(no subject)

[espigeonage]

Hey, people interested in the Christmas Island mushroom investigation! I wanted to plot things out.

The central mushroom is about as big as a car and does nothing but release spores. It can't move or defend itself. The spores make people want to rush out and destroy or deport human-made things but it doesn't make them violent against people, and they regain their usual faculties soon enough. Wearing a face mask protects people who might be affected, unless it slips. It's by far the least menacing of the Animals.

My character, Julien, wants to get out there, measure the big mushroom, and take samples. He wanted company because he's genre savvy enough to think that coming close and touching and cutting little bits out is a great time for a monster to pop out of the ground, but nothing will happen. After that he'll want it covered somehow so the spores stop spreading - maybe get a greenhouse put over it? - and it can be studied and monitored. Jules has read The Girl With All The Gifts and done a little other reading and thinks burning it could end very very badly, and fungicides could go wrong too.

Your characters may feel differently. Comment here if you've got someone who'd like to come! Will they want to live and let live, or go pre-emptive on the big mush? Should there be a log? If so there'll be random jungle adventures and a massive anticlimax thread, either way.

Comments

[bythewaves]

ARNOLD WANTS TO COME AND TAKE HOME A CRAB (mushroom what mushroom) he is the most useless ever but people bringing flamethrowers will probably spark echoes and reduce him to a sobbing mess yelling about his brother no not his brother he's still on that ship.

[espigeonage]

Awww, Arnold, you poor fool.

Think he could fund like... idk. A custom greenhouse-dome of the right dimensions built and airlifted over it?

[bythewaves]

If it gets him a crab you have a deal

[espigeonage]

okay, okay, take a crab home. Maybe he can find zookeepers to squee at it with him and give advice.

[bythewaves]

YAY!

[scarlet_devil]

Well... Emi will be there. When is this happening? The 30th? She'll most likely be leaning towards not destroying the main mushroom by then, given Saretha's post.

[espigeonage]

Cool! Yes, this'll be the thirtieth.

[ruleorserve]

I'm not sure what Emil would rather in so far as outcomes go, but he'd definitely be curious enough to come out and see what all is going on out there!

[espigeonage]

That's good! gosh what an anticlimax.

[ruleorserve]

Terribly so, yep. But monitoring it is definitely something he can get behind. If it's not actually doing anything then there's no sense in getting rid of it and although he's not precisely thought about it, he'd agree that burning it is probably not the best option.

[espigeonage]

True!

Think this could be viable as a log? There could be this discussion IC.

[allpurposescarf]

Completely the wrong account, but yes! It could definitely be viable as a log and the discussion sounds like it could be really interesting to boot.

[espigeonage]

Cool! I'll get up a couple more opinions and see about it.

[ruleorserve]

o7

I'll keep an eye on both plurk and the comms in the meanwhile

[wingsister]

Areonwen would love to come.

Because that's what this mission needs. A magical psychic (not-)horse.

[espigeonage]

Heh. Damn right! They will have to improvise a mask for her somehow.

The spores only work on someone with a human-type respiratory system, but Julien doesn't know that. He'll have this ridiculous cone on his face.

[wingsister]

Oh my god, that's beautiful and stupid, I am so happy.

[espigeonage]

Such dignity, wow.

Jules is a big (mostly) white bird with blue eyes who used to be human, think she could get any echoes out of that?

[wingsister]

Not the used to be human part, but the rest... as a big white bird with blue eyes who's capable of communicating with people, he superficially resembles a Tayledras bondbird from her prior life's world enough to probably provoke that echo. (She had friends who were Tayledras.)

[espigeonage]

Heh. Cool! yeah he's really big.

/slides on in here a little late

[radiantchicken]

Torin's going to be on board with not killing it! The way he sees it, they can always go back and finish it off if they must, but leaving it alone (albeit covered up or otherwise isolated so it can't cause any more trouble) is something they can't just magically go back and do.

[espigeonage]

Noted, cool!

It's sessile, and killing the big one would be pretty easy, but mushrooms are just the tips of huge strand-y fungus things. It probably wouldn't be possible to kill the whole thing without basically clearing the island of life, and this seems pretty harmless with precautions. Jules has gone and wikipedia'd fungi for a while in preparation. |D

[radiantchicken]

And Torin doesn't know much about mushrooms beyond that he doesn't really like eating them much, so he will defer to Juilen's research! 8D

[espigeonage]

There's a mushroom infestation in the manga, one of the birds takes a bite and instantly starts tripping balls... sadly, Yuuya wasn't there for it.

You think a log would work?

[radiantchicken]

A log would work, sure!

[brotimaeus]

Walking in late with Starbucks but I would like to be involved in this!

Are we operating under the assumption that everyone knows that the mushroom is dangerous :|a I may have missed that somewhere.

Also kudos RE GWATG I love that book ;;;;;;

[espigeonage]

Not a problem!

'Everyone' might be stretching it, but every echo zone has its own little symbol on the teleporter and they seem to correspond to the Animal under it - Locke has a snake, Vegas has a crab, Neuschwanstein has a two-headed swan, and Christmas Island has a mushroom. Mushrooms appearing also coincided with people trying to get rid of human-made stuff, plus after some days of scouting Julien found the big one. He's working on the assumption that there's another giant monster underground and poking at the big one could disturb it.

ahaha, it was so good. So suspenseful! Also, fucked up. But good.

[brotimaeus]

Oooh okay neat.

My guy here obvs has the whole human respiratory system working for him but he's good for security detail and Getting Shit Done if things go ass up.

[espigeonage]

Cool! Julien wants everyone who's coming to wear face masks or something similar to try and filter out spores, but masks can slip, if you want!

Jules is gonna look very silly himself with one.

[brotimaeus]

A bird in a face mask oh goodness.

[espigeonage]

Dignity!

Think I should get up a log? This is pretty close to the day it happens, but I don't think anything super exciting will happen. Julien's probably going to get it covered so the spores stop going everywhere. It can get uncovered for the aliens.