January Undercurrent: Growing Pains

[lifeaftr_mods]

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

LOGS ● OOC ● STORIES ● MAIN NAVIGATION

( CODED BY BOOTYCALL )

Comments

b!

[deathfindsaway]

Kravitz knows what this is as soon as the weariness starts, the creaking in his joints that means a specific and horrifying plague, but that doesn't mean he has to like it. Ginko may find his thoughts about fairness unnecessary, but Kravitz is in exactly the same boat- this is unnecessary. This is not needed, for this to come again when they know how to cure it. It's especially frustrating when the red flowers he's waiting for never come- instead, different petals find their way through his hair, pressing out from tiny buds into thick blooms. It's this that spurs him to action- he doesn't know if this is the same. He can't hope to know exactly, and that means he can delay it no longer.

He finds Ginko while he's out seeking someone to talk to, blinking in a slightly bleary surprise to see the other man beginning to blossom as well, and sighs. "So... it is to be everyone, then? All of us must endure this? As if once wasn't enough, compounded with the many memories we've had to see of others. You would imagine at some point it would end."

[onegreeneye]

It seems to Ginko that there isn't much point in hiding the way his eye scans over Kravitz's condition, lingering with some resignation on the flowers in his hair. It looks like it really is spread pretty far, once again. Great.

"You'd think. But, if something is really doing this on purpose, I guess it isn't satisfied yet." He snorts quietly. "At this rate, we're going to need to start writing down whatever we can remember about ourselves that we haven't already told the whole island about, just in case we need it."

[deathfindsaway]

He snorts, an attempt at a laugh that doesn't perfectly get there. It's all he can do at this point to try and find some kind of humor in the situation, because otherwise surely he'll be too angry with the entire thing to think of much else. As it stands, he just sighs and tries to collect his thoughts.

"Yes, that... would certainly be it. I wonder, truly, if we were all entirely honest with ourselves, we would not be capable of contracting the illness." It's an idle thought, some moral goal to shoot for that he knows he'll miss. "But I'm not sure if people are even capable of being honest to ourselves all of the time. To recognize your own flaws so starkly, at all moments... I doubt it's healthy on that end, either."

[onegreeneye]

"Definitely not." They can't be expected to be capable of it, and it wouldn't be healthy. He's sure of that.

"We may have to be ready for this to be a consistent nuisance, if nothing else." He scratches idly at a cluster of flowers by his neck before catching himself and shoving his hand into his pocket. This. He guesses that, if treated properly, it's not much worse than some mushi infections.

Too bad the treatment is what it is. For all he knows, some may still choose to let the flowers take them over - in fact, he would be surprised if nobody did, even if he would rather they didn't.

[deathfindsaway]

He nods in agreement, though the idea of having to constantly be very, very honest grates at him. Not because he's a particularly dishonest person, but that's just a level of vulnerability he can't trust to be out all the time. It's complicated. Feelings are so complicated.

"Well, I certainly hope not, especially concerning the revival rate of some of our population." Kravitz scoffs, a much less quiet concern about all the pesky not-dying around here. "I can't imagine where the Storyteller gets enough power to continue catching souls before they hit the Astral Plane. It's ludicrous, really. The energy they must be harvesting from the dead to make it possible is unspeakable."

[onegreeneye]

"...Maybe death works differently here." It doesn't seem impossible to Ginko; after all, it clearly works differently from how it does in his world, to his knowledge, seeing as how it... shouldn't be possible.

"Maybe each of these places has its own system for that sort of thing." It's certainly something he's considered, even if he's in no position to make a particularly educated guess on the topic. But, then, he's not sure any of them are, given how far these interplanar worlds seem to diverge from laws of nature that any of their inhabitants seem used to.

[deathfindsaway]

He's not sure that makes him feel better, but it is certainly something to consider. On one hand, it's totally possible the Storyteller isn't breaking a bunch of Death Laws, because the concept is completely foreign to him, and that's good. On the other hand, having a death system that he doesn't understand, know, or influence is... worrying at best. He doesn't like being so far removed from a system that's shaped him for so long, even if he has no reason to be influencing it in a space that isn't his.

Maybe he's just a control freak. It's hard to say.

"Mmmm. I suppose. But that brings the question of what dying here really means. We know the Storyteller can step between life and death, but-- where do the souls go if they don't intervene? What about the, the death of gods? What about Bliss?"

Kravitz knows Ginko was around before, long enough to know and understand the consequences of that action. He sighs, almost too heavy, trying to get his head back on track. "I just... I don't like adding another unknown to a situation so, so uncertain. Especially with something as important as death."

[onegreeneye]

"I suppose I understand that." Ginko isn't a big fan of how differently things work in these worlds, either, as fascinating as it might be. "But I don't know that assuming it's the same is a good idea."

Maybe that's where their reactions diverge. Ginko may be used to understanding the way nature operates a little better than he does here, and that may be uncomfortable - but it's not like he ever truly understood his world's workings, or was any more a part of them than any other human. In the end, a gap in his understanding is just something to be filled in as best he can.

In other words, he might just have a slightly easier time accepting that he doesn't know shit or fuck about a vital aspect of reality itself.

"Anyway, if we don't have the resources to work that out now, it's also true that we might be better off focusing on some of the other factors we don't understand here. Like why this has come back." He taps absently of a cluster of blooms on his shoulder. It's at least a more tangible issue.

[deathfindsaway]

Kravitz has never been comfortable not knowing shit fuck about anything, much less a system that's defined his existence for longer than any mortal has been alive. But there are so many problems with that and-- well, the Overgrowth provides a lot of problems on it's own, but right now it's less problems than the concept of death. It's hard to say. But one will lead to the other if he doesn't focus, so he nods, trying to get his head back on straight.

"Right, I-- right. I don't exactly know what's caused this, but we do theoretically know how to fix it before it consumes us." He shifts his weight, trying to keep himself flexible against the roots he knows are clogging his body. "I was at least slightly hoping that speaking of my reservations about the death system would do something, but it seems that isn't enough. Do you... have any ideas? Anything you need to speak about?"

[onegreeneye]

"Too bad it didn't." Kravitz clearly wasn't a fan of the topic, so it would have been nice for it to at least help a little with the disease.

The answer to Kravitz's question, though, is... more complex than Ginko would like, and he makes a bit of a face. "I'm sure there is. Just a matter of picking somewhere to start, and... making myself."

He knows he has to. He intends to. None of that makes it easy - it's not even simply that he doesn't want to so much as that verbalizing what he knows is bound to be something of a struggle. Not like he's ever been much for self-reflection.

[deathfindsaway]

He bobs his head in a gentle nod of understanding, trying to bring himself down and back to the task at hand. He came here to help, not squabble about his own uncertainties that won't bring him closer to the truth. This, at least, he can commiserate on.

"Yes, I... that, I understand." Kravitz sighs, but tries to offer a small smile regardless. "Well, I know it's difficult, but I'm happy to lend an ear to any troubles you may be having. At least, ones I can help with. As difficult as it is, it needs to be done. The alternative is... far worse."

[onegreeneye]

"...Yeah. Same to you." He's got to make that as clear as he can; he's no more comfortable one-sidedly talking about himself than he is letting someone help him with an illness while he does nothing for them.

His brows pull together as he considers what... what he can say. "I guess I don't... feel the way I should here. If that makes any sense. Maybe I'm supposed to talk about that."