New and terrible disease

Wasting Sweats

Communicability: 12/8 bite/contact with fluids or contaminated water
Severity:18
Where is the disease found? 

This disease is very very rare outside certain parts of the Volven jungle where it is so endemic, and the local population at least have some resistance to it , it is carried by a variety of animals, particularly rats and small howler monkeys  who are little effected by it beyond making them fearless and extremely aggressive so much so that it is often mistaken for rabies.

It is also communicable between people via bodily fluids and requires very little to be exchanged indeed contact with the increasingly profuse sweats it causes in its early stages are enough  and through contact with water in which victims have contaminated with them. However this is a slightly less contagious this way.

Minor Effect: Shortly after contracting the disease the victim develops a fever which increases over the next five to seven days as the victim becomes reckless and finds it harder and harder to concentrate (-1/10% penalty per day on all skill rolls and intelligence rolls after the first day or so the level of confusion also effects initiative, to hit and defence rolls at half this value and adds double this  to the chances of spell failure.

Major Effect: After five to seven days the victim reaches a crisis and either  lapses into a coma for a further 5-7 days, generally the same time as the disease took to reach this point or the fever breaks and the penalties are reduced to nothing over the same time period as they came on. At this point the victim is no longer infectious. If the victim survives the coma and the disease its self is not fatal but being in a coma in the wrong place will kill by other means they suffer a permanent reduction of 1d3p whole points to Strength Dexterity  Constitution and Looks to a minimum of one as it causes the victim to waste away to almost nothing. 

It can only be treated effectively before the crisis occurs and it is best treated by clerical disease curing magic but good care and herbal remedies will help a bit prior to the crisis after all that they will do is to ensure that the victim survives the coma and does not die form other causes. during the coma. Either way survivors are some what resistant  to a further episode (-2 communicability & severity per previous bout) Natives to the Volven in the parts where it is endemic halve the base severity