Shattered Skin
Transmission & Vectors
Shattered Skin is aquired by Constructs through rot and fungal transmission, where coming into contact with a specific type of fungal bacteria causes a construct to continuously grow fungi across and inside its body.
Causes
The cause is a specific type of fungas called Greywart, native to the Feywild. Greywart is harmless to other species, espically fey creatures, and only became an issue for Constructs as more fey portals were opened and travel between plains became slighlty more common.
Symptoms
A construct with Shattered Skin starts with growing fungi all over their outer body, that latches onto the magical energy and Life Force inside a Construct, causing the fungus to grow even on constructs entirely made of metal. This fungus turns a pale grey as it grows, and the roots and heads of the fungi resembles cracks, giving the disease its name.
The second symptom is the fungus begins growing inside a Constructs body, causing their motor functions to reduce or become entirely removed if the disease progresses enough.
Treatment
The fungus can be scrapped off of a constructs body over time, slowly the progression of the disease, but this is not an eternal remedy or cure, and eventually the fungus grows too quick and thick to be removed.
The only known, reliable cure for Shattered Skin is consciousness transferance, where in a Constructs consciouness, their soul, is moved from one body too another, leaving the diseased body behind. This is not most Construct's first choice however, due to the mental trauma that comes from changing bodies.
Other cures have been known, mainly acts of divine intervention where powerful clerics or celestials can burn the disease away from a Construct, though this is rare.
Prognosis
The most likely outcome for the disease is a Construct will slowly become overtaken by the fungus and either loose all function of thier body, including speech, or their consciousness is moved before that. The disease does however take a long time to progress to this state, if the scrapping treatment is performed regularly, a Construct can have 60-70 long years before they loose function of their limbs, and a further 20 before they loose function of their body entirely.
Prevention
The best prevention for a Construct is to not travel into the Feywild. Since the diseases discovery transport of Greywart has been outlawed in Erendoc and Rularia.
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