Coeldynia

Written by Innokha

Glazed eyes, amnesia, and breath with an odor reminiscent of wet clay. Those are often the very first symptoms of coeldynia.
It's been fifteen years since the disease first emerged and we are no where closer to a cure. I thought it would be a good time to revisit this and go over what we know about this infection. Calling it a disease or infection feels inadequate to be honest, but I'm not sure what else to call it short of probably the most horrible thing that could happen to a person.
Luckily it still seems to be a relatively rare occurrence but few find that comforting. Because when someone develops coeldynia their mental and physical form becomes twisted in ways unpredictable. No two infections develop the same result exactly, but one thing remains a constant -- that person will become some manner of demented thing not of this world, something that probably shouldn't exist.
Twisted elongated limbs, bent spines, asymmetrical and contorted faces, horrid skin lesions, bulbous tumors, exposed muscles and organs... a complete reorganization of rational anatomy. Sometimes the change is quick and sometimes it is brutally slow. What happens to the mind seems to be worse than the body, the person becomes something inhuman. If they really are still in there, sane, yet trapped, I cannot think of a grimmer fate.
There is a single positive thing to note about coeldynia. For those who aren't infected anyway. And that is those who have it cannot infect others. It is not transmissible by route of the diseased victim. That doesn't stop most from greatly fearing anybody who has any possible sign of early infection, but that's a mindset backed only by superstition. Of course early on we didn't know this, we didn't know what coeldynia was or how people got it. So the sick were quarantined in places like the Madstone Asylum which quickly devolved into monstrous abandoned places. Nowadays people who come down with early illness are prone to disappearing entirely. By who? Your guess is as good as mine. A popular theory is government or private institutions gathering them for study and observation... or quiet execution. That, or maybe the Laruian Dimension just sucks em back up. I suppose it's possible.
So what is coeldynia really and how does it really infect you? You've asked the right person.
To understand how people contract coeldynia you kind of need to know a bit about Laruia and how they manifest in our plane. These alien entities can cross over to our dimension through an operating Laruian Portal... leaking would be the proper term, we don't intend to let them enter when we open one but they often do. When they first cross they are ghost-like entities... formless, invisible, almost entirely undetectable. A newly crossed laruia will travel randomly as nothing more than an aura of potential energy, sometimes for a very long distance, before settling down and latching itself to our physical world. Usually this is a location, small natural item like a plant or rock, or a section of a building, and it will manifest into a wild entity with some measure of physical substance. On rare occasions, a manifesting laruia will latch to an animal. And on very rare occasions, it will latch to a human. Coeldynia is a word to describe the disease that occurs in a human when a wild laruia latches to their body in an attempt to manifest in our dimension.

Recorded by Soren Elliott

Coelarua Researcher in Opulence

Personal Audioblog Transcript

Posted July 8, 2890. #1

Type

Supernatural

Origin

Alien

Cycle

Chronic, Acquired

Rarity

Rare