How many Ducats will it cost the Queen or one of the nobles to help?
Medicine; the distribution thereof, will help alleviate the worst of the disease's effects.
1 unit distributed in a city will cancel out the growth penalty.
1 unit distributed over the countryside will cancel the income reduction in 15 parcels of land.
According to the goods list, Medicine is a tier two good; the base price is 4 ducats. Yes; it is a pretty pricey affair. Probably best to just leave the peasants to die.
You could also try less reliable methods of curing the disease. Possibly the Sholans would be willing to share their knowledge of medicine with you. Possibly quarantines could be imposed on the infected, the plague doctors brought in and corpses burnt. Unlike using the trade good Medicine, these methods are not guaranteed to succeed.
Also, having both a population growth penalty AND an income reduction seems more like a result for a [1] rather than a two...
On the scale of harvest:
1: People die en masse; urban population decreases, taxes are significantly reduced, even PCs may be at risk.
2: Peasants die; growth is reduced, taxes are reduced.
3: Nothing happens.
4: Life is good; taxes are increased, growth is increased.
5: Life is easy; taxes are significantly increased, population boom in cities, miscellaneous bonuses to various things.
6: I dunno, something crazy. Life is good; taxes are increased, plus some other effects, which will be made up on the fly (and should be an even mix of good and bad)
The world is a harsh place, especially before people think up ideas like hygiene and industrialization. The population of a renaissance city could plummet alarmingly due to war and plagues, only to skyrocket after a wave of immigrants and a few good harvests.
!! It suddenly occurs that Laythe's investments in poorhouses should provide a bonus to population growth.
@Nuke: Yeah, I could use some information on Elv[s. I was originally thinking of making Chrionas one of those for Will, but then I read it's only his family or something? A clarification in the wiki would help tons-and avoid unfortunate misunderstandings. :X
I'm going to have to talk with Micelus and a Gm on if there is more than one line of Elvs.
A single bloodline, which over thousands of years has been so successful at wiping itself out that it had at the beginning of YAK 1 only one surviving descendant, is unlikely.
I think we can safely say that there was more than one line originally created by the wizard-emperor, and that those lines have since split into more lines.
How many more is an excellent question which really depends on what we want Elvs to be like. And I don't know what we want elvs to be like. I have spent an agonising amount of time thinking about it, but I can't decide what makes the most sense. Or any sense, really. Augh, I dunno.