reach a victim by their own specific means, not by casual exposure.

Exposure and contraction are two different things. Being exposed is something the world does to a character; whether they catch it is their own roll, and it is always made on the exposed character’s side.

Dormancy

An affliction may lie dormant, having no onset or other effect on its host. While dormant it can still be transmitted (depending on the specific affliction), but it does not proceed to onset or any further state — it is simply marked Dormant, and the host may never realize they carry it.

Onset

When the Incubation Period ends, the affliction reaches onset and becomes symptomatic. Because an affliction can be almost anything, its symptoms are a matter of play — described and role-played by the GM and players rather than prescribed here. What onset settles is the mechanical clock: from that moment the affliction is symptomatic, and its Course Test and resolution cycle begin.

A particular affliction may also carry consequences of its own that fall due at onset — a specific weakness, a lost sense, a compulsion. These belong to that affliction, not to the general rule.

Course Test

Once onset has occurred, the body fights the affliction. Each course period the character makes a Course Test — a d100 rolled against the affliction’s Course target — and its success level changes the affliction’s Healing Rate:

The Course target is Healing Base × the affliction’s current Healing Rate (see Healing Test for both), modified by anything acting on the affliction’s course — a physician’s treatment bonus foremost among them. A worsening affliction is therefore self-reinforcing: as its Healing Rate falls the target falls with it, and each test is harder to pass than the last.

One check yields exactly one test. However much time has passed, a Course Test is rolled once, and whether another follows is the table’s decision.

Reaction

Starting after the first Course Test, the affliction’s current Healing Rate (HR) determines the host’s reaction:

The weakness fatigue an affliction inflicts is its own: repeating a reaction adjusts that fatigue rather than stacking a second lot of it, and defeating the affliction clears it. A shock state only ever worsens — a reaction never improves a character who is already in a worse state than it would impose.

Healing Test

Where the Course Test asks whether the affliction is winning, the Healing Test asks whether the body is throwing it off. It works exactly as the Injury Healing Test does: a d100 against the affliction’s Healing target — again Healing Base × Healing Rate — reducing the affliction’s Level:

An affliction reduced to Level 0 has run its course and is finished with.

The Course target and the Healing target start from the same arithmetic but are separate values, and either can be modified independently — a treatment that improves the odds of fighting an affliction off need not make its course any kinder.

Diagnosis and treatment

Treatment for an affliction is mostly ineffectual, and that is deliberate: the body either fights the affliction off or it does not. A physician can improve the odds; they cannot cure by treating.

A patient may request treatment, which any physician can answer. The physician makes a Treatment Success Value test against their own Physician skill, and the Value Diamonds it earns become the proposed Course Bonus:

The patient then accepts the treatment, which records the treatment date and applies the Course Bonus. A bonus above zero is a standing modifier on the affliction’s Course target, not a one-off adjustment — it applies to every subsequent Course Test for as long as the treatment stands, and it can be inspected, adjusted, or removed later. A bonus of zero records the treatment date and nothing else: the physician tried, and it did not help.

Nothing about this is imposed. The physician’s roll proposes; the patient’s side accepts.

Outcome

When the Symptomatic Period ends, if the affliction has not been defeated (has not reached HR 6), its outcome is applied. Every affliction names an outcome, and it is one of two:

• Death — the character dies.
• Cured — the affliction is defeated: its Healing Rate becomes 6 and it troubles the character no further.

An affliction may also name one or more outcome traumas — the traumas the host is left with when it runs its course. These combine with the outcome above: an affliction that ends Cured but leaves a lasting weakness frees its victim of the disease and marks them permanently. The fever breaks; the blindness stays.

An outcome applies only if the affliction reaches the end of the Symptomatic Period without being healed. An affliction the body throws off first has no outcome at all.

Infection

An infection is a specific form of affliction, contracted when an injury’s Injury Healing Test critically fails. Its Healing Rate starts one step higher than the infected injury’s — the injury’s Healing Rate + 1.

Instead of the normal affliction reaction, an infection uses this table:

While a character carries any active infection, all of their Injury Healing Tests are suspended until every infection has been defeated.

See also

• Healing Test — Healing Base and Healing Rate, and the recovery of ordinary injuries.
• Trauma — the conditions an affliction can leave behind.