The Dance of The Feeble

Sebbywafers

Banned
(note that this is my first TL, so if I've messed up a few small AH.com quirks already please forgive me)
(the next post will put this narrative into context)

28th of August, 1407
Free Imperial City of Aachen, Holy Roman Empire


Robin was dying, slowly and painfully.

The nine year-old laid upon his bed- a large hessian sack filled with bundles of straw that gave the sack a rough rectangle shape. The bag was maybe a third larger than the straw it held- because of this, the edges of the sack were tucked under the bed itself so they wouldn't spread onto the floor and create a mess. There were two layers of blanket, made of a thicker hessian fabric quite obviously and roughly cut from another sack. Robin's bed was in the far corner of the room, which had stone brick walls, a moist, splintery wooden floor and a single window (as much as a hole in the wall could be called a window, anyway). More beds and drawers for personal belongings were also in the room, albeit distanced from the boy's. A lone hen, her body swollen from egg production, paced across the floor quietly and pecked at the decaying floor boards. This was the home of a very poor German family, people not far above beggars on the scale of things. Even in a city as prosperous as Aachen, where Emperors came to be crowned and merchants came to trade the fertile fruits of the Rhinelander soil, there would always be an underclass of people like these. They lived short, filthy lives generally.

Two younger girls, maybe a year or two apart in age, and a mother who realistically could only have been in her mid-twenties at most, looked at the child with despair from a distance of a few metres. The mother herself was in particularly bad condition- she had massive bags under her eyes and was basically covered in dirt. Her ragged clothes made her an almost certain haven for body louse, and her greasy blonde hair jutted out in all directions like a mop. Robin's father was nowhere to be found- he had vanished earlier in the morning, like he did on some days before coming back in the late afternoon. It wasn't a work day, either, so it was expected he was out drinking or wooing women several mud-paved streets down. He only worked three afternoons a week loading crates and sacks of goods atop wagons entering and leaving Aachen's walls, and expectably he was payed an extremely meager salary for it. However, with his laziness and social standing, it was unlikely any other self-respecting entrepreneur would hire him for much, and the life of a beggar was not one suited to feeding a wife and three children.

Even outside the dimly-lit room, things were dirty. While obviously much of the city was arguably the gem of the Rhineland, Robin's place of living was less blessed by fate- the air was stuffy, and the smell of feces and decomposition permeated it at all times (although nobody would be able to tell anymore). Human waste was emptied from crowded story buildings onto the mud roads in buckets, and the godforsaken inhabitants of this place could do little more than pray rain would wash the piles of the stuff off of their mud-paved roads. People would generally drink fermented beverages, usually brewed in their own homes, although if desperate enough there was a well at the street corner just down from where Robin's home was. If you got out to the well at midday, you'd see a line of people with their buckets going to get some water. The smartest would find wood in their dwellings to burn and thus boil the water with, but even that level of sanitation wasn't universal by any means. Hell, children here would throw scraps to pigs that had made a living in the streets like feral dogs would elsewhere- the place was a breeding ground for filth and disease.

However, people in this area tended not to realise that their poor sanitation caused illness. The local catholic preist, a cold, embittered old man with beady eyes and a bug-like aura of sorts, had claimed many ill people, Robin included, were being punished by god for their sins. Robin's father was generally absenteering when it was time for church on Sunday, so it did make sense for god to punish the family by giving Robin a grave illness. Robin himself had questioned the preist's reasoning in his head, but eventually pulled his head in mentally and realised the truth.

Regardless of it being divine punishment, Robin's disease was suffering of the highest order. He had suffered from uncontrollable bursts of diarrhea maybe every half an hour, a constant fever and, a few days after the initial infection, a very bad case of what seemed to be the flu. His disease had been a living hell, and now Robin- an emaciated, pale, quivering shadow of the playful child he had been just a week and a half ago, could do little more than sit there and wait. His speech was hoarse, whiny and exhausted, and consisted of little more than an "I love you" every few minutes to break the tension.

His mother and sisters had been watching him for several hours now. Robin was very much aware he was going to die soon, although he didn't really have a good understanding of what death was. A pair of tears streamed down his cheeks, and his mother came closer. She brushed a fringe of dirty blonde hair from his forehead and stroked his forehead with her thumb gently, her teary eyes staring into his. "Will I go to heaven, mother?", he asked weakly. This question was too much for the woman- she burst into tears. The two young daughters, lacking in understanding but well-versed in empathy, began crying as well. "Yes, son", his mother said between tears ,"You have been a good person in this life, you will have no problem."

Robin's eyes closed. He was still shedding tears, but he felt something- a great exhaustion, like his life was going to end. He replied to his mother's speech with his eyes closed still, but his grip on reality grew fainter and fainter over the course of five minutes. Eventually he let out a great breath, and all was forgotten.

Robin was dead. His mother picked up his limp body by the shoulders and shook him violently, screaming and crying. She then stopped, and turned away to face the mouldy stone wall of her room. It was over, she thought, it was over. But it most definitely wasn't over, it was just the beginning...
 

Sebbywafers

Banned
From Dr. Beurtrande Auvray's "A Concise Record of Epidemics in Europe During the Second Millenia" (l'édition de l'Université d'Aix, Year of Our Lord 1987):

One of the best known and deadliest of all plagues in the late middle ages, and probably in the entire history of Europe, was the outbreak of the beggar's plague in the early fifteenth century.

The beggar's plague is scientifically referred to as the Pollinctorvirus ("Pollinctor" being Latin for "Undertaker"), and is in the genus Cardiovirus. Pollinctorvirus shares its genus with Cardiovirus A and Cardiovirus B, which have one and four distinct serotypes respectively. All Cardioviruses only infect vertebrates. The replication process of Pollinctorvirus is cytoplasmic. It enters its host cell by attatchment of the virus to host receptors, which mediates endocytosis. Replication of Pollinctorvirus follows the positive-stranded RNA virus replication model. Positive-stranded RNA virus transcription, the method of transcription Pollinctorvirus uses, takes place via -1 ribosomal frameshifting, viral initiation and rimosomal skipping. The virus exits its host cell by viroporins or, when this means has been exhausted, simply breaking the cell wall and leaving (this process is referred to as lysis).

The beggar's plague's transmission relies on its hosts, which are always vertabrates, especially domesticated hoofed animals, galliformes and of course humans. The virus can be transmitted from host to host through body fluids such as stool, saliva, blood and urine, but can also survive in unclean water for days on end. Because of this, it is often ingested via drinking contaminated water, where it then enters the blood vessels through the small intestine. The Beggar's Plague's antigen mimics the self-antigen of neutrophils, the most common type of white blood cell (in the average adult human, 62% of white blood cells will be neutrophils). This causes the immune system to release chemicals and cells that kill neutrophils in massive numbers, severely compromising the immune system. In squalid areas, where the plague thrives, it is common for people to become infected with several other diseases while infected with beggar's plague. Beggar's plague also infests the intestine that it passes through, causing diarrhea (occasionally with blood, in a similar manner to dystentery) for the duration of the infection. High fevers are universal. Without treatment, a victim is not expected to survive more than two weeks with the disease, and due to the disease's autoimmune effects the few survivors tend to end up immunocompromised.

The disease was first recorded to have occurred in Aachen, some time in 1408. A scroll recently found in the city, most likely written towards the governor of the city, confirms that it is the beggar's plague. It reports "Oh so many peoples in the poorer suburbs suffering from a strange disease" and "a wave of death, as if the wrath of god himself had been directed at the city". It then goes on to describe symptoms exactly the same as beggar's plague, and not other common diseases at the time like anthrax and the bubonic plague.

Because Aachen was a merchant city, the beggar's plague easily spread to other cities in the Rhineland soon afterwards through rats and livestock whose droppings ultimately contaminated local water supplies. By the 1420s, various writings by scholars, historians and monks tell of the beggar's plague sweeping through Western Europe, although none seem to know how it spread. Various people were blamed for the disease, most commonly Jews and Beggars (this, through the German word "bettlerpest" (or beggar illness) is how the beggar's plague got its most common name). In the 1450s, people in Southeast England were beginning to boil water to decontaminate it, while refugees from Germany were fleeing and spreading the disease into Eastern Europe.

By the end of the 15th century, just under half of Europe's population had been killed by the disease, with many large towns especially in the western part of the continent completely abandoned. Rural areas were affected less by the disease, but people fleeing from urban areas caused massive social upheaval and starvation across Europe. The disease also broke out in the Middle East and India, but outbreaks were much better-controlled there with the exclusion of the Anatolian Peninsula.
 
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Yeouch. Massive die off ala Black Death with a side of the survivors being receptive to future infections.

The coming incursions of nomads and Turkish tribes may have factors on how Europe down the road may be.
 
Yeouch. Massive die off ala Black Death with a side of the survivors being receptive to future infections.

Not only that, but in historic terms, it's coming virtually on top of the Black Death. There was already a lot of apocalyptic thinking in 14th-century Europe due to the bubonic plague and the onset of the Little Ice Age - how much more will there be with the even more devastating successor plague of TTL, and how will this affect the Renaissance in Central Europe?

For that matter, is Gutenberg a victim? He'd be nine or ten years old at this point, and although he came from an upper-class family, that would be a very uncertain protection.
 
Good points on the double whammy.

Will the beggers plague get to North Africa? How much of Muslim Spain get hit?

Could it make its way all the way to China?
 

Sebbywafers

Banned
For that matter, is Gutenberg a victim? He'd be nine or ten years old at this point, and although he came from an upper-class family, that would be a very uncertain protection.
His family seems well-off, so unless he's unlucky he'll probably make it.
But by the time he's old enough to make the press like in OTL Europe's the entire continent's probably going to be in oshit mode, so expect someone else to invent it or him to invent it and not spread very far.
 

Sebbywafers

Banned
Good points on the double whammy.

Will the beggers plague get to North Africa? How much of Muslim Spain get hit?

Could it make its way all the way to China?
Yeah, but I don't know how fast. I mean, this thing spreads through animal fluids and the water they contaminate and not flees like the black death, so the spread across the mountains of afghanistan and such to China's probably going to be slow. I can expect a decent outbreak there, but nothing cataclysmic.
 

Sebbywafers

Banned
4th of April, 1408
Aachen Cathedral, Free Imperial City of Aachen, Holy Roman Empire.


A single candle's light lit up the room. It was a cosy dwelling, nested within the foundations of a short, two-story stone building composed of rooms like this one. The building itself was small and dull-coloured, being dwarfed in both size and attractiveness by all of its neighbours, especially the main chapel, which had been the crowning site of kings and emperors since Charlemagne. The Chapel site was in the centre of Aachen, and many from nearby neighbourhoods would congregate in the chapel every Sunday. Massive amounts of pilgrims also came to the city. However, when it wasn't the day of sabbath and prayer, the most numerous people in the chapel were monks. Many of them were small, beetle-like men with little stout bodies that scurried across the chapel to and fro. They grew a vegetable garden for their own use, maintained the many relics housed in the buildings and kept the place in a tidy, presentable condition for all the weary pilgrims and regular churchgoers that would visit every Sunday.

The small, dull building housed almost exclusively monks- occasionally, a weary traveler would be given a spare room or even allowed to share with a particularly generous monk, but generally only monks were in the building and as a result it was a humble, quiet place. You'd hear the hastened clip clop of black sandals every now and again as a random one of them scurried down the dim hallway, but that was about it.

It was very late in the night, and frost was building up upon the window. The light of the candle bounced off it with a sort of slightly undulating, but nevertheless constant shine. Otto of Passau, a respected monk who had spent his early life in Flanders, sat at the desk. He was very old, but not frail- his limbs and face were covered with saggy wrinkles (particularly his cheeks, which drooped almost comically as if he were a bulldog) and he had a stout, thick form. His gait was an awkward waddle of sorts, but he did not need a walking stick like most other old men whose bodies had been tired by the rigours of youth. Otto wore his hair in tonsure while having clearly balded at the front. He had previously written many texts that the church had stored for their quality- his proudest work was his detailed description of the nature of god and man among other theological subjects that he had finished in 386, dedicated to all friends of God, clerical and lay, male and female. Otto would often stay up writing due to the difficulty he had sleeping, and while it would often take him many tries to get something good out on paper when he did manage to do so he could make masterpieces.

Otto, however, was not writing on theological matters as he usually would be. Last week, he'd seen some disturbing things around town, namely illnesses. He had been out on a walk to appreciate the densely-populated streets of Aachen, and had that noticed ill people had been left to die in the streets. Their symptoms varied- some vomited, some had thrush in their mouths and on their skin, some would have random boils on their arms and legs- but all of them would be pale, unable to control their bowels and very weak. Locals in affected neighbourhoods would call the plague "Bettlerpest", or beggar's plague. Funnily enough, almost all of the homeless beggars had caught the plague before anyone else as the winter snows melted and the streets became coated in human filth once more.

Otto, as a concerned citizen of the Free Imperial City, would be writing to the Count of Aachen, who he hoped would at least attempt to fix the problem. However, while his contribution would alert the Count, he felt that the plague was still going to rip through the city for several months more, and he could do little more than pray for the souls of those innocents who had been taken by the disease.

After a long night of writing the account of the disease and the querry for help, Otto decided to put the script into his drawer and move towards his bed, where he would pray before getting a restless night of sleep.
 
Thanks for the update. Interesting events still unfolding in Aachen. I wonder if Otto will fall victim to the plague before he can write his letter to the Count.
 
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