Brain Traumas are afflictions caused by unchecked brain damage, usually caused when a poor, innocent crewmember gets bashed in the head with a blunt object. They can severely debilitate players, or very rarely imbue them with supernatural powers if they're lucky.
If you are planning on working as a Medical Doctor or the Chief Medical Officer, then you will need to know what traumas there are and how to deal with them.
Traumas are visible to Health Analyzers, and will give a short indicator telling the user which trauma is affecting the patient.
A player gaining a trauma will generally see a warning message unique to the trauma, so you usually will be fully aware when you get one.
Trauma List
The big bad list of all the potential traumas any aspiring brains surgeons could come across during their career working for NanoTrasen. Some are mild and may just take a swig of chemicals to get a person going, others are more serious and take prepped surgery. Some even are... supernatural in nature, and defy logic or reason.
Note: You can only naturally gain one Mild Trauma and one Severe/Special Trauma at the same time from brain damage. However, other sources of traumas ignore this restriction.
Mild
Mild traumas are relatively easy to get: they require a minimum of 20 brain damage. They can cause minor annoyance in several ways, like stuttering, hallucinations, phobias, or poor balance.
They are usually basic traumas which can fairly easily be cured with Neurine. Go ask a Chemist when they are in the lab and working.
| Name | Effect | Warning Message | Scan Message |
|---|---|---|---|
| Schizophrenia | The patient suffers from non-stop hallucinations. | You feel your grip on reality slipping... | schizophrenia |
| Stuttering | The patient can't speak properly, and will constantly stutter when talking. | Speaking clearly is getting harder. | reduced mouth coordination |
| Dumbness | The patient becomes dumb, causing them to speak oddly, randomly spout random nonsense, and making them clumsy when using some items. | You feel dumber. | reduced brain activity |
| Speech Impediment | The patient can't speak properly, and their sentences will have mixed or missing words. | You can't seem to form any coherent thoughts! | communication disorder |
| Concussion | Causes several symptoms, like vomit, dizziness, confusion, slurring, forgetfulness, or fainting. | Your head hurts! | a concussion |
| Anosognosia | The patient will feel healthy regardless of their status. | You feel great! | self-awareness deficit |
| Mind Echo | Records what the patient hears and says, and occasionally replaces heard or spoken messages with one of the recorded ones. | You feel a faint echo of your thoughts... | looping neural pattern |
| Muscle Weakness | The patient will sometimes lose control of their muscles, dropping items or tripping. | Your muscles feel oddly faint. | weak motor nerve signal |
| Muscle Spasms | The patient's body will sometimes act on its own, hitting things, throwing objects, or activating them. | Your muscles feel oddly faint. | nervous fits |
| Nervous Cough | The patient feels a constant need to cough. Menthol can help alleviate the symptoms. | Your throat itches incessantly... | nervous cough |
| Phobia | The patient will be unnerved or panicked by seeing or hearing about a certain topic. Possible phobias include: spiders, space, security, clowns, greytide, lizards, skeletons, snakes, robots, doctors, authority, and the supernatural | You start finding [subject] very unnerving... | phobia of [subject] |
| Expressive Aphasia | The patient is affected by partial loss of speech leading to a reduced vocabulary. A list of usable words can be found here. | You lose your grasp on complex words. | inability to form complex sentences |
Severe
Severe Traumas require at least 100 brain damage before appearing, making them hard to get randomly. They are severely debilitating, and can range from mutism to complete paralysis.
They are usually have the Severe Prefix which means they can be cured with brain surgery. Some have the meaner Deep-rooted Prefix, which requires lobotomy. Some can be cured with a virus with the mind restoration symptom, with a high enough Resistance stat of course.
| Name | Effect | Warning Message | Scan Message |
|---|---|---|---|
| Mutism | The patient no longer knows how to speak. | You forget how to speak! | extensive damage to the brain's language center |
| Cerebral Blindness | The patient's brain is no longer connected to their eyes, making them blind. | You can't see! | extensive damage to the brain's occipital lobe |
| Paralysis | The patient suffers from paralysis in one or multiple limbs, making them unusable until cured. | You can't feel your [limb] anymore! | cerebral paralysis |
| Narcolepsy | The patient often feels drowsy, and will randomly fall asleep. | You have a constant feeling of drowsiness... | traumatic narcolepsy |
| Monophobia | The patient will become increasingly stressed when not in company of others, triggering panic reactions ranging from sickness to heart attacks. | You feel really lonely... | monophobia |
| Discoordination | The patient is unable to use complex tools or machinery. | You can barely control your hands! | extreme discoordination |
| Split Personality | The patient gains a second personality, which will randomly take over their body. | You feel like your mind was split in two. | complete lobe separation |
| Traumatic Non-Violence | The patient gains a compulsion not to hurt anybody. | You feel oddly peaceful. | pacific syndrome |
| Aphasia | The patient is unable to speak or understand any language. | You have trouble forming words in your head... | extensive damage to the brain's language center |
| Hypnotic Stupor | The patient is prone to episodes of extreme stupor that leaves them extremely suggestible. | You feel somewhat dazed. | oneiric feedback loop |
| Hypnosis | The patient's unconscious is completely enthralled by a word or sentence, focusing their thoughts and actions on it. Note: this trauma cannot be randomly gained, and is a result of a hypnotic influence. | You feel a part of your mind repeating this over and over. You need to follow these words. | looping thought pattern |
Special
Severe Traumas have a 20% chance of being Special Trauma instead, though many special traumas can't be acquired this way. Special Traumas grant the player special abilities, although generally with little to no control over them.
Unlike Severe Traumas, Special Traumas are usually basic traumas which are easily healed with Neurine. Since the player will usually also have at least one mild trauma as well, it means it's usually only possible to have both or none.
| Name | Effect | Warning Message | Scan Message |
|---|---|---|---|
| Bluespace Prophecy | Patient can sense the bluespace around them, showing them passageways no one else can see. | You feel the bluespace pulsing around you... | bluespace attunement |
| Criminal | Patient seems to be a criminal. Imaginary securitrons will chase the patient and deal stamina damage. Only from drinking Beepsky Smash. | Justice is coming for you. | criminal mind |
| Existential Crisis | Patient's hold on reality becomes faint, causing occasional bouts of non-existence. | You feel less real. | existential crisis |
| Functional Cerebral Necrosis | Patient's brain is stuck in a functional near-death state, causing occasional moments of lucid hallucinations, which are often interpreted as the voices of the dead. Can happen temporarily when nearly dead. | You feel dead inside. | chronic functional necrosis |
| Godwoken Syndrome | The patient occasionally and uncontrollably channels an eldritch god, sending a Voice of God message. | You feel a higher power inside your mind... | god delusion |
| Imaginary Friend | The patient sees an imaginary person, who only they can hear. The friend has no limitation on movement, but cannot interact with the world and cannot go too far from its source. | You feel in good company, for some reason. | partial schizophrenia |
| Quantum Alignment | Causes the patient to occasionally quantum entangle themselves with nearby mobs and objects; after a random amount of time they "snap back" to them, teleporting after a 10 second chargeup. | You feel faintly connected to everything around you... | quantum alignment |
| Violent Psychosis | Patient fights in unpredictable ways, ranging from helping his target to hitting them with unnatural strength. | You feel unhinged... | violent psychosis |
| Tenacity | Patient is psychologically unaffected by pain and injuries, and can remain standing far longer than a normal person. | You suddenly stop feeling pain. | traumatic neuropathy |
Magic
Well, it can only get weirder from here, can't it?
Magic traumas blur the lines between what's in the mind and reality. They can affect both the victim's body and their surroundings, and usually inflict some of the wildest effects. They are usually deep-rooted, which means the only way to rid a patient of them is to perform a lobotomy.
These traumas only appear when Wizards cast the Curse of Madness ritual before heading to the station. There is a 20% chance that a person will have a Magical Trauma rather than a mild/severe/special trauma.
| Name | Effect | Warning Message | Scan Message |
|---|---|---|---|
| Athaumasia | Gives the victim an immunity to magical effects and projectiles. Mind over magic, baby. | You realize that magic cannot be real. |
Thaumic Blank |
| Lumiphobia | Makes the victim hyper-sensitive to light, causing them to burn when exposed to anything more than a dim glow. | You feel a craving for darkness. The light burns you! |
Light Hypersensitivity |
| Poltergeist | The victim is haunted by a poltergeist that will aggressively throw objects in the area towards him/her. | You feel a hateful presence close to you. | Paranormal Activity |
| Stalking Phantom | An dark presence that only the victim can see stalks and ruthlessly mutilates the victim with ghostly claws once it has caught up to him/her. Unrelated side effects include intense paranoia and a feeling of being stalked. | You feel like something wants to kill you... It's coming closer... |
Extra-sensory Paranoia |
Brain Trauma Prefixes
You can identify the level of cure needed to fix a brain trauma by scanning the patient with a health analyzer. Different level traumas have different prefixes. These prefixes can easily be confused with the different trauma categories on this page, but they are separate systems, which normally overlap since severe traumas usually have the severe prefix, and so on.
Basic Traumas Without Prefix
These traumas have no prefix on health analyzer. Neurine will cure basic brain traumas.
Severe Prefix
You can identify severe brain traumas by the prefix "severe" on health analyzer. Brain Surgery will cure severe traumas.
Deep-rooted Prefix
You can identify deep-rooted brain traumas by the prefix "deep-rooted" on health analyzer. Lobotomy will cure deep-rooted brain traumas. Some viruses and nanites can cure these and lower level traumas.
Permanent Prefix
You can identify permanent brain traumas by the prefix "permanent" on health analyzer. Permanent brain traumas are either permanent or curable with magic, which is typically unavailable. Failing a lobotomy can cause these traumas. If you get one of these then assume "this is life now".