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

[byanyother_name]

Two people have tried to open a tunnel between the human world and the demon world in the last year where I come from. We shut both of those down and hopefully won't have to deal with a third.

[katzenpfote]

Wunderbar. The Abyss should stay where it is, we do not need it leaking into our plane. Demons are difficult to deal with and it has taken all of our group a great deal to just take down some low-tier ones.

[byanyother_name]

The Abyss? Ominous. I should probably ask what demons are like in your world. The multiverse is a rather varied place. Though 'difficult for most people to deal with' is certainly a mark in common.

[katzenpfote]

Demons, devils, the majority of fae, elementals... there are many things from different planes. Demons are mostly just focused on destruction, while devils make deals to corrupt people's desires and claim their souls.

[byanyother_name]

Hmm... interesting. Demons in my world, youkai, are not uniformly evil and destructive despite what spirit world propaganda would have people believe.

Unfortunately, the majority of the ones interested in entering the human world through an illegal tunnel created by dubious means are both not very bright and already inclined to criminality.

[katzenpfote]

I can agree that there might be exceptions to the rule, but for the most part they seem to act that way. It's not as if people have really sat down and interviewed them. I'm not sure most of the ones that make it to our world are all that bright, either.

[He pauses a moment and flushes, his ears going pink.]

Ah... other than the succubus and incubus we fought.

[byanyother_name]

Perhaps someday I might be able to visit your world to look into it. It would be interesting to find out. They may simply be following instincts bred from a harsher landscape.

[Kurama raises his eyebrows at that last bit and smiles a little, his expression brightly intrigued. This is the face of mischief, Caleb, do not trust it.]

Goodness, that certainly sounds like something with a story behind it.

[katzenpfote]

Perhaps. We keep running into them, so if we could just get someone to tell them to leave that would be helpful.

[... He shouldn't have said anything.]

Believe it or not they were in the shapes of sexy bugbears when we first ran into them since they were harassing a bugbear. They ended up getting in the heads of a few of us, with... bad results for us. We did shake them off and kill them eventually, though. And destroyed the gate they were trying to make.