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).