Also! About people who are veil touched... is there a limit on the amount of time that someone might be fighting veil sickness? or a specific speed that s-cells might develop? because I have an idea for an oc who has been very Very slowly going through the transformation into a shade (years) and freaking out about it more and more as time goes on
i think i could do some interesting things with that idea (hehe) but if thats not cannon compliant i can definitely re-work that idea
If I've said something about this in canon in the podcast itself, it's escaping me now - but someone asked a similar question in our Patreon Discord about a year ago so here's all the lore we shared then!
"Obviously, not that much is known about Shades in-world (I know everything but that's for later) but veil sickness survival rates depend on the severity of the illness, and how it is contracted.
Many cases of veil sickness occur during the biannual veil lights phenomenon (they occur twice a year around the solstices). The same way you might get a really bad cold in winter and call it 'flu', people can get slightly veil sick after this event and spend a few days in bed. Then, the same way actual flu can be life threatening, veil sickness can be extreme. I'd say probably about 30% of the people who get veil sickness end up fighting for their life. Chances of surviving it are about 50/50, but chances of turning into a Shade from catching it are seemingly completely random, and not all that common. Staying inside at night during the lights is considered a way to stay safer, although it is speculation, not science.
What is known is that there's a far higher chance of becoming a Shade from a random encounter with a Veil rift than there is from catching veil sickness during the annual Veil lights. Rifts open unpredictably and seem to be far more unstable than the biannual event, and extreme sickness and transformation is more like 80% likely to occur, with death being more likely too.
In terms of what transformations happen, there exists something known as 'The Shade Scale', created by an independent researcher called Dr. Melanie Cruz. It is debated but generally considered reliable. Some shades start low on the Scale and get worse over time, slow or fast, to the point of death. Others just land somewhere on the scale and stay there for the rest of their lives. It goes from 1 to 13. On a basic level, 1 is a 'low mutation' and 13 is a 'high mutation', but the scale is not a straight line. Variables on the scale include from 'low chance of transference' (transferring sickness to others) to 'high chance of transference' and 'no further mutation' to 'continuous mutation' and everything in between. The most "dangerous" (take that with a pinch of salt) and detectable shades are all high on the scale. It's estimated that about 60% of Shades score at 6 or higher on mutation. They might slowly become incorporeal, or appear to burn up from the inside like coal on a fire. Seb mentioned a Shade in episode 2 who was fully transluscent - this person would have scored at a 12 or 13. Of those scoring above 9, more than 50% die within a year. Reason for death, mutation or transference is unknown, but those who start with worse mutations more often continue to mutate. Shades who are low on the scale - 5 or below - have what you referred to as 'aesthetic' changes. Despite the difference in mutation, there's no correlation on Shade magic. More mutation does not seem to mean stronger magic. However, there's not enough research nor has enough time passed to really understand where any of them fit permanently on the scale, and the study was only done on a selected number of willing participants, making the results questionable. As there is no real measure of how many Shades exist - especially those who pass as normal people - it isn't known whether the ratios discovered by Dr. Cruz are even close to realistic."
Hope this helps with your OC building!
