Negotiation phaseA) You offer your blacksmith soul to the orc, but he politely declines, stating that he is no necromancer, barely a Hex Weaver of dubious skill, as you suspected. You then bring on the possibility of them hiring the Tentacle Demon, and you use the opportunity to call for him, and he comes moving the tentacles of his rear in a pseudo-tail motion. The orc is first perplexed, but then eagerly agrees to hire him. You can see a spark of glee on his face. You set a price of three souls per week of service for the main condition of the contract. As additional clauses, you impose that the Demon must be kept out of public sight except when directly working. Using your leverage and his trust, you also impose a clause that lets the Demon decide whether or not to participate in a fight, to take care of himself, and order your underling to never try to face an Inquisitor. Having concluded the negotiation, the Tentacle Demon is summoned into the mortal realm, and after various praises from the Chieftain, you offer them to do something with the soul they just gave you. The orc hastily negates the proposition, not only because he is no necromancer, but also because he doesn’t really want to do anything with that old hag any-more. You get the idea that these orcs maybe are not so stupid, and that the whole Augur business may have been a perfect opportunity to get rid of her. You will consider this during the next negotiations.
The Tentacle Demon is away with Chieftain Hill, who should give you three souls per week of service.
B) Deciding to be a nice gentledemon, you hand back the box with the soul to the dwarven girl. She thanks you profusely. You make use of the chance and the growing trust between you to ask her what does she intend to do with the soul of her father. She is surprised that you realized that it was her father's soul what she gave you, but quickly rationalizes it. You deal with souls, and as such you should be able to get a good read of them, she says. This time her eyes don't break into tears, and she informs you that she wants to keep it, for personal reasons. You press on saying that you could keep the soul of her father intact, while giving him a type of undeath she desires, and even suggest a ghoul, so that her father could be with her without shining like a wight would do. Gretha declines the offer right now, but informs you that she will think about it. With your current power, you could prepare the soul for ghoulhood if you fully dedicate four weeks to it.
Lost the soul of Gretha's father.
C) With Kathy, you pretend to be too busy for this conversation, and politely apologize saying that you have more important business to attend to. Kathy initially doesn't understand, as like most trained Dark Mages know, it is the head of a demonic organization the one who does business. But she has no time to ask you personally, as you let Penelope quickly step into sight. Her face changes dramatically as the usual apathetic stare you get from her is replaced with a warm smile, and widely opened bright blue eyes. She cheerfully opens the negotiation with Kathy by introducing herself, to which the human responds with a mild surprise, before realizing that the child she is speaking to is in fact a Sorrow's Daughter. Penelope deals with the customer with grace, prying some useful tidbits of information from her. Kathy appears to be in the relatively recently opened Western front of the war between the human Kingdom and the Goblins, and she has found the opportunity to do business and grow in strength by collecting the wounded and abandoned soldiers, and she intends to use their souls to reanimate powerful undead to hire as mercenaries to the Goblins. Penelope manages to sell those two warrior souls for six souls each, and you chime in to make the transaction yourself, before leaving again to attend to your supposed business. Kathy then puts two and two together and asks Penelope why her master only had two warrior souls in stock, if he is so busy with business. Penelope masterfully answers by stating that the war has brought a lot of demand for wight souls and that you are dealing with multiple orders at the same time, but that if she wishes for a long-term commercial relation, she could say beforehand how many souls and of which type should she like to buy from us next week. She agrees, and states that with the current state of things, she should be able to buy a couple more wight souls next week, and that she hopes that they could be warrior ones, stating that she is giving you some souls that should be passable combatants. With that in mind, Penelope says goodbye and the call is cut by the mortal.
Your Sorrow's Daughter states that it went better than she expected, and that this is a good opportunity to forge a profitable long-term relation, and that you will likely need more storage soon, unless you want your souls just laying around in your turf, exposed enough that any random demon or even a Dark Mage while prodding the multiverse could steal.
You take stock of the souls she gave you, and are disappointed to find that all to be of goblin and human conscripts, all of them recently pulled into the war and without mayor weapon skills.
+8 goblin slave souls.
+4 human conscript souls.
Damian Skorn:
Mistrusted.
1:3 BtC ratio.
No store credit.
Chieftain Hill:
Trusted.
1:6 BtC ratio.
No store credit.
Give you three souls per week for the services of the Tentacle Demon.
Gretha the Iron Fist dwarf.
Neutral.
Undefined BtC ratio.
No store credit.
Kathy the lowborn human:
Neutral. Believes your organization to be far larger than it actually is.
Undefined BtC ratio.
No store credit.
Will ask you two warrior wight souls next week.
[...]
As you were reviewing you current stocks, you hear a noise near the demonic scrap lying around. Penelope gets up from her sitting spot and quietly rushes past a pile of scrap, and you soon find her running behind an imp about her size. The creature eventually gives up running in circles and attempts to turn around to ask for a truce, but Penelope interrupts him with a blinding blast of fire to the face, before jumping over him and pinning him down. The small horned creature covers his face while asking for forgiveness, but penelope presses on and asks him why he was spying. The imp claims that he was not, but your underling quickly cuts him up and produces a stream of fire from one of her fingertips, and then puts it dangerously close to one of the little demon's eyes. You wonder how such a cold-blooded creature as Penelope could be also such a kind and sweet being when she wants to, and then realize that she worked for a demon of emotion of some kind before getting in here, and as such she is good at faking feelings. The imp quickly breaks down, and states that he was sent down by Miltrikninita, your former master's competition, because he is curious about what happened here. The imp implores you not to eat him, and curls into a ball. The fellow is scrawny and ugly, even for an imp. You wonder what to do about him. You could obviously just eat him (not physically, but rather suck his energy), which should be equivalent of a single soul. You could also enslave the guy, and he will just change masters. He should know quite a lot about the state of Miltri's business, now that you think about it. Or you could use him to relay a message to Miltri, who has a bigger business and maybe could get sell you some demonic equipment, like the Soul Vaults you need to expand your business.
While pondering about what to do with him, you also consider what to do with your time this week:
Work phase:Available AP: 30.
Available actions:
Soul processing: select soul to clean, type of undeath and what to leave attached to it. Souls not relevant to anybody are typically just left with their abilities, and their memories and personality are discarded.
Basic working times:
Scrap: 3 AP
Wight: 4 AP
Ghoul: 5 AP
Other actions:Diplomatic meeting: 5 AP. Take a trip to meet with some demon you know, stating your business with him or her. During the travel, you will have to fend off petty demons, but probably nothing serious. Maximum two due to the time that it takes to physically go.
Exploration: 5 AP. Walk around the multiverse, looking for something useful, contacts, possible minions, anything. Results are random.
Decide what to do with both the imp and your time. Talking to your minions and roleplaying is free
Health: Healthy
Vigor Level: 2 [4/15] curses to advance to the next level.
Available action points: 30
Skills:
Elementalism level 2. [1/25] to next level.
Demonic assets:
-Minor soul vault: [23/30] souls:
Unprocessed:
11 goblin slave souls.
4 human conscript souls.
5 miscelaneous commoner souls.
1 drow fire elementalist soul.
1 orc potioncrafter soul
Processed:
1 Human smith Wight soul.
-Spinescorcher: your former master's flaming axe. You can't even wield it, being immaterial and all that.
Demonic minions:
-A tentacle demon. Maybe you should name him. Hired by Chieftain Hill.
-Penelope the Sorrow's Daughter
Author
Topic: (SG) Bankruptcy: The Tale of a Demonic Enterprise (Read 20244 times)