Hazard Runes are the AXI's official name for all shapes that produce a preternatural or even supernatural effect on the real world when they are perceived, or touched by a sapient entity.
Hazard Runes are designated No Release: Sensitive Compartmented Information by the AXI, meaning no-one may know what the runes are, but may know that they exist if they have clearance.
Effect: Subjects perceiving the rune experience auditory hallucinations of looping temporal feedback (e.g., echoes of their future/past utterances). Prolonged exposure (>20 mins) causes irreversible neural synchronization with the “echo,” rendering speech incomprehensible.
Effect: Induces progressive cellular desiccation in living organisms within a 10-meter radius. Symptoms manifest as accelerated epidermal mummification, culminating in full-body petrification after 72 hours of exposure.
Effect: Triggers perpetual eyes-open REM sleep in viewers, trapping them in recursive nightmares. Subjects exhibit zero physical decay but cannot be awakened without rune removal.
Effect: Causes rapid topological inversion of organic matter (e.g., internal organs externalize, skeletal structures reconfigure into non-Euclidean geometries). Reversible only if perception ceases within 15 seconds.
Effect: Generates a localized causality loop within a 5-meter radius, resetting all events/actions in 47-second intervals. Affected subjects retain memory of loops but cannot alter outcomes.
Effect: Warps perceived light into “information vacuums,” deleting sensory data (memories, recordings, written text) related to subjects observed through its influence.
Effect: Warps local gravity within a 15m radius. Causes immediate structural collapse and internal hemorrhaging in biological entities.
Effect: Selectively erases color perception in viewers, progressing to grayscale vision and eventual permanent achromatopsia.
Effect: Causes immediate amnesia regarding the object/entity bearing the rune. Subjects cannot perceive, recall, or record the “marked unit”. Effect persists post-exposure.
Effect: Lowers ambient temperature to -170°C within 3 seconds of perception. Rapid cryogenic freezing originates from viewer's neural tissue.
Effect: Auditory perception triggers uncontrollable synesthesia—sounds manifest as physical sensations.
Effect: Induces hemolytic cascade: blood vessels rupture externally, forming identical rune patterns on victim's skin. Fatal within 90 seconds. Synthetic sapients unaffected.
Effect: Corrupts cognitive reasoning—viewers become convinced of impossible truths (e.g., “2+2=5”) and violently defend these beliefs.
Effect: Generates infrasound pulses that liquefy calcium-based structures.
Effect: Refracts light to create localized visual and spatial distortions. Unprotected viewers experience time discontinuities (e.g., missing hours/days).
Effect: Synchronizes all bioelectrical activity in perceivers to a single rhythm. Cardiac/neural arrest occurs if rhythms mismatch.
Effect: Accelerates oxidation by 10,000x. Metals crumble within seconds; organic tissue develops rapid systemic corrosion.
Effect: Creates perfect optical duplicates of viewers that exhibit hostile behavior. Copies dissipate after 24 hours or if original dies.
Effect: Rewires autonomic nervous system—viewers swap voluntary/involuntary control (e.g., consciously regulate heartbeat, forget how to breathe).
Effect: Prevents death in critically injured viewers by binding consciousness to decaying bodies. Subjects remain aware during decomposition.
Effect: Corrupts digital/analog information storage. Viewers permanently lose literacy (cannot comprehend written/typed symbols).
Effect: Fuses biological matter within line-of-sight into chimeric entities (e.g., human/plant hybrid). Fusion irreversible.
Effect: Transfers viewers' consciousness into a shared nightmare realm. Physical bodies enter catatonic state until “killed” in the dream.
Effect: Forces viewers to physically reenact their deepest traumas as phantom wounds manifest on their bodies.
Effect: Accelerates thermodynamic decay in perceived objects - metals fatigue instantly, organic matter rapidly decomposes, and complex structures collapse into dust.
Effect: Causes viewers to experience violent physical sensations from non-existent injuries, with corresponding tissue damage manifesting on their bodies.
Effect: Warps gravitational fields around perceived objects, causing them to implode or experience tidal forces strong enough to spaghettify matter.
Effect: Tunes all matter within line-of-sight to its natural frequency, causing simultaneous structural failure through harmonic vibration.
Effect: Creates temporal duplicates of viewers that exist 5 seconds ahead/behind in time, causing catastrophic causality collisions.
Effect: Randomly reassigns sensory inputs in viewers' brains (e.g., eyes process sound, ears process smell, skin processes sight).
Effect: Induces permanent muteness in viewers through vocal cord petrification while creating unbearable phantom auditory hallucinations.
Effect: Forces all quantum possibilities within 10m to resolve simultaneously, creating overlapping contradictory realities.
Effect: Transfers biological energy from viewers to nearest plant life, causing rapid aging in humans and explosive floral overgrowth.
Effect: Locks perceived objects in stasis relative to solar system motion, resulting in high-velocity collisions with planetary surfaces.
Effect: Steals REM sleep cycles from viewers, causing permanent wakefulness while projecting their dream content into reality.
Effect: Traps viewers' shadows as independent entities that actively work against their owners' interests.
Effect: Phases perceived matter through solid objects, leaving permanent molecular discontinuities upon material reintegration.
Effect: Reverses hardwired biological imperatives - viewers develop phobia of breathing, aversion to homeostasis, and attraction to lethal dangers.
Effect: Splits viewers' consciousness into multiple autonomous personalities that simultaneously control their body through violent competition.
Effect: Erases sequential memory formation - viewers retain only 7-second working memory while losing all prior autobiographical data.
Effect: Freezes biological matter in current state - preventing healing, decay, cellular division, or metabolic processes.
Effect: Petrifies viewers' subconscious thoughts as physical mineral formations that grow from their orifices.
Effect: Causes biological tissue to retain and replay traumatic events as physical sensations when touched.
Effect: Reverses emotional responses to stimuli - pain causes euphoria, affection triggers rage, and threats induce calmness leading to fatal complacency.
Effect: Amplifies primal drives to lethal extremes - hunger becomes autocannibalism, fear triggers fatal tachycardia, curiosity overrides self-preservation.
Effect: Induces infinite recursive growth in perceived patterns - skin cells develop smaller faces, brickwork spawns miniature architecture.
Effect: Severs abstract connections - victims forget word meanings, lose muscle memory, and become unable to recognize cause-effect relationships.
Effect: Causes viewers to perceive insignificant details (dust motes, background noise) as critically important while vital objects/events become cognitively invisible.
Effect: Subjects perceive themselves as fictional characters, suffering injuries described by unseen narrators (“John didn't notice the falling piano”).
Effect: Implants false future memories so vivid that victims preemptively experience (and often die from) events that never actually occur.
Effect: Allows perception of 12-second future outcomes in a localized area. Prolonged use (>3 views) fractures timeline awareness, trapping viewers in paradoxical loops.
Effect: Creates temporary telepathic links between perceivers. Unshielded exposure merges memories/permanent consciousness blending after 17 minutes.
Effect: Extracts temporal potential from living viewers, granting brief precognition. Donors permanently lose equivalent lifespan seconds.
Effect: Creates absolute sound vacuum around viewers. Effects last as long as rune perception.
Effect: Downloads subconscious knowledge from sleeping targets. Data manifests as hallucinogenic tattoos on the extractor's skin.
Effect: Renders any information learned while rune is in view “filtered”. Attempting to share “filtered” ideas triggers cerebral hemorrhage.