Vellum Bloom

Disease Cycle

• Incubation: 3–5 days post-consumption

• Onset: Gradual physical changes within 1 week

• Chronic Phase: Indefinite progression unless treated

• Dormancy: Parasites may remain asymptomatic for years, reactivating due to immune stress or exposure to encoded stimuli (e.g., specific texts, frequencies, chemical signatures)

The skin speaks, if you know how to read it.

Transmission / Vectors

• Primary Vector: Pellucida carnivora, a trench clam found in the Drowned Trenches, especially in areas with high organic sediment (e.g., ancient gravesites, sunken ruins, drowned archives).

• Parasite: A symbiotic flatworm known as Memnorea vellumis, whose body is laced with strands of pre-Fall nanofilaments believed to be remnants of biological memory storage.

Environmental Conditions:

• Oxygen-deprived sediment

• High levels of decomposing pre-Fall organic matter

• Trace electromagnetic pulses (possibly triggering parasitic encoding)

• Infection occurs via ingestion of raw or lightly steamed trench clams. Heat above 145°C kills most parasites but not the nanotech threads, which may still bond to gut lining.

Symptoms

Physical

• Week 1–2: Dry skin, itchiness, shedding

• Week 3+: Epidermal plates form over limbs, chest, and neck—thin but fibrous and slightly translucent. The texture resembles warped parchment or cured vellum.

• Advanced: Hair loss, ink-like pigment leaks from skin folds, especially around joints and facial orifices. Blood darkens, becoming thick and slow-clotting.

Neurological / Mental

• Auditory hallucinations: whispers in unknown tongues or pre-Fall languages

• Compulsive writing or scribing behaviors—often with blood or other organic inks

• Insomnia, hypergraphia, and in rare cases, archive delusion: the belief that one is a living record containing sacred or forbidden knowledge

• Some patients display cryptomnesia—recalling historical details they should not know

Treatment

• Boiling bloodleaf tea with silver bark (used by the Farmers Guild) slows skin changes

• Sandblasting exfoliation (painful, risky) to remove plates

• Genetic therapy using nanofiltered viral vectors (available only via The Doctors, and very limited)

• Surgical extraction of parasitic clusters, often fatal if attempted late-stage

• Scribes rumored to perform excision rites, involving fire, ink, and scripture

Cost: Very high. Treatments are rare, experimental, or taboo. The Solstice Syndicate sometimes trades in “living vellums” as currency.

You’re not buying parchment—you’re buying a soul pressed flat and screaming. That’s why it’s worth so much.

Prognosis

• Mild Cases: Skin thickening stabilizes; hallucinations fade with time

• Moderate: Disfiguring dermal plaques; lifelong sensitivity to ink, paper, or speech

• Severe: Full-body "blooming" into plate-covered form; mind often lost to compulsive knowledge retention

• Terminal: Total organ failure; body may petrify and stiffen like old parchment

Sequela

• Secondary Infections: Plate layers trap bacteria and mold

• Psychosis: Caused by constant hallucinations and identity erosion

• Linguistic Tics: Infected may unconsciously mimic writing structures in speech

• Allergic Responses: To ink, parchment, or specific frequencies of light (UV exposure causes seizures in some late-stage victims)

Affected Groups

• Foragers who dive the Trenches

• Low-tier Scribes with insufficient training

• Syndicate ritualists and Wake Chemists

• Those who consume trench meat or participate in forbidden feasts

• Children (immune systems too reactive)

• Most Engineers (rarely eat fish)

• Others (for unknown reasons, the parasite does not latch to their altered biology as readily)

The afflicted often abandon personal identity altogether, referring to themselves not by name but by title—Volume, Codex, Appendix—and insisting they must be 'read' to fulfill their purpose.

Hosts & Carriers

• Pellucida carnivora trench clams

• Blood ink made from trench biota

• Possibly paper crafted from infected plant pulp near water bodies

• The clams themselves show no visible signs of infection, but microscopic tissue reveals etched coding across cell membranes

Prevention

• Culinary: Never eat raw trench clams; full sterilization is necessary

• Protective Wards: Scribes wear glyph-etched gloves when handling trench-born scrolls

• Vaccination: A rumored experimental serum exists—only available to high-ranking Doctors or Scribes

• Other: Charred clam shells worn around the neck are thought to repel "archive ghosts"

Epidemiology

• Harvest festivals featuring trench seafood

• Syndicate feasts or ritual meals

• Improperly sterilized food brought inland by Foragers

• Rare, usually isolated, but outbreaks tend to cluster near Scribe enclaves or old libraries

• Several Book Keepers infected while cataloguing scrolls pulled from submerged temples

History

• 88 SE, when Scribe Archivist Haldon Vitus consumed a ceremonial meal of trench mollusks and began skin-flaking Latin verses within a week

• The Flooded Archives Incident (92 SE): 12 Scribes lost to Bloom; room sealed in inkglass

• The Bloomspeaker Riots (103 SE): a Prophet afflicted with Bloom was flayed alive by Town Watch after reciting unknown pre-Fall prophecy

• Black-market “vellum scrolls” rumored to be skin, treated and written with parasitic ink

Who am I to deny a man his ending, if he’s the one who wrote it? If he wants to be read instead of remembered—hell, maybe that’s braver than most of us’ll ever be.

Cultural Reception

• Fear & Fascination: Infected are both feared and fetishized—seen as containing dangerous, sacred knowledge

• Scribes: Publicly ban the condition, but privately debate its use

• Church of Hope: Declares victims "False Prophets" and heretical

• Solstice Syndicate: Treats Vellum Bloom victims as oracles or tradeable relics