Salvation

The contagion that wiped out the Human empire? I think they called it something... Human-y... 'the plague' or 'the virus'... you know... something unimaginative. We call it, Salvation

— Galis Dek - History Educator

Origin

Salvation, as it is now called, was a particulary vicious disease that spread across the Human empire with incredible speed. No one truly knows how it began or what its origins were, other than where the primary infection occured. One of the newer colonies in the empire, roughly five hundred Humans, with more than 5000 various slave races, were constructing the new city centre when a new discovery was made halfway through construction.
A new kind of metal, one that flowed like mercury at room temperature though less toxic and less likely to make someone go mad. A quick analysis of the metal was undertaken, showing it to be benign to most bipedal life forms, the colonists immediately started working on how to use it in their construction. The metal was super conductive at lower temperatures, great to be used within their new settlement instead of having to find other materials like copper or gold when their discovery came with a small river of this metal running through the nearby hills. Construction on the colony moved at a much quicker pace and was completed a year ahead in addition to finding other uses for the metal, such as medicinal uses for Mechalus suffering cybernetic burnout.
But there is where the benefits of the metal stopped, as with it soon becoming ubiquitous within the colony, something within the metal began to leech into the people around it, first making the slaves sick, then the Humans. A mist that started to permeate the air, slowly seeping into everyday life, it happened over months, so slow that people barely noticed, until the Mechalus start fainting, becoming ill, suffering complete cybernetic failure in the ones that were treated with the metal, then the Fraal, then Weren.
It wasn't till Humans started becoming infected did they take notice or care, by that time it was too late. Once the disease took root in the Humans, it had found fertile ground to mutate and become virulent. While roughly eighty percent of the slave races survived, only two percent of the Human population survived, at least from the disease. The intial infection vector was through touch, but after going through the Human population it could be contracted through the air, touch or ingesting anything touched by someone who was infected.

Transmission & Vectors

By the end of the Human empire, if anyone was within the first stages of the virus, showing signs of a common cold, they could transmit the virus through a number of ways.

• Airborne: The virus would be in every breath of the victim
• Touch: Any sort of contact with the victim could transmit the disease
• Bloodborne: Corpses must be disposed of properly, lest bodily fluids transmit the disease

Symptoms

Phase 1

Once someone has been infected with Salvation, they begin showing signs of a common malady among the host species, such as the common cold for Humans. During this stage, the virus is only contagious through the air, produced by coughing and sneezing.

Phase 2

A week after the initial symptoms show, the virus becomes even more contagious. It is now able to be transmitted through touch, and even the most minor of cuts where blood is exposed. Victims become weeker and more lethargic, generally lessening their likelihood of traveling with the virus to spread it. A frequent mistake in purging entire settlements which had the virus was to incinerate the whole town as it simply spread the virus as the victims burned and the smoke from their flesh carried it further.
Any survivors of Salvation progressed no further than Phase 2.

Phase 3

Three weeks after the initial infection, the victim by now has become dilirious, unable to form intelligable speech as fever takes them. Any victims who reach this stage of infection do not survive. This is the shortest phase in which victims will begin bleeding from their pores. Their insides becoming liquified and no one has lived long enough while studying this phase to really say which comes first, complete organ collapse as their organs liquify or blood loss. In either case, a particularly gruesome death awaits the unfortunate.

Treatment

There have been many attempts to treat Salvation, none have worked effectively. At best most treatments seem to delay the progression of the virus, but not to halt it entirely. The only treatment that physicians have taken to, is the complete molecular deconstruction of the victim to prevent its spread.

Prognosis

Fatality rates from Salvation vary between species, though the hardest hit were the Humans.

• Human: 99.8% fatality rate
• Mechalus: 76% fatality rate
• Weren: 30% fatality rate
• Fraal: 32% fatality rate
• Xanyr: 14% fatality rate
• Various other species: 10-25% fatality rate

Type

Viral

Origin

Engineered

Rarity

Uncommon

Savages should never have assumed they could use the weapons from the armory, even though they outnumbered the revolt squad fifty-to-one. It was a massacre, and the flames burned so hot that it was like we had brought the sun itself to the surface.

— Talus Ravenwood - First Investigator of the Imperial Discovery Directorate

When investigators arrived at what was left of the colony, they were subjected to an assault of savage slaves using weapons out of the armory that they couldn't possibly understand, let alone use effectively. The investigators were not long on the world before they were forced to withdraw, only to return with a full revolt suppression squad. When the flames of the suppression squad died down enough for the temperature in the settlement to be bearable, they brought back samples of the humans and a couple slave corpses, incinerated as they were, as well as the metal to find out what had happened... this proved to be humanity's downfall.