>>5853786>>5852883>>5853348Eightfingers and Butcher's Blokes and some of the more practical members of the Association think they can work out a few ways to slow down some of the fleeter rats. Carts and wagons in the slim streets of the city, a quick hit and run in a blind alley, such things. They're still working on it. Gaming it out, wondering, staring down at a crumbled map and moving pieces with concentrated distant looks in their eyes.
And then, Abnegation, pondering, in the kitchen, staring at cold slices of bread and pondering about their friends, fighting the urge to blink, fighting the urge to sleep, fighting the urge to take a bite of the savory meal, finds a thought...
If, as Amicus reports, the Empyreal Emissaries find themselves serving charitable care to the Slicerats could it be that it is not simply because the scurrying lowlives are so habitually kleptomaniac that they must steal free blankets? There has to be some sort of limit to the larceny, even for a rat.
Mothdream, when carefully administered, dulls the need for sleep and the urges of breath and low, constant churn of your digestive tracks. One can look at the delicious remnants from the planning session that litter the communal kitchen and feel nothing at all.
And what if one offered <span class="mu-i">that</span> to all the mingled, mewling throng that flocks to the Flame for warmth and succor? Bread will kill the hunger pangs but Mothdream <span class="mu-i">will kill the Hunger</span>. Even now, in now dosage, with practiced breath and an expanding awareness of the limits of their own physical form and all the possibilities do, Abnegation remains chain to the thought of tomorrow. One needs a meal, yes? One <span class="mu-i">needs</span> to sleep, at some point.
But if hope was lost in a war, or taken by the night, or fortune turned foul in some trade dispute, if all the little slings of world conspired to knock one down from one's perch, then perhaps the hope of never worrying about such things becomes an enticement.
Imagine the . . . <span class="mu-i">Sales pitch</span>. Accept the bread and blankets and bunkbeds of the hard working Theurgic Acolytes and their flame-mad masters, who, it is whispered, did try to burn us all for some divine favor or accept an armband, a knife, a place in the pack and the end to all your hunger, sleepless nights and insistent bodily sensations.
Small wonder Rinik has such a plague of rats at his beck and call. No whispered tales of Rinik or the Slicerats selling Mothdream or kicking up a turf war with the Shimmergrass gangs. They're in in entirely different lines of business.
Because Rinik and the Slice Rats aren't selling Mothdream at all. <span class="mu-i">They're giving it away for free</span>.
[Warmup Phase 2]
>Our contacts are mostly spent>Our plans are mostly in motion>All that remains is final adjustments, checking our kit, marking our masks, preparing for a dance>Every Mask gets 1 general broad-time downtime action. 