Petrified

You feel the solidifying only briefly, the strangest sensation of discomfort, but not pain, as flesh stiffens, hardens and becomes stone. Your last waking thoughts are perhaps terror, perhaps confusion, perhaps acceptance, as the process your body is being forced to undergo reaches completion, freezing you as if a statue, your whole body solid stone, trapping you in that moment, in that position.

Causes

Petrification is thankfully a rare and unique process, one that occurs very rarely, with very few sources. Magisters of the Topaz order have some ability to do such things, though it is a powerful and difficult spell to weave. A select few creatures, such as basilisks or gorgons have such abilities as well, though again, they are very rare, which is a blessing indeed.

Symptoms

You turn from flesh and bone into a statue, capturing you in the moment, in stasis. Contrary to popular belief this doesn't necessarily mean you have died. Someone whom has been petrified will not age, will be frozen in the moment, however there are rare and complex magicks and compounds that can reverse such a condition. The individual in question will awaken with no knowledge that time has passed, they will awaken very much in the moment they were in before being petrified. Time will not have passed for them. They will not have aged a day. Any wounds or illness will continue progressing from how they were before the process as if not a day has passed. Whilst petrified, though still alive, the victim is unaware, their mind and body in stasis.

Adventures in Valerick: Unless it can be reversed, petrification should basically count as 'character death' for the point of NPCs, enemies or PCs. They can certainly undertake efforts to reverse it, but in the case of a PC they should either be allowed to bring a new character into the story, or the means to reverse the process should be something that can be achieved swiftly.

Treatment

Topaz Magisters can, through the same spell-form but different applications, both cause and cure Petrification. This condition can also be cured by some rare and difficult to acquire and synthesis chemicals and medicines, though such things would need to be prepared and administered by a chemist of rare skill.