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The Mods of LifeAftr ([personal profile] lifeaftr_mods) wrote in [community profile] lifeaftr2020-01-02 08:51 pm

January Undercurrent: Growing Pains

JANUARY UNDERCURRENT
Who: Everyone!
What: Hey bud, how's it growing?
When: January 3rd to January 20th
Where: Everywhere!
Warnings: This event has a potential for body horror and character death; please mark anything as it comes up!

A Notion Growing Inside Me

Those of you who weren't with us the last time Umui entered the archipelago didn't have to contend with the lethal illness known as the Overgrowth personally, but anyone who remembers it probably doesn't remember it fondly. Fortunately, this isn't quite the same strain of the illness that you had to contend with the last time. It's not unrelentingly and uncompromisingly fatal, for one! That's always nice.

For those that need a primer on the Overgrowth, it is best described as a sickness that overcomes you with floral growth both inside and outside your body that can only be cured by expressions of emotional honesty. Expressions of truths, affections, and admissions of things that you have hidden from yourselves or from others were critical in dispensing of the illness. These could be as simple as admissions of past sins or the revealing of secrets, or as grandiose and overt as confessions of guilt or love. That general idea will remain more or less the key means of curing this strain as well, though the stakes fortunately aren't as high this go around! Which is to say, if you fail to have any grand emotional epiphanies by the time this event ends, you aren't doomed to suffer a character death; symptoms will simply dissipate come January 20th.

So what's this sickness going to be like in this particular instance, then? We're so glad you asked!
You can go the standard route, of course. Adventurers' first brush with the illness saw the following afflicted upon them:
[ ♆ ] Stage One: Germination. Initial symptoms involve fever, coughing fits, numbness to nerves and extremities, and general joint stiffness. Difficulty breathing or performing other basic functions will often occur. Fatigue, difficulty sleeping, and intense weakness or dizzy spells are also liable to occur as the flowers begin to harvest nutrients from the body. This will also generate extreme thirst and periods of intense nausea. Tremors and the sensation of something "itching" from inside are also common. The end of Stage One is usually marked by the act of vomiting or coughing up flower petals or spores, along with a not-insignificant amount of blood.

[ ♆ ] Stage Two: Budding. The floral growths spread more completely inside the body, and begin to grow on the skin or exterior. Difficulty performing basic functions will increase as, for example, airways become obstructed and flowers grow around joints and pinch them still. The site of affliction also yields rashes, blisters, and blood sores as the flowers sprout from the skin. The rate of vomiting or coughing up floral growths will increase dramatically. Flowers often bloom quickly, and very painfully. Numbness in affected areas will increase, oftentimes rendering parts of the body completely inert - a pair of legs claimed completely by blooms, for example, will no longer work.
This was followed by Stage Three: Bloom, which resulted in character death. However, this strain will not advance to this style of Stage Three. All symptoms will disperse by the time Umui resurfaces.

This strain is also rather more erratic, which can make emotional repression more of an inconvenience than a horrifying circumstance. For those who would rather not play around with intense sickness (or who have already endured this once before), you have the option to go that route if you like! With this variant of the Overgrowth, one can become, for example, so embarrassed that they hiccup up a flower. A vicious denial of their feelings may cause them to spontaneously erupt into a rash of dandelion puffballs, seemingly immediately. You might end up walking around with a bouquet for an arm for a few hours. Perhaps mortifying, but certainly not fatal! Isn't that nice?

Unless, of course, you want it to be...

I Can't Fight It Much Longer

Now, while the Bloom Stage isn't present in this strain, it has mutated its progression into a rather nasty end stage. Those of you who succumb a little too readily to this illness, who don't fight off the emotional repression quickly, who don't admit those difficult truths to yourself or confess to whatever you're bottling up, you'll be faced with a potentially horrifying transformation. Potentially, because it is your choice whether or not you see fit to commit your character to that fate - as stated above, this option might simply skip over your character entirely, and the worst they'll have to deal with are cartoonishly over-the-top effects that disperse in due time.

But maybe not all of you will be so lucky. Some of you might discover for yourselves how this particular variant of the Overgrowth has mutated.

We call this mutation Stage Three: Outbreak.
In this final Stage, those beautiful blooms wither and harden into a fungus-like carapace as the illness grows into the victim's brain and shuts down virtually all higher functions. This can sometimes render them almost wholly recognizable, but not always - oftentimes, it's very obvious who this person once was. The victim is reduced to a carrier of the virus, which causes them to act the way you'd expect most viruses to act: becoming intent on spreading. Advanced brain functions such as speech, rational thought, and so on tend to shut off and become wholly inaccessible.

Now that the victim's body is no longer fighting the Overgrowth, the illness lends them increased speed, strength, and durability, making them dangerous foes indeed. They will usually seek to infect others by whatever means necessary - usually via biting or exuding breathable spores - but in some cases, they will simply reduce to base instincts, and just outright attempt to attack and kill whoever is closest.

Unfortunately, at this point, there is no hope of a cure; it's hard to make someone be emotionally honest when they're capable of little more than blunt, animal instinct. At this point, you can either wait for the Stage Three symptoms to disperse come Umui's return, or take manners into your own hands. You can probably guess what that might entail.

If you decide to put your Overgrown friends out of their misery, this will count as a character death. If it comes to that, be sure to let us know on the Deaths page! Death penalties, however, will not be reduced for this event.

Try to Get Through It

Of course, there's a lot going on in the background as well. You're free to use this log as a catch-all for the duration of January's Undercurrent Event, as well as any of the other minor events listed on our Monthly Rundown post. And, of course, you are always free to create your own individual logs and posts as needed.

If you have any questions, please feel free to ask them over on the Questions header on our Rundown post!
January Timeline
[ ♆ ] January 1st: "This Sucks" begins and lasts until January 10th
[ ♆ ] January 3rd: "Growing Pains" begins and lasts until January 20th
[ ♆ ] January 11th: "No Water is Safe" begins and lasts until January 19th
[ ♆ ] January 20th: Umui returns to the archipelago
[ ♆ ] January 21st: "Impawsible Geometries" begins and lasts until January 31st
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( CODED BY BOOTYCALL )
eudaimonikos: (universals)

[personal profile] eudaimonikos 2020-01-08 04:25 am (UTC)(link)
They really do! I'm sorry you got stuck with the full human set.

[Michael considers that. It's not fully untrue, but it probably wasn't phrased all that well...]

Maybe not. But the negative ones do suck. Still, Eleanor says that you just have to deal with it, and talk to your friends about it - and she's easily the most dysfunctional of my group of humans, so we should all at least be able to get on her level.
motherfucking_ghost: (Default)

[personal profile] motherfucking_ghost 2020-01-09 01:40 pm (UTC)(link)
See, she gets it. But it's hard to get off of dysfunction junction when you've been there so long. Talking to idiots about nothing, shooting the shit, only occasionally saying something deeply poignant on accident and then walking it back because that's for nerds and we're definitely not nerds.
eudaimonikos: (either/or)

[personal profile] eudaimonikos 2020-01-09 06:32 pm (UTC)(link)
Backstabbing everyone you know at the slightest hint of vulnerability...

[The demon experience is a little different, but they don't talk about shit either. He's trying to relate.]
motherfucking_ghost: (gesticulation)

[personal profile] motherfucking_ghost 2020-01-09 08:12 pm (UTC)(link)
Right? Right! You show vulnerability, you get made fun of and never live it down the rest of your life. Or at least until something wild and crazy comes along to distract everyone.

Pretty sure that's just called male bonding.
eudaimonikos: (a treatise of human nature)

[personal profile] eudaimonikos 2020-01-09 09:01 pm (UTC)(link)
That's just demon bonding, for us.

[how do demons even figure gender, honestly]

It's not very good. I mean - I feel better now, you know?
motherfucking_ghost: (heh yeah)

[personal profile] motherfucking_ghost 2020-01-10 10:58 am (UTC)(link)
From people treating you less like backstabby crap? Yeah, I can get that. I dunno, sometimes the honesty thing can backfire, like, truth bombs detonating early and leaving everything all confused. But I can totally see in general being treated nicer as a whole.
eudaimonikos: (please come through)

[personal profile] eudaimonikos 2020-01-10 03:00 pm (UTC)(link)
From me treating people less like that, too. It's all sort of bundled together, I guess. So really, I won't even bring anything people tell me up with them again, if they don't want to.
motherfucking_ghost: (heh yeah)

[personal profile] motherfucking_ghost 2020-01-12 01:10 pm (UTC)(link)
Like some kinda secret-keeper type, huh? That makes you a good friend.
eudaimonikos: (as many times as you can)

[personal profile] eudaimonikos 2020-01-13 12:39 am (UTC)(link)
Well, thank you. I try to be.