The Blight of Hera TP
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Rings blotching the Rosies,
And withering the Posies,
Ashes, Ashes,
We all fall down!
The Dead will tend the fields,
And reap the Living's harvest,
Ashes, Ashes,
We all fall down!
Cows are in the Valley,
Eating all the ashes,
Atishoo! Atishoo!
A world Dies!
Soon the time will come,
When the Dead will have their due,
One-two-three, One-two-three,
The monument has come!
The Story
In July of 2526, people gathered in Serenity View, Hera for the annual Midsummer Festival. During the celebrations the first of the year's harvest was unveiled... and found to be ruined by blight. An announcement came on to warn that all of the planet's crops would be dead in thirty days, and a minor panic ensued. Only the area around Serenity seemed to be affected at first, and some farmers began burning their crops to prevent the blight from spreading.
The planet was put under quarantine by an Alliance Battlegroup, and an investigation immediately began. Earl Winchester, Duke Carmichael, members of Red Lion Industries and the crew of the Guan-Yin II worked together to identify the cause of the blight, and to develop strategies to counteract it. The combined group was ultimately able to track down the man responsible for things: Gerald Tennyson. A disillusioned (and probably psychotic) ex-soldier, he had manufactured a bacteria to destroy Hera's crops. In a showdown at Serenity View spaceport, he threatened to "burn" the world using hijacked terraforming devices, but was shot and killed.
Many farms around Serenity View lost their crops, but the problem was contained and eliminated without larger issues arising. The bacteria was determined not to affect seeds, or animals or people, so it has been fully cleared from the world's ecosystem.
