It starts with a stiffening of the joints, the warting of the skin. Then it stiffens and cracks, as if dehydrated, but worse. Finally, the affected limb is paralyzed. Worse, the infection is not contained to the limb and spreads and spreads. The blessing is that most die from infection and not from the paralysis. Those that aren't... Well, I heard they die trying to breathe.
Those that lived around
The Gorgonian Desert knew very well of the horrors of that lake there. In the summer, its pink hue deepened and the air became toxic, infecting wounds with its paralyzing sickness that killed children and the elderly quickly and adults slowly.
Contraction and Symptoms
The Petrifying Disease is localized to the desert region and further kept in and around the area nearest the sole lake of that area. When summer heats the air and Mount Muspel spreads it's ashes over
The Ghost Sea , the lake begins to taint the air around it causing it to make the air into liquid concrete. Animals in the region stone over and die, but those who live near who inhale the air or boast open wounds will slowly begin to feel the effects of the disease.
The symptoms are caused by how the body reacts to the air itself, treating the affected area like a foreign body before rejecting it completely, dampening a proper immune response from the body. When in the past amputations were seen as viable and preferable to having the disease, this instead spread the disease if done when the air was tainted by the lake.
The symptoms of the body progressed over a period of a month, minimum. Slowly, the body would ache where affected. If it was inhaled, breathing would become labored over a long stretch of time--this resulted in death within the year, at best. If it was an affected wound, the wound would be unable to heal with the surrounding joints stiffening, reflexes lessening, and finally, the area paralyzing. After paralysis, the symptoms would spread further through the body, taking one one area of the body at a time--this is localized to lymph nodes, which would deflate instead of inflaming.
Recent Advances and a Cure
With efforts lead by
The Shaperate, the Petrifying disease has mostly become cured by creating a dealkalizing solution that is infected into the affected limb. As well, the institution developed masks and suits that the people who live in the region can wear to avoid the sickness. While the suits themselves only stave off the eventuality of infection during the Lake's summerly concrete airs, the solution has proven most effective in curing the effects of the disease.
Theories are that this was not achieved sooner as most saw the lake's effects as magical and several organizations sought arcane methods of correcting the disease by viewing the lake as the problem. Most persons outside The Shaperate see this as the case.
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