Gloomstricken

The Gloom drives mortals to madness, slowly choking them and drowning them in their own breath. It crushes the lungs closed and suffocates you, all the while burning away at your insides. A painful way to die, indeed. Those who don't die to it, become permanently altered by their exposure, losing their sanity or their physical faculties because of it.

Transmission & Vectors

This condition is contracted by only a single means - spending time in the Gloom. It cannot be transmitted from one person to another, though many less educated folk will claim as such. Breathing in air infected by the Gloom results in immediate infection, as it sticks to the linings of the lungs and throat and chokes the diseased where they stand.

Causes

Gloomstricken people feel an immediate and sharp pain in the throat and chest and the gloom clings to their internal organs and limits their function. It begins as soon as someone breathes in air infected by the gloom.

Symptoms

The immediate symptoms are readily apparent - choking, suffocation, and the feeling of fire within your lungs and throat. It locks the muscles in place, paralyzing its victim. People who have recovered from the initial symptoms also describe an overwhelming madness and inability to control themselves during the initial period, which fades upon recovery.
It is also easy to identify when someone has died in this manner. The skin fades to a pale gray, and cancerous masses expand from underneath the skin, stretching and malforming it. The corpse rots at an accelerated rate until it is nothing but a molded corpse, skin held taught and moisture less to ragged bones, which crumble if disturbed.

Treatment

If one should become gloomstricken with no one else around, they are surely doomed. It grips the muscles into inaction, leaving its victim completely unable to help themselves. The only way to survive such an event is to be dragged back into cleansed air by another, and have the lungs and throat washed out by the forced consumption of purified liquid aratha and concentrated aromatherapy of aratha vapors. If applied within a minute of the initial symptoms, about half an ounce of the stuff should be enough to save a gloomstricken person from death.
Such treatment is extremely costly - such aratha is quite necessary in holding off the gloom from larger communities, so using so much of it on a single person is often not seen as a viable solution in most small towns and villages, which may have no or limited reserves available.
It has also been discovered that long term treatment, consisting of repeated prescriptions of regular oral consumption and concentrated aromatherapy, after initial contraction helps reduce the lingering effects of the condition. Only the largest of cities have enough aratha in reserve to support this kind of treatment, and only for the richest and most important of people in Etalyr.

Prognosis

Becoming gloomstricken is most often a surely terminal experience. Few have survived longer than a minute or two in such a state. Even those who receive immediate treatment may not survive the ordeal, succumbing to a slow death in their sleep shortly after. If you survive more than a day following the incident in which you become gloomstricken, you are likely to survive. However, without continued treatment, there are non-life-threatening side effects which stay with an infected person for several years to life.

Sequela

Those who survive the initial throws of becoming gloomstricken are likely to suffer from bouts of madness in the years to follow. The exact nature of the madness varies from person to person, and may never manifest. If madness does manifest, it is usually for a short period of anywhere from a few hours to a couple of days. During this time, people describe experiencing the same burning pain in their chest, despite their respiratory system continuing to function as normal. These bouts are usually separated by a period of a few months at least, or even a few years.
Furthermore, gloomstricken people often become ill with other common infections (cold, flu, etc.) at a higher rate. The immune system is constantly fighting any residual gloom that remains in the person’s system, and can less effectively resist these other infections. This means someone who becomes gloomstricken may later succumb to a normally innocuous sickness.

Prevention

To avoid becoming gloomstricken, one must be vigilant to never breathe air that contains the gloom. For most, this is not an issue - remain within the confines of the city, town, or village, and so long as the place maintains its supply of aratha, you will be safe.
For those who need to travel outside of these safe areas, it is vital to bring a portable arathafier to create a pocket of relative safety. Holding your breath can help you survive if you must move into the gloom for extremely short periods of time, but it is not to be depended upon. The pressure that the gloom exerts on the body is enough to force air from your lungs and cause you to draw breath. You may only be able to hold your breath half as long in the gloom as you would in normal conditions.

Epidemiology

The gloom is the only cause for those who become gloomstricken - anyone who spends enough time in the gloom becomes gloomstricken. It does not spread from person to person, though many uneducated on the subject do believe it to be contagious.

History

The gloomstricken have been around since the coming of the gloom. The earliest records are more than a thousand years old, where ancient tomes detail the trials of the first caravans as they sought out aratha to return to their villages. Every village has their own stories of a caravaner who has succumbed to this affliction. It may have been a hundred years since the last case in a village, but the stories live on as a solemn reverence of their sacrifice and a grave reminder of the dangers of the gloom.

Cultural Reception

In high society, it is well understood that one cannot become gloomstricken by any means outside the gloom. Well taught people will pity the gloomstricken more than anything. Brave souls who succumb may be revered, and foolhardy or reckless individuals may be held out with disdain as a reminder of the constant vigilance that must be taken in a world with the gloom. Those who live are taken into care hospitals designed to help them recover and reduce the lingering effects, if they can afford it. Otherwise, most take a wide berth around these individuals, out of a fear for a sudden burst of violent madness.
The less populous and educated parts of the world view the gloomstricken with much more fear. They may believe that it can be transferred through contact or proximity, and invoke clear warnings to remain far away from any of its victims, even those who still live. Gloomstricken people are not welcome in these communities, and may not even be welcome in the village’s area of safety. Those who live after being gloomstricken are sometimes sent back out to face their own deaths in the gloom by their own neighbors and families, riled into hysteria by superstition and misunderstanding.

Also known as: Bleakfallen, Duskdriven.

Those foolhardy enough to venture into the gloom unprotected are sure to become gloomstricken. What may not kill you immediately will forever reshape you.

Type

Chemical Compound

Origin

Natural

Cycle

Chronic, Acquired

Rarity

Uncommon