Cognitoblight

The Cognitoblight refers to a class of memetic cognitohazards designed against information and communication networks alongside sentient minds.

Description
Being memetic agents, cognitoblights have no physical form. Their effects, however, are very easy to observe. cognitoblights usually cause some form of corruption in data, and in entities that hold that corrupted information. Such corruption can exhibit symptoms in hosts such as mutations of both the soul and body, alongside mental conditions such as insanity and catatonia.

History
The use of the first cognitoblight dates back to the opening days of the First Aeon War. where numerous superweapons saw their introduction. The development of the first such agents can be traced back to research into Shifts and the mechanisms with which they controlled others. Such research bore fruit when a specially tailored Poem of Ending was created in cognitoblight form.

The first victim of the cognitoblight were the beings known as the Ixtani. The Ixtani were beings formed from the fundamental properties and quantum equations of a multiverse known as the Shining Collective. This group of universes were notably unique in that entirely distinct universes and their infinite number of alternates crossed over and blended into each other via the linking of an information network that used countless simulated universes to connect them. The Ixtani and all their varying alternate selves were unified under a single directive, that being to weave all sentient life into its fabric so that they can exist for eternity.

The Ixtani at the point of their extinction had made notable progress on their quest, that being complete control over space-time within their multiverse through their information network. They could travel forwards and backwards in time, hop from timeline to timeline and merge and split with their alternate selves,

Some time the First Aeon War, the Ixtani made first contact with the factions of the Weave. Shortly after, the species developed ties with several minor powers. As soon the war begun, the Ixtani begun to support their allies with troops, summoning countless alternate versions of themselves as fodder for their armies. Unlike the majority of the denizens of the Weave, the Ixtani were were not fully beyond Bound beings; they were affected by the laws of time and space despite their mastery of them within their home turf. While that allowed certain advantages such as the summoning of unlimited numbers of their alternate selves, even in numbers vastly in excess of their opponents it was common for complete annihilation of their forces to occur. Nevertheless, the Ixtani often harassed undefended settlements, and thus drew the attention of several Aedentide civilisations. With the Outer Gods busy fighting their own battles, those civilisations decide to test new measures developed shortly before the war.

Rather than going for the traditional route of using a Linecutter to sever and divide the entirety of the Ixtani information network and conquer them at their leisure, the Aedentide powers instead opted to test a novel superweapon; the recently developed cognitoblight. With the Poem of Ending fully written into the memetic agent, it was unleashed within the network.

The cognitoblight, upon corrupting the first Ixtani, broadcasted itself into the network. While the Ixtani were not unfamiliar with memetic threats and thus practiced heavy compartmentalisation, the mechanism of the agent bypassed their defenses entirely. With every Ixtani connected to their information network, the whole species and their network was infected nearly instantly. The act of broadcasting the Poem of Ending was coded to activate it in that first cognitoblight; the infected would die while passing on the blight to others. As one, the Ixtani and their network let out a final death scream, destroying any trace of their existence. The Shining Collective became emptied of all life, and in an effort to hide the the genocide, those Aedentide powers destroyed that multiverse with erasure weapons.

The information had already spread, however, and the perpetrators were punished through measures such as the Opal Light. Information on the weapon itself was preserved, and development of new iterations and strains begun in secret for many factions and civilisations. For many future conflicts, the cognitoblight would see widespread use as a tool for sabotage.

Mechanism
Cognitoblights work on a similar level to Shifts. Concepts are housed in the corrupted information; by being exposed to the blighted information, the concepts are inserted into the victim and cause the cognitoblight's more malignant effects. Due to this design, cognitoblights can be programmed to have an extremely wide variety of effects through their component concepts; from destruction of its hosts, to body and mind control/manipulation and general malaise.

By design, most cognitoblights are easily neutered or destroyed by Transcends (who have abilities suited for concept manipulation) as this class of memetic agent is primarily made to be used against non-Transcended powers.