Cooling the Harbor's Fever

🎲 Dice

By 夜更かし蜜柑

🌊 Rumors of Shiomizu

"They say that ever since the ship from the mainland put in, the harbor folk have been taking to their beds with fever. The magistrate's office says nothing, but the inn's floors are already full." "If nobody does something before the magistrate closes the harbor, the harbor festival is going to be called off. Ten days, if that." "The girl at Kuzunoha hears those rumors before anyone. Look under your teacup and the gossip comes out before the dumplings do."

The harbor of Shiomizu overflows with people and cargo every time a ship from the mainland puts in. But this morning three dockhands collapsed one after another, and one of them was carried to the inn with a fever that would not break. Dispatched from the guild in the royal capital to its eastern branch, you have been handed the job of finding where this fever comes from. The magistrate's office is quietly at work behind a calm front, counting the ten days until the harbor festival.

If the fever is not contained by the harbor festival ten days from now, the harbor will be closed.
Ships and cargo will stop, and Shiomizu's spring earnings will end right there.

🏮 The Three at the Harbor

Suo Rin / 23, apothecary from the east
Two months after opening a clinic in the royal capital, she has been stranded in Shiomizu on her way home to visit family. Unable to leave the fevered to themselves, she turned a room at the inn into a sickroom. She scolds patients who make light of their symptoms, and then comes by on her own at night to check on them.

Lan Qingyu / 23, Taoist of Canglin Temple
A dragon Sirion who arrived in Shiomizu on the ship from the mainland. Asked to perform a cleansing for the harbor, she walks the port while delivering her readings of the sky and the river to the branch. Gentle, though once the talk turns to clouds and water levels she suddenly has a great deal to say.

Kuzunoha Kon / 20, the face of the teahouse Kuzunoha
A fox Sirion who serves tea and dumplings in front of the branch gate and is also trusted with changing the request tags. Harbor rumors reach her ears before anyone's. She loves playing tricks, but on the days you are truly in trouble, her tail droops.

⛵ How to Play

Three chapters. The day you arrive in Shiomizu is day one, and you move while counting down to the eve of the harbor festival. Each time, you decide who to pair with for canvassing, whose reading to trust, and where to start examining the spreading fever.

Canvassing and investigation are rolled for. Fail, and the sickness spreads quietly, and you have fewer turns to use. Each of the three has her own strengths. Rin diagnoses symptoms, Qingyu reads dampness and the turning of the sky, and Kon brings in the harbor's rumors. What you learn changes depending on who you spend the day with.