Sight Sickness

Sight Sickness, not to be confused with Illusion Sickness is a pretty serious condition. For people who scry or have visions, it can turn those visions real. These are called vision attacks. That's all find and dandy if the vision is one of fluffy kittens, but more often than non, visions are darker than that. And dark visions? They make sight sickness dangerous and downright deadly.

To the best of anyone's knowledge, sight sickness is genetic. There are people who get it that don't know anyone in their family with it, but carriers are really common. For example, my friend, Damian Walker, has a Tenganaw mother and a Seers father who can see when someone's lying. There's a good chance they haven't had visions attacks because they don't spend a lot of their time pursuing visions.

Typically, people with sight sickness have an "inciting incident" that activates the condition. This is usually one of the first visions a person has, and more often than not, it's violent. But that also means some people who scry may even be carriers, if they don't scry often, or typically scry for mundane things like the weather. Then again, for some people, a simple vision of the hay harvest can wreak havoc on their allergies.

Symptoms and Treatment

The primary symptom of sigh sickness are the vision attacks. A vision attack is when you physically experience part or all of a vision. A vision about a storm at sea might soak through your clothes. A vision in which you walk on broken glass can leave you with bloody feet. A vision of a murder? Might kill you. They don't always happen, but the longer and clearer a vision is, the more likely it will be accompanied by a vision attack. Unlike Illusion sickness, vision attacks have an actual, physical manifestation. Damian once had a vision of a knife fight, cuts opened on his body, like he was being attacked by a ghost. It's not pleasant from anyone's perspective.

by Vinicius "Amnx" Amano

Still, there are advantages to sight sickness. For one, unlike illusion sickness, only true visions have a physical manifestation. So if something affects you, you know it's going to happen. People with sight sickness can also see through illusions better than most. The Illusionists over on Co'ar Island typically hide their dock from outsiders, but Damian's never had trouble finding it.

Sight sickness also tends to make visions more common. Other people go to a lot of work to scry for future, past, or distant events. But a person with sight sickness? Once they have that inciting vision, the floodgates have opened. They barely have to try, and sometimes they don't try at all. This can be really convenient, when the visions that come to you contain just the information you're looking for, but sometimes there's just not enough there to get meaning out of. And even these small visions can come with a vision attack. So how useful that one is really depends on who you're talking to.

CW: bodily harm, death, ghosts (mention)

by Chaozzy Lin

Type

Magical

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There's no cure, but the Foxes have developed a medicine to help manage the symptoms. This is usually taken by mouth at the first sign of a vision attack, to prevent the vision from manifesting physically. In some cases, medicine has been known to heal injuries, even after a vision attack is over. If you keep a stash of it with you, can live a pretty normal life, and some people even become famous for their scrying abilities. In fact, you might think Toby's Gambit is nothing but fiction, but I have documentation, not only that it's based on a true story, but that the person who inspired the protagonist had sight sickness.

Affected Populations

I know the name suggests that Seers would experience this the most, but it's actually the Foxes. This probably because all the Foxes learn scrying at level two, but only some of the sight gifts are likely to invoke vision attacks. Of course, the Foxes also have better documentation of it. Seers haven't developed medicine nearly as good as the Fox medicine, and Mistwalker who get sight sickness typically die on their Mistwalk. Damian surely would have, if someone hadn't saved him. It pops up in other communities as well, but not nearly as much as those two. Even the Illusionists and Ghost Speakers don't see it nearly as much as Illusion Sickness. Some handle it better than others (best of luck if you're a Scavenger), but unforuntately, if you don't have the Fox medicine, you're probably going to suffer.