Creeping Terror
"It burdens me to see good people haunted by this malady... This foul sickness of the mind, clouding the senses and beguiling their thoughts. I would give all I have to find a cure, but sadly no such remedy has been found. 'What of Magic?', I hear you say... Yes, spells of Restoration can slow the effects, but they do not halt or reverse it's effects.
One day, I pray we can find a cure, to forever rid our world of this cursed deterioration of the mind." - A Cleric of Dusk, to a grieving family.
Transmission & Vectors
Causes
Unknown, and thankfully not very common.
Less than 1 in 100 Humans is affected, and far fewer for mixed races.
Symptoms
Affecting people of advanced age, it typically starts with mild forgetfulness.
Advancing within 2 to 3 years to general confusion and frustration.
After 5 to 7 years in it's later stages, leads to paranoia and constant fear.
Treatment
Prognosis
Creeping Terror tends to advance in stages. In its earliest stages it can be treated by regularly speaking with the effected. Constant communication and remembering stories or details of their lives seems to assist the affected in slowing the onset of more advanced stages.
Later stages begin to show general confusion. The effected human will forget the year, their children, and act as though they are living out past experiences or times, not realizing they are much older than they were in the memory they are reliving.
In the latest stages, the effected tend to become paranoid and fearful, living always in a murky twilight between fleeting memory and a complicated and jumbled present they tend to become reclusive and un-trusting, even of close family and friends (likely no longer recognizing them).
Thankfully, humans in this stage are usually already quite old, and will pass in their sleep before something horrible happens. Unfortunately this is not always the case, in some rare cases confused elders will become lost in the forest and die of exposure, or take their own lives in fear.
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