(event) SHATTER & DECAY

[vestigemods]

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.

Comments

27th, after Sizhui. Laaaaate morning.

[gusumouthcannon]

[In no world has Jingyi ever been shy about accosting Senior Wei, but in his defense everyone has been extremely preoccupied for the last few days. So when he wobbles groggily out into the main room of the cabin to find Senior Wei on the couch complaining loudly, he freezes like a caught rabbit. He blinks, brains slow still and unfortunately still haunted, and stumbles over to sprawl on the couch nearby instead of completing his trek to the kitchen area.

He mushes his face into the dusty fabric (which he regrets instantly), yanks himself half-upright to cough out his lungs, and then peers blearily at Senior Wei.]

So I know that Sizhui says that you are definitely Senior Wei, but I am not going to lie, you look nothing like I imagined he would.

[mannerless]

( it's approximately when the words begin that wei wuxian narrows his eyes a bit in scrutiny. and once the words are done, ) They've sent us another Lan boy? ( he definitely thought this boy was sizhui at first peripheral glance (the robes, the headband, wei ying's prevailing fatigue), but now that he's sitting before wei wuxian, the differences are obvious.

ah, but he hasn't answered the actual thing the boy said, so - ) Aha, well. Sorry to disappoint. ( it's a bit dry but not actually bothered. ) I'd like to think I usually look a bit less like death, but I suppose that's up for negotiation. And you are...?

[gusumouthcannon]

[The 'and you are?' gets his attention and he snorfles, rubs his face hard for a few seconds, and reorients slightly less asleep.]

Lan Jingyi...?

[Is this a trap? No wait--the whole point of his original comment was that he does not recognize this particular body. Which is very weird! But he can roll with this.]

Well, you are a little taller? I do not know about less like death, though. You do not look very healthy right now. Or--[He corrects himself.] You look like you were not very healthy very recently. Is that what you mean about less like death?

[mannerless]

( lan jingyi, lan jingyi. wei wuxian hasn't heard of this one - but if this boy knows sizhui, it means he's barely more than a toddler in wei ying's day and age.

the commentary on whether he does or doesn't look like death earns a vague snort-laugh, and - ) I'm perfectly healthy, thank you very much. I just lost a bit of blood, as one does in times such as these. ( as if there ever really are any 'times such as these' - times in which merciless captors inflict curses that only excessive bloodletting can solve. )