Alchemist Pontinia's Plague Diary

**Alchemist Pontinia's Plague Diary** is a journal Zone Lore entry found in Auroria.

## Lore entry

[An informative document containing the alchemist's analysis of the epidemic plaguing Hycrest Auroria.]

Health Incident Nexus - 1372

-Day 01

Three cases with similar symptoms today, all lowborn. Not surprising, seeing diseases and ailments among their kind, but three in one day raises some concerns. Recommended a series of standard-strength medishots twice per day to all three patients. Standard medishots should be more than enough to destroy any potential contagions - if this is indeed a contagious disease - to near-zero. I hope this isn't something going around. I have real science to do here. I don't have time to play nursemaid for every lowborn sod who stubs his toe.

-Day 02

Seven more cases today with the same symptoms, all among lowborn. All were employed at the Hycrest starship facilities in some capacity - laborers or service personnel. More disturbingly, I have heard from none of the three previous patients, and they are not responding to datachron messages. I am going with a more potent suite of medishots for these patients, including a slow-release anti-viral and inoculation against all known space plagues. I've also informed these patients that they will be required to remain under observation for the next twenty-four hours or until I know what happened to the three from yesterday.

-Day 04

This is, to put it mildly, not good. Fifty-two new patients since last I had a chance to make a note in this... well, at this point I'd have to call it a plague diary. Because there's no doubt in my mind. That's what this is. I just need to understand how it's spreading if I'm going to kill it. That means I have to contemplate something I don't really want to contemplate. Letting this thing run its course through the lowborn for a while.

All my ethics are against it, but I have to be a realist. It would be fat simpler to isolate the relatively small number of highborn Cassians on Hycrest from the infected lowborn than quarantine all the lowborn from the highborn.

I also must make sure this journal never falls into the wrong hands. What a thing to admit: allowing the Hycrest Plague to take hold without trying hard enough to stop it!

-Day 07

More than two hundred cases, now. Twenty-three deaths, including two highborn elders who insisted on dying in their homes, infecting their servants and who knows how many relatives. We must find a cure for this before it spreads to the rest of our territory on Nexus. Or worse - to the other worlds of the Dominion.

My decision to allow the disease to spread among the lowborn was correct. Today, a breakthrough! A patient awakened from an artificially induced coma on her own. The girl - a teenager, the noble daughter of a local lowborn merchant - said she had witnessed a vision of another girl about her age, hooded and hidden yet alight with holy fire, calling her name just before she awakened. She has requested permission to return home, but I haven't the heart to tell her the rest of her family is already raving with the sickness.

## Location

This journal can be found in the Hycrest Barracks on the table next to Alchemist Pontinia at (-2375.05 -1985.27).