***UPDATE***
Unfortunately, while the character seems to have loaded out, the 'account' in question here did not. This is certainly fishy that such a thing is happening so quickly after the disease-death mechanic was pushed, but I also see no immediate reason why the character would load out and the account wouldn't. Either way, the server has shut down in the process of shuffling around data in the USER databases. This is the first crash to my knowledge that we have experienced in this exact home of the code and I would rather be safe than sorry. Unfortunately, it is almost Midnight here on the west coast and the available options we have at this hour to fix something of this nature are a tad bit limited. I'm afraid I'm going to have to say that this is going to be a 5-10 hour Downtime. Depending on when people smarter than myself can get a full understanding of the impact of this crash, and then of course however long it takes to terminate, and restart, with a relatively certainty that we don't mess up any other users in the process.
I apologize . Please take this as a perfect opportunity to check out the post I made earlier in the night and come up with awesome ways to help improve the early-game of Salem for our next patch though.
If this downtime goes beyond 8 hours, I'll consider it an act of horrible stewardship on my part and consider pushing y'all a gift on the postmaster. So at least there is that.