John O'Neill causes one of these events to avenge the loss of his wife in a Frank Herbert novel.
John O'Neill causes one of these events to avenge the loss of his wife in a Frank Herbert novel. Walter Fane threatens to divorce Kitty Garstin if she does not accompany him to the site of one of them, causing her to head to China in W. Somerset Maugham's The Painted Veil. In another work, ($) Galen will only help the Marshal during one of these events if he stops an ongoing war. One of these occurrences causes the decline of Renzo's village, but on the bright side makes everyone forget about Don (*) Rodrigo's forbidding of a marriage in The Betrothed. Another event of this kind occurs while Joseph is constantly rewriting the first sentence of his novel, and Raymond Rambert refuses to escape it to see his wife. Daniel Defoe wrote a journal set during the year of one of these events, and Martin Arrowsmith loses his wife due to one. For ten points, identify these events, which also form the backdrop of The Decameron and "The Masque of Red Death."
John O'Neill causes one of these events to avenge the loss of his wife in a Frank Herbert novel.
disease {outbreaks} (accept anything indicating lots of disease, like {plague} or {epidemic}s, accept more specific answers like “there’s {cholera} everywhere”)