Red-Spot Fever Tops 4,080 Cases as Disease Council Runs Short of Clerics

Friends, I have bad news and a pot of barley. The bad news first. The Clerics' Disease Council reports 4,080 confirmed cases of red-spot fever across Waterdeep as of this week, 193 of them new since the last count. About one in ten patients needed a bed in a healer's hall. Nu Yarrow has declared a statewide disaster, after 108 cases, 92 of them since midsummer.

The old herbals say red-spot fever is the most contagious thing a body can catch, and that a single sneeze lingers in a room for hours. The actual studies agree, and add that two doses of the pox-vial make a person very hard to infect. Wash your hands, keep your sick little ones home, and check your vial records.

Now the part that makes my ladle shake. The Disease Council has lost around a quarter of its staff since the new reign began, and by some counts nearer a third. Its radiation-spill clerics are gone. Its birth-defect trackers are gone. Meanwhile Royal Minister of Healing Robbert Fennedy the Younger, the Worm-Touched, insists the realm is in fine hands, which is a bold thing to say with a very small number of hands.

Then there is the counting. The Disease Council has quietly started taking its death tallies from the Royal Tally of Healths instead of asking each province's temple. Two confirmed deaths this year, down from three last year, and I am sure that is a lovely number. I also once weighed my prize turnip on a different scale. It came out lighter, friends. It was still a turnip, and it was still rotting.

Hospital stays are up from 244 last year to 414. Children between five and nineteen make up the biggest share of the sick, so if somebody in your lane has a rash and a fever, keep them in bed and send word to the healer before you walk them to the market.

I offered the Council my temple's spare cots and a week of broth. They said they would circle back once somebody was hired to circle. Go outside if you are well, Nyx, but please do not touch anything.

This week's recommendation is carrot-ginger soup with a spoonful of lentils, because you will want plenty of rest and something warm that stays down. Make it thick, make it twice, and leave a pot on the stoop for a sick neighbor.

Rest well, friends. — Brother Wendell