If you asked whether I supported Charles XVI and Minister Necker's recent measures, of course I did. But whether there was a gold mine or not? No comment!
Rorschach maintained his usual stance, saying that the Sub-plane was a barren wasteland and that he did not know whether it contained a gold mine.
Then he began telling them about creating water and building houses in the Sub-plane. The important figures drifted away, leaving only two or three Young People willing to listen to his experiences.
Someone asked, "Did you really discover a gigantic worm lurking underground later on? How did you defeat it?"
That was entirely fabricated by the Elemental Truth Gazette!
"Yes. It had a grayish-purple shell, and every segment was covered in eyes staring at you. The most terrifying part was its head—its enormous pincers secreted corrosive venom, and when it opened its giant, fang-filled mouth, it seemed capable of swallowing the world. Whenever you severed one of its segments, it split into even more monsters, with every segment able to transform a head of its own."
"Oh heavens."
"Those were the thrilling experiences of Mage 'Loka'—the protagonist of the Truth Gazette. What really happened to us was that we encountered a natural disaster." Rorschach thought of a way to explain it. "Ladies and gentlemen, imagine the heaviest snowfall ever to hit our homeland in the north of the continent. It blotted out the sky and the sun, threatening to crush trees and farmers' thatched cottages alike.
That would already be awful enough, wouldn't it? Now imagine every snowflake was a dangerous pink. The moment it touched sand or rock, they would undergo random transformations. If it touched a person, tumors and proliferating bone spurs would grow from their body. And for a time, that lethal substance filled