The Forgetting

The Forgetting is a degenerative disease which slowly and painfully kills amici imaginarium. For a species born of and sustained by belief, to be forgotten is a fate worse than death. After all, as long as there’s someone alive to believe it possible, an amicus can shake off and survive a little death now and then. But once they’re forgotten entirely? That’s the end for real.

Causes

In the case of a traditional amicus, The Forgetting begins when the child who imagined them starts to move on from the need for “imaginary friends.” In the case of Egregore, who are created through collective belief, The Forgetting begins when the total number of believers dwindles below the number of foundational believers it took to create the Egregore in the first place.

Symptoms

The first sign that one is being forgotten is difficulty in performing any supernatural feats that one has traditionally been capable of. From there, the afflicted eventually become incapable of supernatural feats at all. After that, the ability to create a corporeal form diminishes. And in the end stages of the condition, once one has been rendered impotent and invisible, the afflicted being to slowly lose any sense of self they have left, until they eventually cease to exist entirely.

Treatment

Treatments include, but are not limited to:

• Convincing one’s creator to share details about one’s existence with a friend or relative, no matter how embarrassing it might be to admit having an imaginary friend
• Convincing one’s creator to create artistic depictions of one’s self, in order that one may be preserved on the fridge or in scrapbooks
• Adapting one’s anatomy to take on the grotesque features of the monsters which children imagine are hiding under their beds or behind their close doors, for it’s harder to forget fear that it is to forget love
• Tethering one’s self to a longterm amicus memory preservation (L.A.M.P.) of some sort, sacrificing one’s power and autonomy in exchange for theoretical immortality (so long as one’s L.A.M.P. is not destroyed)

This last form of treatment has given rise to so-called “genies” throughout Eden and the wider Clarkwoods Literary Universe. It ain’t a pleasant life, but life is better than annihilation right?

Type

Mental

Origin

Magical

Cycle

Chronic, Acquired

Rarity

Common

Affected Species

• Amicus Imaginarium