After a grueling multi-day trip, four East German farmers peered out the windows of a Soviet made Mi-4 transport helicopter as it descended toward an old coffee plantation in the wilderness of Vietnam's central highlands.
- Arnold Lindwurm, 19, unemployed since finishing conscription. Malcontent with a knack for evading surveillance. Raised chickens illegally in his apartment.
- Kasper Pfennig, Volkssturm child soldier, raised in a Free German Youth camp after the war. 50 years old, loved working outdoors and with kids.
- Melissa Preisner, apolitical hog farmer from a collective farm outside Berlin. 25 years old, liked animals and heavy physical labor.
- Sandro Griebel, Russian war bastard fathered during the rape of Berlin. 35 years old, worked in a slaughterhouse, raised sheep on his one acre “personal housekeeping” plot.
The year was 1980. Skyrocketing coffee prices induced the German Democratic Republic to send engineers and help the Vietnamese establish first rate coffee plantations. In exchange the GDR would receive half of Vietnam’s coffee harvest for the next twenty years. Coffee was to Teutons like tea to the English. Its absence was apocalyptic. It would take years for the Vietnamese coffee operation to bear fruit. The way things were going, there wouldn't be an East Germany by then.
That's why the four mages had been rounded up by Kramer, a Stasi
transvestite who somehow knew they were all Agrimancers. Their mission:
use their magic to accelerate coffee production at the plantation by any
means necessary.
