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

[lesbeau]

Hell is that?

[Neph... il... forget about it, they'll probably tell her sooner than she'll guess it. And yet, she tries some more targeted questions anyway.]

Is that a race thing? Like you look human but have some magic because of blood or whatever? Y'don't look like a tiefling, though.

[Wrong humanoid DND race there Beau. Closer, but wrong.]

[demonpuppy]

[Right on the money, actually! Terminology is weird when demons and angels are technically the same race.]

[Chip nods and rubs their arm anxiously, not quite meeting Beau's eyes.] My...my dad was part demon.

[lesbeau]

[She squints, looking them over as the mania fades from her. It's not judgemental as much as it's confused, and she reaches forward to poke at the top of their head.]

Huh. Never seen a tiefling without horns and stuff. Molly n' Jess are purple and blue anyway, so I wouldn't've guessed.

[Hmmm, maybe that's a little racist? She's gonna sidestep that one just a bit, shhshh. Beau will check for reactions though, watching to see if they look offended.]

[demonpuppy]

[Chip gets a little tense when Beau pokes them, but the spell fading out of her helps relax them again. (They were worried the spell would get sticky or something, knowing their luck.) So far as her comment, they really just look confused.]

...why would demons have horns?

[lesbeau]

[Who knows, buddy. Maybe she'll flare up out of nowhere in 20 minutes. Maybe it'll just be the way she is as a person. You don't know, she doesn't know, we're playing hell roulette now!

She makes a bit of a confused face when Chip asks about horns though, tilting her head.]

I mean not all demons as like... demons, but usually people who are born as part infernal or whatever-- y'know, tieflings. They pretty much always have horns, it's like, their thing. And having magic no matter what.

[demonpuppy]

[]

[Chip wrinkles their nose and shakes their head.]

No, that's not how it--it's not where I'm from. We get stuff growing in weird places sometimes or extra bones, but I never heard of horns before.

...I've got six toes.

[lesbeau]

On both feet?

[Beau, no.]

That's pretty harmless when it comes to like, not people parts. Most tieflings also have like, tails, so you just look like a magic kiddo. Which I mean, it's a look for sure, but if you were blue or something that'd be sweet.

[Beau, you're brown, stop sounding racist]

[demonpuppy]

Uh-huh. ...d'you wanna see?

[Actually, they're not even gonna wait for a response to that and plop down to start hucking their shoes off.]

I never heard of being blue...some people have eyes in their shoulders or stuff? But that's more if you're a half.

[lesbeau]

[I mean, good news, she does totally want to see.]

Eyes? Why eyes? Y'know, come to think of it I dunno why horns and tails and stuff either.

[Genetics is weird and she sure as hell doesn't know how to navigate it.]

I think most of 'em are red. You ever meet Molly or Jester while she was here? That's who I'm thinking of.

[demonpuppy]

Well, demons've got all kinds of weird body stuff. One of my dad's customers said he's seen demons with, like, a thousand teeth.

[Shoes have come off, and Chip sticks their feet up into the air and wiggle all twelve tootsies. If she knows anything about physiology she might notice that it's not just extra toes--there's an entire spare set of metatarsals in each foot, making them a bit wider than a normal human foot would be.]

Um...I think I did. Just kind of around, though. [Chip could, uh...tell their heritage, even with the world differences.] What do your changelings look like?

[lesbeau]

Where would you even put a thousand teeth?

[She's already moving on to looking at their feet though, completely disregarding the concept of that question as she nods.]

Damn, alright. Can you grip with those? Looks like you've got all the uhhh, all the pieces to really wrap them on stuff. Would be really useful.

[Wait, they asked her a question, uh--]

Oh, uh. Never met one, so I dunno. Or never met one that I knew was one.

[demonpuppy]

In their cheeks, maybe? Or they had like, a bunch of mouths.

[Chip shrugs a bit and looks around for a shell or something to try and grab--they've never really tried to use the extra digit any more than normal, so they don't know if it's extra dexterous or not.] ...'s probably better you didn't. Can't trust fae.

[lesbeau]

Oh, it's a fae thing.

[Hey, that's a word she knows, though primarily in 'hey don't fuck with that' territory. Sounds like they operate the same way.]

Still never met one. But I know about 'em. So are all your demons faeries? Only heard stories of people actually having kids with anything from the Feywild, but there's stories about a lot.

[demonpuppy]

[...wait, how did she think that? Chip blinks and frowns, their face screwing up with confusion.]

Huh? No, they're not--they're both planars, but demons and fae aren't the same. Green magic is way different from black.