EXO

The Impure Affliction of Metal

A nanite superdisease that changes anything living into a homicidal, genocidal, and suicidal mass of rage with enough damage potential to level cities.

Transmission & Vectors

It is unclear how EXO is transmitted, as those with the condition (denoted by having ".exo" at the end of their name) never appear to be virulent. Of course, anyone who gets near an EXO is almost instantly killed by them, so studying them is quite difficult. In the months leading up to a rampage, however, when the individual first shows signs of the condition, similar cases are not generally seen.

Symptoms

When the subject first contracts the nanite, there is no way to know that they have it. It is not until several months afterwards when signs begin to show.
EXO victims exhibit diminished intelligence and increased strength and aggressiveness, while mechanical appendages will start showing themselves outside the skin (organs and skin are not heavily directly affected by EXO, but skin will shred as anything from entire extra claws and arms to cannons and saws are fabricated by the nanite). They will often act in an erratic fashion, killing wantonly and eventually doing something that kills themselves.

Treatment

The only known way to "cure" a .exo is to let it kill itself. Killing them with any other means save themself is generally not effective. However, it has never been tested as to what would happen if two .exos were introduced to each other.
...Perhaps we don't want to find out.

Prognosis

The first symptoms to show is abnormal aggressiveness. This takes several months and is very gradual, although as the infection invades the brain (the first but slowest part to fall to EXO (with the muscles being the last and fastest)), the behavior becomes more dangerous and erratic.
Given another couple months, and the aggressive behavior crosses that threshold into dangerous. They start picking fights with no cause, putting themselves in dangerous positions, etc. EXO has begun to enter the skeletal and muscular systems as well, but only enough to alter the strength and resilience of the .exo (the one infected), not to manifest the external appendages.
Almost a year after the initial infection, EXO will start breaking the skin, in strange bursts. Spikes, random simple claws, small lasers, etc.
At that point it is only a couple days before EXO starts throwing cannons and blades and random other things out of the skin and the .exo goes berserk.

Prevention

The only prevention method for EXO is the simple fact of its sheer improbability. EXO only has 3 known major cases, 9 "minor" (only large, not massive, amounts of people killed), and about 20 known cases of early extermination (and many more hits on people who were just aggressive people and did not have EXO at all).
The Purifiers-- also known as the Fellowship of Purity, or the Grand Crusade Against the Heretical Disease-- claim that EXO can be stopped by faith and by a method they keep secret, but considering only Purifiers actually know what that method is, most don't believe the secretive people in gold robes and masks.

History

The first recorded case of EXO was also the first of the three major cases. An Aller by the name of Cadec had suddenly become very aggressive after working with an extragrennal microbe at the disease center of Neropi in the year 9,451 A.D., or 2,549 P.A. Relatives and colleagues reported strangely reckless and dangerous behavior by the already rather odd Aller, when suddenly everyone at the disease center turned up dead. Within a couple days the town was leveled to rubble, and Cadec.exo had to be brought down by an orbital platform-mounted superlaser. It took an hour of concentrated fire from the laser (which had the power to glass a city with half a second of fire), during which Cadec miraculously stood still, but the city and surrounding area were rendered lifeless for hundreds of years. Cadec.exo's body was hardly damaged by the process, with everything in mostly normal shape, and yet he was most certainly dead. He remains one of the few objects of study for the disease.
Five hundred years later, the second major case occurred. No one knows the name of the creature, only that it was a Pedanga of abnormally large size. It ended with the Pedanga.exo dying in a nuclear-like explosion that destroyed the entirety of the kingdom of Kamati, and is regarded as the worst of the three cases.

Cultural Reception

EXO has caused for almost universal marginalization of cyborgs (called by derogatory terms such as "exheads" or "metalheads") and pushing against nanite technologies. It also sparked the Fellowship of Purity religion, whose doctrine decrees they will "seek out and eradicate all things and persons afflicted by and in contact with the Sickness and all other Impurities". This originally and mostly applies to EXO exclusively, but has come to encompass many diseases and peoples, causing the secretive organization to become less and less tolerated.

Type

Nanite / Mechanical

Cycle

Chronic, Acquired

Rarity

Unique