NOVEL NEXT This Whole City Must be Purged
6/13 afternoon
Kathra’Natir, Onyxia, Theradras, Ysera, Thrall, Cairne, and Alexstrasza stood around the sand table when I came in. They were working with a scale model of Gadgetzan, planning out the assault with grim faces.
Forming a large circle around the city were a few dozen blue markers where amulet bearing members of my retinue would be stationed to form a blockade around the city. Most were out in the desert, but I was planning on positioning my two ships just outside of the harbor as well. A few markers showed the depressingly small number of safe houses my agents had found for us to pour out of when everything started.
We’d sent in a few rogues to look around for people that would be willing to join my retinue. Anyone who agreed was warped out, no questions asked. Slightly riskier were the people I’d sent in to check out the major factions, to see if I might have any organized allies whatsoever. The pickings were slim. Gazlowe had managed to find a few observant mid level functionaries that told a harrowing tale of the last couple weeks.
The first sign that something was wrong had, ironically, been the cessation of gang violence. The Wild Hogs and Grimy Goons, a biker gang and a network of gun runners respectively, had long been rivals of the Kabal. Almost overnight, they’d changed their tunes. The criminal underworld had quite suddenly become one big happy family, all under the banner of the Kabal. That was when the lanterns had been introduced.
The Kabal had become increasingly brazen, and anyone who tried to stand up to them either turned up dead or vanished for a few days before coming back as a collaborator. Gazlowe’s informants were mostly nobodies who worked from home a lot and kept their heads down. Everyone at least kinda knew what was happening, but if you stayed out of it you’d usually be left alone. At first anyway. People started fleeing, but the only good route out of town was by ship. People who got on most of the transport ships around ended up coming back quite comfortable with the Kabal’s rulership. I groaned when I realized that Kezan, the goblin capital, was probably being subverted right now. If they were sending people to Tyr’s hand, they’d certainly send someone to the richest city on Azeroth. It was added to the to-do list for Aelthalyste to work on, in the hope that I’d be able to nip that one in the bud before it got this bad. After Kul’Tiras, before Pandaria.
The only real resistance left was a breakaway part of the city guard following the lead of a fanatical keeper of the peace by the name Sergeant Sally. Sally was something of a legend in Gadgetzan; she was short, pigtailed, busty, had glowing blue eyes, and had gone down in combat with the Grimy Goons and Kabal dozens of times before simply reappearing a day or two later. She was violent, brutal, prone to collateral damage, and didn’t actually have a lick of legal authority. She was also, it seemed, largely incorruptible. Many people had attempted to capture the obviously undead gnome, for reasons both lewd and practical, but she could shake it off faster than most and had taken to always moving around with a carefully vetted escort. She turned out to be a tactical genius when she applied herself to preserving her men instead of maximizing damage.
I’d hesitate to call her a hero, but she seemed to be the only real ally left for me in this godforsaken place that wasn’t just trying to keep their head down. Two hundred armed members of the guard and a hundred more concerned citizens were working with her to try to oust the Kabal… mostly through random acts of violence, but they were trying.
Militarily they would be basically irrelevant, but they provided me with information my rogues could use. Not just my core team this time, either. A substantial percentage of SI:7, the Deathstalkers and dark rangers out of undercity, a decent number of farstriders, Pai Stormbringer and several captured agents from the Cult of the Damned, many Syndicate assassins, wardens from Darnassus, Vanessa’s shadow operatives. Anyone worthy of the title “rogue” was brought into Gadgetzan, given a target and an amulet, and sent out in groups of 4-5 to cause a bit of chaos before the fighting started in earnest.
Between Sally’s boys, Gazlowe presenting himself as a representative of the Steamwheedle Cartel from out of town, and a few other more minor plans on the side like booking the Medivas at the Discotheque, I could dress my troops up to look reasonably legitimate. Enough that those who weren’t aligned with the Kabal would mostly try to keep their heads down, at least. The situation was extremely likely to escalate when I started bringing in chargers to act as heavy hitters, and anyone who tried to flee town would be taken into custody, but I could accept almost any situation other than “Nefarian’s forces successfully turn the uncaptured population against me immediately.”
••••••••••
I left the war council to their work after getting my briefing from a secretary who took the minutes. I was planning on participating personally, but that meant I needed to get myself as ready as possible.
To that end, I checked in with Archaedes. My first request was a weapon to replace Archaeus. I genuinely loved the charge and release style it provided me, but as much as a Chad as Morgan Ladimore had once been his sword didn’t stack up in the realm of gods. As it turned out, Archaedes thought it would be best to rework an existing weapon if I wanted anything good (by his standards) quickly, but he made something to tide me over in the meantime.
Thunderstrike was an old spear design he’d made a while back for elite Vrykul commandos; he could whip one up in an hour as long as he had some elementium to work with, and showed my other blacksmiths how to make them too. This was probably science talent talking, but it was shockingly simplistic and nearly identical to Archaeus, save that it would unleash blasts of sound and electricity instead of arcane force, and the output was nearly five times as intense with half the charge time.
“I know you wanted something more impressive, but I don’t have access to my workshop at the moment.” He explained apologetically “If you secured Ulduar I could produce better, but I really do think we should make our way to the Tomb of Tyr at the earliest opportunity. I believe the Silver Hand could be used to great effect, not to mention retrieving Tyr himself.”
“Alright. I’ll accept it. It’s certainly an upgrade. So what about the other things I asked about?”
“The apprentices you’ve assigned to me have been working on their own variations; different elemental cores could probably allow for customization. We have six more in a working state at this point. We should be able to equip most of your… ‘hero units,’” he cringed at the term, “with this design by the end of the week.”
I nodded, inviting him to go on. “I have also managed to synthesize something akin to the ink found in your pen.” My eyes lit up at that. “So far, however, it has proven substantially less powerful.”
“So what can it do and what can’t it do?” I sighed.
“It is resilient but can be removed through mundane methods, even simple soap and water with enough effort. Further, it can not create a bond of ownership.” He answered. “Only sanctify one.”
“Explain?”
“When a claim is written on something, it has the memetic property of forcing all who observe it to respect that claim.” Archaedes explained, “however it will only do so if the claim is objectively true. For testing purposes, Lady Vanessa had several recently captured woman in Telaar explain their status as members of the retinue to their mates while displaying different labels written upon their arms, which were then erased and replaced. The mates’ levels of distress and denial at each were then quantified before they were captured in turn.”
Morbidly curious, I asked the obvious question. “So what were the labels?”
“Erich Bismark’s property, servant, disciple, maid, soldier, slave, lover, whore, slut, and dancer, respectively. Property, servant, disciple, and slave were all universally accepted. Maid and lover were universally rejected, even when the subject was implanted with false memories. Slut tended to be initially rejected, with one exception, and then accepted when the subject’s libido and promiscuity were both elevated, despite the lack of evidence presented to the mate of that change. Soldier and dancer were both only accepted if the woman in question was skilled in combat or dancing. Whore was initially rejected, until the target was assigned the task of providing sexual relief to a member of the shadow Ops team.”
“Yeah, that sounds like the way Vanessa would test a knockoff pen…” I scratched my stubble thoughtfully, “so how did they respond, exactly? When they accepted that their wives belonged to me, I mean.”
“It varied. Most wished to accommodate the new status quo, others wished to sever ties. None attempted to convince their wives to abandon their new position, nor did any harbor ill will towards you unless the claim was untrue. When the label was erased, they did tend to express relief, but still no anger.
It was a massively weaker effect than the pen, but it still seemed like it could save me quite a few headaches if I utilized it well. As much as Vanessa’s decision to test the ink via NTR seemed cruel, it actually seemed like legitimately one of the best uses of the ink. Just getting people to accept the new status quo was pretty great, though I might end up experimenting with tattoos to make them a bit less reversible.
“And Nefarian’s binding crystals?”
“I could replicate the light frequency of the crystals to some degree, but only in short bursts. A few seconds of elevated suggestibility in a large area or a few minutes for a restrained individual, but only equivalent to what you describe as the first tier of entrancement. I might manage something more impressive with better tools and materials.”
“The point is to make something we can mass produce. The neuralizer is fine by me.”
“Neuralizer?” Archaedes asked, clearly having never seen Men in Black.
“Don’t worry about it.”
••••••••••
Strength - Black Goat’s Milk - Erich will begin evolving into an old god, gaining the Lurking on the Threshold heritage perk. All refund credits from preexisting traits and defenses must be spent on other Outsider heritage perks.
Dexterity - A Thousand Faces: Xal’atath becomes incredibly proficient at mimicry, allowing her to create a mind shard that can perfectly mimic the knowledge and skills of any member of the retinue, up to and including company sponsored abilities. She can make one copy of any given individual’s abilities at a time, but may combine up to two individuals’ skills into one shard.
Stamina: Eternal Hunger - any being killed by any member of the retinue will have its soul fed to Xal’atath as a sacrifice unless Erich would desire otherwise. This will reduce it to a tier 1 version of itself if it is not already tier one. After 1,000,000 credits worth of individuals are fed to Xal’atath in this way she will be able to emerge from her dagger as a full old god, also unlocking that species for retinue transformation.
Intellect: Reshaper: with a ten minute long ritual, Xal’atath can replace any willing individual’s abilities with those of a shadow magic user of the same tier. Includes voidwalkers, shadow priests, warlocks, Shadow Hunters, subtlety rogues, shadow ascendants, necrolytes, dark shaman, San’Layn, Nathrezim, void lords, the servants of the Old Gods, and Dark Naaru.
Spirit: Nyalotha Dreaming: instead of the demiplane OR dungeon upgrades from defeating Dar’Khan, Erich will receive the demiplane AND dungeon upgrades. These two normally mutually exclusive perks improve company owned spaces in very different ways.
••••••••••
I looked over my options when Xal’atath informed me of her success. Given the magnitude of the waifu involved, I was not remotely surprised by the fact that they were all bangers. Even Reshaper, the least appealing by far, would have provided a ton of utility. A Thousand Faces lost because it, by definition, didn’t give me anything I didn’t already have. Black Goat’s milk was more tempting, but tentacle Hentai had never been my favorite; getting to be the tentacles in the equation didn’t appeal all that much.
That left Nyalotha Dreaming and Eternal Hunger, which both had a similar problem. Massive investment before they properly paid off. I was taking Demiplane as my reward for Dar’Khan’s death, since a nearly unassailable ultimate fallback position just seemed too good to pass up on, so Nyalotha Dreaming would have given me Dungeons. Dungeons would give me the option of creating special structures, the strongest of which would probably be the Spawning Pools. By dedicating all of my big names to that structure, or a disgusting number of smaller retinue members, I could create a magically conjured tier ten Titan to fight my battles for me. That would, however, cost 50 credits; for that price I could turn Kerrigan into whatever the Warcraft equivalent of a newborn Xel’naga was according to the company. Close enough to a Titan for me, and doesn’t require me to sacrifice all of my hero units.
That left… Eternal Hunger. I sighed when I realized that was probably my best option. I didn’t really like the fact that it would take 1 million credits worth of death to properly pay off, but it had a few edges that would make it worth my while. First, if I managed it, I pretty much won the Beta Test. I can’t think of a single thing in the Warcraft universe, not even cosmic level factions, that would be able to stand up against several thousand old gods. Even if there turned out to be a learning period, we would have Xal’atath at her peak power to show us the ropes. Shorter term, it gave me an edge against Nefarian. Anyone I killed would be reduced to tier one, even upon resurrection. That let me more or less neutralize his agents completely, removing them as a threat forever. I was about to burn down a whole damn city full of his retinue; might as well go all the way. I selected Eternal Hunger and Demiplane; I’d play with the Demiplane later. It was almost time for the attack to begin.