3900 Pandemic

The **3900 Pandemic** (Ardeschen: Spoed Draanruegoe-Treichar Meiandalxon, Spodran Tremedalxon/Spodran 3900, Spod Tremedax, Spodremax) was a great pandemic that struck Jerde at the end of the Sixteenth Age.

The plague or virus was known as "Ae-Bachla-97"

## Symptoms

Symptoms to this plague included:

* vomiting blood
* black blood
* black veins
* difficulty breathing
* (in some variants) sores, lesions, swellings and pus
* coughing

Initially, the plague had no symptoms, although victims started coughing within 3 days. The plague had three variants, based on the runes of the Freyrgardian alphabet: Fes (from Palguenia), Uri (from western Yawanda), and Dornir (Kymisaina of Eibeq, a spaceport). In Variants Uri and Dornir, victims began to cough within one day. Dornir was considered the worst of the variants, as it caused the skin to develop sores.

There was a higher chance to develop worse symptoms from the plague, and they appear within two more days after coughing.

### The Unnecessary Harvest

In the year 4245 16A (3900), the film actress Andrestar Raikavoron unknowingly became the first patient after eating an infected buffalo at a dinner party. Even though she was saved by top-notch medicine from a horrific death, her neighbours and her family cursed her and banished her as the "start of the Pandemic". In fact, she became the most hated person in the world for being the first patient, along with all the guests in her dinner party. After a life of fame turned into a twilight of torment, she died alone in a broken house.

It was later revealed after investigations that the buffalo was infected by a mutated virus designed by a Terran. His writings mentioned that he wanted revenge on all Jerdiskar for their hatred of his people, and he planned to exterminate all Jerdiskar and replace them with his own peoples, ruled under a militaristic, hedonistic world state. His dream came to a short end when he and most of the Terrans were killed by the same plague that he unleashed, as they lacked the mutations that made Jerdiskar more resistant to illness.

The virus brought an end to the Denlotia, the social order that dominated the world. Future historians claimed that its mutations, which made people more orderly at the expense of creativity, nonconformism, and rebellion, weakened human immunity to its parasites. When its enemies tried to wage war, they instead spread the virus.

Throughout the world, the Denlotian governments and their enemies implemented the Three Steps: keeping a distance, wearing a mask, and lockdowns. As it disrupted daily life for their peoples, and it looked too tyrannical, some countries refused to use the Three Steps. Several vaccines were developed in seven countries, and due to a rising death toll from the plague, many governments made it mandatory. This led to attempts by certain groups to fight back, mostly from traditionalist-minded rebels. Many countries' peoples have rejected the rebels and condemned them, while some of those rebels fled to the anti-Three Steps nations, who became into the Kercholen League. The Kercholen League was named after the medical system they used, which implemented many risky and bizarre medicines. Many of its members were enemies of the Denlotia, and some of their members' secession from the Denlotia led to the global order's disbandment as countries scrambled to heal their own peoples.

Some rebels who broke away from the Denlotia decided to create cults. Influenced by distorted, exaggerated depictions of Terran religions and atheist cultures, the war cults either slaughtered people to frighten them, or simply persecuted anyone suspected of spirituality or religious ritual. Although their main purpose was not to impose their beliefs, but mainly to slaughter the Denlotia and throw the world into chaos in the name of hate, they eventually fought among each other and were slaughtered by the survivors.

One of those cults emerged at northern Palguenia as the successors of the monotheist religions who waged war against the nation to forcibly convert it. They did so mainly to get revenge against the Denlotia, murdering as many Denlotians for their own amusement. However, their crude handling of their bioweapons caused it to evolve to a deadlier strain, causing most of their members to melt into puddles of acid in a single night. Most of their prisoners, who happened to be immune, either brought a few remaining church soldiers to be punished and killed by the survivors as they escaped, or simply slaughtered their captors.

It was because of the post-Denlotian Terran cults that became why many of the surviving nations of the Pandemic made polytheism mandatory. That eventually led to the formation of Terran warbands, culminating with them forming a bulk of the ruinous hordes of the Reorganisation War.

### Pandemic Purge

In the First Vozonid Empire, people suspected of spreading the disease were arrested and tortured, influenced by a Gauvajut belief that such irresponsible and desperate people would be doomed to be tormented in Hell for indirectly causing death. Locals even murdered people who were accused of starting on outbreak, and other accused "plague-starters" were brought forward and executed if they were suspected of causing people to die from the disease. People that *already* had the disease, but who did not go and spread it to others, were cared for and protected as "victims" of the spreaders.

The air was filled with the screams and howls of hundreds of people - rich, poor, young, old, who were accused of spreading the virus as they were brought to be slaughtered. Sometimes, the people whom they infected were given a chance to execute the "spreaders" in whatever brutal methods to express their hatred.

In other countries, the hatred of the disease and its resulting deaths and poverty was so strong, that anyone accused to bringing the disease to their country, or simply spreading it, was sentenced to death or killed by mobs if at least one person died from the disease. Their destructive attitude was fuelled by the Denlotian hatred of the ruin of the Third World War, the Fifty-Six Tyrants' omnicides and cults, and their hatred of all disasters and incoveniences. Roughly five million and seven hundred people were executed for supposedly spreading the plague, mostly out of ignorance and their own stupidity. They also murdered anyone accused of saying anything good about the disease, its slaughter of humanity, or even praising inflation, justifying the plague as "Nature is Healing", or the few hundred fanatics who used bioweapons to exterminate more people for a fanatical form of environmentalism. Politicians who were accused of prolonging the virus for the sake of money, power, or social order were turned over by their guards to angry mobs, who immediately burned them or cut them to pieces.

### The Third Red Front

In 4248 16A, the communist state of Baniorel developed a cure for the plague, and it freely gave its finished product to all countries. It was the chief member of the Second Red Front, a league of communist states that opposed the Denlotia, denouncing its form of socialism as corrupt. Although there was public outcry over the Bantortel government possibly expecting everyone to convert to communism to thank it for saving mankind, the rest of the world nonetheless used the cure to quickly end the plague within two years. This caused more people to seek the Second Red Front as the new Denlotia, their solution to quickly end every social ill in society.

Norlen, another country near Baniorel, created an improved version that quickly eliminated the plague's cells. Its leader refused to give the cure to Baniorel's authorities, insisting that it should only be given to friendly countries, so when the world begs for the cure its peoples will have no other choice but to convert to the Red Front, hastening their envisioned world socialist state. The Baniorelian leader sent an army to immediately seize power and take the cure to be reproduced; but due to the leader of Norlen's comments, other countries kept a distance away from the Red Front and many of its supporters.

The leader of Baniorel, Premier Czemialsko, made a speech to reassure the rest of the world that the Second Red Front had no intention to take over the world, even though it wanted to see it completely converted to socialism as an idealistic scenario. Without the possibility of military support for their attempted coups and wars, the wave of supporters began waging wars. Of these attempted coups, only thirty-three succeeded and joined the Red Front, as the rest of the world repelled the pro-Red Front wars. Three years after the Red Front Wars, thirty-three states created their own Third Red Front as their rebellion against the Second Red Front, as they sought to quickly create their socialist world state. They believed that peace with unbelievers would never be possible, but that they must take over the world to ensure total equality and utopia; and out of fear of the corporations that caused the Third World War.

In 4253 16A, someone created a serum that greatly improved human health. Desperate for a way to prevent and destroy any plagues from existing, most of the world took the serum, known simply as the Uplifting. Even the Third and Second Red Fronts used the serum too, causing a ceasefire that lasted for almost a decade. With the rise of the socialist dictatorship of Klesha, the Third Red Front immediately joined Klesha's empire.

## Medical standards

In the Sixteenth Age, three medical standards were used by the world: Hjalmarin, Kercholen, and Krasnoi. Before the Denlotia, the Hjalmarin and the Krasnoi standards were slowly being integrated and fused, allowing medical standards to become more advanced.

### Hjalmarin

The Hjalmarin standard was the standard used in most countries on Jerde. It was safer and more stable than the Kercholen standard, but not very effective.

Although it managed to improve people's health across the world, by the time the plague struck, it was too late. Having been stagnated since the fusion with the Hjalmarin standard, the scientists in the People's Republic of Bandortel developed their own version of the Krasnoi standard, the Kraśnej.

### Kercholen

The Kercholen standard was notorious for being more reckless and risky than the Hjalmarin standard.

Under this standard, face masks were banned except in more visible toxins. All vaccinations were banned under the Kercholen standard, as it was considered a symbol of the hated Denlotia order.

The advocates of this standard supported "natural immunity" to eliminate every disease - if a person still dies, then they say "too bad". For medical research, they not only rely on their own formal laboratories, but they also create their own treatments at home, even if their treatments had nothing to do with medicine.

The Kercholen standard also laid the foundations to genetic altering and mutation, even as thousands of people were killed in failed attempts.

### Krasnoi

The Krasnoi was the most advanced of the three standards. It was through the Krasnoi that the cure to the Spodremax plague was found, although it was not very successful.

It was developed again in Baniorel, the centre of the Second Red Front. Although the Red Front shared the finished product, one of its members developed an improved version of the Krasnoi cure, but only shared it to nations that were willing to convert to its form of communism. This errant member, the Socialist Republic of Norlen, was then invaded by the Baniorelian government to force its leaders to give the improved cure.

## Legacy

The people of the world had a burning hatred of the disease, as their attitudes were shaped by the Denlotian aversion to suffering. In such views, suffering does exist, but instead of running away from it or accepting it and killing one's self, the ideal person must destroy the cause of suffering to ensure it never rises again. Such was their hate that everyone blamed for the virus - not civilians from the alleged source, but people who spread, glorified, or prolonged the plague - were slaughtered.

When only a single person in Ardesch was left with the virus, before he was healed, he was murdered by his angry brother, who was then celebrated as a hero for "killing" the virus and saving humanity. Luckily for the murderer, the infected brother was also on death row, accused of ignorantly infecting a hundred people over a birthday party, so he was rewarded by the government for such a cruel act.

When the plague was finally extinct, the whole world launched an hour of mourning. Black pillars were raised everywhere for all the victims of the plague, and rituals were cast that cursed every person, deity, and demon supposedly responsible for the plague to an eternity in the darkest depths of Hell.

The Terrans were blamed for the plague over the hatred by one man from their fanatical people, and were mostly exiled from many countries or killed on sight. As for Ardesch, the epicentre of the plague, it did its best to provide medicine and vaccines to stop the plague from totally exterminating humanity. But after the death of the last patient, it was immediately isolated from the rest of the world, and many Ardeschens were forced to return to their homeland. During the plague, hundreds of Ardeschen men, women, and children were tortured and killed, as they were blamed for the world wars and the plague simply for being the first country to be infected.

### The Vozonid "spreaders"

Among the executed "spreaders" in the Vozonid Empire, some of the accused "spreaders" were ignorant elderly people who wanted to see their relatives, and they stubbornly insisted without caring. Others were frivolous youths who did not quarantine themselves. Still more were people who simply got the plague spread it to others without knowing that they were infected.

According to Vozonid mythology, these irresponsible souls were doomed to become spirits of disease, existing only to be slain again as walking incarnations of death. Their realisation that they only existed to kill and never return to their lives again tormented them even more. Their punishment for their ignorance was considered very harsh and excessive, but during that time, it was considered fitting because they bore one of the deadliest diseases in Jerdiskar history.

This belief also appeared in most of the world, as the peoples of the world hated the disease and everything to do with it. In many of their legends, the souls of every guilty culprits who spread the plague were doomed to wander the earth as demons of disease, a fitting punishment for causing so much death, and having so little awareness to stop a great disaster that forever changed the world for the worse. Politicians, company officials, and mere random people across the world who were guilty of justifying the plague or praising it, were also condemned as spirits of illness after many of them were slaughtered by angry mobs.

## Trivia

* The 3900 Pandemic was largely influenced by the Covid-19 pandemic.
	+ Ivermectin advocates on the Internet and the anti-vaxxer protests of July 2021 were the inspiration for the three medical standards of the Sixteenth Age world, especially the dangerous Kercholen standard. The Krasnoi standard was based on pop-culture depictions of Soviet science.
	+ The Vozonid purge against people suspected of spreading the plague, and the hatred against Andrestar Raikavoron for being the "source of the plague", was based on the author's anger against ignorant people in Malaysia and politicians who spread or prolonged the Covid virus, causing the lockdown to last longer and the rest of the country to suffer from more deaths and poverty.
	+ Ardesch's status during the plague - its attempts to stop the plague, and its own people blamed for the plague and hated, even murdered by the hundreds - was inspired by how Chinese people were blamed for the viral pandemic and persecuted. It was also reflected by the Jerdiskar hatred of Terrans and Earthlings, who were also blamed for the pandemic even when many of them did not spread the plague. The author himself is of Chinese descent.

## See also

* Plague of 2020, its Rinnarverse equivalent