Chronosis | Хроноз

Wave your mind goodbye each time you attempt travelling through Time...

Chonosis is the most terrifying of conditions that can affect a Traveler. It hinders memory and dampens awareness. In terminal conditions it puts a Travelers mind somewhere out of time. It's regarded not as a disease but as a curse, a punishment for the most cunning but egotistical and vile of those who roam through Time. The Navigators are the most affected by Chronosis, and they think that it starts with a conflict between the brain's limits and the effects of the Stream that force a huge arrays of information upon it, resulting in the disease progressing each time one Travels.

Transmission & Vectors

Chronosis is a mental condition that is caused by external influence. It works a lot like allergies: it accumulates and progresses because of time travel. It can't be transmited to others. This is, probably, the only good thing you're going to read about it.

Causes

There are two theories about the causes of Chronosis. One is scientific, one is, well... Fringe. None of the theories can be proven. Yet.
The scientific ones refers to the Time Traveler's brain as the target of Chronosis. It overloads in the Time Stream and gets damaged. This damage can't be registered by medical devices. The Navigators suffer way more because they can actually see the Time Stream. And it's not a feature of sight: what does this current look like, the environment itself, is being directly broadcasted to the Navigator's mind. It strains the brain which might be the cause of Chronosis.
The urban legend refers to The Dreaded Time as she uses Chronosis to smite those who she couldn't punish with her usual means. The punisment comes because the victim of this condition has violated the Rules of Causality.

Symptoms

The first symptoms of Chronosis feel like normal things, and they concern memory. It usually starts as the episodes of forgetting the reason the patient walked into a room become increasingly regular. Additionally, the victim starts getting migraines and their eyes start hurting.

Treatment

Chronosis isn't treatable by any modern means. It can only be delayed by the means of prevention, and those also don't seem to be effective enough. There is a theory that priests and mages with access to at least seven stages of magical power are able to heal this condition, but nobody from the XXIth century ever got that far in their Travels.

Prognosis

Chronosis develops into three more stages:

Backmonitions

These reverse premonitions mean that the victim of Chronosis starts living inside their memory more than in current reality. The events that they have already lived through are as livid and real in their memory as current reality. Some might think of it as a good thing: one only needs to remember something good that happened to them and they'd relive it in an instance, as if they still were there, as if it's still happening. But backmonitions are just a harbringer of horrific things to come.

Delay in awareness

The victim of Cronosis oneself can't spot the exact time the next stage starts. Their loved ones and the closest to the patient do notice it. The victim starts react to events with a slight delay. At first it again seems like something that happens to anyone. Sometimes we do hear something, our brains register it, but we do not respond at once, finishing up the task we're currently trying to perform, and only then we answer or react. Unfortunately, in the case of Chronosis, with time the delay starts being way longer: a minute, an hour, a day, sometimes even a week. The further the condition progresses, the longer the delay becomes.
Chronosis can develop further, which is described in the next passage.

Sequela

In time the patient becomes unresponsive, though sometimes they mumble something incomprehensive. In some cases they mention some kind of a white tower, and this reads really strange since each and every one Chronosis victim do it at some point. Because of this, there is an urban myth that's used to scare newblies in Time Travel: after the illness runs its course, the victim is destined to become a ghost aimlessly roaming Time's white space, where she lives.

Affected Groups

According to the statistics, the Navigators succumb to Chronosis ten times more often than their passangers. Direct contact with the Time Stream is likely to be the cause for that.

Prevention

To avoid Chronosis one is recommended to avoid Time Travel at all. Travelers usually heed this advice: those who have started to notice first symptoms usually stop Travelling at all since the condition progresses because of Sending Stones usage. Those who can't give up Time Travel still try to halt the development of Chronosis by resting for a week after contacting the Time Stream, and never, under any circumstances, using the Stones twice in a row.

Type

Mental

Origin

Divine

Cycle

Chronic, Acquired

Rarity

Rare