phoenixdominant: <user name=sheme> (pic#16608290)
Joshua ๐Ÿ”ฅ Rosfield ([personal profile] phoenixdominant) wrote in [community profile] shellphones2025-09-01 05:43 pm

[open] ๐Ÿ”ฅ a research project of sorts

Type: Text
Sender ID: phoenixdominant (Joshua Rosfield)
To: Open
Subject: Research into medical conditions, sicknesses and diseases.
Warnings: Tba.

Hello, I am Joshua Rosfield. I fly under the corsair's banner with The Hideaway.

Of late, I have set myself to the task of compiling a reference, a compendium, if you will, of the many maladies, curses, afflictions, and fevers known to manifest upon this star. My concern lies not with ailments familiar to our home worlds, but rather with those that are native to this star alone. Born of its soil, sky, and magics.

This work will encompass all that is known. Recorded symptoms, confirmed cases, and such cures or countermeasures devised by learned minds or discovered through hard-won experience.

Here are a few of those examples that I've gathered:
The Drowning Sickness:
๐Ÿ“Œ A rare and insidious illness, marked first by the appearance of a deep black bruise upon the skin. Often on the hands, at the base of the neck, spine, or over the heart. The bruise is tender to the touch and slowly grows in size and intensity, becoming inflamed as the affliction progresses.

While waking symptoms are troubling, it is during sleep that the sickness reveals its true nature. Those afflicted are haunted by vivid, suffocating dreams. Visions of drowning in dark, endless seas. With each sleep, the dreams deepen. Patients note the sensation of lungs filling with water, of being pulled under by unseen hands, or of sinking into deep, endless water.

Upon waking, the sufferer experiences acute breathlessness, as though having truly emerged from drowning. Over time, rousing from sleep becomes increasingly difficult, and some fall into a slumber from which they never wake. Death comes quietly, the body showing signs of asphyxiation. Lungs filled not with water, but with nothing at all.

If untreated, it is always fatal. The interval from first bruise to death varies. Between three to nine nights, depending on the patient's strength and resistance.

๐Ÿ“Œ Treatment: While no universal cure is known, skilled healers have reported partial success through use of aetheric purgatives combined with dreambinding incantations. Removal or destruction of the bruise by mundane means (burning, lancing) has no effect and may hasten decline. Smelling salts or ingesting powerful angelic jellyfish have shown some success in staving off deeper stages of the dreams, though their effect is temporary, offering only reprieve rather than remedy. What appears to be definitive is surviving the drowning dream, itself.


The Crystal Affliction:
๐Ÿ“Œ A rare condition said to be contracted by those who venture too deep into the forgotten caverns and shadowed mountains of remote, uncharted isles. Victims first notice sharp, painful growths erupting upon the skin. Jagged shards of crystal or glass-like rock, as though the land itself seeks to reclaim their flesh.

Left untreated, the affliction progresses. The crystalline formations spread, encumbering movement, disrupting vital functions, and slowly petrifying the body from within. In time, the victim is left encased in a gleaming, translucent prison. A statue of living crystal, robbed of will and warmth.

Those in the later stages suffer from extreme lethargy, dulled senses, and an emotional emptiness that renders them pliable, easily manipulated and easily controlled.

๐Ÿ“Œ Treatment: Healers across all the Leviathans have developed a method to remove the crystalline growths through careful surgery, thanks to a local riftfarerโ€™s extensive knowledge of crystal. The procedure is long and taxing, requiring potent sedatives or enchantments to ease the pain. Even so, few emerge unscarred and this procedure has yet to be mastered.


The Thornbind Curse:
๐Ÿ“Œ A highly contagious, creeping ailment marked by vine-like growths that first appear upon the hand. Over time, these thorned tendrils thicken and climb the body, binding tighter with each passing day. The afflicted are left with painful welts, bruises, and skin pierced by sharp thorns.

Evidently, the vines seem to grow faster in those weighed down by deep, unmet desires, as if the affliction feeds upon longing that is left to fester.

๐Ÿ“Œ Treatment: A medicinal cure was created that can be taken topically to cure the affliction completely. Trials have proved extremely successful. A full entry on the cure can be found here.

While there remains much yet to study regarding the myriad of ailments afflicting this realm, I pen these entries in hopes they may one day form the foundation of a true medical compendium, for the benefit of others.

On that note, my current inquiries lie with the nature of petrification in all its varied and vexing forms. I seek not only to understand its onset, but to uncover means by which to slow its advance, or better yet, reverse it. Should you possess notes, I would be most grateful for your shared insight.

And, as I am aware, this is hardly the most uplifting or interesting fare for one's morning coffee ... do share instead tales of your most recent voyages across the seas? I love a tale.


[And that concludes this giant nerd post.]
madeofmirrors: (pic#13335771)

[personal profile] madeofmirrors 2025-09-07 11:22 pm (UTC)(link)
[Only a little.]

Of course they do. Are you interested in medical science at all? You're one cephalopodian tattoo away from losing your magic, after all, but science never lies.
Edited 2025-09-07 23:23 (UTC)
hellofishies: (pic#13627891)

[personal profile] hellofishies 2025-09-08 12:55 am (UTC)(link)
You shouldn't feel any sting about what happens to me, sweets.

It's what I did back home. It tried to do in order to help.
astudyinviolet: Sherlock thinking with hand to chin (M for Mystery)

[personal profile] astudyinviolet 2025-09-08 01:43 am (UTC)(link)
I had gone to the infected area in hopes of finding a solution, and I had been willing to use myself to test possible solutions.

[ It had hurt a lot, but in the larger scope of things, Sherlock feels like he's been through worse. ]

How do you intend to preserve your compendium? Are you seeking to publish it or merely have copies of notes?
beshackled: (pic#16532555)

Here be spoilers

[personal profile] beshackled 2025-09-08 03:31 am (UTC)(link)
I am a warder of a facility known as Pandรฆmonium, though I have also recently begun to study under the Words of Lahabrea.

...I suppose I am a scholar of sorts now, aren't I?

[Erichthonios' own smile has a sort of nervous quality to it. He's never thought of himself as particularly smart-- the feedback he'd received from his parents and from other adults as he grew up leading him to believe the precise opposite.]
reindered: (Proves)

[personal profile] reindered 2025-09-08 07:29 am (UTC)(link)
right, of course. i'll let you know if i find out anything more about the diseases here. what you have done already is great!

i'm a doctor, yes! i'm tony tony chopper. i'm with zelda's crew here.
octoblot: (knows how to jam here)

un: octoblot (text)

[personal profile] octoblot 2025-09-08 09:08 pm (UTC)(link)
Oh good, I'm so glad to see that you were able to compile everything together that you've discovered so far in a digestible manner for everyone else to see here!

If you had any other questions regarding the Thornbind Curse in particular that has come up since we last discussed it, let me know and I will do my best to answer, Joshua-san. I'll also be keeping an ear out if I hear of anything else that should be added to your compendium should the need to arise, of course.
reindered: (When I was)

[personal profile] reindered 2025-09-09 09:50 am (UTC)(link)
just chopper is fine. and of course, whatever you need, if we help each other, we can help to treat more people! so we have to work together. we have to keep researching and figuring out more about the diseases here.
hellofishies: (pic#13627858)

[personal profile] hellofishies 2025-09-10 01:03 am (UTC)(link)
[ deal with it ]
would you try to stop me somehow then?
afflatusexarch: (( shb ) ex1)

[personal profile] afflatusexarch 2025-09-11 01:10 am (UTC)(link)
Aye, quite literal gold.

Though you are not far from the truth, no. We do have those selfsame creatures as well as several others that can cause petrification. I do wonder if their appearance differs from star to star.
hellofishies: (pic#2857696)

[personal profile] hellofishies 2025-09-12 01:41 am (UTC)(link)
[ The battle of the stubborn people. ]

What would bring you joy?
beshackled: (pic#16544941)

[personal profile] beshackled 2025-09-12 01:47 am (UTC)(link)
The... Ascians?

[He tilts his head, curious. That is a term that rings unfamiliar to him as ascribed to a people. He is from before that time and no one has told him yet.]

I fear I have not travelled as much as Emet-Selch. I know of no people who call themselves such. I could only tell you of Amaurotine studies, for 'tis in Amaurot that I study.
hellofishies: (pic#2857694)

[personal profile] hellofishies 2025-09-12 01:57 am (UTC)(link)
I'll try to bring you joy then!

What else would make you happy?
netherese: (95)

text | un: netherese

[personal profile] netherese 2025-09-12 05:12 am (UTC)(link)
A noble undertaking. This will be an invaluable resource to many, though I suppose that goes without saying. I've never been much of a healer, but there is some overlap with wizardry, at times.

[Enough so that the magical maladies here have caught his interest, as well, though he hasn't quite had the time to investigate them as thoroughly as he might have otherwise— he's a bit preoccupied with certain personal problems, as it were.]

Basilisk oil is a known cure for most forms of petrification where I hail from; it returns matter to its organic form, precisely as it was upon being petrified. If the petrification is magical in nature, I've a spell that might be of some use, but a cleric would likely be of greater aid.

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