Blue spotted disease

Content warning: gore, abuse, questionable medical ethics.

Named after the most obvious symptom, the blue spots. Blue Spotted Disease is a highly infective, but easily curable parasitic infection.

Symptoms

Blue spots on skin, sometimes changing location

Scratching

Destroyed synopses of sensory neurons (the endings of neurons that connect them together)

Extreme itchiness

Rapid Necrosis

Progress

It starts with itchiness of the skin. That is when the micro parasites bore through the skin and begin their dig towards the nerves. The natural response of mammals, (the parasites are so far only found on mammals), is to scratch. Scratching leads to the parasites digging deeper and creating even more itchiness, increasing the itchiness. Even before the parasites have reached the nerves to start their munching, they expel their eggs.

This eggs that, due to their shape, work themselves to the surface of the skin make the appearance of blue spots on the skin. The eggs are also coating in a numbing chemical relieving the itchiness.

After reaching the surface of the skin, the eggs stick around a bit, but they are easily brushed off by clothes or other skin. It's a pretty miserable reproduction tactic. But the eggs can survive for months before they find out they are picked up by a new host.

About two to three days after the blue spots have washed off the skin, the parasites in that area will start eating again, attacking the nerves. The resulting damage can lead to parts of the flesh dying off.

Cure

The cure is pretty easy, and only mildly annoying to the skin. It is, however, expensive. One must take a bath in a 1/100 mixture of hot water and lemon juice, and soak in there for three hours, every day for a week. This will drive (or lure, scientists are unsure), the parasites out. Which can cause extreme itchiness.

Also, it is advised to wash all surfaces of one's dwelling with a boiling water lemon juice mix. And boil all fabrics in such a mixture as well.

The problem is only that the season the parasites are most effective is the season when there are hardly any lemons.

Untreated

Untreated the parasites will keep eating, destroying more of the nerves system and thereby corruption more of the flesh. After about a month, they will expel a second set of eggs. Which is a lot larger amount than the first one. Covering the entire person in blue eggs.

Scientist have noticed that the parasites do not die after multiplying. But so far, no test person has survived long enough to study what the parasites do in a later stadium

Testing done on human test subjects, prisoners. Has shown that the parasites do not have any favour for skin type or age of the subject.

Type

Parasitic

Testing in Xa'va Prison

Major testing on Blue spotted disease was conducted in Xa'va prison. After the 6^th war, the Rackay had a large number of human prisoners of war. And without the requirement to follow the human rules of war. They thought it was an excellent opportunity to do some test.

The Rackay only infected one person with the Blue Spotted disease, and measured how long it took to spread. If it was capable of reaching those in isolation. They also treated some people just to see how fast they got re-infected.

The whole experiment ran about 8 months before all the 674 human test subjects had died.