~ start 81799b50-adf5-444f-9900-d4c081757a85 if is_quest_accepted Emma: *She looks up from her mortar, hands still working.* [#end] The diner. Northwest, location (10,14). If the grill's hot, be polite. If it isn't, be careful. else Emma: *Emma sits in the shade of her awning, grinding something pale into powder. She nods you toward a stool without stopping her hands.* Three people came off the road this week telling me the same story. I want you to hear it before you decide I've been in the sun too long. Emma: A diner. Lights on, grill going, out where nothing should be standing. They walk in half-dead, and a cook asks what they want. Not what he's got on hand - what they want. And he brings it out exactly right. They eat, they sleep in a booth, they wake up on gravel with no diner in sight. - Three people told you this? Emma: Word for word, near enough. Different roads, different nights. None of them knew each other. *She taps the pestle clean against the bowl's rim.* Truckers told this story before the war. Same stretch of country, even. My grandmother said the road feeds the ones it means to keep. - You believe them? Emma: I believe they ate. You can't fake the look of someone who's had a real meal. I've fed too many people who haven't. What I don't know is who's cooking, and why now, and why only for us. Emma: One of them marked where he woke up. It's south of here. Go and look. If there's a kind soul out there feeding my people, I want to thank them. And if it's something else wearing a kind soul's apron, I want to know that more. Emma: [#quest_info=7c770fe9-e8c7-453a-886f-b9fc5a8cb616] if is_quest_accepted: Emma: [quest: accepted] [#end] Take water. Whatever's out there, don't count on it feeding you too. May your footsteps be light! else: Emma: [quest: declined] [#end] *She returns to the mortar.* Then we'll let the road keep its secrets a while longer. => END ~ start 5bad5108-3b1c-4b1b-a1da-db5dc11a7d98 if is_quest_accepted and are_quest_requirements_met Narrator: *The diner is here. Or it was, once, a long time before anyone woke up on this gravel. Sun-bleached shell, roof sagged in over the kitchen, a pole out front holding a sign too faded to read.* *No lights. No grill smell. By the look of the place, nothing's been cooked here since the war.* Narrator: *But something's been eating.* [#complete_quest] *Inkbloats. A dozen of them, maybe more, dragging themselves between the booths and over the counter, swollen fat and slow. They've stained the floor black in trails.* *Whatever the travelers found here, the bloats found it after.* - They're gorged on something Narrator: [#load_quest=7ea6e34b-6ada-40cc-99a1-743d74da865e] else Narrator: *A ruin like a hundred others. If it has something for you, it's not offering yet.* [#end] => END