>If we had to hae essenses and daimones I'd suggest that mental illness was
>from the sorcery plane, contagious diseases casued by outside agencies from
>the spirit plane and things that are really your own body going wrong of it's
>own accord influenced by daimones (I'm thinking here of everyhting from
>hairloss to cancer - not usually the result of viruses but of chemicals going
>wrong). This still fits in with Malia as a spirit of disease, I think.
Along with many good comments by others.
It seems to me that our RW classification of diseases does not necessarily work well in Glorantha. Things that we treat as similar symptoms with similar causes may have many different causes in Glorantha. Take fevers for an example -- in the RW they have a physiological cause (caused in turn by a multitude of infections, diseases, etc), but in Glorantha you might get a fever because you have been possessed by a fever spirit, attacked by a Fire daimone, cursed by Chaos, etc. A Gloranthan would classify the first as a disease (and summon an Ernaldan or CA healer), the second as a nasty Solar trick (and summon any of a number of anti-Solar specialists (or possibly a Helering or Valindi)), and the third as Chaos (get the Chaos healer or, if you're unlucky, the Uroxi).
Anyway, my point is -- Malia may be the Mother of Disease, and all diseases may be spirits (at least to the Heortlings; I assume that Malkioni, Kralori, Uz, etc. classify things differently), but there may be other "disease-like" effects caused by a range of spirits, daimones, essences, and even the stray physical phenomena. All diseases are spirits may be true, but not all illness are caused by diseases.
Peter Larsen
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