TheHoverpope/ShatteredHeartDisease

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Difficulty to Treat (Mundane/Magical): 4/1

Symptoms: This disease, brought about as it is by a perversion of internal truth, manifests as a purification of truth. The disease enforces truth that accords not only with the speaker, but with aesthetics; they may speak only in true-felt structured poetry. Any other attempt at verbal communication causes the littlest god of the disease to coil invisibly in the speaker's mouth, blocking speech. This disease does not grant any poetic capability, so most victims are of few words. The victim is often afflicted with itching sores along body's natural flows of essence, stretching in webs between their seven chakra and their lymphatic system. These sores are strangely attractive, reflecting the inner truth of the body's essence; increase appearance by 1 while infected.

Vector: There is no absolute truth; one man's hero is another's bastard, and the sciences themselves are mutable before essence, which is equally unpredictable - but one's own internal truth is knowable. This disease has been known to occur in nature when one channels a dominant (3+) virtue to support an action that opposes their motivation. The struggle of self that this creates can normally be shrugged off, but in the rare presence of completely and naturally pure things, such as natural crystals of adamant, the truly innocent, or undoubted hope, this disease will sometimes manifest.

Treatment: Unusually for an essence disease, this disease does naturally go away; each month after infection, the victim rolls their essence in dice at a difficulty of their essence. If they succeed, the disease will resolve itself within a week. It may also be treated by a course of bodily purification often involving restricting one's diet to just salt and water, accompanied by a regimen of meditation. This treatment, if followed successfully for a few days, results in the next essence roll automatically being successful.