On the shores of the northern sea, at the confluence of the roads which travel east and west, sits Humakuyun, last stop before the wilderness. While infamous for its dreaded assassins, Humakuyun-on-the-sea is also widely loved for its lively parties and its beloved hospital. The Grand Hospital of Humakuyun is a veritable pilgrimage site for doctors, alchemists, and nurses, and a regular destination for adventurers. Whether you have been subjected to a horrible folding curse, been bitten by a venomous snake, or contracted the red death, the nurses of the Grand Hospital will accept you with wide open arms (though they might not hug you, depending on how leaky your buboes are).
The Grand Hospital is the only place in the east where you can get real medical attention. You might be able to rest and recuperate in other places, sure, but only at the Grand Hospital will most maladies be addressed. The building is kept completely clear of any foul odors (seeing as, of course, plague is spread through miasma), fastidiously cleaned of any stinky filth by a veritable army of servants clad in distinct green robes. When resting and recuperating at the Grand Hospital, you receive a +1 hp per day bonus to daily healing, and have no risk of contracting disease or being possessed by an unclean spirit. Resting and recuperating in most other environments brings with it associated risks. Injury makes oneself more susceptible to intrusion by unclean spirit or plague.
Resting and recuperating in any spiritually unclean or filthy location (graveyard, sewer, pigsty, deep underground, building built atop any unclean location) prompts a save vs. ritual uncleanliness (save vs. death) or you are taken by an unclean spirit or disease. Until the disease or spirit is purged from your body, you cannot heal anymore. Being subjected to a curse also makes you susceptible to unclean spirits. Roll on the table below to determine the nature of the possession.
1d8 Unclean Spirits and Diseases
1: Spasmodic Spirit: When viewed with eyes unclouded appears as a stiff many-legged thing. Causes random uncontrollable spasms. When this spirit possesses you, roll 1d20; any time you roll the number produced, you go into uncontrollable spasms, unable to act.
2: Dysentery: Diarrhea! Slower movement and faster fatigue; dehydration requiring double the water, rest, rations. Disadvantage on saving throws against disease.
3: Heavy Shoulders Spirit: When viewed with eyes unclouded appears as a wide-eyed long-trunked ape-thing sitting upon the victim's shoulders. Move encumbrance status up one step: from unencumbered to encumbered, from encumbered to heavily encumbered, from heavily encumbered to immobile.
4: Sweating Sickness: Intense fevers and sweats. Too uncomfortable to wear armors or thick clothes. Inability to focus on anything, no attack bonuses and must roll for any spells cast.
5: Stolen Sight Spirit: When viewed with eyes unclouded appears as a dark black glistening insectile thing clinging to the victim's face. Forces the victim to see a horrible dream at all times, unable to stop it by closing their eyes and unable to see their surroundings.
6: Consumption: Difficulty breathing, coughing up blood, rapid weight loss. Steady loss of 1 point of STR and CON every week, and unable to run (automatically captured if in a chase).
7: Pitiful Wrath Spirit: When viewed with eyes unclouded appears as a small crawling mammal-thing, two humanlike faces on either end of its body. Every so often, the victim makes a reaction roll to determine their current emotional state, with low results as more negative emotions and higher results as more positive emotions.
8: The Red Death: Horrible red buboes leaking pus and blood. Physical frailty, difficulty breathing, bleeding from eyes, eventual bleeding in lungs. To be detailed in a further dedicated post.
Intense disease and curses take time to heal even at the Grand Hospital. Constant attention, priestly cleansing rituals, wafting of sweet smelling plants, exorcisms, sacrifices, application of poultices or imbibing of potions all take days, weeks, months. There is a base number of weeks that different levels of plague or curse take to heal (1 week for very basic diseases such as the sweating sickness (influenza), 3 for more involved afflictions, 6 for certain curses, 12 for the worst plagues and curses), and every week after that span of time, the patient makes a saving throw vs. death, recovering more or less fully on a success.
The nurses and doctor-savants and alchemists of the Grand Hospital are always in need of something. Since they expect to see an adventurer again in the future anyway, they often ask new arrivals to go retrieve some item, manuscript, herb, or piece of information for them.
1d12 Things the Nurses Want You to Do
1: Go to the Hinterbog in the east and retrieve the skin of a bright yellow frog; you will know it by the shape of the spots on its back, forming a six-pointed star. Do not lick them! They will make your tongue swell up.
2: Go to the Wall of the Conquering King and ask the Wallmasters how they deal with the thin air in the mountains.
3: Go into the Holy Cedar Forest and snatch up a mossling, just one... and be sure to figure out how to not catch the mosslings' ire, at least not on yourself. How you do that is up to you.
4: Go to Temple Town and retrieve the toes of mummy-saints. Don't take more than one toe from each mummy-saint! We don't want to anger our forefathers... nor the high priests of the fire temple.
5: Go to the Great Desert to the south and bring us a baby sandworm. Please keep it alive, if you bring us a dead one we won't pay you. How you keep it alive for the hundreds of miles between the city and the homes of the sandworms is for you to figure out.
6: There is a snake-vampire living in a copse of evergreens to the east. Go get cursed by him, and come back for us to examine the effects and determine a cure. Do not kill the vampire, that might ruin our findings.
7: Travel to the edge of the satrapy of Numistan, where the red-frond flowers grow. Harvest their stamens and bring them back to Humakuyun, but be sure to keep them out of the sun.
8: Consume this entire barrel of lizards all by yourself and go about your normal business for a week and then report back.
9: Visit the distant leper colony on the edge of Great Desert and remove all your clothes except for this amulet we will provide. Report back on what happens.
10: Travel to the rotting corpse of the slain giant in the territory of the client king to the northeast and harvest part of his liver. We have heard it grows back unceasingly and want to understand it.
11: Go into the Land of Darkness, cross the northern sea if you must, and return with as many individual pine needles as you can. Ideally store them in animal skins.
12: Drink nothing but this mixture of silver and water and sleep in a circle of salt for one month. Report back to us every week.
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