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vestigelogs2020-07-20 07:46 pm
vestigemods) wrote in vestigelogs2020-07-20 07:46 pm
(event) SHATTER & DECAY
EVENT LOG: SHATTER & DECAY
JULY 21ST - 27TH
► IF THERE'S NOTHING BUT PAIN, PUT IT ON ME
- On the morning of the 21st, the sun dawns peacefully over the crystalline lake just as it has every day for nearly three weeks now. Birdsong melodies soften the crisp edge to the morning air, and woodland creatures retreat from many a cabin backyard, unhurried but unwilling to contend with the cabin's residents as they wake. It's... peaceful, more so than one might expect after such a dire fate spelled out in the pamphlets upon your arrival. Perhaps, after many such days, it has managed to lull you into a sense of something like security.
Today we'll be learning a valuable lesson on why that is, in fact, a mistake.
Sometime between the 21st & 22nd, you begin to feel a bit... off. Perhaps the source is apparent at once, the ends of your fingers or toes going stiff and crystalline or swelling and blooming in small rotting sores. Perhaps the source of your discomfort is a bit less clear as your senses begin to sharpen or dull. But make no mistake, this is only the beginning.
As time passes, your situation only worsens. The glass or decay carves a slow but steady path up your limb or limbs. Your sharp senses begin to overwhelm you. Your dull senses muffle altogether. Soon, you may not be alone in your own mind, bombarded by the omnipresent thoughts and feelings of those around you in a way that you can't seem to hide from. Or worse - maybe there's no one around you, and yet you hear whispers in your mind all the same... Whispers which turn to yelling and screams and sharp violent emotions and imagery you can't simply close your eyes to because it exists inside your head.
But there is a solution.
It's detailed inside your new coffee-table centerpiece, a book bound roughly in leather and written in a language none here know or can recognize. All you know is that this book was not here last night. Not far from the book's front cover, you'll find two pages of illustrations with a page of text between them. One depicts humans holding their heads as if in distress, then cutting themselves or one another, then no longer holding their heads in distress. The next depicts much the same, but instead of a their heads they hold a discolored arm or leg... and instead of simply drawing blood, it shows them rubbing one another's blood on their discolored limbs. Skimming the rest of the book will find a dozen or so pages roughly torn from the bindings. Perhaps those were further illustrations. You may never know.
Besides - you have more pressing issues to attend to. Like bleeding, or finding someone else to, in order to make this stop.
You who only suffer the mental effects are lucky, in a sense. Your condition is deeply uncomfortable but it almost definitely isn't fatal. If you've found your limb crystallizing or rotting away, however, you have little choice but to seek a solution or resign yourself to a distinctly unpleasant death.
Regardless of which effects may be lingering, you'll find blessed relief at midnight on the 27th. Over the course of an hour, your senses will fade back into their proper strength, the unwanted guests will evacuate your mind, and the glass or rot will recede from your limbs to leave them just as they were before this veritable nightmare of a week.
Now, it's time to breathe, to recover, and to lick your figurative wounds.
► MOD NOTES
- This log is a general dump for all log threads pertaining to July's Shatter & Decay event! Feel free to utilize vestigenet for any event-related network posts you'd like to make.
- The event takes place from July 21st - 27th. All characters begin to experience effects by mid-22nd at the latest. Any event effects lingering at midnight on the 27th fade away over the course of an hour, in much the same way as they would if provided sufficient blood during the event itself.
- All event information (in detail rather than the flavortext I've provided) can be found on the July Event Infopost!
- Important semantics reminder! While you can have a character experience both psych and body horror within the event, both must be either rot or glass, not mix and match.
- Limbs lost or irreversibly damaged to this event reappear next time your character sleeps (as early as right when the event ends) unless you OOCly choose for them to retain the loss, in which case they instead regain the limb upon their next death + respawn. (If your character doesn't sleep, they go offline/fall unconscious and return to consciousness with the limb fixed.)
- Any questions can be directed to this top-level or, for a quicker response, to Trace on discord/plurk.
no subject
[ Vague enough to be true but doesn't actually say anything about why. There's no need for this woman to know anything about what's afflicting him, after all.
And if she keeps asking, he might just say that too. ]
no subject
It's not new. Very little feels as though it is anymore. She huffs a voiceless, rueful laugh and looks away.]
Echoes.
[It's a statement to herself, to... something, someone. Ripples across time, space, dimensions uncountable and unknowable.
She isn't sure she knows what to do this time.
What's the worst that can happen? He walks away? He rages? He kills you? How frightening are those things, really?]
Sorry, just -- you remind me of someone I know.
[Another little huff; she shakes her head.]
I'm not gonna bite you either.
[The humour lingers just a moment longer before draining away, leaving her looking harried and weary in its wake.]
Look, I'm-- I could use something to think about that isn't... all of this. Is there anything I can do to help?
no subject
His mouth twists in a grimace, and he straightens slightly with a few flowers in hand, settling back on one heel while propping his arm against a knee. 'All of this'? Is something wrong with her too? He supposes it would make sense if others are affected by whatever is happening too, if it's orchestrated by these 'Technicians'.
He inhales slowly, and pauses for a moment. Is that scent ...? Her? That's not a human smell, but his medallion isn't humming. Maybe it's just some kind of strange perfume but even then it's not usually like this. And where would she have gotten perfume anyway? ]
Know anything about plants?
no subject
[Abel used to take her out to touch the plants, each in turn. He'd nestle her in the branches of a tree, guide her hands along the rough bark, the papery leaves warmed by the sun.]
I know how to identify some, but... not many are wild.
[There's genuine regret in her voice: she'd been deprived of wild things. Her childhood was domesticated, medicated into a dull, benign smear she can recall only in vivid flashes. In her adulthood, she'd been a prisoner, deprived even of that garden, that tree.
Though maybe... she extends her hand, palm up. She still travels under the passport of this body: maybe it remembers what her mind can't.]
Could I hold one of those?
no subject
[ Well. Doesn't really matter. He's not sure what she could possibly work out from holding one - and he's not sure how he'll work out if they have any special properties - so he drops one into her hand. ]
no subject
At length, she lifts it to her nose, inhaling the scent -- a green thing plucked, and something gentle, something sweet. Not a rose, subtler, something...
Let the body remember.
Roots grip her wrists, coaxing rhizomes to grip in turn, to translate secret messages -- to the trees, to her. They speak in holy unison, a vastness she thinks might split her skull--
No. Back. Further back.
«Нина,» Papa coaxes, crouching by a scrubby little plant bedecked with clusters of white flowers. At the edge of a meadow, the sun leaks through, lighting them up golden. They've walked far, but near him, this glowing man, she is safe. «Смотри.»
Obliging, she moves to him and kneels, attention fixed on that little cluster of flowers, committing its form to memory as she knows he expects her to do. As he speaks, he plucks one of the little clusters and tucks it into her hair.
OA opens her eyes.]
Is this...
[Поре́зная трава́? What's the word?]
Yarrow?
no subject
When she finally finds it, he makes a quiet sound of agreement, and brings one of the flowers he's still holding up to his nose. ]
Seems like it.
no subject
[What did Papa say? The little girl she never quite was sleeps within her, those memories accessible only when the mind surrenders to the body. Sometimes not even then. Nina is tired, and OA is still learning how to share space.]
People used to chew it for toothaches. Something else. Tea, for... something.
[She shakes her head.]
I don't remember. Maybe it doesn't matter. The plants here are... different.
[The berries bite, for starters. OA pauses, angling her head and opening her eyes to peer at the plant, its shape, its distant smear of dim colour.]
But if this is what you're after, I can help you find more.
no subject
No.
[ With a quiet scoff, he drops the other flower he picked up, grimacing with the realisation of what he already knew. The plants here are different, and he can't be certain that anything is what he expects, even if he finds something that looks like celandine. ]