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]

Well he did tell us the rules clearly, and we would have been executed if our information was not good. So we got off lightly.

Some people just stick to rules. It's a bit of a shame, though. We were in and out in under a day...

[unwittingking]

Eh, I guess that's fair, then. Better banishment then death.

[He would've been nicer, but there's also no way he'd ever become a pirate king, so...]

Was pirate life really that fun?

[katzenpfote]

... I prefer being on land, frankly. And there's not really any escape options on a boat.

[unwittingking]

Yeah, that's fair. It probably doesn't help that it needs so much maintenance too, right?

[He hasn't had a boat, but he's pretty sure having them is a lot more complicated than it seems.]

[katzenpfote]

Ja. ... Especially after a wizard chars the deck and fireballs the sails.

[unwittingking]

[He winces.]

Yeah, that's gotta be a pain. Especially when all the ships are made out of wood.

So how long did you keep up the pirate thing? Until the boat was wrecked? Or as soon as you got back to mainland?

[katzenpfote]

After we wrecked that boat we didn't really engage in any other pirate stuff. We've renamed the boat and now our navigator is running it as a merchant shipping vessel to earn money while we're away.

[unwittingking]

Well, good to know it's still doing some good.

[…that makes him think of something, though-]

I wonder the people that weren't taken to The Empress' world are thinking about the chunks of land and bunch of people disappearing.

[The forest animals are probably freaking out about their lost Opener of Ways.]

[katzenpfote]

I don't know. It's... not helping diplomatic tensions, probably.

[unwittingking]

And I'm one hundred percent sure the rest of Babylon Gardens isn't taking the disappearance of part of their community well.

[And that's not even thinking about the government and what they're doing about it...]

[katzenpfote]

Hopefully the Empress can put things back... once we figure out what's causing the wefts.

[unwittingking]

Or that she can get people’s powers back and they can fix that. Didn’t Ris mention having some reality bending powers or something?

[katzenpfote]

It sounded more like reality rending powers to me, actually.

[unwittingking]

That could still mean she could get our homes back where they belong, right? Or am I misunderstanding things here?

[katzenpfote]

Honestly, I have no idea. I think we'd need to ask her...

[unwittingking]

Until then, let’s just hope they figure something out to get things fixed. Agreed?

[katzenpfote]

Ja, agreed.