W͜͏̶Ę͏E͝͠K͝͞ ̧1̵͟

[strangerpeople]

W͜͏̶Ę͏E͝͠K͝͞ ̧1̵͟

[The national council just announced the blight to the country.

There was no sugarcoating it anymore. This was a critical time. Saving all of the vines is paramount, but what does one do when the blight hits? It keeps encroaching on the grapes, day by day. Entire clusters, entire bunches, dead and rotting, while allowing the blight to spread, and the leading botanists and viticulturists cannot identify the origin or the cause. They can't even successfully isolate the culprit in their labs; it seems to disappear like air no matter the precautions taken.

It is a catastrophe that seems to be beyond science, and it will result in the complete collapse of the entire country's wine industry. Already, embargoes on this year's crop have forced other grape-growers to close shop for the year after they'd sold their previous stock; it is all too possible that no grapes might ever be grown here again if a cure cannot be found. The tourists have stopped coming. The towns have grown silent.

You, meanwhile, are devastated. With the way your business is going, it will be on the brink of bankruptcy within the year. You will soon have no choice but to close shop and let every grapevine die, let the land go fallow. There must be a cure for this, there must be. Yet everything that can go wrong is.

Then, as you watch the news, it happens. Breaking news. The blight has been found in another country.

It is a pandemic-and it is only getting worse.


-

Well. This is...what else can can anyone say? You all know the deal. You all know what situation you're in. All that is left is to figure out what you can do about it. If there's anything that can be done.

You still feel that compulsion to distrust. To know you cannot win. To know that only the hosts have your best interests in mind. It would be easy to just do all that. But would it be the right thing to do? You can't be completely sure. Indeed, nothing is certain here, except for that damned ticking sound. If only you could stop it.

But you can't stop it. It is inevitable.


There are 15 strangers in this place.]

Comments

[katzenpfote]

... No, I think it actually does. It's... complicated, yes, but if you saw... whatever you did...

Bits of universes are being consumed by... something. Ripping holes in the fabric of space and time. Worlds are fracturing, and the Empress is looking for solutions in other worlds. We managed to get her to calm down somewhat and work with us rather than brainwash us to be... happy...

[Well doesn't that sound familiar?]

... In any case, some of us have been sent out to find what is causing this. It's also apparently affecting that world's realm of the dead, and the ruler is incredibly unhappy with that.

[incendiarize]

I remember something about the "Darkness Between the Clusters", couldn't tell you what that is though. But....holes in space and time - there were like three different futures in the world our game was in. And there was a thingy that could do time travel and stuff. It....seemed pretty controlled, though?

[katzenpfote]

... What kind of time travel?

[incendiarize]

How many kinds are there? Eric's from the Old World, and he said the mansion - twelfth century, for whoever that means anything to - was in like, eight hundred years before his time? So I got dragged across at least 1800 years and an unknown number of universes.

[katzenpfote]

Most of the technology I have encountered both here and on the train has been much more advanced than my own, but I think I am from a very different kind of world.

[incendiarize]

I have no idea what BREW actually was, and I kinda get the feeling the bloodsucker and the evil chainsaw dude didn't entirely know either, but Excalibur might've.

[katzenpfote]

I do not understand anything you just said.

Other than maybe bloodsucker. A vampire?

[incendiarize]

Maybe? He really liked bats, but I think his name was Mosquito. He sucked either way. [Wordplay! He does rub a little at his chest. He still isn't sure if that was a dream.]

[katzenpfote]

... Did he hurt you?

[incendiarize]

I don't know if it was a dream or real. They were actively trying to drive us all insane, so....could've been either.

[katzenpfote]

... I see. If it is not too painful to remember... can you explain to me how they were doing that?

[His tone is significantly gentler than it has been before.]

[incendiarize]

A lot of ways. The main one was they had some kind of....creepy freak, a god of fear, crawling around the walls causing all kinds of hallucinations. The killing game. There were spiders and bats everywhere, and there were punishments if we harmed them. The "game room" was full of torture devices. And there was no food - no real food, the Stewards provided something to eat every week, but only once a week.....at the trials. But they didn't let us know what it was until-- we found out the worst way possible. [He looks a little sick remembering. Not so much so that he couldn't explain, but....well. There's a reason he's so thin, and has no trouble eating the sandy food.]

[katzenpfote]

[He's silent through all of this, though his hands are clenched into fists. How could someone do that to a child? Who let a child into one of these places, anyway? He wants to ask what the food was, but the child seems distressed enough, and Caleb stands up and walks over to Arthur, crouching so he's on the boy's level.]

You should not have had to deal with all of that. You're very brave.

What do you mean by a god of fear causing hallucinations?

[incendiarize]

[He could go into more detail. How the sky was blocked out, and it was too hot, and the bedrooms too small and he doesn't like small spaces, and they were all at one another's throats the whole time...]

I'm okay. [He can manage. Even if he wasn't seeing the mansion anymore for the entire final week.]

I don't really know what he was. He claimed he just...was fear. He was like....grey, and basically a skeleton with skin, and he had three eyes that were on wrong - like the corners were up and down instead of side to side. And he had a thingy in his throat that could fire lasers. And all he had to do was exist in the house, and we'd see and hear things that weren't there.

[katzenpfote]

[No. No. He can't think of anything, but right now he can barely think at all. 'See and hear things that weren't there'.]

[It's not the same, but the fear twists in him anyway.]

... Did it make you think people were saying or doing things that weren't what they were really saying or doing?

[It's pointless, pursing this line of questions, but now that the possibility is there he has to know. He needs to know what he's dealing with.]

[... And part of him wants to feel like he's not alone.]

[incendiarize]

I didn't really get any of that, mine was mostly location-based hallucinations, but I think Eric had some trouble like that? And I know Franciscus saw a different person doing something, instead of the person who was actually doing it.... A lot of it made us more aggressive, too. We were all fighting pretty much the whole time.

[Arthur is probably lucky he only saw places that weren't where he was, at his worst. That at his worst he was a manic godslayer. ....But then, maybe that's balanced by how many times he's died.]

[katzenpfote]

[He just puts his head in his hands for a moment, rubbing the area around his eyes. He lets out a few deep breaths and then looks up, his voice very small.]

The name 'Trent Ikithon' never came up there, did it?

[incendiarize]

Not that I heard. You could ask Ambrosine or Osomatsu. Maybe they got that...the Stewards served a lady, though, her name's Arachne. Except she's dead, but not totally dead, because she's spiders.

[Arachne's the big name, so...if someone else is going to recognize any of the names, that'll be the one.]

[katzenpfote]

Wonderful. More people capable of doing that sort of thing.

... If you need extra food, you can take some of mine.

[incendiarize]

I can't speak for the rest of us, but I have a promise to keep - but after that, I'd be glad to help stop anyone else pulling that kind of crap. [Need an alchemist in the party????

At that offer he looks up with wide, hungry eyes. He doesn't want to make anyone else go hungry, not knowing what it's like to starve for a month, but also.....food. Immediately he's interested.] I-- can I?

[katzenpfote]

[They could use another one, sure.]

Of course. I... know what it is like to go without food. I had to steal or scam for many years. You should not have to go without.

[incendiarize]

[Growing up in the Library, he's had it good. Way better than most. They've pretty much never known serious shortage or famine. But he remembers before he and Simon managed to get out of what was left of Gotham - somewhat blurrily, certainly, but he remembers hunger.]

Thank you...

[katzenpfote]

You're welcome. There's too much sad about this situation. It would be nice to help fix the problems rather than solve them, ja?

[incendiarize]

Yeah. [There's still that nagging voice to not trust, don't believe, don't accept, but it's completely overridden by survival instincts. Food is food.] This place is already loads better than the mansion... Might as well enjoy that while it lasts, right?

[necroyalty]

...if you must know, I'm almost certain they wanted us to devour the souls they'd damned to oblivion in that place.

[ Absolutely disgusting. ]