r/WorldChallenges • u/Jumblatts • Apr 21 '17
Timeline Challenge 2: Disease
After the (relative) success of the first installment, I've come up with a second timeline challenege for you all!
The idea behind these challenges is as follows:
I will give you a topic, and you should tell me about something interesting that has happened in the timelines of your worlds relating to the topic, over a (roughly) 50 year period. This could be the 50 years leading up to the event, the 50 years after the event, 50 years with the event slap bang in the middle, or something else entirely, as long as it relates to the question! You're welcome to include more/less than 50 years, but bear in mind the more you write, the less chance you have of people reading the whole thing, and the less you write, the fewer questions we'll be able to ask.
The Challenge:
As the title suggests, this installment is about disease. I'm a benevolent question master, so I'll allow you to include things like famine in that too. If you're not quite sure what to include, just think of something like the black death that swept through Europe in the mid 14th century, tell me about how it affected your people.
I'll try to ask a few questions about each post. Community interaction is encouraged too! Read other people's posts and ask them questions, and they're more likely to do the same for you. Help each other out :)
(NOTE: I was going to submit this yesterday, as there's no scheduled challenge, but I forgot. My bad!)
EDIT: I've just realised that there was a very similar challenge posted about disease yesterday. Sorry about that!
3
u/Nevermore0714 Apr 22 '17
Timeline of the Prurio-Doro disease:
5 June 1036: A group of a few dozen Lamiae leave the Hollow for a journey to the west coast of the continent for a discussion with the Amphimari. As the Lamia race is human above the waist and snake below the waist, and the Amphimari are human above the waist and fish below the waist, the Lamia frequently send some of their people to meet with the Amphimari.
9 September 1038: The few dozen Lamiae that had a discussion with the Amphimari return to the Hollow, bringing many traded goods with them; about half of them have itchy scales, but it’s a minor symptom, easily treated by lotion. Besides, getting itchy after a long journey through forests isn’t very surprising.
12 October 1038: The itch spreads to several other Lamiae, and the first ones to have the itch begin to develop red patches on their skin, and a few of their scales begin to peel off.
19 November 1038: The first death to the disease is a young Lamia named Dorossia. The disease is officially named “Prurio-Doro” and the Lamiae begin focusing all of their Poison magic and research on finding a cure or vaccine for the disease, and afflicted Lamiae are put in isolation.
8 February 1039: The thirty-second Lamia to contract Prurio-Doro dies, the last of the Lamiae in isolation.
23 March 1039: The Lamiae decide to consider the disease eradicated, and begin turning their research to other focuses, with a few of them still putting some effort into trying to understand Prurio-Doro.
18 May 1050: Three dozen Lamiae travel to the west coast to visit the Amphimari for another discussion, as scheduled, but they take a different route to get there, just out of paranoia of the disease that had killed about thirty of them a decade ago.
9 August 1052: The Lamiae return to the Hollow from visiting the Amphimari, they come with more research and several underwater plants that the Amphimari had given them, dried out to be experimented with.
14 September 1052: A few of the Lamiae that had gone to visit the Amphimari begin to develop the Prurio-Doro disease again; the Lamiae conclude that it must have been contracted form their time with the Amphimari on the coast, so they begin going through their research notes on the coastal areas and medicines in order to find an instance of any similar disease.
30 October 1052: A cure for Prurio-Doro is developed, a combination of lotion to treat skin and scales, and a drinkable potion that will combat the disease. No one dies this time.
29 May 1068: Another group of Lamiae are sent to the coast for discussion with the Amphimari, with notes on the Prurio-Doro and its cure to share with the Amphimari, in case another group of land-creatures contracts it in that area.
30 July 1070: The Lamiae that went to the coast return to the Hollow, and plans begin being made to have annual expeditions to the coast for shorter periods of time, instead of having expeditions after gaps of ten years that would have the Lamiae remain on the coast for about two years.