Maybe the maker of that ancient artifact phoned in the work that day. Maybe that witch was in a real hurry to get to their broom cycling class. Whatever the cause, the result is the same: you've been cursed, but not detrimentally. It won't kill you, or severely hamper your rolls and abilities from moment to moment during an adventure. Heck, it probably won't physically hurt you all that much. It can even be dispelled with whatever means to Remove Curse you have access to.
But until then, it is going to be one hell of an annoyance.
- Power Word: Faucet Nose - Whether it's a localized area of damaged capillaries or an incredibly minor bleeding disorder, nosebleeds have gotten much more common for you. The constant, red seepage is a bane to your wardrobe, a pain to stop, and it can be caused by the most insignificant stimuli: sneezing, chewing, rubbing your eyes, looking down too hard to tie your shoes...
- The Feeling of Spiderwebs - You constantly get the feeling that spiderwebs and other creepy, clingy things are surrounding to you. Tickling your earlobes, tangling around your fingers, working their way under your clothes and then surprising you when you move. Sometimes they even skitter, and then people look at you funny when you start to flail and pat yourself down.
- Fungus - A puffy, discoloring fungal infection takes root in your body. Hands, feet, scalp, any and/or all of them are affected. Skin scars, nails crumble and split, bubbles of empty skin rise here and there, and your body's pH gets all kinds of out-of-whack. Topical solutions help for a few minutes at most. In hotter weather, you even start to reek of vinegar.
- Botched Speaking Cues - Communicating with people is hard for everyone; especially for you. You're always about a quarter of a second off from everybody else, either cutting people off without meaning to or interrupting them just as they begin to speak again after a lengthy pause.
- Ichthyosis Vulgaris - Your skin dries and cracks into a mosaic of tessellations resembling fish scales. You flake constantly, and often grow raised patches of accumulated dead skin that look scabrous and dirty. No amount of exfoliating and moisturizing will hide this for long, and you leave a little dusting of human detritus wherever you go. If the climate is especially dry, you can even split open and bleed during vigorous activity. Despite the name, it does not give you a fish's swimming or water breathing powers.
- Always Slightly Tilted - Maybe it's your brain, your terrible posture, or the room you're in. Everything feels off-center, tilted, wrong. And no amount of fidgeting and adjusting will fix that. It doesn't significantly impact your proprioception, but can you really trust your senses as much as you used to?
- Unspeakable Names - Let's face it, you were never good at remembering names. But now the universe is conspiring to put you in situations that highlight that inability. Whether it's shouting them across a battlefield or announcing them at an award ceremony, you're drawing a blank, and someone is already slightly offended.
- First Place You Looked - Whenever you lose something, it is invariably in the first place you looked. But you don't realize that until you've gone back over every spot on the list two or even three times, scouring every inch in increasing desperation until you move one incidental little object aside and realize the lost something had been there that entire time, in the face of all logic.
- Temperature Sensitivity - You know that one friend who's always just a little chilly, even in the dead of summer? Congratulations; that's you now. Your body has embarked on a lifelong war against the thermostat and the consensus of everyone else in the same space as you. Sure, it's still possible to feel comfortable, but those moments are fleeting and hidden in the paper-thin margins between extremes.
- Constantly Shedding - You start growing a lot of hair very quickly, even if that's something you shouldn't be physically capable of. But dashing your dreams of lumberjack beards and/or Rapunzel hair is the fact that it breaks or falls out just as quickly. Everywhere you go, you walk amidst a halo of broken ends fluttering in the breeze. You leave a trail of hair that collects into tumbleweeds if you aren't on top of cleaning up after yourself. And it will catch and snag and rip on everything.
- One Leg Longer - One of your legs lengthens ever so slightly, after a few hours of accelerated growing pain in your shin. It only grows an inch or so; not enough to see at first glance, but enough to disrupt your locomotion. You walk with a pronounced up-and-down bob that can be mistaken for a pretentious swagger, and it always puts more stress on one knee and shoe sole than the other.
- Noisy Joints - Heyyy, what's poppin'? It's your knees, pal. Your joints snap, crackle, and pop more than mediocre breakfast cereal with every move you make. It doesn't exactly hurt, but the feeling is unpleasant; as are all the younger people around you suddenly asking if you're alright (read: too old) to be doing this by yourself.
- Wandering Food Allergy - First it starts with a pit in your stomach. Then it progresses to cold sweats. Finally you embark on a night-long adventure in nonstop infinite bowel-voiding. And here's the kicker: the thing that causes it changes randomly, day-to-day, week-to-week, maybe even midmeal!
- Manual Breathing - Every moment of every day, you have to breathe manually and consciously. You're fine while you're asleep; no sleep apnea here. But as long as you're awake, it's up to you to keep resetting that 3-minute timer until brain death. Which means that you often forget while you're busy, and then you have to suck in great gasps of air during such laborious tasks as sitting still and thinking.
- Smell Your Own Nose - You become acutely aware of the smell of your own nose. No, not something in your nose, but the interior of your nostrils themselves, suddenly risen up from the background of your body's ambient odorscape to contend with all other smells. And it is as unpleasant as it is difficult to articulate to other people.
- Transcended Spotlight Effect - That old comfort, the idea that everyone else is too preoccupied with their own nonsense to care about yours, is dead. Staring at you gives everyone sudden, epiphanic clarity into just how fine they are, and how okay this all is. It's just you who's freaking out. You're the only one. And they're judging you for it. What the hell is your problem?
- Lightning Limbs - Your extremities fall asleep so quickly and easily, you think they might each have a case of narcolepsy with separate triggers. They don't sleep for long, and you're unlikely to trip or drop anything from it. But the waves of cold pins and needles are an unwelcome wakeup call most times.
- Bibliophobia - You feel an acute sense of anxiety, worthlessness, and borderline dread whenever you have to read something longer than a few paragraphs. You remain as capable and able to read as you were before, but now the whole experience is a painful chore. What if you interpret the text wrong, or forget everything you just read?
- Creative Tinnitus - Buzzing, humming, chirping, squeaking, rattling; all manner of different sounds, and none of them real. For whatever reason your brain has decided things get too quiet, and will on occasional supply noises of its own. The plain old ringing of yesteryear was obnoxious, but at least it was predictable and recognizable.
- Nonsense Homophones - Your first language starts to feel... not so first. Words begin to stick out at you as strange jumbles of phonemes and conjugations. Was that person saying things were wonderful, or were they asking for 'one derfle'? Why do they give you funny looks when you say you 'derstand' and need things repeated? Perhaps you need a resher for your reef.
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