Phlogiston Survivor

When a living creature falls into the Flow, their body calcifies and the enter into a catatonic state that lasts until they are killed or rescued by being brought into the air envelope of a spelljammer or the atmosphere of a planet. While in this torpor, the creature is unable to feel or sense anything.   For some humanoids, both long exposure the phlogiston and months or years of deadened senses warps and alters them greatly, leaving them emotionally and sensually deadened even after rescue.

A phlogiston survivor's sole purpose is to regain the sensory stimuli they had lost by any means necessary. While incapable of feeling anything with their own body, a survivor's long exposure to the Flow gives them the ability to gradually dominate the minds of others around them, giving them full access to the unfortunate victim's senses.   Survivors are typically unsatisfied with just one thrall under them and will gradually take over more and more humanoids around them, working up from the least to most intelligent. For those under the survivor's thrall, they continue to act and operate like they normally would, but gradually grow more sullen and withdrawn, which increases in relation to how many thralls the survivor has as more and more of their feelings and senses are siphoned away.   As this usually occurs onboard spelljamming vessels, which are the most likely to rescue a survivor from the Flow, what follows next is usually a mutiny, as the survivor and their thralls take over a ship completely. If successful, a survivor will then continue collecting more and more slaves, never satisfied, until they are stopped or killed.

There are no known treatment methods for phlogiston survivors. However, those under their thrall can be returned to normal should the dominating surivor be killed.

Any and all humanoids have the potential to become survivors, but what causes one individual to become one while another does not is unknown.

Despite their rarity, survivors have left an impact in the minds of all spelljamming sailors. Most crews know of or have shared amongst themselves at least one story of a phlogiston survivor taking over a ship, though the rarity of survivors does mean that many of these stories are exaggerated or inaccurate.   Nonetheless, the knowledge that any individual trapped in the Flow could be a survivor has made more than one crew wary about rescuing a castaway, and those that are rescued are often treated with suspicion, sometimes for months, by their rescuers, afraid that they may have unleashed a monster in their midst.