(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

Lan Jingyi | OTA

[gusumouthcannon]

//Intro & Event Prompts//

Scandalized Junior Discovering His Clothing Options Bare A LOT of Skin
The problem with only having one set of robes is that he needs more clothing than that. That is just math. Reality. Something. The cabins he has rifled through do not have anything remotely similar, and everything that properly covers the skin is all very heavy and very much not suitable for the heat. So he is here, at the gas station, feeling like a criminal as he prepares to steal something more to wear that will not melt him instantly. "Are these--" He turns toward the sound of someone approaching and his tone is an even split between despair and delight as he holds up a tank top to his torso to measure its coverage. It does not cover a lot. "Are these our only options?"

Junior Beating The Heat On Verge Of Learning How Electronics and Lake Water Interact
The function of the smartphone is yet a mystery, but clearly the only way to find out how it works is to experiment! Thus, Jingyi sits on the very end of the dock wearing his new ugly sport shorts and a T-shirt, his bare feet in the water of the lake. He is hitting buttons without a lot of concern. A sound upon the lakeshore startles him, birds bursting up out of some bushes, and he almost drops the thing, bobbling the phone with a loud yelp.

Who Has Two Thumbs and Brand New Zombie Legs!
It is VERY early in the morning and Jingyi has just awoken to the fact that his legs are rotting from his body. His bloodcurdling scream is. Loud. And he is out of his cabin and into the woods as fast as his poor corpse legs can take him, which is incredibly distressingly not that fast, to see the creeping rot and shredded flesh in the chill, stark light of the morning. Hyperventilating, he wails, "They only itched yesterday!"

#PleaseForTheLoveOfHanguang-junDoNOTLeaveMeAloneMyHeadIsFullOfGhosts
He handled having corpse legs like a boss. But now his brain is haunted and that is. Not great. That is why the very next person he sees minding their own business acquires a Jingyi who is smiling a little over-brightly in the internally screaming sort of way. No reason, not even a fake one, just a beeline straight for their side and a slightly strangled (and strangely over-loud, even for Jingyi), "Hello!"

Wildcard~
HMU for a custom starter or throw something at me. :) I'll match brackets or prose.

head full of ghosts

[legbreakings]

"Hello," he echoes suspiciously.

Jiang Cheng's body language is anything but welcoming to clingy juniors, his teeth clenched, his shoulders tense, and there is a particular strained expression around his eyes which doesn't quite fit him being angry, even if at first glance he simply looks the usual bad-tempered.

He eyes the latest white-robed stranger with some faint distaste, dearly wishing he could snap at him but they've met at the beach, people are allowed to walk at the beach, even Lans.

"When did we get more Lan?"

:D

[gusumouthcannon]

"A few days ago," Jingyi all but chirps, relief flowing through him.

Grouchy and displeased was normal. Even he did not particularly like Sect Leader Jiang and he did not seem quite right--he looked very young?--he was an adultier adult and also had a title. And a Zidian? Hopefully? Which Jingyi tried to surreptitiously catch sight of. (He is terrible surreptitious. It is very obvious he is trying to peer at Jiang Cheng's hand.)

"There should only be me and Sizhui, though?"

[legbreakings]

Yes, let's just call Jiang Wanyin an adult... At least he does have a title, no doubt about that. Only sect leader in town you're all doomed if he's the most leaderly leader you have.

But here he is, giving Sizhui another grumpy look when he notices the staring at his hand, and sullenly tucks it behind his back.

"Yes, two of you." Which is two too many in his book, where are his Jiang disciples? "What are you doing here?"

[gusumouthcannon]

Jingyi stops trying to snoop and blinks at Sect Leader Jiang. "Ah--I do not actually know what I am doing here? I mean, I know what I am supposedly doing here, but I am not sure I believe any of it."

Pressing his hand to the side of his head because, ow, ghosts suck, especially when they scream, he squints one eye at him and returns the question, "What do you think I am doing here?"

[legbreakings]

He opens his mouth to snap at the boy but instead takes a deep breath and exhales it in a scoff.

"Never mind that." It had probably been harmless anyway, the boy hanging around at the lake, not everybody is up to as much mischief as Wei Wuxian was at that age. This one is a Lan, after all, they're the epitome of well-behaved boredom.

"Point is, I didn't realize there were more of you." He squeezes his eyes shut momentarily, trying to force himself to think through the... everything that is making it hard to think or not scream in sync with the voices. "Are you provided for?"

[gusumouthcannon]

Just because he had been there a lot while things were happening, it is reasonable that the Sect Leader might have no idea who he actually is. "Well, total of two. So--I am, ah, Lan Jingyi?" He asks it like a question, watching Sect Leader Jiang's face for any sign of recognition at all. "And I was planning on staying with Sizhui, but I am old enough that I do not need a minder, I do not think. I have been on night hunts. Some of them even went well."

[legbreakings]

Some of them even went well he says and there go Jiang Cheng's alarm bells. While the name brings about no recognition, he gives the junior a very dubious look to show how unimpressed he is by that reassurance and crosses his arms over his chest.

"That sounds like you do need a minder, Lan Jingyi," he scoffs. He shakes his head, he really doesn't have the presence of mind to deal with this right now, not with the incessant buzzing in his head, the voices which only ever quieten to a whisper but never fully go away. "Try not to die. I'm not explaining that if your elders show up!"

equally scandalized junior *further* appalled at the thought of showing more than forearms

[deferences]

“Hopefully not,” comes a voice that should be familiar to Jingyi. Sizhui steps a little closer, considers the sleeveless top his friend is holding and wrinkles his nose in a mixture of uncertainty and faint disapproval. “Won't it be uncomfortable without the sleeves?” He casts an inquiring glance around them, catches a glimpse of something else, though as he moves toward the clothes rack and pulls it out, his expression falters again. “Hm...” Well, it's less revealing than the one Jingyi's holding, but what in the world does it even mean?

“Okay, maybe not this one particularly? But there have to be other things we could find that aren't as lacking.” A moment's hesitation before he amends, “I mean, you— you can wear whatever you like, Jingyi, so long as you're comfortable with it.”

[gusumouthcannon]

"Uncomfortable, maybe," Jingyi says, "We show so much skin when we are swimming, right? Wearing this all the time would not be too different."

Only it really would and he is definitely finagling the truth at the moment.

"It would be like swimming all the time."

After that dubious statement, he considers seeing everyone he knows here while wearing so little that he is practically naked. A little frisson of anxiety zips down his spine at the very thought. He shifts his dubious frown from his shirt to Sizhui's pick, and makes a face.

"What if we cannot find anything, though?"

[deferences]

“You can't genuinely want to feel like you're almost half-naked all the time,” Sizhui remarks, following it with a faint, airy laugh and the slightest of smiles. “Although, it would technically be less like swimming in the sense just our arms and legs would show, yes?”

Hmmm. Perhaps it wouldn't be so bad, after all? A shiver zippers up his spine at the thought of having so much exposed; the cold is what he's considering, but it's not cold at all and if they keep on wearing all this Lan clan garb, they'll surely die of heatstroke.

He lets the sweater fall back into place, brow knitting with thought before his smile widens, he plucks up a sleeve on the same garment then makes a cutting gesture across it with the opposite hand.

“We cut the clothes and make ourselves something.”

[gusumouthcannon]

"Maybe I do want to be half-naked all the time." Jingyi says, just to be contrary, before he blinks at Sizhui in mild startlement at the words that had just come out of his mouth. "Oh, I did not mean that," he blurts immediately after, and he could not honestly say which of the statements was the lie. Or both. Or neither.

"I mean." He scrambles a bit, clutching the tank a bit closer to his chest. He focuses on the sweater, and the cutting motion. "Oh, that would be very ugly. Do you think so? We could make ourselves something but it might just be too ugly to wear, and that might be worse. At least if we were half-naked, then at least one of us would be appropriately nice-looking."

[deferences]

He stays silent, allows Jingyi's remark to sink in for both of them, but ends up biting his cheek to muffle a laugh after he immediately amends his mistake. “It's alright, I know you didn't.” Or he'll at least assume his friend doesn't mean he actually wants to be half-naked all the time. (Seriously, if he wants to, Sizhui won't judge him a single bit... but he might question his life choices. Just a little.)

Whenever he takes a moment, reconsiders the idea and contemplates Jingyi's comment, Sizhui's nose wrinkles with uncertainty. “Yes, I think you're right. It would look odd without the sleeves.” So, the tanktop might honestly be the better idea in this situation? As his fellow junior holds it nearer, he abandons the sweater again, stretches both arms out and clutches the sleeveless shirt's hem, tugs down, hmmming softly while he studies where it falls at the hips. “My opinion is that you should try it, at least.”

[gusumouthcannon]

"Right now? Try it right now?" Jingyi asks, squinting thoughtfully as Sizhui fusses with the shirt.

He is gonna do it.

"Then I will!" Because that sounds like a challenge. A slightly scandalous challenge, but a challenge nevertheless.

And then he starts disrobing right there in the middle of the store, because if he is going to wear something without sleeves anyway... It is fine. They are over by the clothing and they are the only ones here and it is not like he is bothered by Sizhui seeing him.

[deferences]

Sizhui simply nods at the inquiry, gives the faintest smile and withdraws his hands after Jingyi agrees.

“Okay, I'll make sure no one sees you if they come in.” Challenge or not (which it maybe sort of is!), he sounds wholly sincere about his friend trying the top. If it fits him then perhaps he might get one himself, that way they match. Oh, imagine the trouble people might have telling them apart once they're wearing the same modern clothes.

The minute his fellow junior starts undressing, Sizhui's arms lift, ever-so-slightly moving out from his sides, that way his long sleeves are almost like a protective curtain. Should anyone decide to come in, at least Jingyi will have some decency.