7 Horrifying Curses

1-Thinner

A classic curse, the spell renders the cursed one unable to benefit from food no matter how much he or she eats. What at first may seem like a boon, at least to the obese, rapidly becomes a bane as the affected person begins to waste away, even if in the middle of plenty, until he or she ends up as thin and boney as a concentration camp victim and then starves to death. Eating lots of food only slows the inevitable slightly. If not lifted within a month or so, the cursed one will die.

2-Fatter

This curse has the opposite effect, as the cursed one starts to balloon and become clinically obese. It's not quite as deadly as the Thinner curse-as if the target stops eating totally, he or she will slowly slim down, protected by all the excess fat from starvation but still feeling the pangs of hunger. As soon as food is eaten however, pounds will rapidly pile on. There have been cases where this curse was intentionally cast not to harm, but to enable survival during a famine, and lifted when the famine is over. For the weak willed with plenty of food, death follows within two to four weeks, the body so bloated that a heart attack follows.

3-Paranoia Blues

The target of this curse will start to think that everybody is against them, and the longer it lasts, until finally a belief grows that everyone is a would be murderer and that the food and drink is poisoned. If the cursed one does not lock himself or herself away and die of hunger and thirst, then an involuntary commitment to a lunatic asylum or a deadly fight with other people is likely, as the cursed one lashes out against imagined foes. If the cursed one really does have people out there who wants him or her dead, then the curse will take it's course and grow in strength much faster, even if he or she has bodyguards or is informally hiding or in formal witness protection.

4-Trust Everybody

This curse causes people to slowly become more trusting over a period of days, until they end up thinking everybody is good. This leaves them very vulnerable to everything from being ripped off whilst buying something, to being ambushed and knocked out or murdered, or joining some strange and dangerous religious cult. Women that are cursed in this way become far more likely to be raped. Only a direct physical attack on someone temporarily jolts them out of the curse and lets them fight back, if the first blow is not incapacitating. A more clever foe will befriend the target and get them to join a pyramid scheme or some other scam.

5-Suspicion

This curse causes people, be they law enforcement, customs officers, shopkeepers, or lovers, to deeply suspect the cursed one even when there is no genuine reason for it. Crossing a border means a wait of an hour or more as all the baggage is searched and researched again and again and intrusive questions are asked. If there are police or the equivalent, they will always pick the cursed one for a stop and search. Secret police and spies will mistake him or her for a foe, shopkeepers will think they are being cheated and lovers will think he or she is cheating with someone else. If the cursed one is indeed up to no good, the curse will be many times stronger.

6-Decay

Cast on a healthy person, the effects are more annoying then anything else. Food that is near them goes bad four times quicker then normal. Parchment yellows and armour rusts four times as fast as normal as well. If the person should get any wound that breaks the skin, if not treated almost at once it will go bad, and if nothing is done quickly, infection will spread rapidly and the person will start to rot whilst still alive, and dies a horribly painful death.

7-Typhoid Mary

Disease follows the person, affecting not them but everyone who stays near them for more then a short time. As more and more people start getting sick, sooner or later people will join up the dots and blame the cursed one. He or she may be thought of as a well-poisoner, a practitioner of black magic or worse. Lynch mobs will warn the person to get out of town, or may actually try and lynch him or her. Cities will close their gates to the affected one. Perhaps the law will get involved and haul the person into court facing very serious charges.