The Sundering Cough

The Affliction Which Brought an Empire to its Knees

Anika helped with the science!

The Sundering Cough is a deadly and progressive disease which can affect any creature with a connection to the source of all magic in the Sacunica, The Divine Sea. It began in Imperial Year 888 amongst the population of Highland University's College of Abjuration, and during the three years it ran rampant before the cure was discovered, it killed nearly 12% of the magic-using population of the world. Even centuries later, the disease makes occasional comebacks in communities far from any dedicated temples of Lady Pholir, whose paladins make periodic ventures into the border ethereal to hunt the Sunderer colonies which cause the Cough. The total death toll of this horrible affliction is estimated to be in excess of 360 million individuals.

Transmission & Vectors

Transmitted through airborne particles expelled by coughing, through blood or other bodily fluids, and through the connection created when one creature's magic acts on another creature, the Sundering Cough is highly infectious. It cannot survive for long outside of a host body, as the individual vectors are microscopic tendrils connected to the parasite creature that causes the illness. These tendrils will be cut off and allowed to shrivel and die if they stop providing the parasite with magical energy.

Important

The Sundering Cough is most infectious during the first two to three weeks of illness. This period is accompanied by a relaxation of symptoms which may seem like a recovery. DO NOT ALLOW any patients who seem to have improved to leave the isolation ward until a period of one month has passed without the resumption of ANY symptoms.

Causes

Sunderers are parasitic semi-dimensional aberrations which live in the border ethereal and subsist off of magic plundered from the minds of mortals. They are the source of the Sundering Cough and they are the way to end it. By threading their tendrils through infected hosts, these creatures gain access to the energies of the Divine Sea and a feast of enormous proportions. Prior to the creation of the Sundering Cough, they flocked around various nexuses of ethernet traffic, feeding from leaks and causing data disruption. Now, they have multiplied into a plague which kills everything it touches.

Symptoms

Symptom Progression:

Latency

The first phase is a small tickle in the throat which persists for about three days, over the course of which it progresses to a mild cough. This then fades, and the infection appears to go dormant for a period lasting two to three weeks. During this time, the sufferer may feel vaguely unwell, or suffer fatigue, reduction in appetite, and weight loss. This is the period during which the infection is most likely to spread, as the patient is generally unaware that they are sick, but the illness is at its most contagious.

Respiratory

The second phase consists of night sweats, persistent fatigue, headache, and a returning cough. This is a hacking cough, and most patients will be producing small amounts of green or yellow sputum. During this stage, the sufferer generally runs a low-grade fever and has a sore throat with mild aphonia as a possibility. Rarely, there may be shortness of breath caused by fluid or air buildup in the chest cavity, which is the most dangerous symptom that can be seen at this stage. If untreated, that buildup can obstruct breathing and eventually kill a patient. In patients who do not develop shortness of breath, it is easy to mistake the respiratory phase of the Sundering Cough for other upper-respiratory illnesses. The respiratory phase lasts for two weeks on average.

Systemic

The third phase begins with worsening cough and migraine, and lasts approximately four weeks. Almost all patients will be coughing up sputum by this point, and most will begin to see blood in their sputum due to the illness attacking the body's protective barriers. At the beginning, the patient may run a high fever, but the body cannot maintain that level of immune response for long without killing itself, so this will fade within days. Over the course of the systemic phase, the fever will come and go as the patient's body tries to fight off the infection. Heavy sweating is usually observed beginning in week two of the systemic phase, and can result in severe dehydration if not appropriately compensated for. By the end of week two, the patient's ability to connect with magic will begin to fade. Spells they cast are weaker, and they become unable to use higher level spells. This is the "sundering" that is associated with the disease, and the symptom which is most feared.

Neural

The fourth and final phase can either progress rapidly or stretch out over the course of months. In its rapid form, the patient becomes very uncoordinated and develops aphasia before collapsing, seizing, and dying. This can take anywhere from two to five days. In its lingering form, the patient develops drowsiness, sluggishness, milder progressive loss of coordination, sensitivity to light, and eventually drops into a coma which can persist for months. The end comes when the patient's brain can no longer send signals to keep the heart beating and lungs breathing. There is sometimes a final bout of seizures, but this is rare. By that point, the sufferer's body just doesn't have anything left to jerk about with.

Treatment

In the first stages, the Sundering Cough can be slowed by the application of healing potions and various herbal salves. Throat-soothing medicines are also encouraged as they ameliorate the coughing of the respiratory phase somewhat. If detected early enough, the thrice-daily consumption of a potion brewed from equal parts Hispid Thyme, Running Clumpfoot Felonweed, and Queen's Stammerwort may prevent the Sundering Cough from progressing beyond the latency phase. The production of this potion is complex and requires great knowledge, as two of the three components are intensely poisonous. Throughout the course of treatment, healing magic (arcane or divine in nature) is to be avoided at all costs, as attempting to cure the disease by magical means has resulted in the infection of the healer in ALL recorded instances. Additionally this illness is resistant to healing magic, and short of a Wish spell or (on exactly ONE occasion) the successful Divine Intervention of a cleric of Lord Nione , has never been seen to have any effect on it. By the systemic phase, ameliorative methods are the only recourse.

A healer with a death wish can sustain someone in the systemic or neural phase by a constant infusion of their own magical energy, however this is almost certain to result in the death of both parties as the healer will be overchanneling for long periods in addition to opening themself up to the Sundering Cough itself. Likewise, a round-the-clock application of healing magic can prevent the affliction of someone in the latency or respiratory phase from progressing to later phases. Again, desperate measures of this variety are unwise and, by order of Emperor Reynlaith Chathia in Imperial Year 889, illegal.

Hosts & Carriers

Creatures which have no natural connection to magic cannot get this illness. Natural beasts, monstrosities with no innate spellcasting ability, and most non-sentient plants are immune. Creatures with immunity also cannot carry the illness without magical intervention, with the notable exception of cats. Cats suffer no symptoms of the disease, but on rare occasions can be vectors and may infect individuals who magically interact with such a carrier.

Warning

This is a deadly and degenerative disease. It spreads through both airborne particles expelled by coughing and through magic.

HEALING MAGIC IS NOT EXEMPT FROM THIS VECTOR OF TRANSMISSION.

Repeat: if you try to heal someone who has this disease, you will also get it! Do not, under any circumstances, attempt to magically interact with a victim of the Sundering Cough.

Type

Magical

Rarity

Common