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

[catpiper]

Okay.

[When they stop talking, it's silent and she's not used to anything about this camp being hushed. It's strange and painful and-

Lonely. Really lonely. She can't imagine how it was like for him, to lose everyone at once, so-

She gets comfortable easily, laying against his chest and pulling his arm around her tighter, like he's a seatbelt. Sorry, she doesn't make the rules. And also she does. And also she's not sorry at all, actually. She reaches down to pull the blankets over her entire body and up to his chin-there we go. There, there. Everyone's tucked in, including herself though-

She doesn't plan on going to sleep quite yet. She wants to make sure he's able to rest first and so she asks, her voice muffled by the blanket-]

Are you warm?

[deathfindsaway]

[It's a lot quieter than she'd be used to. Kravitz sleeps, ironically, like the dead, and without the sounds of one of the twins snoring, or a bird or cat making noise, it's... limited. But Kravitz is soothed already by the sounds she brings, even if they aren't the crashing kind of noise that was typical when their family was whole. The sound of her gentle breathing, the rustling of blankets as she settles, the warmth of her that seems to ring like a bell. It's already so ahead of what he had, a lovely presence for a man used to the dead, that he almost is able to fall asleep just like that.

But Ren isn't, yet. And he knows it's as important as anything that she, too, is comfortable.]

Plenty. Warmer now, with you here. Are you too hot being under there? I don't mean to suffocate you.

[catpiper]

I won't die in here. The cats would sleep like this too, so-

[Those aren't here either and that's not a comforting thought. She knows ESP and EGG are likely long gone, given her apparent disappearance. The same thing had happened to Pachinko and not matter how long she searched, the little kitten never came out of the woods.

She opens up a little air hole towards one of the tucked in edges of the blanket and viola, perfect. Air, warmth-all's well in the land of Ren Oz.]

I can tell you a story if you can't sleep.

[deathfindsaway]

[Good news, Ren, you can collect ESP whenever you want. He'll re-buy Egg if he really has to, also. And Lobstar is in the library, so it's all gucci. At least Pepper is there, roosting in the tent just chillin' out, settled again after Kravitz' earlier outburst.

In the meantime, he watches her with a smile on his face, a little chuckle with her shenanigans. He's so tired from all the worry, all the loneliness, he doesn't have it in him to police her very hard. So Kravitz just lies back, a smile on his face he can't-- and doesn't want-- to lose.]

Mmmm, it might be nice. What story would you like to tell?

[catpiper]

[There's a huge variety of stories she could tell and her mind scrambles to come up with one that would make Kravitz happy. He always listens to whatever she says and entertains whatever wild tales she tells. It almost wouldn't matter, but-

She wants to try. He's the only family she has left now and-

She really wants to try for him, even if it's just a story. It's impossible to tell if it's the last one she'll ever tell or the last one he'll hear come out of her mouth.]

Snow-

[She pauses and-]

Kravitz and the Seven Ravens.

[deathfindsaway]

[As much as Ren is fretting, Kravitz is just so happy to have her back. His expectations for this are nonexistent as he rides the happiness of just not being alone here, and considering most of the things Ren usually says to him, he's anticipating he won't be able to follow it anyway. Which is why it surprises him when Ren says his name, and he cracks open a tired eye to look at her, eyebrow raised.]

Hmmm, really now? I knew there were stories about me, but not ones like that. How does it go?

[catpiper]

[And that innocent inquiry-How does it go? is all it takes to propel her off the story cliff and it's like she spent the entire month she was gone concocting this tale.

Kravitz and the seven ravens starts off as Snow White with some new replacements, but she quickly goes off the rails and the ravens transform into high heeled elves with magic, Kravitz ends up spending a lot of time helping townspeople and at the end of the it all, everyone flies up to live in the constellation of a house. The stars are a part of the garden and Pepper and the cats make a surprise appearance as the local sky gods. It's definitely something. It's horrible, actually.

And as she rambles for what seems like forever, her voice starts to get a bit quieter, like this wild tale is putting her to sleep instead of the other way around. At least that's one small blessing.]

Did you like that one?

[deathfindsaway]

[He has no idea what he expected, but this manages not to be that anyway. From what he can tell this is some kind of happy ending, though the implications that he might have seven Taakos in that reality makes him feel overwhelmed at pure concept. But she seems to be dozing off, which was his real hope here, so he almost doesn't catch when she asks him an actual question for him.]

I-- yes, I, that was a very interesting one. Most of the stories I hear about me are quite spooky, but that seemed sweet. A refreshing change of pace to see me depicted as competent, as well.

[krav ur taking this way too seriously, krav, KRAV,,,,]

[catpiper]

[It sounds like the verbal equivalent of having your picture plastered on the fridge, so she'll take it. He liked the story. That's the jist. She can't really imagine him being a story that's scary, even if he is associated with death. He's the only nice part about it. The only comfort during, so why he would be the focus in horror novels-

Well, she doesn't get it.]

You always do a very good job.

[deathfindsaway]

[She doesn't need to get it. That's the fun thing about Ren- she can be completely, entirely incomprehensible and her presence is still somehow comforting. She's like Taako in that sense, one of the only things to ever really give him peace.

He leans down, curling in over her and giving her a little kiss on the top of her head.]

And so did you. You can tell me a story anytime. But right now, you should sleep. Alright? I'll be there when you wake.

[Likely dangerous to promise something he doesn't know he can keep, but... maybe if he speaks it into existence now, it will have to be true.]