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

[onegreeneye]

The baby?

[There's a lot wrong with what Hector said, but that's the part that Ginko finds himself echoing, his confusion and concern slipping into the look in his eye as much as his voice.

He doesn't remember being a skeleton, or, apparently, leaving his family - if he's lost that much, this is a fair bit more extreme than Ginko had first guessed... and, evidently, not simply a result of the apparent existence of different versions of the same person. In those cases, he's never seen someone's mind mismatched with their body like this.

Thinking through theories as to why this could be happening isn't doing Hector any good. He's clearly panicking, and Ginko doubts that getting closer right now will do anything but make that worse...

Well, it's not the first time he's had to try to calm someone unused to monsters while he himself looks like this. That part, he can handle with relative simplicity.

He sits down, moving slowly and deliberately. Getting off his feet is kind of a relief, anyway; the hardest part is keeping his knees from giving out halfway down.]

...Alright. I can clear some of that up, but you've got to try to stay calm, okay? I know that sounds like a lot to ask - but I can tell you, right away, that your daughter is fine.

[He knows that sounds suspicious, and he knows that this is bound to get worse before it gets better - but trying to explain himself before he explains Hector's situation wouldn't make it any easier.]

[vagabone]

The baby. [He says a second time, raw with desperation, as if repeating it will somehow make her turn up, or for this inhuman fellow to start telling the truth. Which is doesn't.

And 'stay calm'--when does that ever work? He wasn't calm to begin with. He's not in the same universe as calm. It's only because his legs are in pieces that he's not taking off running. Although, perhaps, he is having an easier time not screaming. Talking. As people do. With words.]

How do you know? Why am I a skeleton?

[onegreeneye]

[...Well. He asked.]

Because you told me. [Ginko knows exactly how hard that may be to accept, as small a detail as it is; he's no stranger, after all, to finding out a bunch about himself that he had fully forgotten.

But at least that was stuff that happened in the far past, not... recently, but also in the distant future.

He keeps talking, because he's pretty sure that giving Hector an opening to interrupt him won't help anything.] It seems like your memory has been... rolled back, I guess. I've known you for a while, and you've been like this that whole time. Kind of a... corporeal ghost, I guess.

[Okay yeah that's not the most delicate way to put it, but, in his defense: There is not a delicate way to tell someone they've been dead for years.]

[vagabone]

[He wants to shout that the furry fellow's wrong, it can't be true... but the evidence is right in front of him. His legs. Detached. Bones without skin or muscle. That's impossible to ignore. And yet, it makes no sense. He can't seem to get out questions fast enough, as if asking the right ones will put everything back to normal...]

If I'm a ghost, what are you? Where am I? How do I... stop being a skeleton? I can't even--how do I get the bones to stay on??

[onegreeneye]

I'm-- a troll. No, that's not related to you being a ghost - the island we're on pulls people in from... countless places, there are a lot of us here with traits that may seem odd to you.

[It's too bad that that isn't even the hard part to say here.] I... don't think you can stop. I'm sorry. And it might... take some work to keep yourself together, I don't know for sure how it works.