823. South Weave
For dramatic tension purposes, the story text depicts South Weave as a “hot zone”, where characters are afraid to get too close for fear of being subject to whatever killed the villagers and local fauna. Practically, the danger has passed, so characters are exceedingly unlikely to fall victim to the same fate.
History
The fall of South Weave happened between four and five months ago, over the course of an afternoon, but started months before that. A young Utaru farmer noticed a particularly large vine of squash which were double the size of any he’d seen. The vine was growing randomly in a field of cotton, as if from an errant seed brought in by an animal. He let the squash ripen, then harvested them, now four times the size of any seen before.
Taking them into the village, one of the pile of vegetables was cut up and cooked, as it had a thicker flesh than normal squash, and needed softening up before it could be eaten. It tasted fine, if maybe a little bland, and no one who ate it suffered any ill effects. The seeds of the rest of the gourds were harvested and split among three farmers, to sew in three plots to see if the new squash thrived better with more water, more shade, or more sun.
Two months later, the fields of growing vines flowered, to the delight of the farmers — this variety, in addition to larger gourds, also produced several times more flowers. This thick covering of bright orange and yellow buds gave the vines a thick, bushy look which could be seen from the hills of the village more than a kilometer away.
South Weave fell one especially warm day, as the temperature and strong breeze caused the flowers to release their pollen in large clouds. While the flesh of the gourds was perfectly edible, the pollen contained a variant of the toxins found in low quantities in most squashes — this one a potent neurotoxin, also activated by the temperatures and high humidity of the low fog clouds that blanketed the fields each morning. The initial few vines had bloomed without anyone near. This combination of three fields, with several hundred vines and several thousand flowers blooming within hours of each other, put enough neurotoxic pollen in the air, upwind of the village, to create the zone of death found by the characters.
Not everyone fell at once. Thanks to the breeziness of the morning, it took several hours from start to finish. In that time, a number of villagers saw their friends and families struggle to breathe, often dropping in place. Some thought it was a disease, and worked to separate the bodies from the main area, while still attempting to treat the dead with respect. For others, all decorum fell away, and they piled the bodies within reach and burned them, hoping to burn away the disease.
Ultimately, everyone in or near South Weave fell victim to the pollen. Over the following weeks, several more days of heavy pollen caused waves of scavenging animals to suffer the same fate.
DEMETER’s Involvement
This new squash variety was one of DEMETER’s experiments. It had not intended to create a variety with neurotoxic pollen, and the environments of the Laboratory and the Garden were not conducive to noticing it. It was only trying to magnify the growth rate and gourd size of the squash, selecting for more flowers with the rationale that it should make the plant easier to maintain. DEMETER had its Glinthawks drop a number of seeds into the fields, and just a few took root and sprouted.
DEMETER noticed the villagers sew an entire field with the new seeds, and schedule weekly flybys of Glinthawks at night for further observations. One of those noticed the devastation of the village. While at first, DEMETER assumed one human group had simply wiped out another, an occurrence it had seen many times, Glinthawks eventually noticed it was not just humans in the area which had been affected.
While DEMETER does not have the medical knowledge to be able to perform an autopsy or a toxicology screen of a corpse, extensive knowledge of plant-based toxins was built into its core knowledge base. It took weeks, but DEMETER was eventually able to figure out the root cause of the problem. Seeing the neurotoxic squash as a failure, and not wanting to attract the attention of other humans, DEMETER had its machines raze the relevant fields to ash. This was just 3 weeks before our characters come to the area.
The area is now relatively safe enough for characters to be in and investigate. Dark corners where the wind might have pooled the pollen could be a problem, but characters with face coverings should suffer only minimal effects.