video; un: toxicodendron | cw: medical discussion

[greenpower]

All right, listen up.

[Why is this always so stressful? Oh right, because she'll be talking to people. People she doesn't know already, at least for some of them. That's never her favorite.

But she arrived in the third wave of orbers and she has both information to share and catching up to do and unfortunately talking to the rest of the crew is the best way to do that.]

I've got some information about what ghost matter is doing to people, and presumably what it would do to us if we use our powers more than twice.

[Which they'll have to take Viveca's word for. ]

Some of this we already knew. People have to use their powers to be affected. It's only using our powers that seems to provoke a reaction. When that happens, ghost matter attaches itself to whatever it is that sparks that power, and suppresses it. That used to be all it did and people would naturally recover when they left the affected area. Now it creates an autoimmune response, with the patients' own bodies attacking themselves.

The good news: it doesn't kill you immediately.

The bad news: basically everything else. After infection, patients can last a few months, degenerating over that time. What starts with fatigue escalates until their bodies finally give out on them. The symptoms are pretty diverse, which isn't entirely surprising considering autoimmune diseases can really be a crapshoot that way. There are no curative or therapeutic treatments, only palliative. The local medical community seems like they're getting pretty desperate about the whole situation.

So don't fuck around too much with your powers. Got it?

[She pauses, considering what else she ought to add. It seems like it would be abrupt to end the feed now. Oh, right—]

I landed a job at Naephus' Planetary Hospital and figure I'll follow this lead as far as it goes. I've got a couple of theories about treatment and preventative care which should hopefully get me a little more project access if I can get the hospital interested in them.

Otherwise if anyone else has anything to add, I'm all ears.

Comments

audio; un: felix

[swordandshield]

You know the fun part is that the Federation is still making those ghost matter weapons, right? And they do the same thing when used. So out there in the other stretches of this galaxy, the Federation is using these weapons to hit criminals with powers and take them down.

Like I said, fun right?

[greenpower]

I wonder how it acts outside of its home environment. Is there a risk of it propagating to other planets, or does it dissipate?

If it doesn't dissipate, they could be killing a lot more people than that in the long run.

[swordandshield]

[Well, that made it even more fun to think about.]

No clue. Didn't hear anything about that. I just know that the Federation refuses to stop making the weapons despite the fact that they know it does this now.

At least no one else has access to the things.

[greenpower]

[Leave it to Ivy to make things even worse.]

For now, at least. Weapons like this, there has to be a black market for. And it sort of sounded before like there is a black market for—we just don't know where they're going.

[swordandshield]

Right, right. Bracken and Fyna. Only, they're not selling the weapons on the black market. No one is.

[greenpower]

Doesn't that just prove the demand? We've got a couple of people bottlenecking it now, but how long is that going to last.

[swordandshield]

Well, yeah, there's demand for the things. No one talks about it too openly out of fear--but you're right. I'd take 'em down if I wanted. Eventually someone will take them on.

But maybe not anytime soon. [He and his partner ran for a decade uncontested. These two had time if they were good.]

[greenpower]

It's true that's not the biggest concern at the moment.

[And hopefully it doesn't change. As long as there's no movement on that front, Ivy is content letting the black market angle be someone else's problem.]

Either way the Federation is taking a lot of risk into their own hands. Especially when this shit has already mutated once.

[swordandshield]

You think it could do it again? On its own?

[greenpower]

I'd have to have more information to say for sure. At the moment, I don't that much about how the stuff replenishes.

I wouldn't be able to rule it out, especially considering how dominant the last mutation became.