Effontia

Effontia is a condition that most often occurs in the elderly. It is characterized by the random and bizarre occurrences that follow the person around, and is generally coupled with a loss of recognition of the world around them or lack of memory of large parts of the afflicted's past.  

Timeline

Early Stages

Odd occurances on Poneren are normal, but during the early stages of Effontia, these odd occurances happen with great regularity. Alongside this, the afflicted also begins to demonstrate problems with their memory, forgetting things that happened earlier in the day or struggling to get the correct name for a person they've known for years.   During these stages, the afflicted is capable of being independent, but needs to take more care to deal with the occurrances that happen around them.  

Late Stages

As effontia progresses, the afflicted's grasp on the world becomes weaker, and their ability to believe in other things grows stronger leading to more pronounced and often more directed oddities.  

Examples

In one of the worst documented cases, the patient's room was magically recreated to duplicate his bedroom of his early adult years, with reports of the patient's wife, whom had passed away more then two decades earlier, was seen talking to the patient regularly.   There appear to be few limits on what someone with effontia can do, well beyond the magical abilities of a person more grounded in their belief in the world.  

Treatment

There is no known cure for effontia. Attempts to magically assist the patient began in the late 600s, but due to the strength of belief in the patients, it wasn't until the 800s that any efforts in this area bore fruit.  

Source

With magic being grounded in belief, as a person's mind starts to go, they begin believing in many things that aren't true. The mind doesn't just affect the patient themselves, but rather affects the world around them.   For most people, their incorrect beliefs are both chaotic and not very strongly founded, and have little effect on the world. For people with effontia, however, their beliefs tend to be very strongly founded within them, leading to more effects on the world around.  

History

Effontia wasn't recognized as a physical ailment until the mid 600s. Prior to that time, it was often considered to just be either "how magic works" or fallout of magical side-effects and a lack of enough structure around magic to stop the effects.   It wasn't until the 600s that Lexology was used widely enough and the fallout from the early lack of structure around magic had been handled that magic could again be studied closely. Quickly after that, the connection between these odd occurrences and elderly patients that were losing their mental abilities was made.