They hunt for a living, have established a number of chapters to manage specific areas, and periodically select someone to be the campground manager... Particularly to manage shared areas and ensure proper waste disposal. After all, if one chapter uses the river for their waste it can make other chapters (and even their own members) sick with cholera and the like.
This campground is in a region with a fairly mild climate. It normally doesn't get below freezing... But something made the jet stream shift one year, and they're facing an unusually cold winter.
The campground manager says 'Let's stop checking the thermometers. I like the temperature right where it is.'
Of course some people are aghast, and speak out... But he has a number of supporters who say he's just joking. He didn't really mean it. (And many of the residents don't pay attention at all, and just ignore it).
But the weather keeps getting colder, and the nights are turning frosty.
People start clamoring for someone to do something.
Some arrangements are made to buy wood (there's not enough locally to make enough fires), though there's a lot of confusion. The campground manager added to that, saying it was up to each chapter to procure their own. Except that anonymous groups kept intercepting the wood shipments... Nobody really knows who, though some claimed it was the campground manager's people.
The campground manager also played favorites... He made sure the chapter heads he liked got plenty of wood, and publicly complained about the chapter heads he didn't. Threatened that he wouldn't give them wood.
The weather got colder, and a few people were found frozen to death.
The campground manager then claimed that what they all really needed was flashlights. Flashlights would prevent them from freezing...
There's a couple of newsletters that go around, some of which support the campground manager. Pressure continued to build, and some wood was distributed to all the chapters (some bought it themselves, some came from the campground manager).
Somehow or another, the rumor started that the smoke from the fire was what was really killing people. That you should really just make sure you have flashlights.
The campground manager refused to let the newsletters take pictures of his woodpile (though he stocked up well, and made sure his office was always nice and toasty).
More people were freezing to death, though it was mostly the weak and the elderly.
People started saying that they needed to go out hunting again. They'd mostly been staying close to a communal firepit, which were too noisy and scared most of the game away.
And people did. Even though hunters here and there continued to freeze to death.
Eventually, the time to select a new campground manager came, and the people upset at the current manager managed to select someone new...
But the current campground manager claimed it was illegitimate. He even found members of some of the chapters to claim that they wanted him instead (even though they were never selected by the established process in their chapter).
He told all the newsletters that he was actually the winner, and encouraged people to come protest on the day the results were made official.
He even claimed that his executive officer could refuse to accept the results.
After quite a lot of chaos and confusion, he eventually left headquarters (though he still, to this day, publicly claims he was the real campground manager).
He's nuts enough, of course. But you have to wonder about the people who aided and abetted him.
Some of them benefited, of course. Perhaps they made the mistake of thinking that what was good for them was good for everyone. As long as they were toasty and warm, who cared?
Or maybe they thought the ones who froze to death deserved it. For being weak, for not buying their own wood (because of course they never struggled to do so...)
Basically came up with any excuse to decide things were fine as is, that nothing needed to change, that they deserve the life they live... And that if anyone froze to death it was their own fault. Or because they had an underlying illness, and would have died soon anyway.
Again... Anything to prevent themselves from thinking they should maybe make a few changes.
Or maybe they were just gullible.
Or evil.
That's kind of been the question of the age.
That's all well and good, and you'd think once the old campground manager was ousted that that would be it...
But somehow his friends and allies are clamoring to bring the incompetent PoS back.
They've got a loud group of people who are still claiming that smoke from the campfires is what's really killing people.
They go around from campsite to campsite, having cookouts and talking about how they have to do something.
Newsletters talk about the next selection as though the old campground manager is a viable candidate...
And prices are rising. Some say it's just supply and demand, but some of those friends and allies have raised prices even though they're making even more profit than normal.
Rumors are also going around that they're doing it in order to make people upset at the current campground manager...
As if making people miserable if they don't do what you want is any sort of way to reinstate a pathetic PoS like that.
It sounds like they're just as incompetent and/or immoral as he is.
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