October Event: Crystal Clear

[lifeaftr_mods]

OCTOBER EVENT: CRYSTAL CLEAR

Who: Everyone!
What: Your exploration takes a turn.
When: October 20th - 26th
Where: The caverns situated underneath Ensō
Warnings: Character death, body horror, descriptions of illness. Please mark any additional warnings as needed!

Part I: Attack, Attack!
Congratulations! You've successfully gone where no Storyteller has gone or can go, and woken up in the network of subterranean caves buried beneath the island's mass, along with your designated supplies: a miner's cap, a week's worth of food, and both your knapsacks and their collective contents. And the further along you go, the vaster and more sprawling these almost labyrinthian tunnels seem to get. There’s certainly evidence that civilization once thrived here - old buildings hewed from the rock of the cave walls may very well contain old tools, or even salvageable supplies. Careful examination of structures and cavern walls alike will reveal sigils resembling those carved on the doors, each of which will need to be destroyed entirely at the Storyteller's behest. Whatever was down here was advanced enough to dwell without sunlight. But that raises a rather pertinent question...

If there were once people here, where did they all go?

Fortunately, one will soon discover that there's plenty of natural light underground, exhibited by the crystalline growths on the walls. None of them appear to be dangerous, and those attracted to shiny things might even find them useful for picking up or chipping away in order to better light their way. The crystal has about the thickness and hardness of quartz, and bathes its surroundings in a luminous green glow.

The closer you come to the center of the mass, however, the denser the crystalline growths seem to become, until one has to be quite ingenious in navigating them. Eventually, they'll simply be too dense to be squeezed through, even by the smallest and most agile of your number.

That’s when they it will start to become apparent.
Something in the crystal is moving.

Huge chunks of crystal are starting to detach from the center and move slowly, inexorably, toward those unfortunate enough to have explored the caverns. Unmistakably humanoid silhouettes, distorted by awful crystalline growths, most of which have completely swallowed any recognizable features.

...most.

The good news is that the creatures can be shattered, and beaten back. The bad news? Well...

Part II: Retreat, Retreat!
Those who get close enough to the crystalized beasts to get a good look at them will soon make a horrifying discovery - the fact that, underneath those thick layers of luminescent quartz, there was once something that might have been recognizable as human. These quartz monsters aren't native to this region, or indeed, to any region of the island at all. They were formed.

Formed out of the very crystal that you explorers have been touching, picking up, sleeping on, and just generally remaining in prolonged contact with ever since you set foot down here.

Indeed, anyone who has been in contact with the crystal for extended periods of time - sleeping on it or getting dealt a swipe from one of the crystalized monsters, for example - will find that tiny, quartz-like growths have started to sprout on their skin as well. Once the virus has taken root, it will spread rapidly until it has swallowed you whole. Indeed, the unpleasant symptoms will reveal themselves within twenty-four hours of the initial exposure: in addition to clusters of crystalline growths pocking the affected areas, the inflicted will begin to experience intense stabbing pains all over as the crystal begins to grow - both inside and out. The transformation is slow and arduous and painful, and vocalization tends to be one of the first things to go once the crystals sprout in the mouth and throat. Within the span of about three days since the initial exposure, the transformation will have sheathed most of the physical body in crystal entirely, sealing the victim in a humanoid cast of glasslike green.

It has not been confirmed if the inflicted are sentient and aware of their state of being once they are completely consumed. Whatever their intentions, those are easily overridden by the virus's innate desire to spread to as many organisms as possible.

As this is an event with a high risk of death, the Storyteller will impose death penalties for one week only. Additionally, deaths succumbed during the event count towards the character's total. There is no known cure to the virus, but that doesn't mean characters can't or shouldn't try!

Event Timeline

[ ♆ ] October 20th: Spelunking begins. Points of interest will be provided.
[ ♆ ] October 22nd: The Quartzalcoatl make their presence known.
[ ♆ ] October 24th: The final sigils are broken, and the Storyteller will return all uninfected to the Islets.
[ ♆ ] October 26th: All deceased will be returned at midday, suffering from a reduced death penalty.

Event Specifics

[ ♆ ] If your character perishes in this event, please let us know!
[ ♆ ] For those who opted out, please see the top-level below!
[ ♆ ] Item claims can be found on the OOC plotting post here!

LOGS ● OOC ● STORIES ● MAIN NAVIGATION

( CODED BY BOOTYCALL )

Comments

[esper_magic]

Well they were both competent fighters. It was probably fine. Surely.

"A... connection..?" She furrowed her brow, about to say she was just a normal person - but that was blatantly untrue. Not that she knew the whys and wherefores of it. "No, I don't have anything like that. Regrettably." She raised a hand, pausing when it came in contact with one of the crystals that were growing out of the walls. Huh. Pardon her, she's gonna collect a few. It's not a sigil but while they were down here...

[seesbosscrotch]

"Well, it's not that then," Mar said, shrugging. "Hey... what are you doing?"

[esper_magic]

"Hm?" Terra glanced at him curiously, but she moved back enough so he could see what she was doing. "I'm collecting crystals. They have enough of a glow to be a slight light source." And she's sure it'd look pretty if she hangs them up in her cabin. She freed one from the wall, holding it up, "See?"

[seesbosscrotch]

"That's true, but... it's, ah, also kind of an evil glow.

"I should know." Mar taps a finger to the bridge of his nose, the better to call attention to the glow of his own eyes -- which is very, very close to that color, if not identical.

[esper_magic]

... is he saying green is evil? Light is evil? Light is light. It didn't feel 'evil' to her. That was kind of judgey!

Well either way it.. kind of doesn't make sense to her. "You're evil?" That, or his nose is. Which _STILL_ doesn't make sense to her, but if it made him feel better, she placed the crystal back down. For now. She didn't really need the crystal to see anyway.

[seesbosscrotch]

"Oh, some people think so. I have a pretty colorful past, after all. And there's certainly no denying that I and almost all of my people imbibed fel energy to survive... thus my familiarity with the particular kind of sickly green that almost invariably means 'evil'."

Just... just get it all right out there, Mar, don't hold back on the exposition.

[esper_magic]

The blankest of blank stares. "Fel energy..?" NO clue. "So.. what's supposed to be evil...?" Energy? Energy was just part of nature - she's failing to connect where the evil comes in, here. She doesn't however, fail to spot another sigil, so while she waits for him to respond, she shifts her attention from the crystals to the target, pulling her pickaxe back and laying into the symbol again. Huff~!

[seesbosscrotch]

"Hmm, well. Granting that evil is just a state of mind... objectively, fel energies are destructive, chaotic, entropic, and malign in the extreme, basically useless except for destroying things in agonizingly painful ways. Exposure to them causes mutation and ultimately transformation, along with mental effects such as impaired judgment and greater recklessness. All told, I call that pretty evil."

[esper_magic]

She wasn't so sure she agreed, but - she still didn't know much about it. "If it was so evil, why did you and your people have to use it to survive?" No, she's just confused about that definition. "Unless it's sentient.. it isn't evil, by that definition. It's just... what it is." She thinks.

She took a moment to try to re-process the topic- evil being a state of the mind, ergo you have to have a mind to be evil, but fel energy was just...energy and not a sentient being - even though it caused destruction and other horrible things. "Can something like that really be evil, just for existing..?" Sure other people exposed to it might think it is, but..!

[seesbosscrotch]

"Absolutely we can, and the reason is, because we are ordinary mortals, and the concept of good and evil is fundamentally one that belongs to ordinary mortals. Oh, certainly the gods and demigods and Titans and demons all have their opinions, but ultimately, good and evil are defined by society. I mean, bluntly speaking, if a man kills ten thousand people and raises them as the undead to achieve his goals, what's evil about that from the high-up perspective?"

As casually as he said this all, a real undercurrent of raw conviction lurked beneath his lighthearted tones. Good and evil were very real.

"On the other hand, it is possible to use evil energy for good purposes, if you're quite careful about it. Our use, of course, was neither careful nor good, but we had no choice. It was that or die."

[esper_magic]

".... everything." EVERYTHING was evil about that. Might as well say 'what's evil about taking someone's free will and using them as a weapon?' ... and she'd say the very same thing. But she does still think killing someone is an act of evil - and if you killed them, then brought them back to use them as weapons, that's also an evil act. Of course she knows nothing of Gods or anything like that, but she was rather unsettled by the concept.

"Why aren't you dead now?" TACT TERRA. DO YOU KNOW IT. She pauses, ".. if you need to .. to eat the fel energy to survive, I mean. Is there something like that here?" And then a moment later, she points. Sigil on your left, behind a thick cluster of crystal. Have at~!

[seesbosscrotch]

Mar turned and punched the sigil.

THIS WASN'T AS DUMB AS IT SEEMED, thanks primarily to his gauntlets, which absorbed the force and turned his fist into enough of a weapon to crack the stone. He twisted his fist on the rock once the dust stopped falling, grinding the sigil out, then turned back to Terra.

She was totally impressed, right?

"What my people need is magic," he said, casually dusting off his hand. "We turned to fel energy and then the Light of a naaru because the source of our greatness, the Sunwell, had been extinguished and left us bereft. But it was reignited. Even now across the distance between us, the Sunwell's light still reaches me."

Not perfectly, he didn't mention. That hunger for magic, that aching addiction, had not reared its ugly head since he'd come here, but the Light that came with it was erratic at best.

[esper_magic]

UM.

Oh, well if he was fine, then that was good. Though if he's looking for an impressed reaction from her, he's... not going to get it. She's not even paying attention, looking at the opposite wall and running a hand over it. Nope, no sigils here.

She finally looks back to him, first at the shattered remains of the crystal chunks and then the destroyed sigil. "That's good - it's lucky that you can still feel it." She thinks. She's not going to say she completely understands, honestly, but she gets the general gist.

[seesbosscrotch]

...what was the point of being a badass Blood Knight if you couldn't impress the ladies, damn it?

"Very lucky, since I'd be in useless agony otherwise," Mar agreed, a bit sulky. "The Light may be everywhere, but that doesn't mean I can just draw it from whatever."

[esper_magic]

That was a disappointing reason! At least Terra would think so. Sorry Mar, if it was impressing the ladies you were looking for you're in the Wroooooooong company for that! "Does it effect you being in a cave like this?" She wondered curiously. It's not like the light can reach into the caves, after all. Also was it her or were the sigils appearing fewer and fewer. It seemed they found more before.

[seesbosscrotch]

That didn't mean he was going to give up, damn it.

"The connection I have to the Sunwell transcends time and space," he replied. "And I mean that literally. I've traveled to distant worlds and long-ago times in my adventures, and held close to it always."

[esper_magic]

Fight the good fight Mar.

Terra glanced around the cave before glancing at him in surprise, "So then, this situation is familiar to? I mean, being pulled from your homeland by some mysterious force and left in a completely different world..?"

[seesbosscrotch]

"Oh, I've gotten into some weird situations before. Usually a little voluntarily, but this is a little like getting stranded in Draenor. That was fairly recent." Old hat, in other words, even though he hadn't chosen this path.

[esper_magic]

... He's just saying words at this point and she has NO clue what any of them mean. "Draenor?" She echoed, frowning a little, "What happened there?" More storytime! She's full of inquisitiveness. And energy, because she's spied another sigil being sneaky and hiding between a pair of rocks. She's gonna take her pickaxe to that one too!

[seesbosscrotch]

Hey, he loved to tell stories, so she made the perfect companion. "Draenor was another world. Or more specifically, it was another version of another world, because someone meddled with the timestream and split it."

[esper_magic]

Even though she wasn't impressed by his impressiveness? "How did you get back to your home then?" meddling with the timestream ... that's... she can't even imagine how someone would even DO something like that.

[seesbosscrotch]

He was working on that!

"Azeroth is a very magical world compared to this one, or even Draenor. Our mages devised a way to open portals between Azeroth and Draenor which we could use to travel back and forth in small numbers."

[esper_magic]

Hmmm.. "Maybe that's how we would be able to get back to our own worlds..." She's in no rush though. There were people here she was fond of. "Then again ... there are a lot of people and a lot of worlds.."

[seesbosscrotch]

"And frankly, one adventurer isn't worth rescuing." Yrel doubtless was, but he wasn't. "Plus this seems to be father or weirder away than most places."

And we can wrap about here :D have them split up to adventureeeeeee

[esper_magic]

Terra stayed silent on that matter. She's not sure she completely agrees, honestly. If even one of her friends was trapped in the caves, she would still risk herself to rescue them. "It looks lke the path is splitting here," she mused, "I'm going to go this way," pointing one way, "You should check that one." It was definitely faster.