1980. Skyrocketing coffee prices induce East Germany to send engineers and help the Vietnamese establish first rate coffee plantations. In exchange the GDR will receive half of Vietnam’s coffee harvest for the next twenty years.
Coffee is to Teutons like tea is to the English. Its absence is apocalyptic. It’ll take years for the Vietnamese coffee operation to bear fruit. The way things are going, there won’t be an East Germany by then.
AGRIMANCERS
Stasi transvestite Krämer runs the Hexenkartothek program. They use their Mystic Herm powers to detect and identify wizards across East Germany. They conscript five Agrimancers into the GDR’s adventure in Vietnam:
- Aline Schechter, Holocaust survivor, 45 year old potato farmer, dedicated communist. Wishes the Soviets had killed more Germans.
- Arnold Lindwurm, 19, unemployed since finishing conscription. Malcontent with a knack for evading surveillance. Raises chickens illegally in his apartment.
- Kasper Pfennig, Volkssturm child soldier, raised in a Free German Youth camp after the war. 50 years old, loves working outdoors and with kids.
- Melissa Preisner, apolitical hog farmer from a collective farm outside Berlin. 25 years old, likes animals and heavy physical labor.
- Sandro Griebel, Russian war bastard fathered during the rape of Berlin. 35 years old, works in a slaughterhouse, raises sheep on his one acre “personal housekeeping” plot.
Their mission: accelerate coffee production in Vietnam by any means necessary.
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CENTRAL HIGHLANDS
After a grueling multi-day trip, the Agrimancers are ferried to a plantation aboard a Russian made Mi-4. The plantation is an old French manor at the base of a mountain range, down whose slopes cascades a water fall. The foothills around the manor are barren, patchy with old craters. Prefab structures and dirt roads indicate resurgent industrial activity.
The chopper lands on the old tennis court, lifting off the second the Agrimancers disembark. Their handler Phan Hoàng Phát greets them in perfect German and explains the situation: The engineers left two days ago. The pedantic Germans stuck to the script, building a modern mechanized coffee milling operation but not bothering to demine or decontaminate the fields.
PLANTATION
The old manor is a handsome French building with porches and balconies. The rooms have been converted to offices and dormitories for plantation workers. The outbuildings are now factory floors for processing coffee beans. The site is powered by generators, pending eventual electrification of the region.
The old warehouse is in-use as an elephant paddock. The tractors won’t arrive for months, the elephants have proven their worth hauling things.
The Agrimancers are quartered in an old guest room. The furniture is in bad shape except for a writing desk whose varnish survived eighty years of neglect. In a drawer is the waterlogged journal of the plantation owner, written in French. It recounts an old Montagnard story about the Kings of Fire and Water, sorcerers who controlled the seasons.
At the bottom of the hill is a dock on the river, to transport the beans once the farm gets running. On day two a cargo boat delivers the Agrimancers’ animals, shipped from East Germany.
- Aline gets Elli, her milk cow
- Arnold gets eleven hens: Ulrike, Odetta, Carline, Fanny, Viviane, Angela, Jennifer, Kristina, Natalie, Helga and Gabi.
- Kasper gets Harry, his oldest horse
- Melissa gets the hand raised hog Ian.
- Sandro gets the lame ewe Laura.
FIELDS
A blasted heath of dead trees and scabby bamboo growths. Agronomist Trang explains the problem: During the war the Americans saturated the area with defoliants and cluster bombs.
Agent Orange is a poison that kills plant life but is also toxic to humans. Exposure causes long term health problems, natal exposure causes massive birth defects. Dioxins can remain in soil for decades. No coffee will grow in the field. Any coffee that did grow would be filled with poison.
Cluster Bombs scatter bomblets over a wide area. Unexploded bomblets act like landmines in soft ground, exploding when disturbed. The bomblets scattered in the field are the BLU-26 type, ridged metal spheres the size of tennis balls.
COFFEE GROWERS
The coffee growers are Kinh, the Vietnamese majority ethnicity. None are local to the region.
Translator Phan Hoàng Phát. Ministry of Public Security agent, learned German from Stasi advisors during the American war. His friendly demeanor and probing questions make him a bit too obvious a plant.
Among the agricultural laborers under Vinh,
- Hùng, former PAVN machine gunner. Enjoyed the war, would be in Cambodia chasing the Khmer Rouge if he still had his left hand.
- My, bitter drunkard, lost her husband to a 500 pound bomb. What's the point of the revolution if she has to grow coffee for rich foreigners?
- Bình, sniper. Patient, long suffering, excellent vision but bad hearing. Hunts wild game with a battered SKS.
Agronomist Trang, Former Vietcong sapper, body covered in teardrop scars from crawling through barbed wire. Thinks Germans are cowards but respects their technical knowledge.
Nguyễn, chief mahout. Easygoing and lazy, knows he’ll eventually be replaced by machines but is indispensable for the moment. Has no reason to work hard or risk the lives of his animals.
Among the dozen elephants in the herd,
- Chuối the Matriarch. Spent most of her life hauling artillery shells on the Ho Chi Minh trail. Doesn’t startle easily, instinctively avoids explosives.
- Chai, Chuối’s oldest daughter. Keeps the other elephants in line. A good natured beast, gives ample warning before stomping threats to death.
- Cam the calf, curious and trusting. Has a knack for finding lost items, or stealing them and forcing humans to chase him into exciting situations.
Ritually killing elephants grants Agrimancy Sig charges, like human sacrifice of non-family members.
KING OF FIRE
The French treated the hill people of the Highlands as vermin to be exterminated so coffee could be cultivated on their land. The newly unified Socialist Republic of Vietnam is finishing what they started.
The King of Fire is the last of his tribe, sole heir to their magickal tradition after Vietcong death squads and American bombers killed everyone else. He lost the last King’s legendary sword but still has the Water King’s green whip, a supple treebranch that makes the land bloom wherever it strikes. His M1 Carbine is only effective at close range. He’s maybe fifteen, he isn’t sure.
The King is a Pyromancer. He sneaks down from the hills at night and burns things for charges. Objects, then buildings. Incinerating a stolen technical manual teaches him German. He wants everyone to leave but he doesn’t know how. If he burns everyone the army will garrison the area. If he leaves them alone the plantation will be there forever.
The Agrimancers can track the King with magick. The elephants know his scent. Catching him is an uphill hike through terrain infested with centipedes, vipers and the occasional tiger, which could provoke a freakout and taboo an Agrimancer.
CLEANUP
Conventional demining takes months of dangerous and painstaking work by the plantation laborers. Speeding up the process is a no-go unless the Agrimancers have leverage over Vinh. Agrimancy servitors can search the field and remove the bomblets safely. Elephants can detect explosives by scent.
Agent Orange is trickier. Removing and replacing topsoil takes more time and resources than currently available. Agrimancy fertility spells help. So would the King of Water’s whip. The King’s fire spells could superheat the soil and denature the poison, but it would be hard to convince him.
The mahout Kiên can be converted to Agrimancy if he ritually slaughters an elephant. This requires serious coercion but ensures a bountiful harvest because he can stay behind and teach others.
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