Joshua 🔥 Rosfield (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
phoenixdominant) wrote in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
shellphones2025-09-01 05:43 pm
phoenixdominant) wrote in shellphones2025-09-01 05:43 pm
Entry tags:
[open] 🔥 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:
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.]
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:
📌 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.
📌 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:
📌 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.
📌 Treatment: Healers across all the Leviathans have developed a method to remove the crystalline growths through careful surgery, thanks to a local riftfarer’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:
📌 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.
📌 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.]
text; un: madeofmirrors
I trust this work will include ALL maladies native to this world, not just the bizarrely magical afflictions?
no subject
no subject
[He was unaware he was speaking with a Victorian scholar, though given the archaic nature of the writings here, he shouldn't be surprised.]
Surely there's more standard fare: colds, fevers, the odd case of measles given the lack of vaccine.
The the mention of it does make me realize the studies of virology and microbiology are likely alien to this place. Do those terms mean anything to you? Please tell me you at least know about inoculation.
no subject
Regrettably, I am not well-versed in such terminology. I hail from a star where medical practice is limited. Much like what I've observed here. My strengths lie more in the arts of healing magicks than in the deeper sciences?
That is not to say I lack the will to study these afflictions with the care and depth they warrant, mind you.
no subject
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.
no subject
no subject
In the mean time, I'll note none of the afflictions you mentioned result in "petrification". Why the interest?
no subject
As for the petrification. It's something of a personal concern. To speak plainly, I, and a small number of others I know, are afflicted by a type of slow petrification for which no cure has yet been found.
[He has no reason to keep it a secret.]
no subject
[That is to say "yes".]
Petrification? As in turning to stone?
[There's a pause here before he continues.]
I realized I was going to make a reference you have no way of knowing. Petrification isn't completely alien to my world. There is a man very much in the public eye who was mutated by cosmic radiation into stone. Some mutants can petrify themselves at will to the same effect.
Your answer is most likely in the cause. How does this happen? We could speak in person if you'd rather.
no subject
[That just doesn't compute in his head. He's trying, but frowning terribly at this information.]
To turn to stone... at will? No. That is a fate I neither seek nor accept. I hope to stop it, not embrace it.
[Explain to him a little more about these "mutations" because he doesn't quite understand.]
Perhaps we should speak in person.
no subject
[Mutation being a permanent change as it is.]
I can't say anyone has sought the ability. Some of us have to learn to live with the hand dealt us, though. Not that I'm trying to destroy your hope before I even have a chance to run any tests.
Yes, I think we should.
no subject
It will take some time to travel, perhaps in a few days? Which leviathan do you call home or are closest to?
no subject
no subject
Eltrut, then. There are several places we can talk there.
no subject
Cheers. Are we meeting for wine or coffee?
no subject
[YEAH. There is no way Joshua would know what a spaceship is.]
I think coffee will do just fine.
no subject
Then one of Eltrut's cafe's should suffice, yes?
🎀
Yes, that should do. I will see you there.