Essence Devourer

They were for a creepy condition ages ago...I learned about it in school.

— A student to a tourist asking about the wards on walls across the entire Station.

This condition terrorized the inhabitants of The Station around 2405 years ago, in the year 523AR. The bacteria-sized creatures attacked people's ability to use Essence.

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About

Essence is a magic source that all living beings in this Universe have access to. All living beings can use an individual amount of essence at a time. This condition hampered the infected person's ability to connect to the source.
Around 1 year after the planet of Areu was resettled, some people stopped being able to use magick on The Station. This spread, and later, people started getting sick. At first, they did not know what was happening, but when people started dying from this condition, the Public Health sector of the Government of Reki had to step up their game.
There were many books in The Central Library left by the original creators of The Station that explained how they had planned to deal with an epidemic. The Dragons had read these books when they settled in The Station and decided that they had to put this information into use.
While the large main docking hub for The Station is located in the Monochrome section, there are smaller docks on the other sections that are usually not in use. The government closed all the docks for visitors, and only spaceships exporting and importing necessities were allowed to visit. The space ships were only allowed to visit one of the 7 sections and only that section for the two years that The Station was closed down.
People were not allowed to travel between the sections. People with family members in other sections could not see their family face-to-face for over these two years. Tourists who were only visiting a sector (or the station) for a couple of days during that time were also stuck where they were for those two years.
Infected people were moved to areas for quarantining, with anti-essence wards. Many of these wards were also set up in areas around the station where people gathered. Even though these wards have been canceled since the epidemic was deemed over, many of the wards can still be found where they were placed.
The government started public awareness programs that are still in order today. They informed the public about the infection and what to do to avoid getting infected. The government still uses these public awareness programs for other information. They are still aired through the mobi’s of the inhabitants.

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Symptoms

Symptoms start out with the inability to reach out to the Essence. For many people on The Station with the ability to use other magicks this was not a big deal in the beginning. Later comes a dark purple rash across their chest, fever, cold symptoms, headaches, muscle pain, and seizures. Around 59% of the people who show symptoms get mild to moderate symptoms, and their ability to connect to the essence returns after a couple of months. Around 41% of the people get severe symptoms. Strong muscle pains and seizures. If they survived their ability to reach out to the essence were forever damaged.

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Transmission

This bacteria came from Areu infected the people there and spread to The Station when the infected people returned home.
When a person reaches out to the essence in the precence of an already infected person, they also have a large chance of becoming infected. This infection happens about 2-14 days before the first symptoms happen, so it can be hard to triangulate where the infection happened.

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Diagnosis & treatment

People with symptoms would be isolated from the general population and their families to be diagnosed. The condition were diagnosed by aura readers. These people could see if a person was infected with this condition. If they were infected, they would be quarantined in special tiny apartments until they were well and could be returned to their families.
Mild symptoms would just be treated with bed rest and medication to alleviate them. Those with severe symptoms would be monitored more heavily and get heavier medicine.