#fantasy illness

Tango gets redstone induced nosebleeds every so often.  Apparently radiation sickness can cause spontaneous bleeding and weakens the body's ability to clot blood, so we’re leaning on a moderately less extreme example of that lol.  Tango walks out of his redstone caves with blood trickling from his ears like it's normal.  Every so often he just passes out in his redstone noodles, in like a “cats are liquid” sort of deal, facedown in a pile of redstone dust.  He’s got a very “hasn’t killed me yet lmao” attitude towards redstone.  “This is normal!”  He says as his lungs are literally coated from the inside out in red glitter.  Sir, this is why your eyes are red.

Etho is mostly immune to redstone poisoning.  He doesn't so much have a resistance, as the redstone doesn’t have anything to really affect.  There's just nothing there. There’s a running theory on the server that it’s the reason his eye is red, but like.  There’s no legitimate proof for that.  And Etho won't say anything either way lol. Every once in a while he'll do something stupid like eat a handful of redstone, and he’ll either get deathly ill, or be completely fine.  It's a coin toss.

Mumbo is completely immune to redstone.  He doesn't know why.  He doesn’t know how.  He didn't even know redstone could even be harmful until a few years ago, when Doc started shouting at him for wandering around in his redstone in shorts and a t-shirt.  Mumbo has eaten redstone, and will eat redstone again.  

Pearl has also eaten redstone.  It is a rite of passage.  She was then violently ill because she doesn’t have any tolerance for it.  She does have several Doc and Tango sourced gloves and goggles now, though.  

Doc has so many precautions for redstone poisoning at this point.  He has full body protection, and a whole lot of “No, Grian, no you cannot go in there, the air is so saturated with redstone that you would die on the spot-”  He has also poisoned himself so many times because he will just.  Fall asleep in his redstone.  Doc no-

Xisuma’s suit protects him from redstone poisoning!  And pollen.  And other common allergens.  And malware.  And Jevin.  And lore apparently.

Zed goes through the proper redstone protection protocols, but like also what if he ingested just a little bit.  For science.  Like what would happen if he just licked a little bit.  Just a taste.  He has absolutely gone around and asked people if they’d try redstone dust in various formats.  The only person he actually convinced to try some was Keralis and uhhhhh.  Ummmm.  Keralis- Keralis buddy where the fuck did it go.  Like you just touched it and it was gone man what-

Impulse is very proper with his redstone safety.  He goes through all the proper procedures and steps, and measures out the dust carefully and makes sure everything is in order- until something breaks.  When something breaks, he just goes in there, bare handed, no eye protection, no nothing.  Like there is a certain point where he stops caring and just sticks his hands into the wiring to see what he can do about it.  In his defense this has only gotten him killed once.

Skizz is doing the redstone thing, yep.  Mmm-hmm.  He’s doing the things.  …why is his nose bleeding.

Bdubs has gotten redstone poisoning before and it was bad.  This happened during like his shirtless Mindcrack days, and he’s been religiously careful about it ever since.  Long-sleeves, close-toed shoes, netherite mesh gloves, goggles, gloves under his gloves, a mask, the works.  There ain’t no redstone poisoning in this house, he’s got an apron and everything.  This man is inches away from putting himself in a full hazmat suit.  He did steal those goggles from Doc, yes.  The sheer dichotomy between him and Etho is killing me.

Cub will not die from redstone poisoning.  Like he puts on the minimum protection and then just.  Is fine.  Like.  He just manifests it, man.  He has absolutely eaten the redstone before, but like.  He was fine man, idk.  Hasn’t killed him yet.  To be completely fair there is so much bullshit in his system, it probably all just cancels out in there.

My take on how ichor poisoning works in @fizzyboy 's au

IDK WHAT FIXZY STAND IN DID IS BUT I LIKED THD IDEa.

[ONLY FOR HUMANS]

Works similarly to mercury poisoning, if you dont properly handle ichor, the skin will absorb the toxins through osmosis and kill the poor victim from inside out. Depending on how frequently they handle ichor improperly determines the speed.

Symptoms can Include but are not limited to

- Paranoia

- Numbness

- Anxiety and Depression

- Tremors

- Headaches

- violent thoughts and tendancies

- audio and visual hallucinations

- pyrophobia

- Lack of appetite

- insomnia and restlessness

- coughing, vomiting, etc.

For some added context as to why The Narrator looks like that, back in middle school I had this idea for a disease that would slowly turn people to stone. I thought out how it affected the body, quarantine and treatment methods, and stages of infection. It acted a bit like the zombie-ant fungus, where it would drive people to freeze in different poses as they turned to stone. And while I didn’t know it while I was making it, when I told my father about the quarantine methods I’d come up with and he mentioned that it was similar to the quarantine methods of tuberculosis.

How to put Phainon through his cycles in a modern au without typical magic:

A dreaming illness, where the characters dreams are just of the exact same day they just lived, on a constant loop. As the night of dreaming progresses, the dreams become more and more distorted until they become full on night terrors of that very day, eventually they may or may not wake from the night terrors.

And then the next night it repeats.

Again

And again

And again.

Every night, replying the day that had just been lived in increasingly more terrifying ways, where the situation devolves dictated by your subconscious in ways you cannot fight against.

And you remember all of it.

That would drive a character mad quickly. And nobody else knows.

Eventually you could find ways to medicate with its own host of other problems, but eventually you have to sleep.

And the cycle repeats.

Something that occurred to me recently was about how satisfied i felt with how a drug for a fantasy-specific medical issue was handled, and it made me think about it a bit more to realise why

For an example, i will be comparing to contraception while I make my points, so here are some things to consider when delving into your fictional medicine

Most important first:

Side Effects

To consider the side effects a developed or developing drug may have, ask yourself first

What is the drug supposed to be treating? What symptoms are alleviated?

For a medicide to be considered worth developing and producing, the side effects cannot be worse than what is being treated

Many contraceptives exist for afab use, but none for amab, why is that?

This is because, for what it is treating, any amount of negative side effects are considered worse than not using any

The amab user would not be experiencing any pregnancy, afterall, so when compared to not taking a drug, it's not worth using

Side effects of contraception can include headaches, nausea, mood swings, and acne, among other things, so when compared to pregnancy, these are reasonable risks

When compared to nothing, as the amab partner would be experiencing, they are not reasonable risks

This is why attemps to produce contraception for amab people typically fall short because of the risk factor

Varieties

Does your medicine come in different forms? Pill, injection, gel, etc.

Medicine can affect people differently, meaning that different types of medicine can be produced to treat one thing

This one is a lot more dependant on what exactly your fictional disease or condition or whatever else is

The reason contraception can come in so many forms is simply because of the sheer amount of ways pregnancy can be prevented, but it usually comes down to stopping or otherwise disturbing the menstrual cycle

Their use and effectivity, however, varies from person to person

This links back to the side effects point, in that someone can experience some of the worse side effects on one type of contraception, but next to none on another

Are there subtle differences between the types of medicine developed to consider this? Is it a new medicine so there aren't many being developed? Is it not in high demand? Are there not enough people willing to or able to drug test? Does the administration method contribute to the side effects?

Why are or why aren't there different varieties of your medicine? Do they treat the symptoms slightly differently (e.g, Drug A treats symptoms x, y, and z but Drug B only treats symptoms x and z)

There also physical contraceptives, being condoms, femidoms, or caps

These are not medicines or drugs, but there are still different types because of how varied people are

They may be more effective or more comfortable with different types of people

     Clay knew the moment he woke up before his alarm clock that it was going to be a Scales Day. He pressed his face into his pillow and didn’t bother groaning, because it would help nothing and would only waste valuable energy. And here he’d been hoping to go hiking after work with friends too. He dragged himself through his morning routine, holding onto the bedpost when his legs threatened to forget how human joints and walking worked, cracking some of the stiffness out of his hands and wrists with practiced motions that his doctor kept telling him to stop (but he never did because otherwise he wouldn’t be able to move them well enough to get dressed).

     Getting dressed was a chore too. He had to wrestle on his socks first, pulling them over feet tipped with sharp claws that would shred the fabric if he wasn’t careful, but putting on socks meant bending over and even while sitting that pulled at his spine and hips and threatened to make his tail spill into existence and tear a hole in his pants (yet again, he had so many slacks he’d bought for work that now he used for slouching around the house on his days off because of the patched holes in their backs that it wasn’t funny anymore). He shrugged on a button-up shirt and stubbornly ignored the catching and ripping sensation of threads tangling with the scales peppering his shoulders and spine only to be pulled free or cut through by the sharp edges of said scales. It didn’t feel bad enough to have made any noticeable holes, and he’d be wearing a vest over it anyway, so no one would see if there was a new hole.

the story plot for OFND is really really cool! and i have zero creativity at making plots. so is it ok if i try writing for example ignite 1? i probably won't post it online its just for writing practice.

also how does the blackpath radiation sickness (?) work, is it like "on contact you get a status debuff and if it gets into your bloodstream you hecking die" or is it like regular infection?

Oh gosh?? Absolutely, yeah!!! OFND is here to be shared and to inspire, so if you’d like to write out a scene that’s highlighted within the outlines so far, I absolutely encourage you to go right ahead and do so! And, if you do end up sharing it, please tag me so I can read it!! ^^ Though of course there’s no pressure! <3

Admittedly I haven’t worked out all the kinks there just yet; I have plans and ambitions to make full little pages on OFND’s fantasy illnesses, the Darkpath Sickness included (and hopefully given a new, less mouthful of a name lol)! But, as far as I assume it works at the moment, I kind of see it like ARS, also known as Acute Radiation Syndrome.

The whole point of the Darkpath being dangerous is that the road, having been touched by humans and not made by Nature, is charged with immense radiation. The fealty cats aren’t exposed to as much raw radiation as outsiders are, as they’re sequestered within a valley that is fully natural - the only radiation that reaches them is that in the air, and thus it produces some physical traits, but it doesn’t make them sick. Should they come across the Darkpath and touch it with their exposed skin (via their paw pads or through an open wound), then the sickness would take hold.