Speller's Graft
Speller's Graft is a type of Miasm known to inflict itself upon the users of wands, staves, and other such wooden magical implements. It is an illness which progresses in stages. As one loses more and more of themselves to the power of their instrument, their body is slowly transmuted into wandwood, becoming more kindling for power itself. The natural end state of this process leads to the creation of a terrifying spirit known as a Walking Stick, a speller whose concience has been entirely subsumed the wand's power.
Transmission & Vectors
Speller's Graft is acquired via prolonged contact with magical wooden implements, the most common of these being wands and staves.
Causes
The condition is commonly understood to progress through extended contact with wands and other such tools, and while this isn't necessarily a lie, the actual driving force of speller's graft in the human body is a lack of mental fortitude within the afflicted speller. Essentially, it is overreliance on the power of a wand that creates the conditions ideal for speller's graft.
Symptoms
The condition is named after the practice of grafting for a reason. In the initial stages of an average case of speller's graft, a wand attaches to with the hand with surgical precision. It can then familiarize itself with the body unnaturally quickly, as though it were tricking the speller's body into thinking it had always been there. This allows the speller to disregard the change more easily, and get accustomed with thinking of the wand as though it were an extension of their own limb. This is a deception, one that has all too often masked this parasitic dynamic until it is far too late.
History
The condition first came to prominence in the early days of imperial expansion, when pioneers who had been equipped with wands slowly lost their minds, succumbing to fear and paranoia in their strange new locales, and finding solace in the power assured by their wands.
As with many of the other mental sicknesses common to the Hinterland at this point in history, no authorities deigned to notice this issue until it had gone well beyond the point of no return, when Walking Sticks began wandering the plains in droves.
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