15strangers | (no subject)

W̡͜E̶EK ̵̕2̕͠

[The blight would not stop.

The world's leading experts have been trying to find a cure, to no avail. Th blight keeps changing, keeps foiling all attempts at being fully understood. It's almost sentient, or at least more sentient than any disease that's been encountered before. People fear the disease jumping from what's left of the grapes into other plants, into animals, or even humans.

You can only watch as entire economies and ecosystems collapse. You can only bury your head in your hands as your own business comes to its end. The destruction of the clusters of grapes has not simply destroyed the wine industry, either-other businesses are being destroyed by the plague. Food, transport, retail, nothing is untouched.

You look on your own vineyard, its yield almost entirely blackened and dead.

This can't keep going on.

-

A week has passed since everyone's arrival. No one has died, yet. But surely no one is holding their breath to see if they would survive this unscathed. They are veterans of the game, and they must know that whoever it is that is in charge demands their pound of flesh. The question is when it will happen.

It is the second week, after all-and when the second week of the game comes, death is not far behind. Not even when you wake up, feeling something different in your mind as you remember the truths you originally woke up with, deep in your mind. You feel...lighter, somehow, when you realize there is a change.

Even so, there are 15 strangers left in this place.]

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

We cut it from the Yggdrasil Core, so.....it's at least partly tree. And that thing had regeneration powers.

[Arthur may be reckless and have an ego twice his own size, but he knows he wouldn't stand a chance if he had to fight the Core without his guild. He doubts anyone here would stand a chance.]

Partly tree... How interesting. I wonder how many different things called Yggdrasil exist out there.

[Arthur. Arthur, you might have made a terrible mistake. Kurama is looking at the core with fresh fascination.]

[Hm. On the one hand, this seems ominous. On the other this is appealing to his library investigator curiosity?]

D'you mean in general? 'Cause there should be five other Yggdrasil trees other than the one we got this from.

Mm? I more meant multiversally. Chariot and Croix's universe had an Yggdrasil as well but it was more of a magical energy construct, not an actual tree.

[He sounds a little disappointed by that. "Likes: plants"]

Oh. I dunno. Ricky said the Yggdrasil Project that made the trees was named after a tree in some old myth, but that's all I really know.

Curious. Yggdrasil exists in mythology in my world, as well.

That....might not be too weird, actually. The Yggdrasil Project was made in the Old World, and Akira said he's from a city that I only know as Old World ruins, deep in Yggdrasil's roots. And Eric - mansion Eric not the Eric here - seemed like he might've been from the Old World, too.

...Tokyo?

[So Arthur is from a post-apocalyptic future? Not what he expected but interesting.]

Yup. It's hard to believe humans built something that big. Ricky named that section of the Labyrinth 'Lost Shinjuku'. Used to be a huge metropolis, but it's all crystal and trees now.

[Surprise?]