EVENT: HOSPITAL EXPEDITION

[asgardmods]

Who: Anyone!
What: Hospital Expedition Time!
When: Day 70
Where: The hospital and surrounding grounds.
Rating: PG-13 for potential scariness

Warning: This log includes reference to and optional effects of psychotropic medication. Those intensely bothered by such things should be cautious or steer clear.



After The Doctors found the hospital, an expedition was organized. Those who signed up in that post or who just want to tag along will be heading out on the morning of Day 70 (April 20, ICly). After a 3mi/5km or so walk, they'll find themselves at what looks like a mostly modern hospital and outbuildings, surrounded as a compound by a tall wire fence. The fence is now full of holes, and it's obvious that the buildings haven't been used in decades. There is very little graffiti or other human-caused damage to the place, but weather, animals, and neglect leave it pretty worn down anyway.

Inside, the buildings are mostly empty of medicines and things. There's some broken-down equipment and a few bits of both modern and herbalist medication here and there but not much. The records room however is pretty much intact, besides the wear on paper from sitting in a non-climate-controlled room for 30 years. The records date from the native's reckoning time of 376-385, and are mostly not very informative, but reading through a bunch will reveal how the greyness progressed as a "disease".

Emotion left first, so through 376 and 377 the records state that people just seem to be mysteriously losing all personality and are somewhat lethargic, just going through the motions for no apparent reason. By 378 people are losing colour, and the hospital turns from a specialty hospital to a quarantine zone. People are brought there the moment they're diagnosed, and while it seems the conditions at the hospital were humane, it was crowded and generally not a happy place.

By 383 the staff have been replaced multiple times as they too get sick, and the conditions at the compound were degenerating by sheer number of patients vs number of healthy staff. It got dirty and the food rations were a bit tight, but it wasn't any sort of horrible place where people died. It was just overcrowded and understaffed, for the most part. There's notes about how any animals or even inanimate objects that come into contact with the sick also lose expression and colour.

The last of the records will be notice that there's no more room in the hospital and no successful treatment or cure, so everyone is going back to the city and shutting it down, by order of the gods. Essentially, the entire city is doomed to go grey, so they'll turn the city walls into the quarantine zone to try to protect the rest of the world.

The one other interesting thing in the records might be that in all of the individual patient records, one file (that seems like it was very thick) is missing. There's also mention in the general notes of "the Queen" being sick -- one of the earlier patients, even. Most record of her has been blacked out, however.

Aside from records, there's only one other interesting to be found during the day. A large room in the old laboratory building seems strangely personal inside, having couches, tables, and stacks of basic board games lying around. If the door to this room is closed, it will automatically lock, and within a few minutes anyone inside will start feeling... funny. Perhaps as an attempted treatment for the emotionless lethargy of the disease, the room is equipped to be air tight, and a dosage of an odourless, colourless, mood-improving gas released. The effect should be no more than a case of the giggles and a sharpening of the characters' sense of colour. The room will unlock after ten minutes or so of the gas being in effect, and the symptoms should wear off in an hour or two.

Beyond that, there isn't much to find besides a general spooky feeling. The attic storage floor of the hospital may contain bats, and there's signs of other animals nesting (rabbits, etc). The creepy atmosphere should make for interesting exploration though -- especially at night. Anyone inside after darkness falls should stay there. There my be the sounds of nearby wolves outside, but running into any is entirely optional and won't happen inside the buildings.

Each Doctor will be leading his own team, so if your characters will strictly be sticking to their team, make sure you note that in your starter or wait for your chosen Doctor to set things up for his team. You're also welcome to have your characters explore free-form with their friends or with strangers, so don't worry too much about structure! Have fun and go wild!

Comments

[seventeenpills]

I'm not sure but I'm not seeing much here. There's a date in the native calendar for each of them though, and despite them getting a little mixed up just now, I seem to be moving forward. Would make sense that they're stored by date, right? Maybe this stuff is from BEFORE anything started.

[He did his best to re-assemble everything.]

We should put these back and check over the other side there. Probably that's stuff from later dates.

[queenoftheforlornheart]

[She nodded.]

Right. There has to be something depicting such a big event as this... Anything at all, even ramblings from the first people who began to notice.

[seventeenpills]

Let's see if you can open some of those cabinets over there. I'm sure they're just as tricky to open as the first one but if you're gentle, we should be alright.

[queenoftheforlornheart]

[She nodded, moving over to said cabinets and this time gauged her own strength to make sure she didn't cause another paper storm. Once the cabinets where coaxed open, she moved aside to let Hisao have a look. After all, she was more of a fighter.]

[seventeenpills]

[Hisao pulled out two stacks of papers and set them down on the table - one for him and one for her.]

Hmm... more routine stuff here. Eye infection. Broken nose. This person sounds like maybe they're depressed or something. Loss of enthusiasm, lack of appetitte...

[He kept reading, going to the next record.]

Loss of enthusiasm for this one too. And a slowly growing apathy and lack of expression...

[He set that one aside, being it was more detailed.]

See what yours are. It sounds like we've hit paydirt, right?

[queenoftheforlornheart]

[Satellizer frowned, seemingly getting a bit more frustrated with her stack until he started talking about his finds. She let out a sigh and put a good deal of them aside.]

Nothing on my end yet, but yes I do think that might be related to the conditions right now all things considered.

All I got was a few common diseases, some viral infections, a few stress related accounts... Only one depression and lack of enthusiasm one, but it seems like it was dismissed.

[seventeenpills]

Yeah those seem to be fairly harmless at first, but finding a few of them like this...

[He went through, finding a slightly thicker one.]

Here we go. Starts out with the same symptoms... lack of energy, general apathy, loss of expression...

[He kept reading.]

...eventually culminating on a total loss of emotion. Personality and definining characteristics dissapear but daily tasks and routines aren't interrupted. Sound like anyone you know?

[queenoftheforlornheart]

[Satella frowned and walked over to look look at the document her expression not changing much.]

What's the date on the document? Maybe we could find others on the same time frame.

[seventeenpills]

Let me see... the years are different here, but I think... Yeah, here we go. Three hundred and seventy seven. That's the year. This patient's name was Agmund. He was brought in by his Wife...

[Hisao's tone dropped. Wow. That was sad. He felt bad for Agmund, of course. But his Wife who was slowly watching her Husband dissapear right before her eyes...? How heartbreaking would that be?]

[queenoftheforlornheart]

Three hundred and seventy seven... [Satella repeated as she moved over all the other files. She took a moment to sift through them before placing the ones that matched the year in front of Hisao.]

These are all i could see from our piles. Hopefully they'll shed more light into the subject.

[Satella didn't seem fazed by the development or the patient. Pandora had seen plenty of horrors already, something as such would have been classified as a 'normal' occurrance.]

[seventeenpills]

Let me see...

[Hisao set his initial record down outside of the piles, wanting to hold onto it in case he needed to reference back. He started reading through the other records at speed, figuring out the layout fairly quickly and deciding where he needed to look to find the most pertinent information.

He was quiet for maybe ten minutes as he shuffled papers, his expression intense.]

....damn.

[queenoftheforlornheart]

[Damn? Damn? That was it? That was worse than saying a lot more Hisao! Satella thought to herself as she got closer, a much more intense look on her features.]

Well? What is it?

[seventeenpills]

Well, in the later half of three seventy seven... there's just a lot more cases of the same thing. You can see the name of the person who brought the patient in for admission. It seems like this sickness or malady or whatever you want to call it was breaking up families all over the place. Mothers taken from kids, kids brought in by parents.... just... damn. I don't know.

[He just found it upsetting. He had feelings, even if he wasn't about to speak to how strong those were in front of the pretty girl he didn't know so well.]

But one thing is for sure - by this time, it wasn't one or two cases. I have at least thirteen here from that year. There might be more. There probably are more.

[queenoftheforlornheart]

[Truthfully, Satella had expected worse from his reaction. But considering they were from vastly different situations, she could see how this would have been very grave to him. Nonetheless it still posed a threat and how it began to spread rapidly.]

It doesn't seem to have a particular target judging from your findings...An all around epidemic maybe? But then how did the environment start to change then?

[seventeenpills]

I don't know. And we may not find the answer to that here in these records - it IS a hospital, not an all purpose kind of laboratory. Let's jump forward a few years and see if we can't find something more.

[For all he knew, this was something different. He had to remember to keep a level head and approach this scientifically - he could almost hear Moutou in his head: "You have a hypothosis, no ability to experiment, but you DO have the works of others to lean on. Make sure to study those thoroughly and then find a way to confirm their findings."]

[queenoftheforlornheart]

Right...

[Satella wasn't a researches, a genius in her own right, but this definitely wasn't her field. For now all she could do was assist.

She went ahead and crossed past one of the doors in the room and came back a few minutes afterwards carrying two file cabinets, then left, and came back with some more.]

I believe that was one of the storage rooms. I don't know if they will have anything of use, but it doesn't hurt to check.

[seventeenpills]

[Wow - she was hefting those things pretty easily - Thor's house power of strength was pretty impressive. He sat there a little wide eyed for a moment before starting to open some drawers.]

Right, let's see, here...

[queenoftheforlornheart]

[Satella simply sat back and let him do his thing. For a few moments she paced until she found herself staring out a window looking thoughtful.]

It must have been horrible... seeing the environment change slowly into a colorless wasteland...

[She was mostly thinking out loud at the moment.]

[seventeenpills]

It would have been pretty tterrible.

[He took a sampling of folders from a few drawers and started to leaf through them, making some distinct piles as he went, his expression kind of bleak. About thirty minutes later...]

It looks as though the cases of Personality loss are related to it, yes. This set of files is from three seventy nine - People who had lost personality also started to lose color. They started to appear grey as well as listless and unresponsive.

[He poked the next set.]

These are from three eighty. The hospital staff are now starting to be admitted with symptoms of the same.

[queenoftheforlornheart]

I wonder if it was contagious, or if the suffering and eventual lethargy simply began to spread...

Which makes me wonder... If the gods wish to have the world recolored through interactions and living a healthy life? I wonder if they tried asking the natives to try the same when the world began to change, or what kind of counter measures they attempted during the spread.

[seventeenpills]

I don't know - these files don't mention anything about the Gods in specific. I mean, vague mentions here and there but nothing concrete.

[He turned his head back down to the pages on the table.]

Hospital staff started to become infected, so, it seems as though it WAS contageous. And quick spreading. It seems like anyone with symptoms was brought here... There are more records for the next year then the previous by far.

[He pointed to the stacks - the later year he had available at this time was much larger then the previous.]

[queenoftheforlornheart]

[Satella narrowed her eyes and looked over the ones Hisao was browsing through.]

This is upsetting... but it brings another question to mind. Are otherworlders immune to these effects? Is that why we were brought here to fight this outbreak?

[seventeenpills]

That's one thing I CAN answer. See, the bracelets we wear have something to do with that - if you take it off and lose it for too long, you become just like one of the natives. You lose your face and emotions and drift around the city on autopilot. A couple of people have mentioned that happening to them. It seems like whatever magic keeps the bracelet working, it makes us immune to the greyness.

[He paused.]

....or at least heavily resistant to it.

[queenoftheforlornheart]

Wait... So people brought in to this world have lost their colors too? But if you say they've been able to re-tell the story... then that means that they've gained their color back correct?

[She looked at him curiously.]

[seventeenpills]

Yeah. From what I understand, friends or other people who knew them were able to clap the bracelet back onto them and that reversed the effects. But that goes to show the importance of never leaving your bracelet anywhere someone could move it or where it might get stolen or lost.