Bloodblight

Bloodblight is a devastating magical illness that occurred as a result of the heavy use of blood magic by various dragon warlords. The first outbreak of the sickness was recorded in BKY73. However, the slow development of the disease was triggered by the practice of utilizing extensive blood magic in animal husbandry practices, which had a centuries-long history among the warlords of the Tangled Jungle.
As a magical disease, bloodblight is one of the few illnesses on Eldara known to be zoonotic - able to transmiss between animals, beast shifters, and divine beasts alike. Sadly, the effect of moderate to severe bloodblight on intelligent creatures is just as terminal.

Transmission & Vectors

Bloodblight is transmitted via an infected host's bodily fluids, including saliva, blood, and reproductive fluids. Excrement and urine are typically free of the disease, however the presence of blood in waste can cause these to become transmission vectors as well. The disease persists past the death of its host, continuing to live in decomposing fluids and tissues, and can leech into soil or groundwater, causing contamination.
Creatures that receive the blight by infected soil or groundwater may exhibit no symptoms initially, and if they do not remain in the area the damage may be able to be rehabilitated from the exposure by simply quarantining them away from bloodblight damaged areas or creatures. If not repeatedly exposed, they will not absorb a significant enough amount of blood magic to effect subsequent generations. However, consumption of an infected creature in the late stages of bloodblight will in turn cause severe symptoms similar to late-stage congenital infections.

Causes

Novel outbreaks of bloodblight occur due to generational overuse of shaping magic, a form of blood magic that modifies a living organism. As these organisms breed and pass on their magically engineered features, subsequent generations of organisms are then subjected to further shaping magic. Gradually, the overload of shaping magic begins to rapidly mutate the subject organism with unpredictable results.

Symptoms

Mild cases of congenital bloodblight can result in visible physical mutations, such as extra or missing eyes, limbs, or digits. However, as these mutations are sometimes the desired result of shaping magic, early signs often go unnoticed. Undesirable traits are often magically shaped away, resulting in more instability and integration of blood magic into the target creature and its offspring.
In the late stages of the generational compounding of the disease, bloodblight afflicted creatures are extremely aggressive and hypercarnivorous, regardless of whether the original parent species was carnivorous. As the blood magic becomes more integrated with the creature's essence, it drives them to fuel it to continue their own existence, which necessitates that the creature become more and more aggressive until they begin killing in excess. At this stage, afflicted creatures are also highly unstable in form, and the warped energies of shaping magic may begin to absorb and integrate parts from the prey they consume, giving them a twisted, chimeric appearance.

Treatment

The only known treatment for bloodblight is the removal of the afflicted animal from all possible sources of blood magic. For mild acquired cases, this can at times result in complete recovery of the animal and a cleansing of the magical blight on their system. For mild congenital cases, removal from exposure can result in complete remission of any symptoms.
However, once the bloodblight becomes moderate to severe, either by congenital or acquired transmission, there is no known treatment able to reverse course of the disease. Utilizing shaping magic to attempt to reverse the chimerism and bodily mutations would result in more absorption of the magical energies, more instability, and perhaps even worse outcomes. In these cases, culling the animal is agreed to be the best treatment. In cases where the infected is an intelligent person, the patient is isolated and the disease is allowed to run its course. Palliative euthanasia has been practiced historically in some cases.

Prognosis

Carriers of the bloodblight due to a genetic history of shaping magic that do not exhibit symptoms themselves can live long, healthy lives with no sign of the disease. Mildly expressed congenital bloodblight, which typically manifests as outwardly visible physical mutations, can still result in a realtively healthy life through managing any adverse effects resulting from the physical mutations.
Moderately and severely expressed congenital bloodblight, or severe acquired bloodblight, is always terminal. Afflicted creatures are eventually unable to sufficiently fuel the blood magic powering a large part of their chimeric bodies and perish to magical burnout.

Sequela

Initial symptoms of acquired bloodblight include aggression, increased appetite, and sleep disturbance. Creatures that have consumed tainted prey or grass will exhibit these symptoms a few hours after contact with the transmission vector, as the material begins to be digested and enters the bloodstream. Upon contact with the host animal's blood, the blight begins working to its purpose, reshaping the creature so it can more effectively predate on others, feeding the blight with blood and life essence. Depending on the severity of the infection, physical mutations may take place over the course of days or mere hours. At this point, the infection reaches the active phase and the host begins exhibiting the characteristic hyperaggressive, hypercarnivorous behaviors the boodblight is known for. The more prey it is able to consume and feed to the blight, the more active the blight becomes in changing its body, which results in the well-known chimerism.

Prevention

When dealing with infected host animals, droplet precautions are strongly encouraged to prevent transmission via bodily fluids. To prevent new outbreaks of novel bloodblight, the practice of utilizing shaping magic in animal husbandry was outlawed.

History

Blood magic has historically been seen as an unethical practice in the majority of the world due to the sacrifice necessary to fuel it. However, the dragon warlords on the continent of Amara, located in the Tangled Jungle and Drywind Desert, faced a unique set of population pressures. Half of their population lived in a highly fertile environment that was able to support a large number of dragons, and half lived in arid conditions with little ability to sustain any kind of agriculture, including animal husbandry practices common to dragons. To resolve the issue of raising animals adapted for wet jungle conditions in arid desert conditions, these warlords turned to shaping magic. The practice involved sacrificing one animal from the stock to power the blood magic to change the others, modifying them for traits such as size, drought tolerance, the shape of their bodies (such as widening feet for walking on sand), and etc.
Initially, the practice was well-managed. Traits that were shaped in one animal were monitored in the next generation, and shaping was not performed but once every two generations, a slow process that was nevertheless more accurate and rapid than the reliance on genes expressing themselves through selective breeding. However, less than twenty years before BKY 73 several warlords and their clans had been pushed down out of the Coastwall Mountains and back into their ancestral homelands, resulting in increased population pressure for the dragons and vastly increased demand for rapidly-produced livestock that were ideal for consumption.
Domestic turkeys were the first recorded carriers of severe bloodblight. Historical reports note that the afflicted turkeys did not initially behave markedly different than other newly-hatched turkeys, but as they approached fledging age the blood magic rapidly mutated their bodies, lengthening their claws and causing their beaks to curve downward and grow sharper. This first incident of bloodblight-afflicted turkeys simply resulted in the loss of the owning rancher's turkey population, with the afflicted turkeys themselves culled. None of these afflicted turkeys were consumed, and therefore the zoonotic nature of the disease was not known.
Subsequent outbreaks occurred in the desert llama population, among llamas that had been subject to increasing amounts of shaping magic in order to stabilize the large number of disparate traits that had been shaped onto them to allow their survival in the arid desert. This outbreak was the first recorded attack of an afflicted animal on a dragon, and resulted in the first case of bloodblight transmission between animal and dragon. The resulting infection, behavioral decline, magical mutation and mental instability of the afflicted individual sounded the alarm regarding the disease and its dangers.
Dragon warlords began issuing orders for ranchers to have their stock inspected for signs of the bloodblight. Any exhibiting uncharacteristic aggression were removed and culled immediately, in an attempt to stave off the disease. However, many of the smaller ranching operations escaped notice or were unaware of the spread of the disease. Bloodblight afflicted animals began to be sighted in the wild, and soon recorded cases of non-domesticated animals afflicted by bloodblight began to appear. More cases of attacks on dragons by afflicted livestock or wildlife were reported, with more infected dragons perishing of the illness. The disease rapidly reached epidemic status in the region within five years of the initially recorded outbreak, and warlords began to coordinate their efforts to eradicate the bloodblight.
Many warlords demanded the total surrender of all livestock in their territories, without exception. This stock was then culled and burned, to remove all risk of taint leeching into the ground soil. Hunting expeditions were organized into the depths of the Tangled Jungle to root out feral livestock and wildlife alike. In densely-packed areas of the jungle where it was questionable whether all afflicted animals could be removed, wings of dragons flew overhead cleansing large swathes of jungle with dragonfire, carving scars into the land. The greatest fear of the dragons was that the bloodblight would become endemic to the jungle population, where already dangerous animals such as jaguar and caiman could become terrifying, unstoppable threats to dragonkind.
As a result of these aggressive actions, the dragons were able to halt the bloodblight before it could establish itself permanently in the Tangled Jungle. However, the toll on the dragon population was significant. Several entire lines were wiped out, and the surviving families dwindled to a fraction of their previous population. Incidences of the blight persist to this day, and it is believed that more pockets of blighted flora and fauna exists south of the River Rushing, where citizens of the kingdom do not venture.

Type

Magical

Origin

Magical

Cycle

Chronic, Acquired & Congenital

Rarity

Rare