ESCORDVI NETWORK

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.