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

[salutosinedelectat]

Right. Yes. Hullo.

[ Good Florida. Nice Florida. He's just going to...step over her strange, long fuzzy body. ]

How about you take a seat, Michael?

[eudaimonikos]

Okay.

[He does. There are, miraculously, two chairs in here. Florida hops up on his lap; Michael doesn't react until the lorby starts headbutting his hand for pets, at which point he starts petting him.]

[salutosinedelectat]

[ Aziraphale watches Michael for another good few, awkward seconds, just trying to see any signs of well, anything that might've happened. ]

So...hm. [ He purses his lips. ]

Did anything...strange happen? Earlier today, perhaps?

[eudaimonikos]

[Strange? Everything seems pretty much the same right now, but he guesses some things are unusual.]

There was a fox outside.

[salutosinedelectat]

[ What is even unusual anymore? They’re a person shaped demon and angel, that’s normal. In magic islands in an alternate or pocket dimension. That’s normal too.]

A fox?

[ Living in Britain for so long, he knows foxes, but he doesn’t think they’re natural to magic tropical islands.]

A...normal one?

[eudaimonikos]

They steal your stuff. Pretty sure there's a different name for them, not sure what it is...

[He's always gotten by just fine calling them foxes.]

[salutosinedelectat]

Right... [ He continues to observe Michael carefully, as if that might bring him any answers.

Glancing around, he pulls a chair over and sits across from the demon.]

So, it stole something from you?

[eudaimonikos]

[Did...it? He doesn't think so. He can't quite remember what happened there or where it went, admittedly, but he doesn't own that many things here and he doesn't think any are missing.]

...I think I chased it away.

[salutosinedelectat]

[ Aziraphale nods, observing him rather attentively.]

Right...

And what happened after that?

[eudaimonikos]

[What did happen after that...? It's all hazy around there.]

You showed up?

[salutosinedelectat]

[ Aziraphale furrows his brow in thought. ]

Are you sure nothing else happened?

No...strange plants, or other creatures, perhaps?

[eudaimonikos]

No, that was it.

[Potrick was there too, he guesses, but Aziraphale saw that part.]

Just that tree.

[salutosinedelectat]

Hm. I see...

[ That seems far too odd, even for this place. Certainly something has to have happened - he might not know Michael too closely, but he sure seemed a bit more lively other times they have seen each other. ]

Perhaps you are in need of some rest. How do you feel?

[eudaimonikos]

Not...

[How does he feel? He doesn't feel like much of anything. Michael trails off with a shrug.]

Whatever.

[salutosinedelectat]

[ Aziraphale blinks, really not sure what to make of that answer. ]

Any exhaustion? Do you feel sick?

[eudaimonikos]

I've never been sick.

[Is this what sick feels like? He's aware that he could get sick now, reduced as he is, but it hasn't happened yet.]

[salutosinedelectat]

[ Well, that makes sense. He hasn't been sick either - yet -, just very, very tired.]

Well, I'm having a hard time understanding what's wrong.

[eudaimonikos]

Nothing's wrong.

[He can't see that anything is particularly amiss?]

[salutosinedelectat]

[ He flattens his lips, unsure of where to go from here. ]

I do have a hard time believing that, Michael. [ And he usually believes most things. ]

The foxes - have you seen those before today?

[eudaimonikos]

Yeah. [Well.] Maybe. Looked like the same kind of fox, but maybe it wasn't. They usually take stuff.

[His belongings, really. But he doesn't remember this one even trying.]

[salutosinedelectat]

[ He sighs, a tad bit frustrated, not really understanding the situation enough to help the demon. ]

How about a pick-me-up? Perhaps some tea. Do you like tea?

[eudaimonikos]

Sure. There's some water.

[Michael keeps rather less water on hand than most people - he doesn't need to drink as often as a human - but Florida does need it, so.]

[salutosinedelectat]

[ This he can do. Maybe it’ll perk Michael up enough that he might remember a few more things and hopefully what exactly put him in such a state. Or, in the very least, he won’t be flopping about outside.

Finding the water, Aziraphale inspects his surroundings and starts preparing the tea. Coming up with conversational topics to use with someone who seems to have had the life sapped out of them, however, is proving understandably difficult.]

Right. A nice cup of tea does help brighten the spirit sometimes. [ That or alcohol. But maybe not that right now.]

What do you have?

[eudaimonikos]

Some...green stuff, I dunno. From that big goat guy.

[Asgore is the only reason Michael would have tea on hand, honestly.]

[salutosinedelectat]

[ Ah, the demon has much to learn.]

Big goat— oh! Asgore, I believe is his name.

He did, hum, provide my friend and I a tea plant as well, a while back. That was quite generous of him.