The Creeping Dust
A scientific scourge that kills soil bacteria, plants, and animals via the process of sapping them of water and destroying the cells. This process creates a sand-like desert in the environment filled with dried-out corpses. This virus has been spawned in a few different ways throughout all of reality, generally as bioweapons, and as such remains a dangerous scourge wherever it is detected. Without proper protections, this disease is capable of transforming entire worlds into lifeless wastelands.
Notable Manifestations include:
The Creeping Dust appeared on Rast after being used as an extermination weapon by the local populace during a war. Once it got out of control, The Sanguar Institute - Cassio Division was tasked with stopping it to save as many lives as possible. While they were successful after committing a great sacrifice, this event resulted in the creation of the broken shards called The Garden Ruins of Sanguar.
Transmission & Vectors
Contracted primarily through physical contact and infected dust blowing in the wind. The Creeping Dust is a hardy disease able to last in many harsh environments for significant periods of time. Once it has infected a suitable host or environment, it will steadily increase its presence within the system until its infection reaches a critical point and begins the dust-creation process via the sapping of liquids and other connective materials. This 'creeping' effect will appear to spread outward creating a lifeless desert and desiccated corpses in its wake.
Causes
Decidedly engineered in construction, the secrets of the creation of this virus are an incredibly difficult and time-consuming trial wrought with significant danger. However, if completed successfully, the resulting creation is a powerful and tough virus capable of decimating entire worlds if left unchecked. Unfortunately for many realities, they hold the right conditions to allow for The Creeping Dust to manifest with the only thing preventing its creation being ethics, morals, and, if considered, easier ways to murder one's opponent.
Symptoms
Symptoms of this condition include the persistent presence of sand on one's skin, the feeling of ash in one's lungs combined with a harsh cough, thirst for water, gradual blindness, and fatigue. Over time, an infected individual will begin to hallucinate for greater and longer periods before eventually either succumbing to their illness or perishing due to actions they take while hallucinating.
Treatment
While simple treatments, such as soap and water, are sufficient to prevent the disease from spreading, once it is in the body it is a difficult opponent to defeat. As the main transmission of this virus is dust being blown or otherwise moved through the air, many consider any measures taken to be temporary at best as the virus works its way through the environment. To cure this disease in the environment requires extensive and virulent measures such as the utilization of an apporpriate antivirus. However, due to the difficulty of creating these cures, often it can be too late before the disease has taken its course.
It should be noted that the usage of magitech has proven effective in managing the disease as shown by the events that took place on Rast with the Sanguar Insititute - Cassio Division. However, even this approach enacted a hard price in order to work before the dust claimed everything.
Prognosis
The prognosis for this illness is almost inevitably death without extreme steps being taken to halt or cure the disease. Generally, the disease will begin to affect an individual's energy and they will feel fatigued as well as manifest a persistent cough. They will lack the ability to sweat and joints will begin to hurt after 2-3 days followed by a strong desire to drink more water. After two weeks, the infected individual will start to hallucinate with the initial effects being flashes of shadows before progressing to more significant manifestations. During this course, the affected person will often notice their vision fading as their eyes become consumed by the virus.
These symptoms will steadily progress until the victim is left with tightly drawn skin, reduced musculature, blindness, and an addled mind. The infected will then perish after about three to four weeks looking like nothing more than skin and bones.
Prevention
Tightly sealed hazmat suits as well as simple chemical washes such as soap and water have proven effective in fighting this disease externally. However, there is little to prevent it from spreading internally once infected.
Epidemiology
Primarily spreading rapidly with the encroaching desert-like wasteland it produces, this virus can also spread throughout population centers through touch alone by infected individuals. This is because this disease will produce infectious and gritty dust along an individual's skin as it destroys its victim's body. This makes treatment difficult and infected persons are often banished by their fellows, often to little effectiveness as infected wastelands continue to spread larger and larger.
History
TO BE DETERMINED
Type
Viral
Origin
Engineered
Cycle
Chronic, Acquired
Rarity
Extremely Rare
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