Last Winter Virus

Name:  Last Winter Virus
Notes:  The Last Winter virus is a naturally occurring organism of unknown, potentially prehistoric, origins.  First encountered by humans working on an ice world, but later even showing up on Terra through no detectable vectors of transmission, Last Winter is a mysterious disease organism.
Though Last Winter itself hasn't been known to kill it's host victim, nor has method of infection or transmission been yet fully nailed down, few are able to survive an encounter.  Last Winter affects the brain, hyper stimulating the production of hormones for aggression, fear, depression, and other factors.  In the end, it works by degrading the subject's ability to think rationally and reason, forcing them to turn into mindless and hyper violent beasts.
A sign of early infection is hallucinations due to infection of the portions of the brain that deal with the senses.  Colored by the subconscious, these hallucinations have a tendency to touch upon the mythologies of the victim's own culture and history.  For example, during the incident on Terra, the common thread in the hallucinations was of killer wendigo.
Later on, the hallucinations overlap the senses.  This means victims of Last Winter see others around them as nightmare beings, thus lash out in what they think is self defense and tends to be at a lethal level.
As the next and final step displayed so far is that of a mindless killing machine, it is believed Last Winter is a de-evolutionary disease.  This is due to how it reverses modern, civilized beings back into feral, wild animals.
Category:Disease