15strangers | W͜͏̶Ę͏E͝͠K͝͞ ̧1̵͟

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.]

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

I do know them and that isn't them. They have their faces and memories, but they don't act the same at all. The one McBurn picked a fight with is Hiyori and the one with the pointy ears is Link.

Some kind of mental compulsion spell or ability, then... if it's that strong, fighting them likely won't break them out of it.

What are they normally like? Do you know if they have strong mental defenses?

Hiyori is a very normal person from a version of Earth that lacks anything supernatural like Charlotte and Jonathan's world. He hates magic as well, so I doubt he'd have any mental defenses beyond being incredibly stubborn and narrow minded. [Her tone definitely gives the impression she's not fond of him.] Link is from a less ordinary world, but he's not a magic user.

Both I feel would make good allies if the control can be broken.

[He wrinkles his nose at the thought of someone who hates magic.]

I see... ah, curses aren't my specialty... or illusion magic, whichever this is. Did either of them make a strong emotional connection to one of you?

Mine is long range communications through illusions. I considered illusions and asked Link for details about events on the plane. His answers were accurate and also not vague. It's not impossible, but very unlikely. Mind control is far more likely and that would mean if we can break it then we can gain them as allies.

Enchantment, then. Also not my specialty. Pumat Sol would know more about that than I would. My specialty is transmutation, though I have studied evocation.

Such things can usually be broken by attacking the caster, if we can find them. It may not work like the spells I am used to, though.

It may also not work like the versions I'm used to. I don't think our knowledge is useless though because it gives ideas. The versions I'm used to usually don't have someone actively influencing them. What I don't know is if we're dealing with magic, technology, or a drug.

Maybe one of the others have seen a sort of... subsuming of will like this before. We could ask.

I think that would be good. McBurn and Estelle are from my world so they'll know the same things, but Estelle should be able to give a firsthand account of dealing with the victims which could be useful even if there are differences.

[Vita is especially interested in this because she knows some many of the victims went on to improve their lives, so something definitely was done right in the handling of these matters.]

Could you ask the ones from the Mall? I also think the ones from the Mansion may have some interesting insights, but I've only spoken with Arthur so far.

I will see what I can do. They seem to be a very close-knit group, so it should be easy to ask all of them at once.

... They seem to have had an extremely rough time of things...

Truly, I think the Mansion or plane are the worst sounding. The plane had all the snakes, power failing, and it was in the air so people could get motion sickness and there was a very real risk of it crashing. The mansion sounds terrible because of the spiders and cruel hosts.

Ours was terrible, but more from the sense of... dealing with larger monsters and focusing on finding information from our surroundings than fighting with each other.

For the most part. Eliza hated me, though I can't entirely blame her.

Then it sounds like the Base may be the least terrible because other than Marie, we were in a relatively safe place until she gave a motive and someone died. Though it only seemed that way, we found out later that had we not escaped when we did, we would have all died.

Ah... ja, I can understand that. We would likely have been brainwashed if we also did not escape.

Fuck this whole place. This whole series of events. The locations, at least... not the people.

W͜͏̶Ę͏E͝͠K͝͞ ̧1̵͟

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject