lifeaftr | January Undercurrent: Growing Pains

January Undercurrent: Growing Pains

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 )

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(Maybe Beau doesn't realise this about her quite yet but Yasha notices a lot of things. She's pretty quiet, sure, but that doesn't mean she isn't listening, or watching. Paying attention, especially to certain people. So for example: when Beau's morning routine starts to chug a little in the lead up to her becoming sick, Yasha notices that too. She can tell Beau isn't feeling well because the way she moves is stiffer. She's sluggish when she talks, which isn't much. That's odd too.

Yasha doesn't mean to come across her the morning she collapses because she is genuinely going in the same direction, and spotting Beau in the distance going through her paces makes her stop, and watch. Just in case.

And sure enough–

Yasha lurches forward on the spot when Beau's leg comes out from underneath of her, a sudden jerky movement as if she could some how catch her before she hits the ground. She's too far away for something that dramatic, but she does still get to Beau in time to see her up on her knees again, staring at something wet in her palm. She slows, then stops a few paces away from her.)

Beau?

[Beau's smart and careful, but not incredibly perceptive. When she's on her full beat, she can track things around her and tell if she's being followed with relative ease. Now though, with her head feeling cloudy and heavy, with the heat of sickness clogging at her neck, it's harder to keep that kind of grip especially as she's trying to keep with her normal routine. Meaning she misses Yasha entirely as she tumbles, immediately clenching her hand over the blood and petals in an attempt to hide it when she hears someone approaching.

It makes it better that it's Yasha, but Beau looks up, and bits of blood are still dotted onto her lips.]

Why is it you only showed up when I ate shit? Figures that's my luck.

[She wipes her forearm across her mouth, clearing off remaining traces of anything out of the ordinary as she begins to hoist herself up.]

It's good, it's-- it's fine. I'm fine.

Did you bite your tongue?

(Yasha hates it when that happens. She noticed the blood on Beau's mouth, dark red where her lips meet. Finds that looking at it gives her a little thrill, a hot rush of– well. Beau's wiped her mouth off on her arm, so she's not going to think about it any more.

She's still standing awkwardly as Beau pulls herself to her feet, one hand clenched on the ground in a fist as she pushes up from the ground. She's upright again only moments before Yasha's fingertips, lit by a soft blue glow around their edges, find her shoulder, and heal her for ten hitpoints.)

Now you're fine. (But she isn't truly convinced.) What's happening? You're... different. It feels like something is wrong.

[Typically, the warm feeling of Yasha's healing hands meeting her would cure anything she's got, but all it does is ease a bit of whatever she tore open in her throat with that cough. Not to mention that somehow looking at Yasha makes it worse, her hand clenching as she feels the wet of the blood and plant pulp of the petals crushed in her vice grip.]

What do you mean different? Sometimes you just fall, it's--

[Her lies are stopped basically immediately by a sudden feeling of her throat being blocked, and she stumbles forward again as her hands fly to her mouth to cover a deep, wet cough. It almost looks like she's retching, chest expanding and flattening as the fit swells and subsides. Her fingers are kept over her mouth, but behind it and over her lips is now a bloody mess of stringy flower stamen and delicate petal, which she hasn't moved away to reveal out of hesitation that it's exactly what she'll find.]

I mean– Beau?

(She means the way that Beau is acting, a little shiftier than usual perhaps, but then Beau stumbles forward and Yasha steadies her with the hand already on her shoulder. Maybe she hit her head? It looks like she's about to throw up but Yasha doesn't move away. Her fingertips touch the small of Beau's back hesitantly before she flattens her palm there, rubbing between her shoulder blades. Helping her through whatever is happening.)

I mean... that. (Beau isn't making a sound, really. She's just convulsing, her hands pressed to her mouth. Yasha has no idea what level of concern to take with this.) If you need to puke I won't look.

[She's still for a few seconds, contemplating how she's going to go about this. There's undoubtedly blood on her face and in her hands from the way she can smell it wafting up to her nose, the wet stickiness binding to her cheeks and lips. But there's really a thing that would differentiate it from any kind of common sickness, if she's in serious, serious trouble right now. And she could lie; she could tell Yasha she's gonna throw up and make her leave and just deal with this, but--

Ugh, is this what family means.

Beau stays where she is, and talks through her hands.]

Don't... freak out.

[And she brings her hands away, bloody and dotted with what look like... flower petals. Blue and delicate, with stray stamens and bits of the fuzz that should be present. Beau makes a bit of a disgusted face at the visage, taking one hand and wiping the blood from her mouth with the back seeing as they're already pretty fucked up.]

I didn't eat that. Uh, by the way.

Okay.

(She can smell the blood too; it's a scent that Yasha has never been a stranger toward. But she trusts Beau and Beau isn't freaking out in response so... whatever is happening, it must be under some sort of control. Her hand stills between Beau's shoulder blades, but does not move away.

When she's finally shown the wet mess from behind Beau's fingers, the tangle of what looks like... flower petals? in blue, covered in wet, red fuzz, all Yasha can do in response is frown.)

Did... that come from inside of your mouth? (Is that normal? She isn't freaking out, but she is pretty confused.)

[Okay, Yasha's calm, that's-- that's good. She just needs to keep going, remember her vulnerability is safe with them. It takes less manual reminding every time.]

Do you remember when we were exploring that underwater place? The, uh... the curse they got that killed a bunch. Where the flowers grow in you.

[She could be more eloquent, but Beau's also trying to remember the right details as she goes. She'll need to go back to her notes as soon as she can. In the meantime, she rubs her hands together to clear the plant bits, flake out some of her own blood.]

Think I got it. Don't know how. This is the, uh. I mean this is the first time I saw the actual flowers, I just thought I finally got a cold.

(She remembers, vaguely? Beau is the person in the group who writes everything down. Jester is the one who illustrates, so really it's easier to let the two of them remember all of the very little details about everything. But now that Beau is talking about it, yes, she does remember something like that...)

So you have it. And flowers are growing in you, now.

(Her stomach does a little lurch as she processes the implications, and even though Yasha still has her calm face on, her mouth suddenly feels very dry. She has to clear her throat before her next question.)

... Do you think that you're going to die?

[Beau's absolutely chattered about it before, especially when they were exploring Tempide and the watery wreck. That was the disease that killed the entire town most likely, and to see it back is more than a little harrowing. She swallows, something thick and tight still in her throat, and it worries her how much she doesn't know about what that actually is.]

No. I mean, I don't know, but-- it's not... impossible. There was a cure, I just need...

[She tries to move, a quick up motion and the usual candor of her step and the entire world sways, leaning back on Yasha for support.]

Fuck. Here, help me inside, I need my notes.

(It's not impossible.

Thankfully, Yasha is pulled sharply off of that trail of thought by Beau's next statement; she reaches out automatically as Beau staggers, and steadies her with an arm around her waist. There's no need to panic. Beau knows that there is a cure, and she has notes, she has so many notes. She is taking notes all of the time. So those will include a way to find and deliver the cure to her, and she will be fine. It's better than the alternative.)

Okay. (Yasha still feels a little out-of-body herself, but it's easy to let Beau rest most of her weight on her as she helps her inside.) Don't move too fast if you're dizzy.

[It's nice to know that Yasha's going to be by her side, not in a way that feels reassuring for any kind of illness but just that she's a known quantity, a factor of trust and a resource that has proven not to fail her. Something about that is romantic, but not in a way Beau knows how to express. All she does with it is hold on as Yasha brings her into their home, directs her towards Beau's space where she has her stuff.]

Just because there's blood out of me when it should be in me doesn't mean I'm gonna die right now.

[Thanks, that's reassuring. But once she gets where she's going she doesn't try to stand, instead lowering herself to sit on her knees while she starts flipping through books. At least nothing's broken out yet, but Beau doesn't know how much time she's going to have before that. There's no good data except for what she collects now.]

So what... do you know. About this stuff, I mean. Pretty sure it's some kind of curse.

Sure.

(A very ominous statement, also not... necessarily true? Yasha's no cleric but she's pretty sure blood is supposed to be in you at all times and never out no matter what the circumstances, but hey. Apparently they're playing this whole thing cool and not talking about worst case scenarios just yet. Yasha ignores the hammering of her heart. They'll cross the bridge when they get to it.

It does make her feel better to get Beau on the ground and flipping through her books though. Like she'll find the answer soon and later they'll laugh about this and Yasha will tell her, reluctantly, that she was a bit scared. Any second now.)

Well, I... don't know that much, really. Nobody ever talks about it. Kravitz even told me that bringing it up to other people would make them upset, so I shouldn't mention it. (It hit the community hard the last time it came around. Yasha grimaces, and takes a seat next to Beau, watching her progress.) I do know it killed a lot of people.

Edited 2020-04-15 01:30 (UTC)

[It feels harder to flip the pages than she wants it to, the stiffness in her fingers being acknowledged and then immediately ignored. It's fine. It's fine, she's been through worse than this, she just needs to keep looking. It'll pan out. It has to.]

By the sound of it, killed most of the people in that, uh... the sunken island where we went as fish. That whole place. Pretty sure it started there.

[Finally she relents to the stiffness in her hands and brings them up to crack her knuckles, trying to free some of the tension, but instead of the snap of air in bone it sounds more like the break of twigs underfoot in the forest. Beau hisses a small, sharp noise of pain, looking down at the knuckles in her right hand. Right in the middle, it seems the skin has split open like a cut... and what seems to be a splinter is sticking out, where bone would be if her finger was split off. Beau stares at it, trying to figure out where that could even be, and swallows as hard as she can-- not hard enough, she notes too quickly. Not hard enough.]

Uhhh. Shit.

Maybe we could go back, (Yasha says fruitlessly, knowing there's no way they're going to make it back to a sunken island with human lung capacity any time soon (and that's assuming the island is even there any more, as they seem to change around a lot when nobody is looking). But she feels like she has to make some kind of suggestion in the face of... all of this.) Or talk to somebody else who was there, see if they know anything about how to fix it? Or slow it down, or...

(She exhales, frustrated. If only Jester were here. Yasha misses her.

Her head snaps up at the sound of splintering bone.)

Beau? (Beau is staring at the back of her newly wounded hand, at something protruding from the sudden split of her skin. Yasha stares along with her. How did she do that?) What did you- I don't think that you should touch that.

[Beau would protest the idea of going back, but that's not where her thoughts are right now. Her brain is skipping through options, ruling out the easier ones and lamenting Jester's loss at the same time. Even if magic doesn't work well here, it had to be better than Beau looking at her notes and hoping those are going to save her somehow.

She bites her lip as she looks at the new growth, because what starts to emerge from her hand isn't bone. It looks like wood, or vine, some kind of plantlife that's starting to encircle her finger like a ring and climb it's way up the back of her hand. In one part to spite doing what she's told and one part panic, Beau slaps at it, grabbing the slender sort of vine and trying to yank it out of her.

Of course, that just creates another yell of pain and a few curses, as it decidedly doesn't come off.]

Motherfucker! Okay, okay, fine--

[Great, back to the notes then, time to try and ignore that shit. She looks between the book and her hand, and resolves to just grab a nearby shirt from her room and wrap the offending limb off with it so she won't look. It's like covering a zit with a bandaid so you won't pick at it. It's fine under there. Totally.]

Here, so uh-- look, do you remember about this thing at all, because I think I know what the cure is but it's kinda vague on the details.

(Look, she can't be held responsible for Beau immediately touching something Yasha just told her not to touch and then getting hurt because of it. In fact, Yasha even rolls her eyes despite the fraught nature of the situation, and promptly grabs Beau's wrist to stop her from picking at it any more after she's come back with a shirt wrapped around the offending hand. No more flipping fruitlessly through notes. They're going to figure this out.)

Um, (she says, and really tries to think.) It was... something strange, I think. The cure. Like you had to say something or do something...

(Fuck. She stares at Beau's open book, frowning at the upside down writing. What did Ren say to her? Something sort of... indecipherable, as is Ren's usual way.) You have to be your truest self.

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January Undercurrent: Growing Pains

overgrowth

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cw: body horror, which like, we knew, but. yeah

its yucky

it sure is happening

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