"Today's air quality is mauve and speckled. Welcome to Night Vale."
The Night Vale city council decides to help local farmers and businesses, specifically those involved in growing, making and selling of Wheat and Wheat By-Products. And why not? Wheat and its by-products are tasty, filling, good for you, and will never turn into venomous snakes.
Er. Well. About that...
(Also, some important announcements about blood-stone circle use, taxes and health policy.)
Tropes present in Wheat & Wheat By-Products include:
- Continuity Nod: The massive, yet undetectable-without-a-measuring-instrument earthquakes mentioned in the Pilot come up again.
- Crazy-Prepared: There's a shelter for use in the case of a Wheat and Wheat By-Products emergency. Apparently there was a prophecy.
- May Contain Evil: All wheat in Night Vale is apparently just a disguise for a group of malevolent spirits, and can transform into a 3-foot highly venomous snake at any time.
- Screw the Rules, I Have Money!: Marcus Vanston is exempt from all taxes in Night Vale due to being its wealthiest citizen.
- Undesirable Prize: The prize for writing the best Sorrow Song at Night Vale's annual Sorrow Song Festival is to be drowned in a vat full of the audience's tears.
- Un-person: The punishment for selling discount bloodstones in Night Vale is erasure from recorded history. Those buying them, on the other hand, are "just" summarily executed.
"Today's Proverb: Today is the last day of your life up to this point."
