Well, the first thought is Sticky. That's anyone who touches a victim, for +1/2. That's already nasty enough. If you make it "anyone within 2 meters" you've got something super-infectious. I'd consider adding extra time for activation and even 14- activation. And of course there's the obvious Not Vs the right knds of life support.
How nasty you want this to be, will impact those points...what's the range for it to spread from A to B? What's the probability B will be infected? How long does it take for B to become contagious? How long after infection before the onset of the damage? How long after infection before the infection starts showing? How much contact is required for A to transmit to B...airborne might require, say, a full turn, casual contact like a handshake, soft tissues contact like a kiss (herpes), fluids. I'm assuming airborne, but say A is infected and doesn't yet know it. He's a jogger. He passes by B, a biker in the bike lane next to the running path. Total time they'd be within 4 meters of each other is maybe a second. Does that do it?
Low: Hiram Lowman, halfwit son of Bertram Lowman, owner and master of the Blue Goose. Hiram knows how to pour beer, collect pitchers, and swab floors. On a good day, he can figure out how to cock the crossbow hanging on the peg behind the bar. And, he can manhandle two full kegs from the cellar up to the taproom all by himself. But he won't take money and he won't make change, sending anyone with cash to his younger brother Brent, who's half his weight and thrice his brains. Don't try hitting Hiram in the head; there's nothing in there to hurt.
Middle: Jarod Tanner, graveyard shift barkeep at the Broken Axle Gulch. A biker bar outside of Pueblo, Colorado, the Gulch is a rough place, where the beer and the bourbon are plentiful and easy to come by, though the law and quiet aren't. He won't sell you weed, but for a two-buck tip he'll direct you to someone with high-quality goods out in the parking lot who will. His left hand and half his forearm aren't his, being an early-generation prosthesis with a little voluntary gripping and nothing in the way of nerve endings that he earned on a shortened tour outside of Peshawar. What is his is the small collection of blades jammed into a board on the wall next to the cracked mirror behind the bar, every one of which had earlier ended up point-first in that left hand when he had to escort a client out of the joint before things got really violent. He's got a good head for numbers, and a good sense for who's worth trusting and who isn't, and so if you hand him a fifty once a week and don't make more than your share of trouble, he likely won't ask for the twenty bucks of overage when you hand him the next fifty. A lot of the police don't like him; most of the Gulch's clientele does; and in his nine years there he's never had to draw the shotgun that lives under the register. So four nights a week from nine until closing he's the main man on the premises.
High: On the eastern shore of the Schlachtsee ("Slaughter Lake") in Berlin is a posh old hotel built in the 1880s, shortly after the first streetcars were extended out into the forested districts on the western periphery of the city. Catering not to the richest segment of the population but those who aspire to be and whose means and ambitions allow them to make it so, the hotel was modernized after World War 2 into a safer, updated edition of the large and exquisite Victorian hotel it originally was intended to be. From its upper storeys is a view over the lake, and in summer the sunsets are quite sublime.
Like many hotels of that era, there are several rooms on the premises where guests can get food and drink, in any of a number of different atmospheres, with different kinds of entertainment available. While the Herzoginsalon ("Duchess's Parlor") isn't the finest of these, it is the one with the most intimate atmosphere. Her Excellency Marie, apparently ageless, runs the place by herself (albeit with a large and excellently appointed staff). The menus are superlative; the wines are the best; the comforts are many-layered and delightfully complimentary. Quite pricey, but there's never been a dissatisfied patron. The finest champagne; the most glorious delicacies; unmatched pastries and meals; and in the rooms of the floor below, restful, dreamless sleep in immaculate featherbeds.
Her Excellency Marie, though ... *is* ageless. Exactly what sort of unnatural entity she is is unknown to any mortal. She has always been there. Her staff come and go, never admitting to any doubts about their employer, even though they will in an incautious moment let it drop that their great-great-grandmama remembered standing at Marie's elbow when a company of Prussian cadets marched by on their way to the Palace en route to the naval intervention against Venzuela in 1902. Marie's services are cataloged nowhere, their prices are admittedly high but reasonable for the quality, and limited only by the patron's ability to pay. The price need not be merely money.
One overbearing minister's wife was entertained for a fortnight at the Salon, and she admitted to having had the time of her life there, before she dropped dead at the breakfast table three days after returning home. Oddly, no one seems to have noticed that her three dogs and two daughters never came back home from the hotel. A similar end met an industrialist, whose competitor entertained him in the Herzonginsalon for five days while trying unsuccessfully to cajole him into selling out; his heirs were willing to accept the other's generous offer. A gang of Brown Shirts simply vanished after going through the front gate of the hotel in 1935; the Nazis subsequently merely stayed clear of the place, and as the War ground to its end the British and American bombs never fell too close. When the last battle came, a Red Army colonel was received by the hotel staff and promptly gave orders to stay entirely outside the hedge surrounding the grounds. The occupying Americans acknowledged the hotel's presence but never interfered with it, though it was only after reunification in the 1990s that the old guesthouse returned to the full glory it had seen before the world exploded in 1914. And once again, the richest folk in Germany come to the hotel on the Schlachtsee and have their comfort seen to by Her Excellency Marie.
Her Excellency Marie has seen it all, there on the western fringe of Berlin.
Is she a vampire? It seems not, since she's appeared in broad daylight in the gardens countless times. Is she a devil? Is she something else? A few have wondered. They continue to wonder as long as they stay outside the hedge. Those that go in, intending to find out ... come out changed, and their friends no longer quite recognize them after they return.
It seems wisest not to interfere with the hotelier on the edge of Slaughter Lake.
Next Up: Naval conflict in the Gulf of Mexico, American Civil War.
whitekeys reacted to unclevlad in Building the perfect disease
whitekeys got a reaction from Pariah in NGD Scenes from a Hat
