"I .. I'm not sure what caused the disease." Chen said. "There was a peddler came through the village a couple of days before the first person came down sick. By the time the first person died, almost everyone was sick, and those that weren't were hiding, or leaving." His eyes seemed to mist over with tears before he rubbed them away. "I'm not quite sure what happened. The sickness, it got into peoples heads. They saw things that weren't there, shouted and roared. Some couldn't stand up, others ran around til they fell over, burning with fever."<br/><br/>"When we found him, he was wandering in the forest." replied Gan, with a sullen glance around the table. "Old man Fong said he thought he could help him, and we made him a little camp, away from the rest of us. We left him food and drink, and got him herbs, and he took care of him til the fever broke. By then he was weak, couldn't hardly stand. We nursed him back to strength, gave him food and shelter for weeks til he got his strength back."<br/><br/>Chen nodded along to this, though he does not add anything further to the story.<br/><br/>"When he got his strength back, we went to check on his village, and it was gone." He gave a shrug. "Either someone torched it to prevent the plague spreading, or maybe some cookfires got out of hand." He did not seem overly concerned by this. "We took what was still useful, though that wasn't much." He glanced back at Chen. "With nowhere else to go, he swore brotherhood with the rest of us. When it came to persuading some fat merchant to share his wealth, or to send a tax collector away with less than he arrived with, he wasn't so keen."