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setevulpo · 18 days ago

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silco's eye and health headcanons

because the entirety of *gestures around* that is really interesting and apparently the writers forgot about this man so i gotta hurt him about that.

warning for talk of addiction and withdrawal, general drug use, ocular trauma, nonconsensual medical experimentation and loss of bodily autonomy in that context, infections, chronic illness, and the results of the drowning incident and the general pollution of zaun.

this is going to get gory and a little descriptive on the injuries, please be careful if that bothers you.

disclaimer: these are just headcanons, all in good fun. i'm not a specialist on any of the topics i talk about, i just like the fancy terms, and if you have anything to add to these please do!

divider by @/cafekitsune

face – general injuries

his eyelid is pretty much entirely gone, and so is most of his tear system. while the eye itself is still in place, his sclera and cornea were both damaged during the drowning, and the situation of his iris has been steadily getting worse since then.

the reason for this is the open globe injury he got and the damage in the area surrounding it.

the skin was slashed and shows deeper injuries there, but the vast majority of the wound is from having his epidermis and dermis scratched off.

his eye, on the other hand, wasn't deeply damaged by the knife, but suffered because of the scratches while vander was trying to drown him.

his eyelids are missing because they had to be removed, singed was the one who did that process after finding him in the riverbank. he also took the time to remove part of his lacrimal apparatus on that side of silco's face.

he suffered a necrotizing soft tissue infection in the area and was in an early stage of sepsis when singed found him. singed removed the infected tissue and used shimmer to combat the worst of it, which lead to some changes happening in what was left of his lacrimal apparatus.

the eye

again, the eye itself escaped getting slashed or stabbed, silco managed to close it in time for the knife damage to be superficial. however, it was damaged by vander's nails during the drowning attempt.

his sclera and cornea were both extensively damaged, meaning he cannot see well from that eye, and was at risk of needing a full enucleation because of it.

it was painful beyond relief, and it still doesn't feel good even after medical help. other than the difficulty seeing, his eye constantly feels like there's something stuck in it, and it's just generally uncomfortable. it's always a little watery too.

adding to the sight part, all the can distinguish from it is light. even then, he sometimes doesn't notice duller lights, and bright lights are painful to look at.

it's important to mention that his eye was affected by the nsti. it was superficial, but it added to the damage, and part of the tissue was removed to prevent its spread.

the iris was also injured, though it wasn't immediately noticeable after the incident. with time, the iridodialysis he acquired became more severe, hence why his pupil seems to have changed place.

in addition to that, he suffered a severe hyphema at the time and the mix of shimmer with it is what caused his eye to look red and kinda murky(?). don't ask me to make it make sense it's a fictional flower drug and a tokyo ghoul looking eye pls.

in short, he can't see anything other than bright lights from that eye, but bright lights make his eye hurt because the wounds made it photophobic.

eyelids and surrounding skin

his eyelids are gone. part of them got slashed, and considering the immediate reaction of the body to water as polluted as the pilt's is closing his eyes he got toxins into the wounds pretty quickly.

and with that came the nsti, that expanded from his eyelids to some of the skin surrounding his eye. singed ended up removing his eyelids almost completely, and had to take some of the skin around as well. silco did not know about that part of the procedure until after the fact.

the type of necrosis that happened on his face is gangrenous necrosis, which is why it looks so starkly different from the healthy skin in terms of colour.

his epidermis is severely damaged. because of that, his skin is dehydrated and sensitive in the area, even in the present day. he's also more prone to injuries due to pathogens, uv radiation and chemicals.

the dermis was also wounded, and that means his nerve endings in the area don't function well. he cannot feel pressure, temperature, or pain in the surface of his skin, but the deeper layers have some sensation. that type of damage also causes his skin to not move correctly in the area, and if he had his eyelids they would not stay open correctly because of it.

he should not be wearing makeup. the protective layer of his skin is gone. he's going to give himself another infection oh no /hj

on a more serious note, the skin did heal on the more superficial injuries. it's a little thinner than the surrounding skin, but on the deeper wounds it's unsafe for him to be putting chemicals on it.

short version, his eyelids and part of his skin were removed to avoid the spread of necrosis, the deeper injuries are mostly numb but the superficial ones are pretty sensitive. what he can feels hurts, and his scar tissue is colder than the rest of his skin.

lacrimal apparatus

considering his eyelids are gone, part of his lacrimal apparatus had to be rerouted. also, the use of shimmer to battle his infection lead to his lacrimal gland not working properly for a while.

not only did his lacrimal glands shrink slightly, but the way shimmer affected them means they produce a shimmer-like substance mixed with the actual tears. it's not shimmer proper and it's oilier than tears, which gives his eye a very watery look.

the ducts connecting those glands (and the puncta) to the surface of the eye are shorter than they're supposed to, because part of the tissue they're supposed to route through is gone.

his meibomian glands (which produce the oily part of tears) are gone. the shimmery substance his lacrimal glands produce makes up for it, but the lack of the glands themselves had him struggling for a while with itchiness in the eyes.

the infection took a part of his lacrimal sac in the left side of his face, and did superficial damage on the top of his nasolacrimal duct. because of that, the excess tears that are supposed to be stored in the sac drain into the duct instead of staying where they should. from there they flow into the back of his nose, so he has a pretty constant runny nose.

in addition to that, shimmer has made his lacrimal gland work overtime, so his lacrimal sac can't fully keep up with the storing of excess tears. his tears are slightly purple too.

infection by river toxin

here it's easier to focus on the immediate effects of the infection, although he still suffers some symptoms of it to this day.

at the time, the toxins affected his eye, the soft tissue around it, and his bloodstream. it evolved beyond a simple infection due to the nature of the toxins, which made his soft tissue necrotize (nsti), and the fact that it entered his bloodstream, which caused his body to react to an extreme point (sepsis).

the use of shimmer potentialized healing, yes, but at the same time it kept the infection in a sort of stasis, contained to the point of its origin. meaning that most of his infection, as of the present day, is located in his already decaying eyeball.

his eye used to be nearly swollen shut. it's better now, but there are still days where it's noticeably puffy, and the damage is more visible at night/in hight humidity.

it's also painful! he doesn't have much sensation in the deeper wounds, as mentioned before, but the little he can feel pretty much hurts all the time. not just the skin and eye either, he has frequent headaches because of the infections.

the first months were rough. while infections tends to heal in a few weeks with a strict antibiotic course, the conditions silco was exposed to meant he didn't have it that easy.

constant fevers and fatigue meant he didn't get to move around much, and singed had him sedated whenever his pain started getting too loud for him to work with. he got sick a lot on top of the infections because his immune system took a dive, which also didn't help.

fever dreams and hallucinations were common. singed knows more than he should from hearing silco mutter during those, and again, sedated him during those so he could study the effects of the infection mixed with shimmer on a "willing" subject's mind.

his skin started necrotizing before singed found him, and it would have killed him if singed hadn't removed the infected tissue. part of his face was dead already, because the gangrenous necrosis he got was rotting his skin. part of his sclera was rotten too.

it stunk. bacteria was eating away at the damaged skin. he was recovering in a humid cave. need i say more.

sepsis has several long-term complications, and silco has experienced a bunch of them. his immune system is weaker than it used to be, and he's at risk of developing sepsis again if an injury gets infected. muscle pain and insomnia are constant, and have been getting worse. he also has a hard time concentrating because of it.

the treatment's harm

so. shimmer. singed used a localized variant of it to fight off the worst of the infection and a more spread out variant to combat the sepsis side of things.

for his eye he had a 10 day course, but he had a few setbacks after seemingly improving and he had to be put back on antibiotics (shimmerbiotics?) when that happened. he no longer needs this specific variant of shimmer.

note on silco's daily needle treatment: i think it's not a needle, it's a type of (medical) lance, used for incision and drainage! more on that later <3

the shimmer used for his sepsis treatment was a mess at the start. singed gave him a high dosis in the moment to keep him alive, and then it was almost gambling with the dosage and variant to understand what would help with the infection.

the side effects of shimmer had silco by the throat when singed first started messing with the antibiotics. he attacked singed a few times because of the effects of shimmer, and just generally felt sick to his stomach the entire time.

supposedly the course for his sepsis was going to take two weeks, but silco ended up just lowering the dose after that. he uses shimmer for pain management, mostly through smoking the plants it's made from.

(shimmer flower cigars? yes. he'd probably smoke weed cigars in a modern au. suspend your disbelief please, especially about the shimmer variants)

the initial variant singed used was a stimulant, but the later one (which silco currently uses) is closer to weed. this was yet another thing singed did without informing silco, who was only told he was still on shimmer when it was time for him to leave the cave and go back to his life.

(silco was not aware of the weaker variat because it was given in oil form, blended into the drinks and food singed gave him)

during his time coming down from the first variant he slept a lot. he tried drinking coffee to stay awake more often than not, which made the rest of his symptoms worse even with the weaker version already being given to him.

that was the time he had the most nightmares about the time before the bridge explosion. not the explosion itself, or what came after, but nightmares of felicia, connol, and vander in a multitude of situations prior to it. he distinctly remembers one that included them dying in a fire in the last drop.

silco's anxiety was at an all time high during that time, though part of that came from having to finally deal with all the damage from the drowning incident while off major sedatives/painkillers/antibiotics.

as mentioned before, he currently smokes a variant of shimmer for pain management. not just from the infection's visible damage, but also the headaches he gets from bright lights and joint pain during colder weather.

it also makes him less nauseous, which he needs because of the changes to his lacrimal apparatus. since a big part of his shimmer-like tears drip into the back of his nose, it drains into his throat and to his stomach, which makes him sick.

back to the shimmer of his eye, and the needle/lance. due to the overflow of shimmer that occurs in his eye because of the tear production and localised deposit that stuck in the area, he needs to drain it to avoid a resurfacing of the effects that specific variant had.

essentially, the lance functions as an incision and "suction" instrument, making a small hole in the affected area and drawing out the excess shimmer. the only reason that doesn't completely ruin his eyesight is because it's already extremely damaged. he doesn't have much to lose in that eye.

supposedly he should drain it twice a day, but he found that he can go for a whole day without the symptoms getting too bad. he got jinx's help with it because his hands are usually too shaky after that long, since tremors are one of the first signs he gets.

nonfatal drowning complications

silco didn't actually suffer that much damaged directly connected with the near drowning itself. he had a very mild form of cerebral hypoxia during the event, and doesn't remember the details clearly because of it, but there wasn't much damage beyond that.

he did spend a lot of time going between upper respiratory tracts infections because his lungs were weakened, though, and he still gets them pretty often.

not a complication per se but i feel bad making this section so short: he's scared of water. it's worse around actual bodies of water, and triple that if there's someone else near him. as with most other issues of his, it has gotten better with time, but he still doesn't appreciate being near water with people he doesn't trust.

he took jinx to the river not just to help her, but to practice a little exposure therapy on himself. he goes there from time to time just with that purpose, but usually just sticks to the riverbank instead of going in.

there was a long time when he couldn't wash himself properly because of that. the texture of water on his skin was pretty stressful, so he mostly used wet rags and solid soaps. his hair was a whole different beast, he cut it almost completely off so he wouldn't have to put as much water on it.

zaun's water pollution...

is it even necessary to get into this. silco is the poster boy for the water toxicity of zaun. surprisingly, he's more resistant to the effects of it now because of the shimmer, but he used to get problems from time to time before.

he had kidney stones when he was younger. that was in part due to rationings of potable water, but some of it was because of the high sodium content in the food he ate (used to preserve it for as long as possible).

had the runeterra version of cyclosporiasis before. i don't know how to expand on that he just did. same goes to him having salmonellosis. multiple times.

when he was younger he got a few inflammations of the digestive system because of the water quality. he had oesophagitis and gastristis multiple times as a kid. then again, he wasn't the only one.

this one is also small but pretend it has an extra point here lolol.

... and its breezy twin

the air pollution is what affects him the most and what gives him the most trouble since he was a kid. he grew up in the mines, and the air/sediments there were troublesome for his lungs.

the tissue in his lungs gets irritated easily because of multiple inflammations and infections he caught when he was younger, so his health is a little bit of a gamble.

(in case it wasn't obvious, i write him with a weak immune system, first because of environmental conditions and later because of the sepsis' long term effects)

anyway, he tends to stick to his rooms and office during the colder and humid seasons. he invested in a dehumidifier because humidity makes it hard for him to breathe.

honestly believe he'd hide away from the public eye to nurse his diseases away from people. he catches chest colds at least once every winter and locks himself in his room to avoid spreading.

this menace. has a bunch of lung problems and smokes on top of it. he's gonna cough his own lungs out.

he has chronic chemical pneumonitis from inhaling a bunch of chemicals and irritants while working in the mines and generally breathing in areas where the grey is thicker.

refuses to see singed about these specific issues, mostly because he has a lot of respiratory problems going on too. it's mostly a base of "if he can't fix his own issues why would i let him try to fix mine", but he's uncomfortable letting someone see him in that state in general.

he seems very calm but most of the time it's just him putting effort into not straining his lungs beyond necessary.

thanks for reading! hope you had fun, and thanks for reaching this point!

#silco #silco headcanons #arcane #arcane silco #arcane headcanons #writing the content warnings and going progressively wide eyed #the only thing i can talk about with some confidence is the fear of water everything else is powered by neurodivergency and guesswork #can you tell i'm into whump #seven.

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windsandwaves · 1 month ago

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Winds and Waves Session 7

One of the best things about being a DM and a writer is getting to do foreshadowing… This whole scene from Session 7 between Aeroki and Akuji (two of my NPCs) is possibly one of the best examples of that.

The absolute INSANE amount of foreshadowing in this interaction! Let me break it down:

Akuji calls Aeroki “Your highness”, referring to his title as king of Maya. Immediately Aeroki humbles himself,

“You needn’t call me that… In the Goddess of Fate’s grand tapestry, I am far beneath a Reaper.”

“It is a title of respect. One that you have more than earned in the eyes of the Raven Queen herself.”

The king mutters something to himself quietly,

“Gotten, ich wünschte ich glaube das auch.”

(Gods, I wish I could believe that too)

This is of course referring to the fact that Aeroki doesn’t believe the Gods care about him, and moreover the fact Aeroki feels betrayed by the Gods in general. When Akuji soothes that even The Raven Queen still respects Aeroki, and that Aeroki has earned his place as king of Maya, Aeroki basically flat out rejects the sympathy.

When Akuji tries again to reassure Aeroki that the Raven Queen will protect Coral and her friends on their journey, Aeroki once again scoffs, because The Raven Queen is the Goddess of Death and therefore her ‘protection’ is a death sentence. Akuji immediately stiffens and retorts,

“Death has existed as long as mortals have lived, long before the Raven Queen even gained her own godhood.” He replies almost sternly, defensively. “We do not cause the deaths to occur, we simply collect the lost souls and lay them to rest…”

Death has existed long before the Raven Queen, because it was The Vulture who once commanded death. The Raven Queen herself used to be a mortal. Once The Vulture fell from his place in the Pantheon and disappeared, the Raven Queen took his place, but the balance between life and death has been broken ever since.

“You know this, Aeroki. You have seen it for yourself.”

After adopting Coral, Aeroki briefly worked alongside Akuji, helping the Reaper to collect lost souls and rescue any survivors, as self-inflicted penance for his crime of summoning The Lich King. But this is also an incriminating statement, suggesting that Aeroki knows more about the Vulture’s downfall.

“And that is precisely why I cannot let Coral leave Maya… There are many great evils in the world...”

“But, if you do not let her explore the world for herself, how will she ever learn to protect herself against those evils? How will she gain the courage to fight against her own?”

The line, “How will she gain the courage to fight against her own? (evils)” is a direct reference to the fact that Akuji knows about Coral’s curse, as well as how to stop it. He is basically saying, “You have been way too overprotective and Coral is suffering from it. She needs to go out and live her life to the fullest before the curse completely consumes her. Akuji is once more encouraging Aeroki to let Coral and the others find The Heart of the Sea here, because he knows that it can help her.

Aeroki sighs. “You’re right… I know I cannot keep her sheltered here forever… But is it really selfish of me to want to try?”

Oh, my son. He wants to keep his daughters safe from harm, and in his mind Maya is the safe haven that he built for them. And yet, he knows that every bird must leave the nest eventually. He knows deep down that he has to let Coral and Fringille go. And what’s worse is he realizes that the best way to protect them is by sending them away from himself.

“You have already thought long and hard about this choice… Why, then, did you come to see me?”

“Because you know…”

“You know better than anyone why I cannot let her go.”

He’s trying to prove to himself that he can let Coral and Fringille spread their own wings and be on their own, and yet, he also doesn’t want to lose the only family he has left.

“But you must. She must. The darkness…”

AKUJI KNOWS. AKUJI KNOWS THAT AEROKI HAS NO SOUL. HE KNOWS ABOUT THE CURSE. But AEROKI DOESNT KNOW HE KNOWS.

Remember, Aeroki was convinced that if Akuji ever found out that he was The Fallen Champion, Akuji would have to kill him.

Akuji is basically admitting that he knows about Aeroki’s curse as well. That’s why Aeroki gets so freaked out here.

Then the rest is just Akuji and Aeroki basically making excuses to end the conversation and do their separate shady business, but all the same Akuji reassures Aeroki that he is always welcome in the Raven Queen’s Court… Don’t forget that.

“Thank you Akuji. I won’t forget that.”

Pause. Fast forward to Session 66:

“No, I guess I didn’t think at all.”

He forgot. Aeroki forgot that Akuji basically promised to be there for him no matter what, because he was convinced by his own anxiety that Akuji would literally kill him if he ever knew the truth about what Aeroki did…

But as this entire passage shows, Akuji already knew, and he offered Aeroki his protection anyway.

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