Crazed Colonist

Crazed Colonists were ordinary personnel of the Concordance Extraction Corporation working the Aegis VII colony, driven insane by the effects of Marker 3A. The dementia the artifact spread through the colony pushed its victims through worsening stages of madness until, in the end, they acted on their hallucinations in suicidal or homicidal ways. They were among the first signs of the disaster on Aegis VII, appearing before the Necromorphs rose.

The Marker dementia#

The madness that produced the Crazed Colonists came from Marker 3A, the artifact the colony had unearthed on Aegis VII. Most of those affected showed similar psychological problems, which could not be cured and only worsened with time. The first symptoms were difficulty sleeping, nausea, and mild paranoia, mild enough that they could sometimes be treated with over-the-counter sedatives, as with Brant Harris and Vera Cortez, though the treatment remained highly ineffective. At this stage the sickness did not yet interfere with a victim's grasp of reality, and most could still function more or less normally.

Within a short time, however, most afflicted personnel began to suffer mood swings and a general loss of self-preservation. Visual and auditory hallucinations followed with increasing frequency. This stage was very short, typically lasting less than a day, as it did with Natalia Deshyanov. The colonists who reached the final stage were lost to total delusion or to complete despair, acting on their hallucinations in either suicidal or homicidal ways.

Behavior#

Once fully consumed by the dementia, the Crazed Colonists turned violently on anyone near them. They attacked with their bare fists, dropping any weapons they had been carrying in order to do so. Some still wore the protective gear of their former duties, the suits of engineers, miners, and security officers, while others were dressed only in their ordinary work clothing. They were at their most dangerous in groups, where one could draw a survivor's attention while the others closed in.

The Crazed Colonists belonged to the earliest stage of the Aegis VII crisis. They preceded the rise of the Necromorphs, and as soon as the creatures began to appear, this kind of human threat gave way entirely to the monsters that the Marker had ultimately summoned. Among the personnel recorded as having fallen to the dementia were Brant Harris, Jennifer Barrow, Hans Leggio, Natalia Deshyanov, Sam Caldwell, and Sterling.