#everfree fever

[rainbeauriot]

Everfree Fever - Log 1

[plushcat42]

Everfree Fever

Stage: 0

Healthy, Pre-Infection

Stage 1: Initial Infection

Host has come into contact with a pony carrying the disease and had been bitten or otherwise gotten infected blood or saliva in an open wound.

The area of contact becomes itchy and irritable. Avoid biting at it to relieve the pain.

This is the only stage in which the pony is curable, albeit by brutal means as the infected area must be cut off to ensure it does not spread. The longer one waits the more of the area that must be taken off.

Bites to the flank, back or throat are fatal no matter what, death is more merciful than the fate they will succumb to if the infection is allowed to continue.

The subject has 3 hours before Stage 2 begins

State 2: Progression

Once they enter stage 2 they’re a lost cause. Death is the most merciful option but the hysteria that sets in seldom makes it easy. Even if a pony has accepted what must be done the infected brain will keep going regardless and instinct has begun to override the conscious mind.

The first signs of the progressing infection are boils forming nearby the site of contamination which spread up the leg and in the later hours, dark spots of necrosis and decay. The eyes begin to sink in and the hoof’s keratin begins to start growing rapidly and sharpening. The pupils noticeable begin to dilate even in high light levels until only a sliver of color remain.

Muscle spasms start within the first hour or two of this stage and get more violent with time and eventually leads to muscle damage, including the ripping of the jaw as it aims to stretch impossibly wide as the body beings to look more lithe and malnourished. A hunger begins setting in around thirst stage, one that cannot be satisfying no matter how much or what they try to eat. Sometimes results in choking due to impulsive attempts at eating with a broken jaw

The bones begin to reshape beneath the skin

Stage 3: Vivusmortuus

The final stage, the hope that they can be saved is lost at this point. The site of infection has rotted away almost completely and spread up as have the boils. The hooves have morphed into overgrown claws and the legs elongated and can bend in unnatural ways allowing for the infected to squeeze through small spaces that they otherwise wouldn’t fit through. It is highly recommended that all ways to the outside of a safehouse be secured top to bottom. Despite their frail appearance they are dangerously strong. The pain receptors that once kept them from pushing their muscles too far no longer fire.

It is just a husk of hunger that will go through any means necessary to satisfy the empty pit that never seems to fill. If the mind of the pony the husk once was is in there. All control over their body is gone.

It is still fully capable of speech and uses it to lure out prey from their safe havens. There’s tells as it speaks with slightly off inflections of the voice. There’s little to put words to explain what about the way they speak is slightly unnerving.

Avoid at all costs.

If you have an opportunity to kill it. Do it. It is a mercy, even if a cure is possible they’re body could not survive it.

[plushcat42]

EVERFREE FEVER

Character log: Stormy Weather

The first to discover the long lost disease. She was sent to ponyville under the order of Queen Callisto to try and dig up the lost history of The Everfree Forest and why it formed. While she did find the answers the Queen wanted, it came at a cost.

She and the bodyguard she was accompanied by found somepony or.. some thing and it wasn’t friendly. The decades old body of patient 0 which still lived and moved. It attacked them and bit Steele on the leg. Unknowingly, Stormy allowed the infection to spread beyond saving to her bodyguard and friend and had her wing bitten by Steele’s body. However, she successfully escaped him and the Everfree.

They had been gone for a few days at this point and her friends in Ponyville got worried and were looking for her.

Skyfeather(a friend’s oc) was the first to find her. Stormy was in a state of hysteria and inconsolable absolutely insistent Sky cut her wing off. She was on the 2 hour mark of the first stage. By pure luck she was able to calm down enough to explain vaguely that if Skyfeather didn’t cut the wing off, she’d need to be killed or she would become a danger to ponies.

Everfree Fever has a weakness towards certain types of magic.

They learned that quickly as it burned the stump of her wing when another, her cousin Lily Ink tried to heal up the injury.

Unfortunately, Steele’s body had found a way out of the Everfree too and the infection spread. Rapidly.

Day in day out, Stormy tries desperately to find a cure. To undo the mistake she unknowingly made. It wasn’t her fault, she couldn’t have known but she blames herself regardless.

Any food she finds is given to the group that survive with her. She eats last and refuses otherwise. She doesn’t sleep either, her cousin and Skyfeather have to fight with her to take care of herself.

Skyfeather belongs to @nash-artz-my-gays

[plushcat42]

I was pulled down the pipeline and now I’m beginning work on my own infection AU

A tiny crumb for the infection information stuff

Ignore that I forgot his cutie mark

Name: Steele Swordsmith

Race: Earth Pony

A member of the Royal guard, he accompanied Stormy Weather to Ponyville to make sure she was taken care of during her research on the Everfree Forest’s origin at the behest of Queen Callisto

[plushcat42]

EVERFREE FEVER

Character Log: Skyfeather

[@nash-artz-my-gays]

Skyfeather is the foalhood friend of Stormy’s. Born a Unicorn they knew nothing but the freedom of innocents. Dreamed big and looked brightly towards the future.

Like many ponies, Sky didn’t really get many details on what happened to Stormy’s patients nor why she was being sent back to Canterlot to live with her grandparents and the rest of the Starlet family and he never got an explanation.

Skyfeather became an alicorn via an accident with black magic that ended up killing his adoptive mother and later his adoptive father would move away. Possibly for the best knowing what happens to ponyville.

Ridiculed by the general populous. Skyfeather just wants a quiet life and worked as a librarian and occasionally helped the baker, Sweet Pea out. One of the few townsfolk that treat him well.

This is where he reunited with Stormy. Despite a rocky reunion they got along well after awhile and next to Lily. Sky was the first pony to see Stormy after she escaped the Everfree and was the one to cut off her wing, soothing her.

When Steele erupted from the forest after Stormy, Skyfeather put a barrier up around Ponyville while the three figured out what to do. After he forced Stormy to get some actual sleep of course.

Lily was the one to send a letter to Callisto.

They would quickly find out that the barrier was only a temporary solution as one night Sky’s horn burn out in a violent spark of light. Steele had broken the barrier.

It lasted for a month. The screams were immediate. It was too late to stall the apocalypse.

Skyfeather is Stormy’s anchor. She would be far more unstable if he wasn’t there. He makes sure she sleeps, eats and stays hydrated. This stallion would rather die than let something happen to that Pegasus. When they’re not relocating as a group, Sky is nearby Stormy at all times. Where one is, the other isn’t far behind.

Skyfeather is the father of a baby dragon named Gus

[plushcat42]

Everfree Fever

Character Log: Lily Ink

Lily Ink is Stormy’s cousin. They have a.. tumultuous relationship. But that’s purely due to their family, the Starlets, pureblood unicorns. She grew up in Canterlot.

When Stormy was sent out to Ponyville, Lily followed. Ignoring her role at the academy because she didn’t trust a Pegasus and an earth pony to be safe. Without magic what could they do against the horrors of the Everfree?

When Stormy charged out of the forest Lily had never seen the mare so shaken. She was the one to try and heal the open wound of her wing after Skyfeather was the one to cut it off. Which quickly taught them that healing magic responds violently to to the infection which is why Stormy has such a big scar on her shoulder now.

Lily was there when Steele’s body stumbled out of the Everfree before the spell over Ponyville was cast, a faux sense of hope. It only lasted a month before it violently backfired.

Since the infection has started to spread, Lily cut her mane, tail and the long tufts on her hoofed short so they can’t get grabbed or snag on anything. Despite being a spoiled child she was surprisingly serious about it all. She didn’t break down the way everypony thought she would.

Lily uses the magic she learned at the Academy for Gifted Unicorns to keep the group she travels with safe and next to Skyfeather, makes sure Stormy takes care of herself.

The mare is adamant that her or Sky go with the others when they need to scavenge for supplies. This isn’t a Timberwolf or a Chimera. This is serous. While she’s not as bad as her family, Lily still has her beliefs that Unicorns are more fit to survive against such threats due to their magic. She isn’t half wrong either as Healing magic is amazing against the infected but non-magical means of self defense works just as good. Their most valuable skill set is being able to cut off a bitten limb or being able to teleport out of the situation.