notjelly | Black Rock Event

BACKGROUND

In Camille's world, there is a substance called Plague. It's not a disease. It's a black and purple gaseous substance that erupts from holes in the ground. It pollutes, corrupts, blights, kills and mutates everything in its path, sometimes all of those at the same time. It's been an ongoing problem in both the Mortal Plane (humans) and the Whodden (Spirit Plane, where the Folk live). Most recently, however, a new form of Plague has appeared called black rock. This is essentially a super compressed, crystallized form of Plague, and it's infinitely more dangerous than Plague itself.

It's called black rock because that's what it looks like--tiny black pebbles. Coming into contact with it is fatal 99% of the time for any living thing. All it takes is a touch. The average person who touches black rock will die in five minutes; a few more strong-willed people and critters can make it to seven minutes. A very, very small percentage of the human population is immune, and a few Folk seem to be unaffected, including elementals and stone and metal spirits.

The major problem with containing black rock is that it contaminates literally everything it touches. You touch some wearing gloves? The outside of your gloves are now contaminated, and touching them will still give you black rock. Black rock falls in your well? Your water supply is poisoned. You're studying black rock in your lab? Every beaker, test tube and bell jar it has touched is contaminated. Worse, it doesn't leave any residue, so there's no visual way to tell what black rock has touched. Spectrum analysis will reveal some discoloration, however.

The only way to destroy black rock and the stuff it touches is to burn it at about 500*F.

WHAT WILL HAPPEN

Camille will be scrounging around the junkyard when she discovers a small pile of black rock. She'll then freak, and warn all of Sacrosanct about the danger. After that, since black rock is pervasive, it will somehow make its way into Sacrosanct proper and begin contaminating areas, killing wildlife and plant life, and maybe even infecting characters themselves. It's going to spread far and it's going to spread fast. After all, just imagine if a cleaning drone tries to clean it up and ends up tracking it everywhere?

I imagine that at some point, there's going to be a quarantine, instated either by Hypatia or by character vote. Characters will have to deal with not being able to reach people they care about, not being able to enter certain areas, etc. Zone 1 is probably going to be a hazard zone throughout the event.

The event will last for 1-2 weeks, until the characters or Hypatia manage to come up with a way to neutralize it.

SYMPTOMS

When you touch black rock, or touch something contaminated by black rock, you initially don't notice anything. Black rock acts like a poison, absorbed through the skin/fur/scales/feathers, entering the blood stream and traveling to the heart and lungs. After three minutes, the infected will start to feel ill--short of breath, dizzy, confused and shaky. They'll also start coughing. The coughing worsens, until at about four minutes, the victim starts coughing up black rock itself. This is because black rock crystallizes in the lungs, and counts on the body's natural ability to expel foreign objects. Coughing up black rock lasts for about another minute, until the victim suffocates and dies.

In plant life and in creatures without lungs, like fish, black rock targets the flowers and/or any internal body cavities it can reach. Plants will start expelling black rock like pollen before withering away. Fish and stuff will be spitting it out of air bladders and stomachs.

All of the black rock they produce before death is just as deadly as what killed them.

IMMUNITY

Now obviously if black rock behaved in Sacrosanct the way it does back home, probably everyone on the station will die. Fortunately, you're all aliens!

Who will automatically be immune:

Machines and AIs--though they might experience some glitching.
Anything capable of producing high temperatures--this includes dragons, firebenders etc.
Extraplanar/omnipotent beings--aka Kyubey and Bec

Additionally, anyone with special suits or armor or clothing won't technically be immune, but they'll have a much higher chance of avoiding contamination.

Everyone else has the potential to get black rock. Humans in particular will be in danger. Now, not everyone can be immune. I'm gonna arbitrarily say that TEN characters can have a natural immunity. I'm gonna also say that a handful of others can either be carriers, get sick but not produce black rock, or produce black rock but get better. Being a carrier means that people only have to touch you to get black rock. Enjoy your quarantine!

There's gonna be a sign up sheet at the bottom of this for those who want assorted immunities or deaths.

DEATH

Black rock is not nice. People WILL die in this event. Characters who die will be resurrected by the transporters as per normal, but keep in mind that their corpses will be contaminated. If you want to die, make sure you clear it with the mods.

Also keep in mind that certain unpleasant people on the station might want to keep black rock for themselves and weaponize it.

Questions? Not sure if your character will be immune? Comment here and we'll talk it over :)

SIGN UPS

Characters who will die:
Davesprite
Pounce de Leon
Jade Harley
Angela
Black-One
Nathan
Gamzee 1
Avery
Dillinjr

Characters who will get natural immunity (ONLY TEN):
Raimi
Bro
Sonic
Thane
Stitch
Zaeed Massani
Karkat
Eleanor
Foxface

Characters who will be carriers/will fight off the infection etc:
Darwin (carrier)
KiKi (carrier, short-term)
Alex (survivor)
Jaedri (survivor
Jack Noir (survivor)
Chellbot (carrier)
Gamzee 2 (survivor)
Kanaya (carrier)

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Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

From:

fuckinghubble

Just for irony's sake... Volunteering this jerkass to be one of the ten naturally immune? y/n?

From:

notjelly

Hahaha, hell yes!

From:

manipul8trix.livejournal.com

O HAY. How would you imagine plague would work with Bullshit God Tier Powers (tm)? Would John and Vriska be in the automatically immune group? :Ic

From:

notjelly

OHAI THAR.

I'd thought about that, and I was actually going to leave it up to you guys to decide individually. God tier isn't the same as omnipotence unfortunately. Vriska might be safe, since she can steal enough luck to make her immune. As for John, I don't know. The Windy Thing could either do jack shit for him, or he might be able to Windy Thing all the black rock out of his lungs or something.

The immortality thing is also in their favor. Back home, immortal critters aren't safe at all, but playing by Homestuck rules, getting contaminated with black rock wouldn't lead to a heroic or just death. So it's really up in the air.

TL;DR IDK MAN YOU DECIDE!

Camille

Black Rock Event

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