Divine Blood: Dryad Infection and Stages

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There has been some question as to why anybody would ever eat a dryad fruit.

First answer: Only a portion of the population knows about psychic phenomena. Of that segment, only some of them are familiar with dryad fruits. The parasite has been successfully driven to near extinction over the past two thousand years. Most of the current living dryads became dryads over 300 years ago, with a handful of more recent individuals here and there. As such, most of the time when a dryad fruit is eaten, it is because the person eating it is not aware of what they are eating.

Second answer: There are some advantages, physical beauty and agelessness among those. There are some people that would sacrifice physical strength and psychic potential to get that. Especially if they don't think they have psychic potential. Also, there is always the chance that you can become an oread and retain your psychic ability, physical strength AND get some extra bonuses to boot.

Third answer: It pretty much creates a person that has little to no ability to physically protect themselves. This was a deliberate facet of the parasitical plant when developed by the Gods (or more likely Zeus and his specific House). Since the parasite is wild now, though near-extinction, there are some people who might know about it who would want to either trick someone else into eating it or force feeding them.

Fourth answer: The mythical troll brides were the survivors of about 1000 trolls that tried the plant in an attempt to create a female troll. What it created was purple skinned dryads.

Fifth answer: Some people are just weird. Such as one Sherle Adler now working as a researcher for Psyche somewhere in London. She full well knew the reputation of the plant when she ate its fruit a little more than a 100 years ago.

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Dryad

Category: Afflicted
Active Psychics: 0%
Common Active Talents: None
Status: Fewer than 1000 dryads exist in the world and maybe 12 oreads
Location: Global
Life-Force: Pale Brownish-Blue, no name
Description:

The dryad is one of three possible results of a person eating a fruit from the dryad tree and failing to get the infection treated quickly enough. The victim generally has a week in which they can have the infection removed. After that point the plant has generally hijacked the host’s immune system and started to supplant it. After that there is a protracted period during which the fate of the infected is decided. Those that escape the fate of being a dryad end up forcing the infection to become a symbiote rather than a parasite. These “oreads” are described below.

Without medical treatment, a shaper trained as a healer or, preferably, both the survival right of infected individuals is low. Females have the highest survival right, with human females surviving the best at about 43%. Only about 0.25% of human males survive the next phase. Non-humans have about half those survival rates. With treatment, survival is much higher for women, getting toward 95% for human females and almost 1% of human males. Of the survivors, less than 1% escape becoming a dryad. Immortals never become oreads or dryads and they are able to fight the infection off and both males and females have equal survival right past the point of no return. That survival right is about 70% with medical treatment or healing and about 27% otherwise.

Dryads are all female and often characterized by a green tinge to their skin, though it is only easily visible at the extremities such as finger tips, lips, sclera and more private areas. They generally lose muscle mass and become slimmer and more traditional attractive. Their life-force has been described, based on residue that was encouraged to become visible, as a sort of pale brownish-blue, but considering that dryads are universally unable to generate usable life force, that is a difficult method to use to confirm that someone is a dryad.

Abilities:

Dryads benefit from an increased immune system and tolerance for poisons and usually require less food than most creatures their size. They are generally very beautiful and graceful with an almost endless level of energy. They do not generally age and like all incidental immortals, do not suffer from the same need to reincarnate to prevent insanity that the Gods and Demons do. Dryads are also rather resilient to pain and while they don’t heal quickly, as long as they survive they will generally completely recover from any injury.

Weaknesses:

Despite the benefits, the penalties are usually considered worse. Dryads have substandard human strength. On average they measure around the physical strength of a twelve to fourteen year old human girl. Exercise regimens have been found to top them out at the level of the average non-athletic human woman. Their inability to maintain muscle mass beyond a certain point limits their running speed and jumping ability as well as their lifting strength. Most crippling, though the average infected victim is unlikely to notice, their life force is generally devoured by the parasite bounded to them as soon as it is created, leaving them permanently unable to activate psychic abilities, inborn or otherwise.

Reproduction:

The first matter of dryad reproduction is concerned with their own children rather than how more dryads come to be. The children of dryads are generally seem to gain the most beneficial traits of both parents, often becoming paragons examples by the time they grow up. Occasionally, however, the reverse is true. They are never average. Dryads are often the mothers of either heroes or monsters as a result.
As to the reproduction of dryads themselves. Once a dryad dies, the parasite plant in their body begins growing again, eventually developing into a small tree roughly seven feet tall that produces fruit externally similar to an apple. This generally occurs over the course of six months to a year. Before the death of the dryad, however, they are entirely safe to be around. Dryad trees will not grow except out of the corpse of a host body. As a standard, identified dryads are cremated on death.

History:

Dryads first recorded to exist in ancient times and listed as minor nature spirits or Gods due to their agelessness. However, they have persisted to appear occasionally ever since they first appeared. They came out of some of the Gods’ experiments in creating useful races and weapons and are related to a more virulent and lethal parasite vine initially used to infect Demons as a way of restraining them. Dryad seeds are both less lethal and harder to cure than those earlier weapons, given that the option of a cure was often used as a carrot for an infected Demon or rogue God.
Dryads served as a sort of control element in the eugenics and deliberate engineering projects taken by the Gods. For added benefit, the infection effectively crippled any dryad, preventing them from using the more traditional methods of self defense. Via dryads, a number of races were developed in the early days of human history. Factors of dryad motherhood have given the dryads a deserved reputation of being the mothers and wives of heroes…and sometimes monsters.

Vishnu outlawed the continued use of the dryad trees once he came into power, however, by that point, the parasite had already developed to its current state and was capable of propagating itself. Only in recent years with an informed Community has the creation of new dryads begun to slow down and it is hoped that they will eventually be eliminated completely. Currently, it is mostly people outside of the Community that end up infected and transformed.

Oreads:

Oreads gain two major benefits from their survival and success in not being transformed. The first is that, like dryads, they also seem not to age. The second is that in addition to keeping their own life force intact, they also have a second life-force that seems to resemble Mana which they can access similar to the way a demi-God can. Oreads typically lose some muscle mass and ability to generate life-force while they’re essentially taming the parasite, but unlike with dryads, they are able to rebuild the lost ability as easily as if they were starting from a natural level.
The children of oreads do not benefit from any increased chance of possessing beneficial traits from both parents, nor do they have an increased chance of having negative traits.
Like dryads, identified oreads are cremated as soon after their death as possible.

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Infection: The victim eats a dryad fruit, usually appearing similar to an apple.

Stage 1 - roughly 3 weeks. The victim is increasingly hungry, will often put on several pounds

Stage 2 - roughly 1 week. The victim's eyes and extremities begin showing signs of green flecks. Phantom pains begin. Slight fever.

Stage 3 - 2-5 days. The phantom pains worsen and become more frequent as the parasite invades the nervous system. Increasing fever.

Stage 4 - 3 days. This is the point of no-return. The green in the eyes and extremities becomes more predominant. Pain is almost constant. Paralysis starts spreading over the body. Heavy fever. Nausea. Diarrhea. This is the last point at which Immortals can fight off the infection or which mortals force the parasite into symbiosis, becoming oreads themselves.

Stage 5 - 2 weeks. Paralysis is complete. Nervous system more or less completely destroyed save the brain, bodily function is maintained by the parasite. The body's immune system continues to fight, but "success" at this point destroys the parasite and kills the host. Immortals that reach this point are terminal. Pain is excruciating. Males begin to shift gender. If the paralysis is lessening at this point, that means that the victim is becoming an oread. Eyes and extremities are now intensely green.

Stage 6 - 1 week. Pain abruptly abates with occasional recurrences, control of limbs and bodily function begins to return to the brain. Severe weight loss follows as musculature loses density.

Oreads retain green eyes and extremities for one month following recovery, but lessening at a consistent rate until returning to their natural color. They are not an actual transformation, having somehow forced the parasite into symbiosis without succumbing to genetic changes or death.
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