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

[postictal]

[Yeah, he doesn't entirely grasp the meaning there. He just kind of assumes...well, the sun setting sounds like a dismal thing. Close of the curtain. Final call. Something like that. He doesn't know. He's not sure how to ask. Will it help, if he asks?]

Sunsets, huh?

[The door's open. Connor can walk through it if he wants, but Tim's not sure how likely that is.]

[yourattention]

You know, when a person is very, very sad they like sunsets.

[The words are slow and measured, but the response is too quick to be anything but something Connor's reciting from memory. It, like most things Connor says that he's stolen from somewhere else, is a deflection.

He remembers the last time he did this: I live in the sound of the waves. You have to look with your heart.

Tim is too practical for that. Instead, Connor breathes, ragged and laborious.]

I'll tell you a secret if you go first.

[postictal]

[It sounds like a recitation. A reference to something that Tim doesn't get, like most of the references Connor drops. He looks away, runs his tongue over the blood in his teeth. He can still taste the sharp sting of sap from the flecks of plant matter caught there.]

[Tell you a secret.]

[You go first.]

[Well, he can work with this. If it means Connor doesn't die, again...if he keeps it vague enough, maybe...]

I killed someone. [He says it simply, and without preamble. It's something that people here used to know, back when they were here. But now he's pretty sure no one's left. No one's left who remembers, which basically makes it a secret all over again.]

Back home. I wasn't gonna. I spent the entire time - he was trying to kill me, actually. I kept trying to find some other way out. He kept saying no.

He wasn't even a friend, but I knew him. From school. Years ago. And he tried to kill me, and he killed a lot of other people, so when he had me up against a wall I stabbed him in the neck and then I hit him until he stopped fighting.

Told me to kill myself before he just...

[A shrug. Before it was over.]

[He breathes a little. Feels a bit, a tiny bit, like letting poisoned blood out of a wound. In the grand scheme of things, it's not really much of a weight off his chest.]

[But he does it without much hesitation, because he actually does want Connor to live.]

[yourattention]

[Tim is the worst person to have to tell a secret to, because all that's left are the things Connor doesn't tell anybody. He's left most of the story in the gaps and offhand statements he says, and it would be cheating to say one of those things more explicitly. Which is why, after a long moment, Connor breathes out.]

I wrecked my car by driving it into a tree. [This isn't the secret, but he has to start there so the secret makes sense.] I said I lost control of the car. I don't lose control of vehicles.

[The unspoken truth in that combination of facts is that he was trying to wreck his car. That's not the secret either.]

Nobody ever asked why I was on my way to Ohio at 3am.

[Connor pauses, partially to swallow down the petals lodged in his throat and partly because he doesn't know how to word what comes next.]

I don't know either. I just - I had to leave. [He swallows again.] I spent the entire summer pretending it could be okay again. It wasn't.

[He coughs and there's no blood, but a flurry of white petals fall to the ground. His voice is clearer when he speaks again, but also quieter.]

The last thing I was living for was Miguel and I couldn't even keep myself from ruining that. Once it was gone, I didn't see the point in trying anymore.

[Breathe. In and out.]

And that wasn't fair to either of us, but when is love ever fair? It's not even fair that I'm telling you this. It's not fair that you had to tell me you're a murderer.

[postictal]

[I wanted to die isn't a secret between them. Not anymore. But then he keeps going, and...]

[It was a guy. Miguel. Someone that Tim doesn't know, and probably won't ever know. Connor's like a fucking vault about this stuff. Most stuff. He doesn't feel like he should ask unless Connor offers it up voluntarily, like he just has.]

I didn't have to. I chose to.

[And he's a murderer. In a lotta ways, he was a murderer before Alex.]

[That just made it more complete.]

I'm sorry. That...that's how it happened.

[yourattention]

It's fucked up. [He gestures at his left arm, which is still majorly fucked.] Even if you chose, would you have without this?

[He doesn't leave space for Tim to answer.]

Oh, by the way I sailed off the edge of the map for the same reason.

[He wasn't lying: Connor has a deep-seated faith in exactly one of his skills and it's his ability to control vehicles. He doesn't lose control of vehicles and he knew exactly where he was going when he sailed off the edge of the map.

There's a story in the gap again: he has a bad habit of having a person be his reason for living. It's usually a boy. Currently, he's got a dragon.]

[postictal]

Just to find a way to get it to all stop for a minute, right?

[He won't say he doesn't know what that's like. He does. Full well.]

I don't think you're as alone in this as you think you are. And maybe that's not...I could be wrong. I dunno. But I chose to 'cause I wanted to. 'Cause...

["You're worth it." He doesn't say it, though, because that sounds like a line from a commercial or something. It probably is.]

I died last time and it was...fine. I knew it was gonna happen. And I let it.

I just don't want someone else to feel the same way.

[yourattention]

I don't think I'm alone. [Not anymore, anyway.] Letting people in is just worse than dying.

[That's not quite true. They're about the same, he's just more comfortable with dying.]

But people caring about you makes you feel guilty about that.

[postictal]

I dunno about that.

[Dying's just easier, is the thing. He knows it is.]

I would if I could. But the last time I opened up, it - well, that whole "murderer" thing was a direct consequence of that, let's just say. And it's not just...coincidence. So I'd rather not let that happen again.

[yourattention]

Letting people in is how you end up sucking dick for meth, in my experience.

[Those things are, perhaps, not as directly related as Connor is making it seem. They're directly related in his mind, though.]

[postictal]

Yeah, that's probably not likely to happen here. I think you're the only drug dealer in residence.

[And calling him a drug dealer is. a stretch.]