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Prison planets are a bit of a SF cliche so anything you can do to narrow it down would also be helpful (for example, you say you read it about 15 years ago... do you believe it was new, or was it an older book then? Were the prison-keepers other humans and it's a political prison ,or is say aliens running it for humans)
I think you've got it, one of the races (actually subgroups of humankind with a consistent set of mutantions) in that also had elaborate facial tattoos and embraced their various neurodivergences.
Not a duvet but rather whole-beds, and a lot of the other details don't really fit so I don't feel comfortable putting it as a real answer, but any chance it could be the Fred Savage/Howie Mandel movie Little Monsters?
I don't think this is it but "A Door Into Ocean" by Joan Slonczewski has a mostly ocean-based moon where people live on rafts and there's a regular wave-like phenomenon that crosses the world that the rafts have to be prepared for. I don't remember anything about this 'wire' disease but there are other books set on the same world I believe.
@dominicfonde Can't help much but The Alien Within has a sequel called Michael The Master (written by the same author but oddly under a different pseudonym, "W. Lambert III"). I've only been able to find one-sentence descriptions of either of them though, but maybe the cover of the latter is more familiar?
I believe Buffy the Vampire Slayer also did this with the 2000 episode "Superstar" where minor character Jonathan used magic to make himself the center of everything. The credits for that episode altered to include scenes of him doing heroic things.
Too much of a longshot to suggest as a full answer since there's plenty that doesn't fit, but any chance it's Peter F. Hamilton's Void trilogy? It's far-future SF but there's a parallel story in the void which is a fantasy with psychic powers, and the main character Edeard starts as an apprentice in the Eggshaping Guild which uses their psy powers to genetically modify animals for service.
