A few days later, a representative from the Supreme Council arrives at the palace. Bryzax greets the messenger at the palace’s gate, and then relays the message to Enno.
“The Supreme Council comes bearing news, milord” Bryzax tells his liege lord.
“Send the messenger in”
The Supreme Council’s messenger is then brought before Enno in the palace’s great room. He has news for him:
“Milord, the peace treaty has been ratified with these otherworldly factions, and it has come to our attention that your dominion has a haunted park under construction” the messenger tells him.
“What does the peace treaty mean for our haunted park?” a puzzled Enno asks the messenger in front of him.
“Unfortunately, this is going to mean that any haunted park under construction must be demolished! Heck, haunted parks are now banned as a result of this treaty’s provisions!”
“And what happens with the money we spent building the park?” a distraught Enno wonders what will happen with the haunted park being demolished, while so close to completion.
“The Haunted Park Construction Guild is ordered to repay in full all costs incurred in the construction of the park!”
And angelic beacons are outlawed as well, but this is not relevant to him right now, the messenger tells himself before leaving the palace.
“You know what this means?” Enno starts crying. “I worked so hard to get the haunted park built, it was almost ready to open! And now the Supreme Council outlawed haunted parks! I guess having the construction costs repaid is better than nothing…”
“Speaking of which, you levied special taxes to pay for the park!”
“And then we need to cancel the special taxes levied specifically to get the park built, except for the taxes on banking services and torture instruments! And same goes of tariffs, too!” Enno tells Bryzax, still reeling in from the news of the interdiction of haunted parks.
“Oh boy, repairs of high-end gear, magical alcohol, funeral goods and services”
Speaking of high-end gear, we can keep the gear. We sent it for repairs, and it should be repaired and dyed in a few more days, Enno muses, while he’s wondering what he could do.
“We have no choice but to comply with the Supreme Council’s new regulations! And execute the park’s ghosts!”
“Remember when you threatened the first boss with throwing them into a cauldron of holy water, in public?”
“The Supreme Council forced our hands! We’re going to need a cauldron of holy water, and Concetta to be on hand to start boiling it. Then bring in all the ghosts from the park that can be taken out of it…”
“Where are we going to get holy water?” Bryzax asks him.
“Surely there’s some priest who might not have liked the life or responsibility of a rental healer, nor that of providing religious services, but might make holy water for money, and we’re going to need two such priests: one for the ghosts that can be taken out of the park, and another one for those that can’t”
“If I may, milord, two priests are going to be a bit much. It might be better to use one priest for hire and make holy water, and then have Moratorium Day celebrated at the quarry!” the code name for the park’s demolition is given.
“Moratorium Day?” Enno gasps.
“A fortnight from now” Bryzax tells him about the timing of Moratorium Day.
“I believe we might also want to auction off select pieces of items from this park. Weapons, armor and, of course the pushtigbans’ mounts! Hence Concetta’s presence”
I guess, this haunted park I worked so hard to get built is never going to happen, through no fault of my own. The best I could do is to use some of the money spent for the park on stuff like, say, a brokerage and the warehousing this requires, Enno starts wondering how he should adjust his policy in a world without haunted parks. This seems too sudden to him. Should I then ferry food, or just magical ice wine?
He then goes to the kitchen to make another request to Concetta.
“A fortnight from now, Moratorium Day will come, and attendees will be thirsty for magical ice wine. For that duration, you will not cook anything for me, and you will instead focus on making as many barrels of magical ice wine as possible for the next twelve days!”
“Who will replace me as cook?” Concetta asks her lord.
“It depends. But since the Supreme Council outlawed haunted parks, and I don’t want to face the backlash of running an illegal haunted park, Moratorium Day is about celebrating the demolition of the park. A dossier that polarized public opinion in the dominion for so long. And I believe also that all ghosts in the park should be thrown into a cauldron of boiling holy water, or, in the case of the electricity-stealing dragon, its locus”
This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it
“Who would want to see ghosts being thrown into a giant cauldron of boiling holy water?”
“The plan for the day is as follows: the ghosts being thrown into a giant cauldron of boiling holy water, airlifted from the palace to the quarry, and placed at the bottom of the crane assembly, then auctioning off the items from the park. And you might even have enough to buy some property in which to operate your own magical ice winery!” Enno tells her alcohol witch.
Concetta then goes to work conjuring magical ice wine. However, she needed barrels to store it, and there aren’t enough empty barrels left in the palace. And so she needs to sell some magical wine to buy barrels.
Unbeknownst to Enno, the demolition work for the haunted park requires the use of holy water. With their own suppliers they could find among the priests in the countryside. I guess, the population can live with the park’s demolition taking a little longer than expected, but I hope that the ghosts are ready for one last public appearance a fortnight from now...
On the day before Moratorium Day, a hung-over Concetta meets with her lord in the palace’s courtyard while her barrels of magical ice wine are loaded on a two-horse wagon. Especially when the wagon could carry many more times than his carpet could.
“Because it’s not practical for us to airlift the magical ice wine tomorrow, I had a wagon full of the magical wine depart now for the haunted park. You may sell any leftover magical ice wine however you wish” Enno gives his instructions for Concetta for the next day.
“And yet there are several dozens of magical ice wine that I made over the past thirteen days that I had yet to get to market!”
I wonder how many people will attend Moratorium Day at the quarry, and, from there, how many 55-gallon barrels they will drink. But a gallon is usually good for 30 glasses. One barrel is going to be good for a few hundred attendees, and my liege loaded a full wagon of these… Concetta seems to feel like there’s just too much magical wine to go around.
Speaking of which, by nightfall, the magical wine is stored at Mijanou’s inn for the festivities of Moratorium Day the following day.
----------------------------------------
The following day, several wealthy people arrive on site, lured by the collection items that are going to be auctioned. And, of course, the magical wards no longer being in place.
Shortly before the events of the day begin, Saronium comes to her lord to reveal something to him, after the two guns and the xyston are safely stored:
“It might no longer be relevant to you, but I forgot to tell you something essential about a key function of magical wards put in place at haunted parks” Saronium confesses to him.
“What is it?” Enno asks her, troubled as the ghosts are rounded up, stripped of their gear and dismounted.
“Magical wards also allow for parks to be instanced, that is, several parties can run a park simultaneously. And it also allows ghosts to be in multiple places at once, within the confines of the park”
“And I didn’t realize it was the wards allowing for that! Why didn’t you tell me at the Caladon Bog?”
“I only learned about the role of the wards in the instancing process after this beta test run of this park!”
“I forgive you. Now, if you could please excuse me…”
The crowd attending the Moratorium Day festivities is at the upper levels of the quarry, with the ghosts lined up near the edge of the crane’s scaffold. And Enno is near them:
“It pains me to announce this, but the demolition of the haunted park was ordered by the Supreme Council. I wished things could have happened differently, but we have no choice but to throw the ghosts into boiling holy water! The good news is that taxes and tariffs on funerary goods and services, repairs of high-end gear and magical alcohol are repealed!” Enno turns to the executioner facing the ungeared ex-anusiya wearing loincloths. “Throw the ghosts into the holy water!”
“Milord, only one ghost may be thrown into the cauldron at a time! The cauldron is not big enough for more than one ghost!”
As a local fire wizard lights the fire underneath the holy water cauldron, the executioner pushes the kamandaran into it. And once the ghost hits the heating water, it starts screaming as its body dissolves in it. And creates a smoke cloud as the locus of the electricity-stealing dragon is unearthed.
But between the time they watch the first anusiya, who is no longer manning the quarry’s crane, get dissolved in holy water and the retrieval of the third boss’ locus, all three anusiyas are already poofed out of existence. Suffering a humiliating (by ghost standards) destruction, screaming as they get dissolved in boiling holy water.
How unworthy of then... These anusiyas died defending the upper city. In death, they were made to operate a treadmill crane as if they were serfs! Ermahgerd ponders about these ghosts’ afterlife as he regarded them as valiant warriors in life, just without the allure and status of pushtigban or gyan-avspar, the latter of whom non-Perserians knew under the name Sable Order, or even grivpanvar or savaran. He gets his gear stripped away, and even clothing, too. Like the other four ghosts about to be thrown into the cauldron.
The electricity-stealing dragon’s locus is then thrown into the cauldron. But the public gasps upon seeing the liches bearing the weight of the magic they used in life.
Seloniel was seemingly covered from head to toe in burns of varying degrees, while Janick had yellow skin with star angiomas everywhere. And yellow eyes too...
“What exactly is this?” one of the attendees, not having attended any haunted park with personified ghosts, gasps upon seeing the ghosts showing sicknesses. “I never saw a haunted park ghost naked!”
“Yeah, I never saw ghosts that sick!” another attendee, here to buy some auction lots belonging to the park’s ghosts, realizes before Tissaphernes gets thrown into the cauldron.
Much to the horror of the attendees, the sadistic Tissaphernes, for whom racks and pinions were his mainstays as a torturer, screams as his phantom, bare body dissolves in boiling holy water. And the cycle continues with Ermahgerd and then Marzban.
“I guess, this is how the age of haunted parks is going to end: with boiling holy water!” Marzban’s last words echo throughout the quarry as he is thrown, naked, into the cauldron.
And while the three pushtigbans are being dissolved to their destruction in holy water, the lich ghosts are about to suffer the same fate, even when their gear is ready to be auctioned off.
“My makers refunded you… may this world be a better place without haunted parks, nor angelic beacons!” Janick’s voice echoes across the quarry.
“I didn’t record that line! Yet she sounds more or less like a drunken version of myself!” a bewildered Concetta asks for herself.
“Angelic beacons? What is that ghost on about, milord?” yet another attendee asks Enno at point-blank.
“The Supreme Council has outlawed both haunted parks and angelic beacons!” Saronium explains herself. “It seems that, so long as angelic beacons existed, their wearers were controlled by people on another world! So no longer will our world be subjected to the whims of another!”
It turns out that what the residents of the world call ratifying a treaty with that other world actually results, to the eyes of the players’ world, in the closure of MAA.