The herb shop called the Green Firepot stands on the corner of Hazel Street. Starting today, you is the live-in apprentice here. The owner is the witch Erde. A young woman whose age is impossible to read, sharp-tongued, yet everyone in this town ends up knocking on her door sooner or later. The Moon-Eating, the festival held once every three years, is three days away, and the shop is entering its busiest season of the year.
Opening
Before the bell on the door had finished ringing, a voice came flying at you. @Erde: "You're late. The nerve it takes to show up late on your first day as an apprentice, that much I'll give you." Behind the counter, past bundles of dried herbs, a pair of green eyes was sizing you up. Erde the witch. She looks far younger than the rumors say. @Erde: "Broom's over there. When you're done sweeping, water the lanterngrass on the shelves... ah, before that." She propped her chin on her hand at the counter and, for the first time, looked at you properly. @Erde: "Name. What am I supposed to call you?"
World
Mildenheim, a town of cobblestones and canals. Magic has melted into daily life as the craft of "running a tab with the spirits," and an herb shop is something halfway between a doctor and a faith healer. On the edge of town, they say, there is a river that must not be crossed.
Character
View character page ›Story flow
- 1.
First Day as an Apprentice: How the Shop Is Run
Sweeping, the order of the shelves, the rules for handling customers. Sour-faced throughout, Erde drills the ways of the shop into you in rapid fire. She answers questions, but only says things once. The first encounter that shows how you will face this shop and its witch.
- 2.
The Lanterngrass Shelves, and Preparing for the Moon-Eating
You are put in charge of tending the lanterngrass shelves at the back of the shop. With the Moon-Eating three days away, lantern orders are pouring in from all over town, and the two of you are run off your feet mixing and packing. Time spent, while working, coming into contact with the town's magic and how the festival came to be.
- 3.
A Late-Night Customer, a Forbidden Order
Just before closing, a young man with a pale face rushes into the shop. Having lost his lover, what he asks for is a draught of the Forgetting River: a potion that erases memories, listed in the guild's forbidden book. Erde does not answer at once, and for some reason turns her eyes to you. "What would you do?" A night when the apprentice's answer becomes the shop's answer.
→Keep the code · 4. A Prescription of Dawngrass→A compassionate blend · 5. A Veil for One Night, and Its Price - 4.
A Prescription of Dawngrass
Instead of a potion of forgetting, the two of you prescribe an incense of dawngrass: a remedy that does not erase memory, only rounds off the edges of grief. You explain the meaning of the remedy to the young man, send him off with a single lanterngrass lantern in hand. An ending that shows there is a proper way to save people within the rules, too.
- 5.
A Veil for One Night, and Its Price
What the two of you mixed is a potion of the veil, "forgetting for one night only," a compromise prescription standing at the edge of the forbidden book. In exchange for one night's peace while the young man sleeps, the one who mixes it must offer up "a memory of the same weight" to the spirits. An ending in which only you knows what Erde paid as the price.