Sickness of Sınır Sapı

The sickness of Sınır Sapı is the affliction blamed for a wave of sudden killings in the district of Sınır Sapı in the campaign Zincirsiz ("Unchained"). By the account of the legion's major, Lucius Cardoor, it makes the sufferer see the person before him as a deadly enemy and can turn even innocent people into killers; the Empire, the witch hunters and the elves were looking into it together. Its cause, how it spreads and how it might be cured were not known.¹²

Course

The innkeeper tells that the cases began some six months earlier and that it took three months to see that they followed one pattern; the quarantine had then lasted three months. A week before Jonathan River arrived, he says, a man named Ted killed his wife of twenty-five years and then himself.³⁴

Legionaries told Jonathan that the attacks had grown fewer since the beginning, down to about one a week, and shared what they had heard of the joint inquiry and of word sent outside.⁵

The test

Everyone held at the town was tested by having a mixture sprinkled on the face; Jonathan and Olaf did not look sick by it and were released into the town, though the ban on leaving the district stayed. When Jonathan asked how certain the test was, the elf commander Ignorr explained that the sickness might have different stages and carriers, told of a case whose signs appeared only two weeks later, and gave this as the reason for keeping the border shut.⁶⁷⁸

Explanations

The old elf Ektelyon knows from histories and books of spells that keep a person from telling friend from foe, but had never come upon one that spread like a plague at such speed, and he does not count himself an expert. Jonathan suspected someone was behind it on purpose; the dwarf Fundin suspected the dark elves.⁹¹⁰¹¹

Jonathan found it hard to explain the spoiling of nature and the madness he had seen in people by a sickness of drow making alone. A hooded man he met at night claimed that many of those thought to have fallen sick had in truth been taken. Shown a drawing of a creature, Jonathan was asked whether such a being could bring on the signs by working on the mind; he answered that he was no expert and had never met one, but thought it possible. Psionic powers are held to be something apart from the ordinary use of magic.^12131415

Jonathan came to think that the sudden rage of the attackers might be meddling with the mind rather than sickness. Captain Markus, when questioned, spoke of pressures he could not withstand, things that entered his dreams and his mind.¹⁶¹⁷

Spoiler: The truth behind the sicknessRevealSpoils: Zincirsiz #13 · Say what you have read

The governor admitted to Jonathan that he and a few trusted people had made up the story of a sickness. The being behind the attacks had sent messages before it came, and by presenting them to the authorities as a plague the governor hoped to draw soldiers and witch hunters to the town; by his account neither the elf commander nor Master Otto knew the truth. The violence and losses were real all the same.¹⁸

Jonathan thought the growing number of soldiers and watchful eyes might have slowed the being. It, in turn, threatened that while its search for the drow went on it could enter people's dreams at night and drive them mad.¹⁹²⁰