The Fade
Tairos is poison to us! It wants to strangle anything that's a reminder of time before YOU broke it!
Tairos is not a particularly hospitable place for most. It is filled with dangers and ravaged by The Queen's Rebuke yet a countless many have managed to make it their home. However, for a certain type of visitor or immigrant, the land itself is toxic. When the rebuke devastated the Leylines the impact when far beyond just severing magic and silencing the gods. Certain beings depend on the flow of magic for their very existence. Creatures such as demons, angelic beings, and elementals exist in bodies carved from mana and Tairos' withering touch quickly erodes such forms. Even things such as constructs and undead whom are fueled by magic rather than made from it will eventually fall victim. Perhaps the most notable species impacted by this is the Fae who, while living creatures, are deeply connected to the ebb and flow of mana. /
For beings shaped out of magic it means slowly losing their grip on the ability to physically manifest. Their power, their bodies, there very being will diminish until they become little more than a shadow of their true self and slip into the turbulent etherium just behind the veil of reality where they will continue to waste away into nothing. A once mighty demon-lord would, for example, fade from Tairos entirely and be forced to lurk just on the other side where it would be ground down to arcane dust upon the etheric winds. It's a process who's time table will vary from being to being but the end result is inevitable.
Living creatures, such as the fae, will experience an altogether more physical anguish. While it takes longer for Tairos' ravaged mana to take root within them, once it does it will manifest as weakness, fatigue, and fragility at first. Later, it will inflict pain, long periods of fugue, and a disruption in the ability to cast magic or use innate abilities. Eventually, their bodies will give out on them entirely as organs cease to function. Those who manage to stave off the death of their bodies through intensive medical care will fall victim to hysteria and madness as their minds crumble.
While a cure or inoculation against the Fade is unknown there are means holding back. Beings who exist on magic alone such as ghosts, elementals, constructs, infernal or divine beings can anchor themselves to sources of power to sustain them. It is why totem spirits will choose particular places in nature to root themselves in, why elementals lurk in places overflowing with their chosen element, and why angels, demons, and spirits may choose to possess the living. These efforts at anchoring provide relief from the Fade and a means of recovering what may have been lost to them, for so long as the host being or location can continue to provide sustenance. For living creatures there is typically only one option, infusions of mana. That could be anything from devouring life force to receiving injections of liquified Manacite.
Transmission & Vectors
The Fade is the direct impact of pulling upon the tainted leylines of Tairos. It impacts any being who relies on mana on a constant basis. Magicians of most sort seem largely free of the Fade as they use Manacite for their casting efforts and Manacite is form of purified energy left over from prior to the destruction wrought by the Queen's Rebuke. However; necromancers who choose to use the damaged leylines rather than Manacite will quickly find themselves the victim of the Fade.
Causes
The root cause of the Fade is the necrotic nature of the leylines of Tairos.
Symptoms
For magical beings it is decline in their ability to physically manifest and to access innate abilities. For constructs it is an increasingly frequent occurrence of malfunctions.
With living creatures the Fade can takes many months to begin to show itself. Early symptoms are varying degrees of exhaustion, irritability, minor aches, nightmares, and bouts of insomnia. These will become increasingly worse and grow to include periods of debilitating pain, depressive episodes and panic attacks, difficulty in casting spells or accessing innate abilities, and sporadic fugue states often lasting hours. End stages of Fade present with periods of hysteria often lasting for days, increasingly unstable mood, coma-like states, and eventual organ failure.
Treatment
The effects can be halted and in some cases reversed for beings sculpted out of magic or powered by (in the case of constructs) with regular infusions of fresh mana or similar energies. For many of these extraplanar beings such relief brought about by finding a powerful place to tether to or a strong soul to tether to. However; once these sources are spent they will very quickly decline. This is why wiser entities will be careful how quickly they burn through whatever is sustaining them.
For living creatures suffering the Fade's effect it means a need for direct infusions of mana. The most common such source would be liquified manacite injections or directly draining the energy inside manacite somehow. Purer sources are preferred and in considerable quantity. Diluted or tainted infusions can often lead to their own deleterious consequences. Sources other than mana are known though rarer. Harvesting souls, creating concoctions from the distilled fluids of certain magical creatures, consuming magic items, and investments of power from creatures willing to share (though, rarely without a cost), are all possible routes as well.
Prognosis
Ultimately, those suffering from the Fade must continue to find ways to stop the crippling energies of the leylines from infecting them. They are like a ship taking on water and any moment of complacency could be fatal.
Affected Groups
Demons, Divine Entities, Constructs, Fae, Totemic Spirits, Awakened Creatures. It is also a very closely guarded secret but many of the eldest lords of the houses of Melanthris are suffering from the Fade as well. The bargains they made with the The Autumn Queen are now coming due.
Hosts & Carriers
It is unknown but believed unlikely that the Fade can be passed on from being to being at least among the living. For non-living beings it is speculated that entities deeply impacted by the Fade might pass on the corruption afflicting them to whatever place or person they tether on to, should they remain in contact long enough.
Prevention
It doesn't seem that there exists a means of avoiding the Fade short of completely shutting one's self off from magic which seems an impossible task in its own right,. There is some evidence to suggest that for living beings reliant on mana that a certain tolerance to the destructive mana leaking into Tairos can be built up over generations. In the case of the fae for example some of their youngest members seem the most resistant to the Fade but in turn they losing touch with their own innate abilities.
For those of a more magical nature, simply never leaving their place of power or vessels they possess will prevent any exposure the Fade.
History
The first recorded cases of the Fade began in the wake of the Queen's Rebuke. Surviving Fae were quickly succumbing to the withering disease. It's likely that it was the beings shaped from magic that were encountering the Fade well before the fae though. There is a rather immediate end to recordings of demonic manifestation and roaming phantasms just after the Rebuke, coinciding with the Silence of the Gods as well.
Cultural Reception
In whatever cultures that are aware of the illness, those suffering from it are a stark reminder of the fate that awaits all of them unless magic can be rekindled.
Type
Supernatural
Origin
Magical
Cycle
Chronic, Acquired
Rarity
Rare
Affected Species
Entry for Worldbuilding Summer Camp 2021
Answering: "a medical condition which is feared by some"
Cover image:
Fading Away
by
Siljavich
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