Amelia Wulfhart
𝕰𝖍𝖗𝖊 𝖉𝖎𝖊 𝖂𝖔̈𝖑𝖋𝖎𝖓𝖆
Objective: To resubmit something from 1.0's World Building Wednesday
Category: Disease
Image Credit: Nef
Development Thread: N/A
Permissions: N/A
Name: Olagh Morah
Aliases:
- The Stillness
- Stone-Bones
- The Binding
Intelligence: Rare
Location: Found across Eroba in very small numbers
Description: The Stillness is a slowly developing disease, taking years for its effects to be fully realized. When first infected, many mistake it for Elf-Shot, arthritis, or just random aches and pains. Some days are better than others, and it takes years before it becomes severe. Then, its victims become ossified, their joints fusing together, often in painful angles, until they succumb in other ways or become trapped within the prison of their own bones.
Affected Species: Humans, Taoar
Transmission: Typically the Olagh Morah is transmitted through blood and bodily fluids being passed onto another person, however it has a low infectivity compared to most diseases and so not everyone exposed to disease fluids becomes infected by it. Sometimes it will affect only the husband and leave the wife and children unharmed, other times it may slowly spread through a small community making it difficult to predict.
Progression:
- Stage One: The Ache, 0 - 10 Years after Infection
The Olagh Morah begins quietly and slowly that most cannot mark the day it begins. A stiffness in their fingers at dawn, a reluctance in their knees after sitting too long. It is often mistaken for arthritis, a dull ache that feels more like fatigue than injury. Joints feel swollen and thick without visible change, the body resists movement in small, easily forgotten ways. Some days are better than others, and the victim convinces themselves nothing is amiss. But as time goes on, those better days come less and less until they do not appear at all. - Stage Two: The Binding, 5 - 15 Years after Infection
Movement in the infected begins to narrow, fingers no longer open as wide as they once did, wrists lose their easy rotation, ankles stiffen so that walking becomes more deliberate instead of natural. There is a sense of resistance within the joints, as if something inside is catching or holding. Tasks that once required no thought now demand attention and effort. The body compensates without permission, a shoulder lifts higher, a step shortens, one hand works harder than the other. Pain becomes more consistent, manageable, but present everyday. - Stage Three: The Crippling, 10 - 20 Years after Infection
The illness can no longer be ignored. Nearly every joint is affected, stiff and often inflamed, movement is still possible but painful. Rising from a chair causes sharp pains to shoot from hips and knees, turning the head causes stabbing pain in the neck. The body settles into slight distortions, fingers never fully straighten and bend at odd angles, knees that remain bent, a back begins to curve. A man's posture might become slightly off center. Moments of painlessness occur, but are rare and cruelly fleeting, just enough to remember what life was like before it began. By this point, it is a disease that cannot be ignored, and will not stop. - Stage Four: The Stilling, 15 - 25 Years after Infection
The joints begin to surrender entirely. What used to resist movement now cannot move as the bones fuse together. Fingers and toes are first, locking into positions that may make standing painful. Then the elbows and knees hold at odd angles. Attempts to fix them require the bones to be broken, a painful and potentially deadly resolution. Then the spine stiffens, drawing the body into a slow, inevitable posture. Stooped, twisted, or rigidly upright. The neck loses all freedom, forcing the infected person to turn their whole body. Then the jaw tightens, speech becomes measured and whispered. Eating and drinking become impossible for the victim to do alone. Breathing becomes shallow as the ribs lose their ability to flex. By the time this stage is done, the victim is completely immobile and their skeleton has fused into a single solid bone. - Stage Five: The Wretched Blossom, 20 - 30 Years after Infection
In its final cruelty, the body begins to grow beyond itself. Bone pushes where it should not be in painful spurs, rising beneath the skin, then piercing through it. Spurs emerge like thorns, splitting flesh, distorting what remains of the victim. Spikes appear growing out of larger bones, pines and needles from smaller ones. Some grow outward, visible and grotesque. Others press inward, unseen, intruding upon organs, nerves. Even the eyes and brain become afflicted. Movement is gone, replaced by the terrible stillness broken only by the slow relentless expansion of bone. Death comes not as a single moment, but as an inexorable advance until at last the body can no longer sustain itself.
Physical Changes: The Olagh Morah begins with subtle stiffness and over the course of years and decades fuses the entire body into a singular bone. Limbs become fixed in place, the spine stiffens, and breathing is restricted. In its final phases, bone growths protrude through the skin and into organs.
Behavioral Changes: Suffers of the disease adapt slowly at first. Favoring certain joins, avoiding strain, hiding discomfort. But over time their actions become deliberate and measured. Eventually they become entirely dependent on others for every task, eating, drinking, cleaning themselves causing them to grow quiet and isolated.
Societal Perception: The Olagh Morah is feared by all, not in the way of fast-moving plagues that devastate villages. It is a slow, inescapable fate that marks individuals rather than communities. Early on, victims might be met with sympathy, but as they become dependent on others, communities often lose empathy for the condition as they begin to shoulder the burden of the person's survival. Most view it as a cruel affliction, a punishment from Theos, or a test of what suffering a person can endure.
Origin: In the Isles the druids first note the "Great Stillness" when it began infecting its members who visited the outlying towns. First it was believed to merely be arthritis hampering the joints of the druids, until the disease was revealed to be far more sinister.
- Incurable: The Olagh Morah has no known cures, only treatments to extend a person's life, not to save them.
- Severe: Eventually, those who suffer the Olagh Morah become totally paralyzed having their bones fused together, but not unfeeling.
- Weak Infectivity: The disease transfers through bodily fluids, but affects slowly and not often. Even those regularly exposed to the illness may go their entire lives without contracting it. Usually the victim has some other compromising illness at the time of exposure or genetic predisposition.
- Slow: The disease takes 15-30 years to become debilitating or fatal.
The Druids of Albion have told outsiders that the Great Standing Stones they have erected are none other than the most ancient of their order, struck down by the Olagh Morah, the Stillness of Stone. Cursed to stand still, as their bones turn to stone and render them totally immobile, eternal guardians over the isles and the sacred places to the druids. That is the reason the Standing Stones are found closest to genus loci, places of power, to protect them from outsiders.
The Stillness is slow moving, going unnoticed for years, and then lingering and progressing slowly. There are likely many with the illness festering in their bones, slowly eating away at them, that will die without ever noticing it. Most who do begin to feel its slow creep succumb to age before the Stillness claims much more than their fingers and toes, wrists and ankles.
The Sloannar tell of King Thorod, the King that Crawls. King Thorod rose to power as a great warrior, but in his middle age became afflicted with the Stone-Bones. He chopped off his toes to try and stem the turning of his limbs. It creeped up his legs until his knees locked in a cruel bend, forcing him to crawl, using his arms to pull himself across the ground, until the Sky Father mercifully let him die in battle.
But then there is the tale of Father Richter, and Arch Rector of the Sanctus in Atéria. Father Richter lived to be over a century old, so ill-fated to bear the curse of years for so long, but with him spread the will of Theos, and so with his god's work incomplete, he remained. At first, when he was just an old man, the use of his hands disappeared as they became one solid bone from wrist to fingertip. He remained a skilled orator, speaking the word of his god every Mass. He was required to be fed by monks of his order, but wherever he was sent, the Brotherhood of Saint Richter stirred to Theos's great work.
And so he remained.
The decades dragged on, and before long his knees became fused into a bent position, forcing him to sleep in a seated position. He was bound to a throne which his flagellant order carried as a litter from town to town. Then his spine became one, twisting his neck, unable to lay his head to rest. He was all but a corpse upon a throne, only his mouth could move, and so he became more of a symbol, whispering the word of Theos to the monks for them to relay it to the masses. Father Richter finally could no longer move his mouth, but as death had not claimed him, the Cardinals ordered his brother monks to continue to feed him.
After a century of life, he remained.
The spurs first dug through the skin on his arms, rising up like thin needles of bone through his skin. Then on his left shoulder a large spike protruded from his shoulder blade. Then his right eye was claimed by the needle-like spurs of bone that grew out from his skull, tearing through the milky white flesh of his eye and through his brow. Finally, death came for him, and Theos let an end to his suffering, as the spurs from his ribs tore through his lungs and heart. Now all that remains of his endless suffering is his bones, still bound within his robes upon his throne, a relic of his zealous followers sat in a temple dedicated to his suffering.
Such is the wickedness of the Stillness, the slow, creeping death.
