Quote Originally Posted by Dalinale View Post
"They're also a big criminal syndicate based on blood ties and money-grubbing, which is a little more familiar to me. Let's say every single one dropped dead because a deadly virus broke out in their compound. Have you seen anything that could replace them before thousands of ponies starved? You could shoot Last Stop's parliament and no one would care, or kill every single water merchant and claim the Stable for yourself and rule like a king, or kill off the Guild wizards and do whatever you want after that, but the Olive's don't have that many ponies against them because they sell food for cheap and they're not exploitative; there's no hard evidence that they trade in slaves, and the workers they have can afford to feed themselves off their own labor. In a city with as many ponies as this one, that's a deal you can't find anywhere else."
"And this is why nothing is simple," Stellar says, sitting by the table with the cybercorpse on it. "Wiping out all the olives wouldn't make things any better for the citizens of Tauronto. We need to offer a genuine alternative before we can make that sort of judgement. When we eliminated the source of the contagion I had hoped that with this facility we could provide meat for all of Tauronto's meat eaters, but again we aren't in any position to hold it and the tech here can't be allowed into anypony else's hooves. I'm beginning to think we need to destroy the labs at the very least."