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

[thermalwind]

[Keith laughs as he leans back and pulls his shirt off. He drops it to the side as he says,] You didn’t meet me before when I was just the best friend and second of the team.

And noted. Galra heal fast too and too fast if we get fed a bunch of life energy. Just don’t tell anyone that part either. [His body is covered in scars. The simple scratches of blades or claws. Bite marks and burns. Across his side is a patterning or burns as if the flame that caused it splashed against his side.

His throat has the scar of a monster’s teeth on it. Over the scars is a pattern. Holes at his joints, lines and markings like as if he were a machine. Across his chest the blood has formed a v based on the pattern of holes. Over his back it looks like he should have wings.]

These are all the lights and vents of the Black Lion. You pilot Black, you lead the team. [His right arm looks like a machine from how the flowers follow it down from the middle of his bicep down. He puts his hand over it.] Shiro’s prosthetic used to connect to his body like this.

[blindfoster]

Not a word, [Quenting promises, but now he's trying to puzzle out what get fed a bunch of life energy entails because it sounds sort of vampire-y. But he'll save that question for later and turn his attention to first aid.

He takes a moment to take in the patterns of wounds on Keith's torso.]

So your flowers grow in a pattern to make sure you can't forget that fact. [That he's the leader, that people are relying on him. Yeah, this place definitely wants to send messages.

Carefully, he goes about cleaning the various little holes and wounds, trying to be gentle about it but trying to stay efficient at the same time. Hopefully he strikes a decent balance.]

[thermalwind]

[Keith only nods.] And that Shiro means everything. Yeah.

Not things I wanted to think about the first time. [He doesn’t like the patterns now but he can see what they might mean. He traces the flowers mid-bicep.]

...I wonder...I wonder which god made this sickness. I think I know but, what did they do to them to make them so willing to go this far?

[His hand falls back down. To his side as he shakes his head.] Anbaki said the trials were about judging willing participants. Then something happened and we woke up in the trials and has to go through them.

...something isn’t adding up.

[blindfoster]

[Quentin nods. Not talking would've been worse, right? So not a good time for Keith the first time this came around.]

It's a pretty forceful way of getting people to be honest. Painful too.

[He's still working as he talks. Cleaning, beginning to bandage how he can.]

What isn't adding up? You've been here a lot longer than me. I mostly just feel confused all the time. And it's frustrating. Faerie is messed up, but I grew up in it. I've been raised to know who the players are and what the rules are. This place? I'm just... lost.

[thermalwind]

That’s the thing. None of the gods remember what happened. It’s as if something tore that memory out of them or is preventing it from being seen.

Some places are warded against Storyteller. [He breathes in slowly, hyper aware of where Quentin is at any given time. He subtly tests the dressings and makes a noise of approval.]

There should be clues. There should be a lot of things. One of the gods is hiding the truth. The question is who stands to gain from that? The only constants before islands started staying was Storyteller, us, and Ensō. Then Water came just recently. Water seems to want answers too but that could be a ploy.