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INHUMAN COURTESY

I. PUSHING UP DAISIES

cw: depiction of hanahaki, mention of blood, mild body horror

The Frightful Harvest ended on a bloody, eerie note, but the Respite's most welcome interlude has proven exceptionally fruitful. The sky's darkened again, moons struggling to glow through turbulent clouds, but crops all over Stygia have grown dense and healthy, herbs and plants and flowers aplenty. Normally, it'd be a time to rejoice, even as sleet pours and winds grow bitterly cold -- and it might have been, had greens and stems and petals NOT elected to blossom inside you. Your lungs, specifically.

It's an uncommon side effect of the Harvest, affecting those who foster affection or attraction towards another, triggered only by a stray thought. Almost as if punished by Oblivium for harboring any kind of positive feelings. The worst part is that the object of your desire doesn't even have to be in the Netherworld for you to be afflicted. Over the span of three months, you'll gradually experience various degrees of the "harvest's curse", depending on the source of your feelings:

► PHYSICAL/EMOTIONAL ATTRACTION & REQUITED LOVE
It starts with an itch. Your throat tickles, an odd sensation in your lungs, slightly constricted. Allergies? Not quite. It worsens overtime, and days pass by, perhaps weeks. You cough, a little more every day, a little deeper, and then it happens: petals, stuck to your lips as you wheeze and try to empty your chest. Marigold, carnations, daisies, peonies... Thankfully, for you, it's more of an annoyance, sporadic at best and leaving you exhausted at times, but you're in no immediate danger. Unfortunately, not all Restless share the same luck.

► UNREQUITED LOVE
It doesn't matter whether it is truly unrequited; as long as you think it is, whether you're fully convinced or distantly resigned, you get the whole package. It starts the same way the lesser variation does, gradual, and with unsavory (!) additions: lilies and dark red roses. The first slowly spreads its poison in your body, inducing fevers, skin rashes, blistering in your mouth and stomach aches. The second pricks your throat bloody, making speech difficult and breathing even more so. It spreads throughout Stygia, and if most wound up meeting their end in the past, some speak of a highly hypothetical cure. It's believed that if the object of your affection confesses equally strong feelings for you, the curse should rapidly subside. If this option isn't viable, Doran promises that all Healers in Hale are working extremely hard to find a solution. In the meantime, symptoms can be partially soothed with poultices and spells that you can find in the Marketplace or in Serene. Some merchants might even take pity on you and offer them for free.

if your character has heard of similar diseases in their home world, they're absolutely welcome to share their insight on the netherwork or anywhere else
the evolution of the disease can be as gradual, as fast or as severe as you wish it to be
a mini quest to retrieve ingredients for a cure will be available in december or january
by february, all characters should be cured

II. DO NOT PASS GO

cw: mention of blood, torture, branding, violence, forced captivity

Full-swing investigations concerning the Harvest's murders have begun, though the mysterious rider has yet to resurface. The day is young still, but no matter; the Hierarchy firmly believes that the creature was summoned by a group of renegades, fully intent on finding and dismembering the organization. Perhaps even literally.

If you've spilled blood not your own in the previous event, the Hierarchy finds you. Do they know? It doesn't really matter; they've targeted you for reasons they won't divulge, persuaded of your involvement -- and off to the Gallows you go. Each of you receives the same greeting when you arrive, held down by rough hands and branded upon the arm with the letter F. The mark signifies ‘forsaken’, and the painful scar is indelible proof that each of you has betrayed the Hierarchy's hospitality. Writhe and scream and glower as much as you want; next thing you know, something heavy hits you across the head, and you collapse.

When your vision slowly creeps back, your eyes adjust to a dimly lit stone cell. Your feet are secured by iron cuffs tethered by one long chain, and you lie in nothing but filthy, tattered rags. It's dark; the air is bloated and filled with agonizing shrieks. Dead vines scrap the walls of half-crumbled buildings, weather-worn stone pillars surrounded by withered clumps of grass. You may converse with your cellmates: the guards patrolling the Gallows couldn't care less, convinced that no one could possibly escape anyway.

► Ironically, a magical barrier around the Gallows prevents magical/spiritual abilities from functioning. However, characters who roam free still can absolutely sneak in! Be careful not to get caught, though!
► Loud disagreements might attract unwanted attention. A single guard will come, and if he finds nothing else amiss, will threaten them to be quiet. A second violation earns the offender a rap on their bare feet with a club. A third violation will cause the offender to be gagged. Note that in order to beat or gag the offender, the guard must first open the cell.
► If you share affinities with Gargoyles, incapacitating a guard in any way will draw the attention of one. It'll show you to the gates where you'll be able to escape, taking care of sentries on your way. You should probably keep a low-profile from then on, and avoid showing-off your brand.
► A secret passage may be found through a mausoleum nearby; an arrow of flaking red paint marks the entrance. Or is it blood? Inside, it's nearly pitch-black. Perhaps, if you're lucky, your vision extends as far as 30 feet in front of you, but occasionally, the darkness is broken by clinging phosphorescent fungi or crawling luminescent creatures, and from out of the silence echo sounds of dripping water. You're underground, and Abysmals can be encountered here if you're too loud. You should also watch out for cave-ins, but as you get farther away from the general region of the Gallows, your magical abilities gradually come back.
► Eventually, a long, broken staircase will lead you to Hale. If you're injured, you'll be sent to the main infirmary; characters with healing abilities or knowledge are super welcome to help!

Luckily for you, there are so many prisoners it's a difficult task for the Hierarchy to always keep track of all of them. Your brand, however, is a dead giveaway, so you might as well try and find a way to get rid of it; you might hear through the grapevines that the dead skin of Badaliscus can be used as bandages, and overtime, the brand will fully heal and disappear.

III. TO THE RESCUE

As you attempt to escape, or perhaps once you’ve successfully snuck in, you come across a terrifying spectacle: in front of you, impaled through the shoulder by a spear, a weary humanoid figure covered in blood. The body is being restrained by additional shackles on each arm and leg, which are linked to chains anchored within the walls. There's a guard nearby, armed to the teeth… and still you decide to free them.

The guard’s magic is just as useless as yours, and while impressive in size, dexterity definitely isn’t his main strength. He hits hard — with brass knuckles, a chain mace, and a sturdy shield — and his stamina almost seems endless, but it’s not. Keep evading, and he’ll eventually tire enough to topple over. It’s also possible to have him chase you around if you don’t go too far, which would allow someone else to grab the spear. Once he’s too exhausted to go on, you can either kill him or chain him to the wall. The keys are in his boots, and you’ll find a bottle of water as well as a small vial of ointment in a satchel on the ground, where he previously stood.

The prisoner is a young man, perhaps in his mid-20s. Once freed from his shackles, he immediately keels over, though he’s not unconscious. He thanks you with a deep and raw voice, begging for water. You can tend to his wounds if you’re able—the ointment quickly soothes—and when he finally stands again, he asks you a question: “I’m a stranger to you, and you could have died. Yet, you chose to free me, unaware of my past. Of my crimes. Of my virtues. Why?”

Regardless of your answer, he smiles, a private understanding that turns the stretch of his lips enigmatic. There’s a bubbling chuckle in his throat, very hoarse, and then he hisses, touching where you’ve helped him apply the ointment on his body. “You know what they say. If it stings...” He looks at you, deliberately pausing there and staring bold into your eyes. “... then it must be working.”

It might feel like there’s more to what he’s trying to say, though it’s pointless to ask: he bows, and then he slowly inches away from you. “Until we meet again.” White and thick tendrils of smoke envelop him, seemingly coming out of nowhere, and then just like that, he’s gone.

so you’ve chosen to free him, which in turn has generated a future plot point that’ll occur some time in february. some of you WILL see him again.
what he says to you is a clue.
you can answer his question OOCly right here. it’ll have some bearing on the way your character will be approached re: future plot point.
if you've voted no and would still like to participate, you could always allow your character to be convinced or reluctantly dragged by another!

ooc note

► As always, check out the Notice Board if you'd like additional prompts! Older quests from previous months are always available as well. You'll also find the Calendar right here.
► You'll find already answered questions just here, and if you'd like to ask new ones, ask them here!
► For fun's sake and similarly to the puck adventure, you may play it out in different groups or on your own, and still obtain the same results as everyone else whether your characters threaded together!

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（ ichigo is laying flat on his back, arms cushioned behind his head nearby. that accent... can't be anything but texan, can it? his dad used to watch old subtitled john wayne movies growing up, and there was a very terrible, terrible time in his life where every return from school was greeted with a howdy, pardner that he has tried desperately to block out.

(now, he realizes it's more that his dad was actually around during that era. maybe he visited? who knows.)

he hefts himself halfway up, giving the man a bit of a Look. ）

Pretty sure I just pissed off the wrong asshole. You?

Yeah.

[ He lets the word drag out a little — emphasizing that Texan drawl of his — before he shakes his head, meeting the kid's eyes for a moment before looking away. He idly scratches at the scruff of his chin, mouth quirked. ]

Mighta done the same thing. [ And he certainly didn't make it easier for himself either when he tried to resist arrest, but they got him anyway. Didn't help when they took his belongings away and outnumbered him too. ] Doesn't seem to take much.

（ he thumbs across the brand, his jaw set stubbornly. it's not the pain that irritates him, it's the mark. ）

Yeah, well. Nothing we can do now but wait.

（ he lets that settle in the silence between them, and after a long moment: ）

Kurosaki. My name.

（ ... surname, technically. ）

[ The mark bothers him too. Hates that someone or anyone or anything could get the jump on him like that, and then adding salt to the wound, brand him like he was goddamned cattle, thrown into captivity. For what? Who the hell even knows.

Joel hums a sound of agreement to the boy's first statement though. If there is something to be done, an opportunity'll present itself and he'll make a move then. But until that moment comes ...

A nod, as he commits the name to memory and then offers one in kind. ]

Joel.

Joel.

（ imperfect pronunciation, but he's got the spirit. ichigo looks at him intently for a moment, an' then pulls himself into a sitting position, crosslegged with his hands braced on his knees. shoulders forward and slightly hunched, mouth set in a faint line. then, all in a sudden rush he blurts out: ）

Texas, right? The accent?

[ It might be imperfect but it'll do. It prickles some instinct in him to remain anonymous, the way he knows his name might mean something to some people — he's never been a good man with a clean record after all — but he figures this is some kind of hell, they're in a cell, and he's dead.

He's got bigger problems. ]

Yeah, that's right. I take it you're from some version of Earth, then.

[ Maybe even some kinda American, or someone familiar with America anyway, the way he seems to quickly place his accent's origin.

Funny enough, that'd make him one of the first he's met here so far. ]

Yeah. Uh...

（ he waves a hand, not quite dismissive — more tired of having to append these details into normal conversation: ）

Japan. 2003. My old man loves cowboy movies.

[ Joel's surprise at the familiar-enough decade has him more interested than he would otherwise be. Hasn't really had this kind of chat with any of the others he'd spoken with so far, assuming they'd come from different galaxies all together. It wouldn't surprise him. This whole damned place feels like another planet. ]

2003, huh? You're kiddin'.

[ He reaches up to scrub at his chin, scratching at the beard that has certainly seen better days. But between the rags and the scarce, dirty food they're served at bare minimum ... he hardly expects shaving facilities to be provided for them or anything.

He reckons they're expected to rot here until there's nothing much left. ]

That'll be thirty years until you hit when I'm from.

（ it's not the first time he's met someone from further along than he is, but he thinks that's probably the furthest it's been. thirty years... almost a lifetime. and whether or not it's the same world doesn't really matter, it's still a world, a future. maybe it's one where yhwach failed.

it shouldn't be the relief it is. ）

Yeah? Do we have flying cars yet?

[ Joel's chuckle is more rueful than anything, and it's almost too soft to hear.

He can almost imagine a young girl's voice, a little cheeky, almost daring, asking him a question just like that with a dragged out, half-annoyed Daaad to boot. ]

Woulda come in handy. [ He shakes his head. ] Nah. You'd be lucky if you could even find a car that starts.

What happened?

（ he sounds altogether too serious for a seventeen year old in that moment, and the fidgeting is gone. his hands are in his lap, faintly curled in against his palms. ）

Nothin' good.

[ Truthfully, Joel's plenty content to leave it at that on account of how squirrelish he is when it comes to sharing anything about himself. But between the ghost of a memory and the earnestness of the young man sharing a cell with him in this godforsaken wasteland, maybe it makes for looser lips.

Maybe.

Either way, he takes a breath and goes on. ]

Some kinda brain-infection spread over a little more than half the world's population. Happened so fast, and changed everything we thought we knew about the world.

[ And that's ... putting it very, very lightly. ]

（ that faint curling wisp of relief he'd felt earlier crumbles into nothing as he takes those words in.

it doesn't even occur to him that the man might be lying about it. not even maliciously, even just... the sense of yanking his chain. trying to get a rise. ichigo holds the joel's gaze for a moment, and then his attention flickers to a guard passing by their cell, rattling his baton across the bars. intimidation tactic. it only annoys him a little, now, his brow creasing as the man continues on. they walk a fifteen minute cycle in this block, but there's only two guards. the cell he'd shared with that quincy must have been closer to the barracks or something. okay.

the way the man said a car that starts is maybe the most worrying part. it paints a bleak picture, apocalyptic in a way. but not the way yhwach intended it to be. not a tearing down of the various spiritual realms. brain infection doesn't exactly suggest a world where hollows roam alongside humans and eat them at a whim, only to be removed from the reincarnation cycle by the destructive force of a quincy.

what else is ruined? lost?

(is this one of the earth variants where karakura doesn't exist at all? are his sisters —) ）

I'm sorry.

（ what else can he say, really? asking about anything — like the state of japan — would only be selfish. and it wouldn't matter to someone who has no cause to care. most people are tribalist by nature, and that tendency increases tenfold when lives are at stake. surviving something like that is hard enough. he shakes his head faintly, and then: ）

Guess that explains why prison doesn't really seem to have rattled you much.

[ Joel grunts a quiet sound, blows a breath through too-dry lips. He lets his own gaze wander, following the guard that passes them by, and watches as he disappears past the corner to rile the rest of the inmates about. Christ, if he had even one of those bobby pins, he'd find a way out of this godforsaken place.

But the hierarchy, or whoever it is in charge of this mass imprisonment — oh they know what they're doing. They picked 'em all clean of their belongings, even the hidden ones, and stripped them down to formless rags. It's still early days yet but they feed them only enough to keep them alive and nothing more. Years of this and they might even turn into the material they need to forge objects.

Yeah. They know how to keep the prisoners in prison; they've got this all down to an art.

Dismissively: ]

Ain't nothin' to be sorry about.

[ It bristles something in him, the apologies, no matter how sincere and heartfelt they may be — but he manages to soften the edges of the words. It ain't on the kid, after all, to apologize for something so catastrophic, something so world-ending. ]

Well it's no paradise but things can always get worse.

（ he understands not wanting the sympathy. maybe not on the same scale, but... he does get it. so nothing is said to that, and instead he just fidgets with his ripped-off fingernail, scraping blood off the side of his finger against the tattered rags. ）

I'd be careful about tempting fate like that. Somebody might hear you.

（ it's not like the guards have been shy with their stupid nightsticks. he's got his fair share of defensive wounds, bruises to his forearms in varying states of their healing. ）

Anyway — that guard won't be back for another fourteen minutes, so here.

（ he shakes the chain on one hand, and a key slips out of the space between his wrist and the cuff, down into his palm. he holds it out for joel to take first. ）

Stole it off a guard in my last cell. It won't work on the door, though, just the cuffs.

[ It becomes pretty clear, pretty quickly that the kid has been through some shit. The bruises and cuts and that bloodied finger of his don't miss his notice, though he says nothing about it. No reason to, really. It's clear that Kurosaki's clever, wily enough to snatch a key off of a guard, which has got Joel warming up to him.

He shifts over close enough to reach a hand out and take the key, aware now more than ever of the presence of these cuffs weighing heavily around his wrists and ankles and keeping him chained to the floor of this too-small cell.

He'll have to keep them loose around him for when the patrol comes by to check in on them again, but it's a small blessing that they never linger for too long, or pay too close attention to the unwashed, unkempt rag-wearing prisoners they've got captured by the dozens — so long as they do nothing to gain their notice anyway.

Joel nods in the boy's direction, grateful. ]

Cuffs are a good start as any. [ He sets the small metal key into the hole of his cuff, twisting it as quietly as he can. It clicks open, the cold metal relenting away from his red-raw skin.

Probably shouldn't have struggled so much against it the last time he caught up a fuss with one of the guards. ] Thanks.

My last cellmate and I started a fight. It worked, he got out. I went the wrong way and walked right into the middle of the guards' lunchbreak, so...

（ he definitely made sure a few of them are going to regret waking up tomorrow, but he's not exactly at his best. he's dangerous with or without his reiatsu, but he'd just about kill to have old man zangetsu with him here... ）

So I don't know if that'll work again.

（ he gestures for the key back once joel's done, and repeats the process on his own cuffs. a moderately polite boy, letting his elder get free first. ）

I'm open to ideas if you are.

Could fake gettin' sick, the way some of us have been feeling.

[ It hasn't been so bad for him, easy enough to manage anyway, but some of the others haven't fared too well. The eternal damp and cold in this prison sure don't help matters either. ]

But startin' a fight was what I had in mind too.

[ Once he's finished with his cuffs, he passes the key back and rubs at his wrists. Seeing Kurosaki start on his own constraints, he really can attest to him being a decent kid. Most folk he knows wouldn't even think to offer help like that, let alone give them a chance before they help themselves. ]

It'd help if we had a better idea of what this place looked like, knew where the exits were.

Well, take it from me, don't go right. Or, if you do, don't open the door with the red circle on it.

（ aka: the direction he'd been dragged in from. he unhooks the manacles himself, and piles them neatly in front of him in case he has to fake having them on again.

he scuffs his foot against the dirty floor, and then draws a rough map from where he's been and what he's seen from his time with jugo all the way to their current cell, which he marks off with an x. ）

I lost consciousness before they got me in the first time, so I couldn't tell you which direction we have to go to get out.

No red circle. Got it.

[ With more flexibility of movement, Joel moves forward, close enough to watch as Kurosaki begins to draw up a rough sketch in dirt with shapes depicting rooms and halls, none of which make a whole lotta sense to him. Doesn't help that they're dragged into this place, caught unawares. He'd been knocked unconscious too when he was brought in and his recollection of any room outside of this one is foggy at best, glimpses of images caught between slowly blacking out.

He sighs, jutting his chin towards one of the unknown paths. Risky, sure, but if they know the other spaces might not work ... ]

Maybe we oughta try the left, then.

[ If they can find anything along the way to defend themselves with — even if it's a loose nail or a brick of stone, anything sharp and mobile and weapon-like. ]

Anything else you remember seeing? Anything useful?

No.

（ he rolls one shoulder, and then drags a hand through his hair, which is dirty and gross from all the rolling around he's been doing in the dirt. ）

But once we can get out, just make sure you stay behind me.

（ sometimes the shōnen hero jumps... out... ）

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jailhouse rock;

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