Mahd Wy'ry is a psychological affliction that can afflict members of the Eternals. It is a degenerative disease that looks like features of dementia and post-traumatic stress.
History[]
The Mahd Wy'ry-afflicted Thena
Mahd Wy'ry was a psychological affliction that Eternals suffered from as a result of the vast amount of memories they acquire due to their immortality. This affliction led to the suffering Eternal forgetting when exactly they were in time, making them potentially dangerous to others around them, with Thena becoming the notable Eternal who suffered from the condition. However, the rest of the Eternals eventually learned through Sersi about the truth of their real mission on Earth, in which Arishem revealed to her about his methods of erasing and storing the minds of the Eternals after each Emergence succeeds. In this revelation, Sprite was able to deduce that Mahd Wy'ry occurs when the memory reset of an Eternal begins to lose its effect, as Thena had been disjointedly recalling her past missions to other worlds.[1]
Effects[]
Mahd Wy'ry can turn the affected Eternals' eye white and make them attack anyone near them, regardless of their relationship. It can be triggered by sudden noises such as hearing gunfire or nearby violence, or by threatening events such as earthquakes. Victims of Mahd Wy'ry thus enter in a dissociative state as they cannot differentiate between the time of the memories they are reliving and the time in which they are, similar to a post-traumatic stress disorder episode. They are also left with no recollection of what happened during their Mahd Wy'ry crisis.
Mahd Wy'ry also causes other damage to sanity beyond the episodes, such as causing him to start having strange and eccentric behaviors and attitudes. Thena had a habit of isolating herself and compulsively drawing her memories. Mahd Wy'ry seems to evolve like a dementia, slowly worsening and making the affected Eternal dependent on a caregiver, important personal information begins to be forgotten, psychotic symptoms begin to manifest, mood swings and difficulty in doing basic day-to-day tasks.
Despite Mahd Wy'ry progressively worsening like a dementia, Mahd Wr'ry does not affect the abilities of the affected Eternal, since Thena's fighting skills remained completely unaffected even after many centuries of suffering from Mahd Wr'ry.
Mahd Wy'ry episodes could be contained if the victim were to remember their memories in the correct order. Ajak was able to use her powers to temporarily stop Thena during a Mahd Wy'ry episode, although Thena resumed her madness upon hearing new gunfire; while Sprite was able to calm down Thena by reminding her of who she was. An outburst of Mahd Wy'ry could also be ended if the victim was knocked unconscious, as demonstrated by Gilgamesh against Thena.
Victims[]
Trivia[]
- In the comics, Mahd Wy'ry or Eternal madness was an illness resulting from the Eternals' extreme longevity. Due to the Eternals still possessing a human mind, they could be driven mad by centuries of knowledge and memories being acquired over time. The disease typically took centuries to take hold and drive an Eternal mad, although it could take hold faster. The only way to cure an Eternal of this illness was to kill them and then revive them from their last safe genetic backup.
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