#Rustbark

[gymnosporangium]

Full version of PFP + Header, information about the AU under the cut :D

This is just a lil thing for fun, it is serious but it's mostly just screwing around to see what sticks. I've been meaning to mess with an infection AU for a bit now, and MLP in general I used to love this show growing up and as someone who adores horror and silly zombie plots this is exactly up my alley thank you

This blog is mostly based around Rustbark Disease, which is the in-universe nickname for it, or Gymnosporangium juniperi-virginianae/Cedar Apple Rust. I love timber wolves, they're neat, and I haven't seen many people use them for one of these AUs just yet so I looked for some tree diseases and bonk, angry puppy. Also gave me an excuse to draw one with a birch body and weird elk-looking antlers, I love making a bunch of variants for things that do not need them. I'll probably make a post about timber wolf variants later on but for now: horror stuff!!

TWs for typical scaries below the cut, body horror, violence, it's based on a fungus disease so pretty much if The Last of Us freaks you out maybe don't, I suck at TWs I am sorry

(Text is in the image description for all of these! I'm not the best at descriptions so if you have a better one in mind I'd be more than happy to change it, but for now I've only included what I felt was the most necessary.)

And while I do want to include more stages, there are more 100%, I feel as though now is a good time to stop it. Leave some room for speculation... also I don't want to burn out before I even get started lol. I do have St3 mostly drawn but aaagh I don't wanna draw this many of what feels like the same thing to my brain so.... haha.. I'll probably scrap it

It moves a bit slower and is a bit less dramatic than some I've seen, but in my defense I am a nerd who loves doing research and most diseases tend to move kinda slow in most cases. I personally feel like that's scarier, anyways. The slow, drawn-out takeover is great for horror.

The infection is based off of a few different things, color-coded for your convenience. Primarily, the real-life Gymnosporangium juniperi-virginianae, or cedar-apple rust is a big inspiration. The fungus is non-lethal to the plant and mostly affects the appearance, so, with it mainly being transmitted by Timber Wolves, I also felt it made sense to base it off of diseases like Rabies and, since I design Timber Wolves with ungulate-like antlers, Chronic Wasting Disease/CWD. In the final stage, the infected collapses and the body begins to rot, but the fungus and spores continue to prosper.

It is inspired by games like The Last of Us and perhaps some Dying Light, but is not by any means a direct copy of anything. I tried to avoid taking inspiration from other AUs because I simply wanted to go wild with my imagination, so from here on out any unintentional similarities are purely coincidence.

All ponies (except for Zecora) shown in this post are nameless ocs for the point of showing off the disease.

All parts of this will be tagged with #Gymnosporangium, #Rustbark, and #Cedar Apple Rust, for the sake of simplicity. Non-canon entries have #Branch as a tag, as a silly little pun about trees and how it branches off from the main series, and designs I've made for the series are, of course, tagged #Design, as well as the character's name. Art that isn't mine is tagged #Not My Art, of course, such as edits or.. I dunno, picrews or something. Each post will have involved characters' names tagged as well. I never fully finished the original series and am in fact not too far in rewatching sadly, but I will strive for diversity as well as I can.

Lowkey a lil nervous but horror is one of my favorite things, infection AUs are sick (hehe) and I want the practice, so, uh, here

[kjwarriors]

Rustbark- red tabby molly with white front toes and amber eyes

[hellborg]

Full body Render Commission of Solanah Rustbark for @keepsmewyrm

Thank you SO much and Again I adore your bosmer! She’s a lovely Lady!

[thereluctantinquisitor]

AHHH I MISSED PROMPTS! How about we give someone in Stonebreaker something they desperately need. 22, nap!

Micro Story Prompt

In which I, once again, fail to deliver a micro story. (1453 words SHAAME).

                                         ---------------------------

“Hey, Delver... can we stop for a bit?”

The heat was unbearable. Oppressive. Smothering. So much so that Delver trudged a few more steps, deep in the trance of just putting one foot in front of the other, before he even realised Sylda had opened her mouth. By the time he lumbered to a halt, the young woman was already veering off the road, her pack half-slung, dangling from her elbow. “What?” He blinked slowly, glancing around the roadside. Red dust. Brown grass. A scattering of rustbark trees. “Right here?”

Divider, he felt like his head was about to split open. Whose bright idea was it to make the sun so damn... well... bright.

“Mhm. Why not?” Sylda, the brat, was already dragging out her spare cloak. Deftly, she shook out any stray pieces of grass before laying it down again beneath the thick branch of one of the rustbarks. The squat tree, its copper leaves drooping like a miser’s purse, cast its shadow at a long, wide angle. They still had a few hours of light left. It made no sense to stop.

Delver opened his mouth to say as much, only to turn and find Sylda already lying on her back, one leg kicked over the other, her foot bobbing, shoeless, in the late afternoon heat. He stared for a beat. And another, bemused. Then, with a defeated sigh, he shook his head and trudged over, boots grinding against road until the sound was replaced by the snapping of brittle grass.

“What, no argument?” Sylda seemed genuinely surprised. He supposed that was fair enough. On a regular day, he would have a number of choice words at the ready, but right now his head hurt enough to turn his empty stomach inside out. So instead, Delver just grunted, dropping to the ground, not even bothering to put anything beneath him. He wrapped himself in his cloak and leaned back against the rustbark’s knotted trunk. As always, it was about as comfortable as lounging on a bed of river rocks, but for some reason it didn’t bother him so much. The shade alone, like a salve against his throbbing skull, was worth the rest of the discomfort.

”Twenty minutes,” he said, and tried hard to keep the relief out of his voice as a gentle breeze trickled around the tree, curling the edges of his cloak. Merciful Divider. He failed to stifle a yawn. “After that, we keep moving.”

“Forty,” Sylda countered. Because of course she did. “I’ll keep watch for the first half while you take a nap. You can do the second. Deal?”

Delver would have sent her a vicious glare - Divider knows she deserved it.

But, lucky for her, his eyes were already shut.

                                                ---------------

Delver awoke, disoriented, to the sound of birds. Groaning, struggling onto one elbow, he nearly yelped like a startled maid when something slid from on top of him and landed with an indignant rustle in the grass.

A cloak?

His cloak.

When had he...?

As his consciousness slowly rejoined reality, Delver glanced around. A few feet away was a pit, lined with stones, the smoke of a freshly quenched fire curling from its charred center. A pot hung above it, filled with water, about a cup short of full.

And, perched atop the already packed coil of her sleeping roll, was Sylda.

How had she managed to boil an entire pot of water in twenty minutes?

“Oh, hey- you’re up.” Turning, alerted by his attractively waking grunts, Sylda threw Delver an innocent smile. It called forth just the right amount of dimples to disarm even the sternest opponent. It was the exact smile she used when she was up to something. “Feeling any better?”

As much as Delver wanted to chastise her, he found himself lacking the willpower. Again. Oddly enough, this time it was because he didn’t feel like a mule had kicked him in the head.

He really was losing his touch.

“I’m fine. I was fine yesterday, too.” Sitting up, wincing from a night spend on dirt and stones, he mustered the effort to cast her a disparaging look. “You didn’t keep watch all night, did you?” He wasn’t sure what would make him angrier. Camping roadside was dangerous at the best of times. One of the biggest benefits to traveling as a pair was having a second set of eyes readily available. If she’d stayed awake, she was an idiot. If she’d dozed off, she was a reckless idiot.

Sylda shrugged, before climbing to her feet and moving towards the pot of water. Well, at least she'd put her boots back on. “It’s alright. I sleep well most nights.” She left out the unspoken unlike you, which was unusually tactful for her. “And before you start snapping at my neck, it was an accident, okay? I got all stuck in my thoughts and forgot to wake you.” She scooped a ladle of water into a cup. The water was probably still pleasantly warm. “You didn’t even snore for once. It was actually peaceful.”

While that was a valiant attempt to distract him, Delver refused to rise to her obviously false bait. He didn’t snore. He had that on good authority. “It doesn’t do either of us any good if you’re exhausted either,” he chided, stiffly accepting the offered cup. “You won’t be able to concentrate on your lessons.”

The water was a sweet, sweet mercy. His throat felt thick and dry with dust. It coated his skin, his hair, darkened the underside of his nails. Divider’s Own, he couldn’t wait to be rid of it. Away from the dust storms, and the burning heat, and the shadeless stretches of sun-cracked road...

He lost himself so thoroughly in the simple act of drinking that he completely missed that Sylda had spoken.

“I said,” she repeated with a roll of her eyes, “that you’ve been in no shape to give me lessons these past few days anyway, so what does it matter if I’m a little tired?”

The urge to argue rose like a flood within him. In fact, Delver spent a good half-minute in stony silence trying to come up with a remotely feasible defense. But, like with most things lately, it just kept slipping through his fingers. He might not be in crippling pain, but he still wasn’t himself. As much as he loathed to admit it... she might have a point.

“Oh!” Clearly immune to his resentful silence, Sylda tugged up her sleeve, her fingers making short work of the leather straps binding the anchor to her wrist. “Here. I took it off you while you were sleeping. Figured I could try practice a bit overnight, but...” She faltered, some of the brightness in her dimming as she turned the ebenite disc over in her hands. Delver waited silently, partly because he still felt a little too raw to speak, partly because he assumed she had more to say. But instead, she just sighed and handed it over, her eyes fixed on the brown grass at her feet. The shame radiated off her so intensely it was almost palpable.

“Drawing from any anchor isn’t easy, Sylda.” The disc felt right, strapped safely to his wrist again. He was surprised he hadn’t noticed its absence the moment he woke. “And drawing from Ebenite? It’s practically impossible at the best of times. If it wasn’t, we wouldn’t be here, doing what we’re doing.”

More importantly, if she truly couldn’t do it, she wouldn’t be here. Alive. Breathing. Mothering him despite being ten years his junior.

“I know, I know.” With a heavy breath, Sylda kicked at the stones near her feet. “I just... I don’t know. I have the anchor, and I have you. I figured I’d be able to do something by now.”

You and me both, Delver thought, but kept it to himself as they lapsed into silence. She self-applied more than enough pressure without him adding to it. He might be a belligerent asshole, but he liked to think he knew when to ease off. “We should pack up,” he said after a time, sensing they both needed a distraction. As Sylda nodded and stood again, his gaze followed her, a slight frown tinging his brow. “You’re... sure you’re not tired?”

His kindhearted concern was met with an entirely unnecessary groan.

“I’m not, Delver. Really - I feel better than fine. It was just one night. I’ve stayed up for longer before, back when I was in Yelen.”

Just one night. Sure, if they were lounging around eating grapes and reading poetry, he might accept that. But they were on the road, traveling all day in the dragging heat of Latesun. It just didn’t add up.

Then again, he had to admit, she really did seem fine. No heavy footsteps. No dark circles beneath her eyes. No sluggish reactions as she went about clearing up their makeshift campsite, bundling utensils, kicking dirt over the fire, re-scattering the stones. She wasn’t even yawning, even though she had been the day before.

Slowly, Delver’s gaze drifted down to the anchor. It was warm against his wrist. As warm as usual? It was hard to tell, with the day’s heat already climbing fast around them. Regardless, he made a mental note to pay closer attention in the future. Something could be happening right beneath their noses. Something subtle enough that they could comfortably blink and miss it.

“So are you planning to watch me do all the work, or...?”

Snorting, Delver waved an acquiescing hand and struggled to his feet, muscles protesting the movement, aching from a night spent curled on the uneven ground. “What, you mean your goodwill only lasted one night?”

He barely caught the ladle as it went spinning towards his head.