The Purple Haze condition is an illness caused by the radiation emitted from the Purple Cataclysm, which still plagues a large chunk of the Milky Way. Since the Cataclysm happened - thanks Voidwalkers - thousands of beings were infected with it and died because of it.
Beings with specific genetic markers (all species are affected sadly) suffered from this lethal illness which kills the infected being. Slowly and sometimes really, really painful. It is called "Purple Haze" because of the way the skin (or fur or chitin armour) is slowly falling off the infected being. Humans call the Purple Haze sometimes "Space AIDS", even when it is not nearly identical to the same immunodeficiency syndromes the real AIDS has. Humans are weird, I know.
Mostly the skin is altered and coloured in a faint purple shade, sometimes entire beings are more like fully purple, with cracked skin and veins and sometimes screaming in agony while skin, armour, chitin plates and feathers are falling off.
It starts with an itch which is getting stronger over the course of days. Sometimes localised, sometimes all over the body.
Slowly the veins in ones body are getting infected and start to bleed and crack, causing dots to appear. The illness should have now affected ones hearing and seeing, sometimes causing wild effects or hallucinations.
After a few weeks (or days in an extreme case) ones skin cracks open and the bleeding continues. This is the point where parts of the outer shell (skin, feathers, chitin, armour etc.) are falling off, causing more bleeding and more pain.
If one endures to the last state of the condition, one is bleeding from the whole body, mostly stripped off the outer shell and suffering from pain-induced hallucinations. At this point not even the strongest painkillers, coma-inducing medications or other methods can release or even ease the pain.
Death comes when the heart or the brain is affected by the condition, rendering one or both of the organs non-functioning anymore. In terms of the heart it rips itself open (strong muscles, remember?) and in case of the brain it starts to crumble into itself. It is common that it is accompanied by great pain and often the infected being dies in agony and screams.
There is no real treatment. Humans are trying to find a cure or at least some kind of helping medicine which helps the infected, but twenty years after the first human victims there are only real strong painkillers to ease the way to the end. But there might be hope, because a new cluster of supercomputers is built below the surface of Mars. Rumours are that Sullivan is developing a system for it...
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