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

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( CODED BY BOOTYCALL )

Comments

[atailoftwoworlds]

[Zidane turns his head. His face is pale from the shock and horror of what he has discovered but once he sees Tim’s situation, his shock turns to worry as he tries to put his situation aside for the moment.] Tim, you’re….. [So that flower disease has returned. Tim’s situation has only further confirmed it.].....How long have you been like that?

[He might have to be careful here. He still remembers trying to help Tim when he was upset. It felt off for him at the time but....]

[postictal]

I'm not answering that until you do.

[Don't think he didn't notice that Zidane didn't answer his question. How bad is it? Well, it's hard to tell. The buds haven't broken his skin yet, but that doesn't mean he's not in a lot of pain.]

[Tim can handle a little pain. He can handle unsteady breath. That's been his entire life.]

[atailoftwoworlds]

[Zidane's instinct is to insist it's not that bad but then.....he needs to find out about this illness as much as he can. And who else has got it.

He dreads what he's going to find out. But he has to. He manages to pull himself up and look composed but there's still confusion and fear in his eyes.]

I....don't know.

I haven't been feeling great for the past few days so I thought I'd go to the clinic and uh.....[He doesn't say more. Tim can guess what happened.]

[postictal]

You feel sick, right? Numb in places?

[He can guess. He's already figured out what's going on based on the plant matter he's been hacking up. He's been through this before. He's died from it once already. Second go around, huh?]

Coughing up stuff?

[atailoftwoworlds]

[There is a short silence followed by a hesitant nod. There’s not much else he can say about that.

So.....it is that disease after all. The disease that killed so many people. He wasn’t around at the time it first happened but he heard enough to know how it worked and how to cure it. And now he also has it.]

Same as before......right?

[postictal]

I think so, yeah. Overgrowth.

[He coughs again, rubbing at his mouth with the back of a hand. It leaves a smear of blood on the skin, but he gives himself a shake, as though that might be enough to clear it.]

You gotta talk about shit to get rid of it.

[atailoftwoworlds]

[In other words.....being honest. Talking about your feelings.

Zidane feels he already knows the answer to this. But even so....] There's.......no other way?

[postictal]

Not that I know of.

[Hence why Tim's been resigned to his fate since he started to suspect what was up. That's only increased the more certain he's become of what this is, what this really is. It claimed him the first time. It'll claim him this time too.]

[He's accepted this. The kids did too, the last time. Too bad they're not here.]

[atailoftwoworlds]

[Not that he knows of....of course. Otherwise Zidane probably would have been told by now. The feeling of horror and dread grows in his heart. But he keeps himself together, as he has to ask further information.]

Huh....figures.....how many people died last time..?

[postictal]

A lot. [He winces a little. There are already buds scraping his airways. He recognizes the sensation.],/small>

Really...really a lot. I lost count. I think everybody did.