The sickness began in the far off land of Wa, this much is known. But in the world of Portals no land is far off. The Portal Network tied the modern world together in a web of trade and profit. News, discoveries, and goods flowed across the world daily.
Every single day hundreds of portals moved locally produced goods across the Network. Carried by Deryni operators and Human Dedicates providing extra energy these goods were shipped around the world in mere days. Silks from the land of Wa, spices from the Spice islands, rare metals and jewelry, porcelain and laquerware. Anything and everything that could turn a profit was moved along the network, hand to hand, Portal to Portal.
The Portal House in Wa was the first to notice the sickness. The illness began as a cough and runny nose. It affected Human and Deryni alike. A message was sent along the network to ask for some Healers to be sent, local Healers were in short supply. In subsequent days it turned out that the messenger had been ill and each portal house reported an outbreak of illness.
Rhemuth and Dhassa, the end point for the trade route reported illnesses appearing. Local Dedicates and Deryni alike had come down with the illness. Some of the Deryni had travelled locally to their estates and their families were infected. The Human Dedicates were living in neighborhoods close the the portal house. These communities all began to have outbreaks of the disease. Within a week the network was reporting illness all across the network.
The Network began to fail as the Deryni were too sick to use the Portals, or too afraid to travel. Some Portals were closed, with messages implanted on them, warning of major outbreaks at the location.
The Healer Academy on Kerkyr had sent Healers to Wa when requested. Some had returned, bearing the illness. An outbreak there overwhelmed the hospital. The sickness ravaged those suffering from it, making Healing costly and exhausting. The patient was also highly infectious, so in the act of Healing it was quite possible the Healer and supporting Dedicates would get sick as well. The school was soon reduced to a shell of its staff as Healers and Dedicates became patients.
The Network that had carried so many, and earned so much, had brought disaster to every corner of the world. The speed of the Network, the end goal of its construction, proved to be the very thing that caused the destruction of everything it had built.
Very intriguing, MD. A lesson for us? Perhaps we can have too much interconnectedness with too much speed. Something to think about. A little frightening too.
A timely addition.
Timely indeed. I hope the large world of the eleven kingdoms that had been made small so quickly by connected portals does survive this difficult setback. Hopefully new solutions and healing will be discovered and the whole world will come together in peace and not blame the Deryni.
In my RPG experience with Deryni and a Portal Network that was public that spanned not the whole world at the time but the "known world". It wasn't KK's world at all. But Deryni were there, their powers were accepted. And the Portal Network linked everyone together for trade and news just as MD is describing. But the world was more middle ages or renaissance in technology and understanding.
There was an infection of the Portals themselves. It caused madness in the operators of the Portals. A Deryni would make contact to an infected portal. Link to another portal (infect it with the link). And would eventually go mad themselves. It shut down the Portal network after it was discovered to be the cause.
Private portals were guarded with strict secrecy and the sword. Quite fun.
I remember that game, Bynw.
Intriguing story, MerchantDeryni!
Thanks, just a pandemic post. The downside of fast travel is fast spread of infection. Given the state of the world I figured I would throw in a page of what a Portal network could have happen.
As revanne stated, a timely edition. Disturbing and intriguing at the same time.
I like this. I've always been interested in epidemics, and I now wonder how KK's world of Eleven Kingdoms would have reacted to their equivalent of the Black Death of 1348. Would healers be able to treat it successfully? Would they have used portals to escape it?
Thanks for a fun and thoughtful post. :)
If the plague carrying fleas were on the people using the portals to escape an area with plague, then the plague would travel with them. This would result in the Portals carrying and spreading the plague. In the case of something like the Corona virus then if an infected person used a Portal the infected person could spread the virus, just like travellers are spreading Corona virus and the new variant now.
As for Healer's helping cure a viral or bacterial infection. I am not sure. I will have to run off and check with the Deryni MAgic grimoire to see how effective a Healer is on infections.
As I recall, Healers can't actually do much about infectious diseases except to treat symptoms and try to curb the spread, but that also depends on the level of medical/scientific information available to them.
A Healer who trained at St. Neot's, say, contemporary with Rhys, probably wouldn't be able to help much.
But a Healer in, say, the 20th or 21st century, whose education might be something of a hybrid between the Gabrilite curriculum and a modern-day medical-school curriculum, who knows what they might be able to do? Healing appears to involve visualizing the body as whole and healthy, and a Healer who understands health/wholeness on a cellular/molecular level might have quite a few more tools in their toolbox, so to speak.
I agree with DR. The more a healer knows about cellular functions and how the body reacts to and heals itself against infection, the better the Healer would be at encouraging the body to become healed. But I do not think that Healers can stop the infection from occurring and from it spreading. But they should be able to assist a healthy person stave off the worst reactions to the infection. A not- so- healthy person might be much harder to heal. The trouble would be the same as it is today. Also Healers are susceptible to the infection and their just aren't enough Healers for everyone who becomes seriously ill in a pandemic/plaque situation.
In KK's story timelines germ theory is a long ways off. If the 11 Kingdoms follow our own history we are talking centuries before such knowledge is even thought of let alone common place and training. Doctors didn't think washing hands was important until after the beginning of the 20th century. It's all about humors, leaches, and the wrath of God.
ah HA! The Addendum. Well, there is always a solution. It's called KNOWLEDGE, and then the proper practice and use. Often enough, it comes from a source outside the so-called 'network', sometimes from the hidden or reserved knowledge and documents from the past, which comes into the possession of those who realize how it can be used best. Yes, MD, knowledge has a price, too.