It was only a matter of days before Pitkins began to get a bit of an idea as to why Bandit had soiled the spices, but in many ways it only thickened the mystery. Talk was spreading like wildfire about the spice that was said to make coffee seem like sleeping powder.
The rumor was that stores were having a very hard time throughout the capital city keeping enough of the spice stocked due to its immense popularity. Those who put it into their stew reported feeling extremely energetic, and if even slightly more than what the recipe suggested was put in, people would be awake all night.
It was only a couple months after that that Pitkins began hearing stories not only about how this would replace coffee but how this had brought “the age of the party” to the city. One rumor was that a cook had dropped a bag of the spice, causing a cloud of powder to erupt, and reportedly she didn’t sleep for two days afterwards. Another rumor was that someone had just put some of this powder onto his stew and, having a terrible cold, breathed in deeply before sneezing and in the process inhaled some of the powder right off the top of the stew.
While there were many different explanations for the discovery, what was certain was that somehow it had been discovered that just a little bit of this stuff up your nose could make you party all night long. It was also becoming popular amongst a lot of the construction crews who were still working feverishly to rebuild the damage to the city from Dachwald’s invasion. They found to their satisfaction that one whiff after a hard day’s work and they felt as if they had just awoken from a refreshing eight hours of sleep, ready to tackle anything—in this case a long evening of drinking and partying. Pretty soon, many people were concluding that this spice was good for both work and play.