The Seeds of Unrest, Phase Two 🌱

[beleos]

UPROOTED

Time has not been kind thus far, and the future will be no kinder.

The slow passage of days to weeks has seen both cities increasingly ravaged by the untamed growth of the enlarging roots. Their size is enough to uproot buildings by their foundations, if not bisect them entirely where they push through unfettered. In the worst-hit areas, entire blocks are left abandoned - if even standing at all, displacing families and leaving businesses in ruins.

Cetina and Kathova have been in near constant contact with Bearers via Communion, feeding them information about which areas to focus their lifesaving efforts. Yima’s Manor and the Seat of the Tribune - despite their closeness to the Trees - have been fortified by your leaders and act as a base of operations for each respective faction. You will be able to return to either to find sanctuary from the chaos beyond, but the innumerable civilians are not so lucky.

Bearers are tasked with rescue and recovery efforts and requested to assist hands on the ground with taking refugees to temporary shelters. Survivors must be dug out of the debris. Those who are capable of healing will be enlisted to assist at hospitals and triage centers. Supplies must be gathered and harvested from areas that are collapsed and too dangerous for civilians to navigate. If you are feeling generous, you can go on search and rescue missions, as many people are considered missing in both Highstorm and Springstar. Some areas are completely cut off to regular foot traffic by the massive, winding roots bearing countless Blight-blooms. Citizens are succumbing to the Blight flower’s effects persistent from phase one with more and more frequency.

While both cities slowly succumb to a deepening catastrophe, the situation worsens.

STIRRING STORMS

As the days pass, inexplicable and unnatural weather occurrences will randomly plague both cities. They can last as long as a full day or as little as an hour before dissolving entirely.

• Flurries: this snow is tainted by the Blight, making the snowfall look like ash. Any organic matter it touches will be affected by reopening wounds, re-infection of illnesses, or re-experiencing injuries that may have healed over years ago.
• Thunderstorms: these storms carry a frigid rainfall and heavy cloud cover, making already difficult-to-navigate disaster zones harder to clear. As each thunder bellow crashes overhead, you might swear you hear a familiar voice reaching out to you in the fading rumble… one that sends a message - either from the future or past.
• Fog: dense clouds of thick, freezing fog will roll in randomly, making visibility even more precarious. In your search for survivors - or your companions, you may find yourself coming face to face with someone else, instead: a version of yourself (or a companion) from another timeline. You may also hear your own voice calling out to you from within the fog, attempting to beckon you further into the mist.
• General Note: Exposure to any of the above weather patterns will increase your Blight infection.

THE BLIGHT COMES FOR ALL

As if it were not enough to see the cities that have become your salvation at the end of the Timestream falling to collapse and ruin, the Bearers will slowly begin to realize their previous immunity to the Blight is eroding. They will begin to show symptoms of infection that increase into May’s event. ( For more information on the effects of the Blight and purification methods, please see the OOC Summary. )

Now that their last bastion - the Bearers - are just as much in harm’s way as everyone else, the populous’s efforts to formulate a temporary stop-gap solution are being rushed to completion. Time is not on anyone’s side. They will continue to work with those who have been kind enough to volunteer their resources and brilliant minds - collecting materials and attempting to figure out a way to avert their otherwise inevitable destiny.

ORDERS

Orders from your leaders will come as soon as infections among the Bearers have been confirmed.

🌙 YIMA will stress for all Zenite Bearers to prioritize their well-being and to avoid unnecessary exposure, to manage their symptoms as much as possible. They must fight for their own survival to bring in the birth of a new universe - and their lives are too precious to risk. Beyond that, she asks them to save what they can of their people and their most critical structures with the understanding that hard choices may be necessary.

🌞 CYRUS will implore all Meridian Bearers to prioritize the general population's lives and turn their efforts to save as much of Springstar as they can. He will note that Bearers have ways to help keep one another from suffering too much contagion and to coordinate their usages appropriately, to keep one another safe, and watch their backs.

ANOTHER EN-TREE-TY

The Tree of Life continues to sicken, yet - thankfully - the progression of the Blight is slow. Still, Bearers will find themselves occasionally compelled to take a moment to sit beneath its boughs and vibrant leaves, even as some begin to show signs of discoloration and rot. Any characters who sit with the Tree with the purple leaf they found on their person after phase one will find it warming to the touch, its veins laced with gold. This effect will be even more effective if taken into the cavernous roots beneath the Tree! While this may fill you with a temporary sense of calm, it doesn't seem to have any other effects... yet still, you are compelled, if not curious.

The Tree has offered you this gift for a reason. Perhaps you will find its use before long.

...As long as you - and Kenos - survive long enough to discover it.

CODING

Comments

✦ closed to GAVIAL

[lifespanned]

[ While Misa might have initially blown off getting involved with any of the rescue and recovery efforts on account of Yima stressing that the shard-bearers own well-being comes first... well, she's always had something of an over-inflated sense of invincibility. She's sure a little exposure will be fine. And besides, these people are fellow Zenites. To leave them out to dry, when allegedly, they'll be her and all the other Zenite shard-bearers' supporters... that would just be foolish.

So, that's how she finds herself with Gavial, hiking around some of the more extreme disaster zones, where roots have completely upended entire blocks. A faint cry of help! can be heard from beneath the rubble, even if the survivor is not visible to the eye. ]

Oh! Did you hear that?

[ Misa leads them over to the source of the sound — and the person below makes a pained groan as some of the rubble shifts. ]

You wouldn't happen to be able to move some of this stuff, would you?

[ She asks, raising a brow at her companion. There's something of a lack of urgency in her efforts to save this person... but at least she's trying to puzzle out the best way to do it!! While she waits for Gavial to answer, she actually kneels down to peek through some of the rubble, her head passing through the solid concrete as if a ghost. ]

[kinaesthesia]

[While Gavial herself is pretty gung-ho about getting into the thick of things to help the people unfortunate enough to get caught up in this mess, nothing about the disaster zone they’re wading through seems to phase her. Just calm, collected, and alert for anything that might stand out among the wreckage they pass through. It’s like surveying an area after a Catastrophe, except instead of sharp spires of Originium left in its wake, there’s… roots and flowers.

She just barely catches that muffled cry even as Misa points it out. She narrows her eyes as she looks in the direction it seems to be coming from and nods.]

Yeah, sounds like we got one. Let’s move.

[With the mess they’re soon led to, it’s almost a miracle that whoever’s trapped underneath it is still hanging on. Must be one tough customer, and Gavial doesn’t intend to leave them hanging down there for much longer. She rolls her shoulders and is halfway to trying to find a good handhold on a large chunk of what looks to have been a brick wall when Misa’s question comes.]

Yup, I’m on it! Stand back, and I can—hey!

[She cuts herself off as Misa does the exact opposite of standing back, going so far as to basically ram her head right into some concrete… and then right through it, like nothing. Gavial laughs as she resumes pulling up that chunk of rubble she’d grabbed.]

What the hell… That’s a neat trick.

[lifespanned]

Hee hee. You think so?

[ She beams at the praise, pulling herself back to look at Gavial fully. ]

I can do it to other people, too. So if I could just reach this person... it'll be easy to pull them out.

[ But the other girl says she's strong, so there's no problems there, right? Now finally following Gavial's advice, she stands up and takes the requested step back, watching her as she works. Most of the upper levels of rubble are big slabs of concrete walls that have tumbled down, and have layered on top of one another in haphazard ways — almost like Jenga, but with rocks instead of wooden sticks. ]

But that's a pretty neat trick yourself. Being able to lift stuff like that must come in handy... I'm no good at things like that.

[kinaesthesia]

It does feel pretty good, being able to put this strength to use helping people.

[Normally she just uses it for fighting. Which is fun, don’t get her wrong, but there’s nothing quite like the satisfaction of doing something for the good of others. It was the whole reason she’d taken up studying medicine in the first place.]

Think our skills might make a pretty good combo here, though.

[She grunts as she carefully scoots one big piece of rubble out of the way, tail swishing behind her slowly to help her keep her balance. She inspects the next one with a curious tilt of her head, then glances back Misa’s way as she continues.]

If you can really pull them out with that skill of yours, then it’ll be faster if I can clear enough of a path for you to reach them, right?

[Definitely faster than doing it all by hand, and probably safer too—it can be kind of a gamble, digging through a mess like this.]

[lifespanned]

[ Misa folds her hands behind her back, hopping down a little bit more to make way for Gavial's eventual rubble clearing. ]

Oh! Yeah, that'd make it a lot easier. I don't think I can pull someone that far, so... the closer, the better!

[ Perhaps because Misa has never done something like this before, she seems not worried about the potential for disaster by digging around in the rubble like this — like the potential for them to accidentally have more stuff topple on the person below. She's sure it'll be fine!! Anyway, since she's not doing any of the heavy lifting, she'll try and play navigator instead, surveying all the jenga blocks of concrete. ]

You seem pretty used to this sort of thing. Have you done this before?

[kinaesthesia]

[Gavial will dutifully follow Misa’s lead as she navigates for them, working to move each piece of concrete as carefully as she can. ‘Careful’ normally isn’t really in Gavial’s vocabulary, but she knows enough that going ham on the mess in front of them might only make things worse for that poor schmuck stuck under it all.]

Eh, kind of. The world I come from tends to deal with a lot of disasters, so sometimes the company I worked for had us out there helping people. Usually when I was on the field, though, I was working as a combat medic to heal folks in the thick of things.

[Or fighting herself. Or getting yelled at by Kal’tsit for fighting when she was supposed to be healing. Look, she was just trying to be efficient!]

Stuff like this is definitely not as exciting, but it’s real important.

[lifespanned]

So what you're saying is, I should come to you if I get hurt. Haha.

[ There aren't that many healers or medics among their numbers, after all. Misa says it in a light hearted, sing-song manner as they clear through the rubble, and then she's raising a hand to get Gavial to pause. ]

And, that means you can take care of this guy, [ Misa leans down, laying as carefully as she can on her stomach on the dirt in order to begin phasing through the rubble at a lower to the ground vantage point. But she doesn't send her head in before turning back to give the other girl a wink. ] I mean, he looked pretty messed up.

[ Because why else would she say that, unless she was prepared to do the same here? The man is in fact "messed up," as Misa had said - from pillars crushing the lower half of his body. But Misa barely gives Gavial a chance to clarify or elaborate on the extent of her abilities, confident that she can reach the victim from the point they've cleared now - she only needs to get to their hand, after all. And so, she sinks into the wreckage until only her boots are poking through, at which point, she wiggles her foot, blindly trying to nudge her in the ankle. ]

I think I've got him but — he's heavy! Could you do me a big favor and help pull?