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[VoidSlayer]

So we should prepare the potioncrafter as a ghoul and maybe meet with some people?

[Tomcost]

While considering what to do with your time, you think about the possible things you could get from meeting with those demons you know:

-Miltrikninita could probably either sell you chimeric abomination souls or mummy souls, or maybe, if you are convincing enough, find a way to have him teach you how to prepare them. Of course, you don't expect anything more than having to pay Miltri an important cut of your earnings for selling those souls. The Devil is quite connected, and could likely get you demonic equipment, for a price. You are in dire need of soul vaults.

-You doubt that you would want to meet Plinrgleth ever again, but as a bully she could very well bully whoever you dislike, but you fear that hiring her will take at least all of your current soul stocks, and that she may even demand more afterwards. Still, using both your immaterial form and her speed, you could apply pressure to Miltri or even force him to move out of your turf.

-Carampapagas could easily get some of the extra goblin slaves she cares for while in the mortal realm, but she is quite likely going to use her seduction powers to get a good deal out of you. Penelope could help you with avoiding that, being the apathetic cold-blooded girl that she is (the seduction powers of Succubi and Incubi don't discriminate between genders or sexes, so she is no more resistant to her for being female). Still, you highly doubt that you could do something with slaves now. You lack the infrastructure necessary to keep them alive, and, while you air elementalism would suffice to keep one or two from dying, it would heavily tax your Vigor and render you too tired to do anything else.

The Tentacle Demon seems to be willing to go with you whatever place you want to go to. Penelope doesn’t, but she wouldn't have too much choice in the matter either, slavery and all that. Pim would be useless anywhere, and fears that Miltri may just kill him on sight. You have to consider who do you leave at your base, though, as someone has to defend your property from any random demon looking for a snack. Penelope could handle her own with her fire elementalism, but a fire-attuned demon would be able to just take her out, just like a Demon of Silence, as she doesn’t have any kind of physical way of harming anyone. The Tentacle Demon could fight other demons, but you suspect that a clever demon would be able to just outmaneuver him. You could leave them both at base, but you wouldn't have either a small fighting boost or a clever counselor during your meetings.

Of course, you can also just work and process the souls that you have too. And probably eat that one floating away, because it can disappear at any moment.

[ATHATH]

Let's meet with Dmitri, and bring a couple of souls with us as bartering goods. We should start processing them into (ability+motion core) Wights on the way as well, and sift through their memories and abilities to see if we can find anything interesting.

Also, bump (I asked Tomcost for permission to do this first, by the way).

[Tomcost]

You decide that meeting Miltri could be advantageous to you, and so take five souls with you, all of them goblin slaves. Their memories are mostly uninteresting. Besides the traumatic separation from their biological parents when young, and growing up under the command of the local Dark Lord, some guy named Bloodwalls, there doesn't seem to anything interesting. Wait, what's this? One of the slaves had a romantic adventure with one of the wives of this Bloodwalls guy. Huh, the guy wouldn't like to hear about this, you are sure. But who cares. Also, you discover that goblin courting manners are quite weird, you are not sure if they are being romantic or are having some friendly wrestling contest.

But you get away from that memory. As you can't process the soul and defend yourself from the denizens of the multiverse, you just walk towards Miltri's place. The particular plane where both your neighbor and you belong to is not a notable one. While uninhabitable to mortal lives, it still has some degree of resemblance to the mortal plane. Namely, floor and sky, which are dark purple and red, respectively.

From time to time you see some minor demons skitter away from you when they notice your presence. On the way you find an odd breed of demon who greets and introduces himself as Trarlarlmrak, "Trar", for short. He claims to be a direct underling of the God Urchurn, a Deep Deity related to treasure hunting. He offers you to pay you in Divine Energy, which you could digest just like souls, in exchange for directions about possible treasures you may find. You think that all the demonic scrap lying around your base would have some value, but you are yet unsure about how many.

[...]

You finally arrive to Miltri's place, and find it to be quite busy. Huge Soul Vaults are being studied by some imps, which also are taking some notes. Other ones are taking thing from one place to another. A bunch of Executioners are playing with a terrified little demon with the back side of their scythes. One of the little imps notices you and runs to tell his master that you are here.

Before he arrives, you are met by an imposing demon, covered in shiny skin which is a mixture of organic and metallic material. He is obviously Miltri's bodyguard, Xrtalalamt, the Armor Fiend. The Greater Demon orders you to not come any closer lest you want to be vanquished. Unless the guy knows Air elementalism, you doubt that he would be able to do that, but he must be used to being intimidating. You still don't feel threatened, which makes him slightly uncomfortable. The awkward moment ends when Miltri enters the scene and breaks the tension by giving you a warm welcome, whoever you are. Devils are known for their silver tongues, you have been warned by Penelope, so he must be trying to honey you into some kind of deal, you are not sure if even he knows which one yet.

You introduce yourself as the new leader of the demonic organization from the Balrog Frisiilastt, your former master. He hides his incredulity:

"Oh, really? I haven't heard any news from him lately..."

"Yeah, I guess your imp didn't tell you, right?" You retort.

The horned demon then gets serious and raises an eyebrow and looks at you carefully. He then states:

"You are that Mist Fiend that cleaned souls for old Fris, I see. Why did you come?"

"To do business, of course."

And with that, you get down to the possible benefits you both could get out of dealing with each other.

When you mention buying extra storage space, he offers you keeping your souls for you, for a cut of 50% of them, picked by him. As you frown, he realizes that you were not born the former century and graciously claims that it was a joke and that he could get you the Soul Vaults you desire. He offers to get you a small Soul Vault for 25 souls, but you suspect he is charging you a considerable finder's fee. You wonder if that scrap lying around could be worth something to whatever demon makes them.

Upon mentioning the possibility of learning how to make Chimeric Abominations or Mummies, Miltri evades the topic of teaching you, and instead offers you to sell you Chimeric Abomination souls for cheap at two souls each, and four for Mummy souls. You could sell them at about four and eight souls, respectively. Alternatively, if you send him customers, he could give you one soul for each soul the Dark Mage buys, but you will have to come here to receive your payment.

During your whole chat, Miltri has tried to pry some information about your master's death. While you could tell him the truth, you doubt that he would believe you.

Which deals do you arrange with Miltri? You are carrying five goblin slave souls.

Do you tell something to the Demon in service to the Deep God?

Spoiler: Yxcransprunrtolmsxrcilp "Yxcran" (click to show/hide)

Health: Healthy
Vigor Level: 2 [4/15] curses to advance to the next level.
Available action points: 30
Skills:
Elementalism level 2. [13/25] to next level.
Demonic assets:
-1 goblin slave soul floating around. Can be easily stolen.
-Minor soul vault: [30/30] souls:
Unprocessed:
3 goblin lasher souls.
1 human warrior soul.
12 goblin slave souls.
4 human conscript souls.
5 miscelaneous commoner souls.
1 orc potioncrafter soul.
1 human prostitute soul.
Processed:
2 scrap souls
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.
-Penelope the Sorrow's Daughter
-Pim the ugly imp.

[ATHATH]

Ask Trar how we could contact him in the future if we find something of interest, or how we can rig up something of interest for a servant of Urchurn to find (if that's acceptable to Urchurn, of course).

Press the Chimeric Abominations teaching thing deeper, telling Miltri that we'll only tell him how our former master died if we get tutorage on how to create Chimeric Abominations in exchange for it (more goods/services/souls can be added to either side of the deal, of course, but Miltri won't learn how our master died until we get taught how to make Chimeric Abominations).

[Arcvasti]

Press the Chimeric Abominations teaching thing deeper, telling Miltri that we'll only tell him how our former master died if we get tutorage on how to create Chimeric Abominations in exchange for it (more goods/services/souls can be added to either side of the deal, of course, but Miltri won't learn how our master died until we get taught how to make Chimeric Abominations).

-1

They're not going to give us a very valuable secret for some minor information that they can find out in other ways without THAT much effort. Besides, it LOOKS like they're giving us a decent deal on making the Chimeric Abomination souls for us. There's probably a catch, but we can still probably reap at least some benefit from it anyways.

Instead, buy two Chimeric Abomination souls with four goblin slave souls and throw in the fifth one as a gesture of goodwill.

[ATHATH]

Press the Chimeric Abominations teaching thing deeper, telling Miltri that we'll only tell him how our former master died if we get tutorage on how to create Chimeric Abominations in exchange for it (more goods/services/souls can be added to either side of the deal, of course, but Miltri won't learn how our master died until we get taught how to make Chimeric Abominations).

-1

They're not going to give us a very valuable secret for some minor information that they can find out in other ways without THAT much effort. Besides, it LOOKS like they're giving us a decent deal on making the Chimeric Abomination souls for us. There's probably a catch, but we can still probably reap at least some benefit from it anyways.

Instead, buy two Chimeric Abomination souls with four goblin slave souls and throw in the fifth one as a gesture of goodwill.

Eh... Okay, but only if we ensure that they are of good quality by checking their soul-structures compared to some of the ones that Miltri has around his base (personally, of course; hopefully, we can learn something about how the souls are made through observation of functioning ones as well). +1

When we get back to base, let's see if we can reverse-engineer these.

[Tomcost]

You listen with interest Trar's offer, and while you don't have anything to tell him about possible treasures, you aim to build contact lines. Who knows which kinds of services a Deep God could offer. Trar mentions that he is quite the traveler, being a Realmanglar and all that. It seems that this rare type of demon of ancient drowish design is built to quickly leap between the multiple planes of the multiverse, and so it is going to be difficult to locate him. So, he proposes that he will locate you instead. You mention your particular place in this plane, and Trar says that he will appear around your home once per month more or less, because he won't waste much of time if you don't have anything for him. He then mentions how this whole treasure finding thing works. Apparently, gods get their strength through their worshippers, and so priests of Urchurn have to actually find treasure to keep believing in him. Of course, Urchurn is also associated with other aspects, like Fire and Law, but mortals are too greedy and Treasure tends to be the aspect they look forward the most when dealing with this particular Deep God. Trar's role in this whole mess is finding artifacts, demonic equipment, or rare alchemical materials to then hide in a place where Urchurn will tell the mortal to find, generating more worship. He gets a cut of the divine energy generated, which he is willing to share with you if you point him out where to look.

Having arranged everything you need to arrange, both of you say goodbye and he quickly leaps out of this plane.

[...]

You avoid discussing the whole matter of your former master's death with Miltri, but find his offer about Chimeric Abominations to be quite good, and so you decide to trade four souls for two Chimeric Abomination souls. Miltri calls the two from his huge vaults, and hands them to you. They are both made from commoner folk, he says, as the only relevant skills for an Abomination are the magical ones. He notes that in case you need a caster soul prepared for an Abomination, the cost will increase. You then attempt to give him another soul as a gesture of goodwill, but he refuses to accept it, telling you that it is not necessary and that he hopes to build a better commercial relation with you.

You say goodbye, and you walk back to your home.

[...]

You are greeted by Pim, who anxiously asks you if Miltri said something about him. You answer in the negative, and tell him that you just mentioned that his former master had sent an imp to spy on you. A sight of relief comes from the ugly demon:

"I thought that he'd want me dead. Well, he never paid too much attention to me. I was bought in bulk in a special imp sale, so I was just one more." He explains. You can't really say you care too much about the creature.

Penelope, who was silently watching behind you like the creepy little demon she is, added that at least he ended up here in a better way than her. You realize that you don't remember how is that your master ended up with a Sorrow's Daughter in his possession, and use the opportunity to ask:

"Oh, Friis just got an agreement with my mother." She says.

"Which was it?"

"She would give me to him, and, in exchange, he would stop smashing her head against the Projection Stage."

"Oh, I see." That was your master's style; you can surely believe that story.

Having done some idle chitchat, and after a brief session of "Fetch the demonic scrap" with the Tentacle Demon, you get back to work, as you still have energy to process souls. First, you begin to examine your recently bought souls, but realize that to learn how to make them you would likely have to deconstruct and destroy some of them, potentially losing all the energy. You are not yet sure if you want to go that way. But there are still plenty of things to do:

Available AP: 25.

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

Spoiler: Soul structure (click to show/hide)

Reverse engineer the Chimeric Abomination souls: 5 AP per soul. You are likely going to need to destroy more than the two you have.

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. The tentacle beast is willing to go with you.

No AP cost actions:
Send Pim to explore around. He may come back, or not.

Decide what to do with your time. Talking to your minions and roleplaying is free

Spoiler: Yxcransprunrtolmsxrcilp "Yxcran" (click to show/hide)

Health: Healthy
Vigor Level: 2 [4/15] curses to advance to the next level.
Available action points: 30
Skills:
Elementalism level 2. [13/25] to next level.
Demonic assets:
-Minor soul vault: [29/30] souls:
Unprocessed:
3 goblin lasher souls.
1 human warrior soul.
9 goblin slave souls.
4 human conscript souls.
5 miscelaneous commoner souls.
1 orc potioncrafter soul.
1 human prostitute soul.
Processed:
2 scrap souls
1 Human smith Wight soul.
2 Chimeric Abomination Souls.
-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.
-Penelope the Sorrow's Daughter
-Pim the ugly imp.

[crazyabe]

>Destroy one CA soul so we can begin to learn about them.

[ATHATH]

>Destroy one CA soul so we can begin to learn about them.

+1

Also process some minor souls into (ability+motion) Wights, and send out Pim to explore.

[Tomcost]

You begin to dissassemble the soul of whatever poor mortal ended up with its metaphysical identity repurposed to fit and control an offense to nature. You notice, first, that everything save its basic movement abilities have been removed. You remember what Miltri said: that having most mundane combat skills in an abomination is a waste of soulstuff; the proper stances and means to use weapons are usually useless for a being that has a bodily structure that doesn't resemble at all a humanoid one. On the other hand, you also notice how its basic motion core has been improved beyond a simple "adapt to any humanoid body". In addition to recognizing different body sizes and proportions, it can also recognize different kinds of limbs. A complex task, but one that hopefully won't take too long on most mundane souls due to the lack of need of extra abilities.

Going through the souls and pulling it appart has destroyed it, but you gained valuable knowledge. Unfortunately, it is not enough, and you will need more Abomination souls to be able to replicate their complex motion core.

Progress: 12/50

With your remaining time, you get to prepare some souls for wighthood. You grab one goblin lasher soul, and one human warrior soul, and make them both into wights. You also grab a goblin slave soul and strip away everything it knows, because its basic understanding of what a pointy end is is likely not something too useful for most dark mages, and also make it a wight.

While you were at it, you sent Pim to look around and inform you what he sees in this plane. He bows and sets to do just that, scared as he always is.

Just as you were going through the last soul, he comes back running in fear. It appears that a hostile demon of silence has settled nearby and attempted to eat him. It is just a minor demon, but it was enough to scare the small imp. You could just shoo the demon away, or maybe even force him into servitude, but it is going to be complicated without you being able to speak in his prescence to cast spells. Maybe the tentacle demon would be up for the task, but he could get hurt, even if Demons of Silence are not combat specialists.

While you are considering this, you notice that some mortals have been doing some work for you.

The Rothwell guy is now giving you 3 net curses.
Chieftain Hill finally managed to weave proper hexes, and is now providing you a single curse, with no blessing associated with it. It seems that the guy is still too bad at it.

Spoiler: Clients (click to show/hide)

Damian Skorn:
Mistrusted.
1:3 BtC ratio.
Providing you 4 net curses.
No store credit.

Chieftain Hill:
Trusted.
1:6 BtC ratio.
Providing one net curse
No store credit.

Gretha the Iron Fist dwarf.
Neutral.
Undefined BtC ratio.
No store credit.

Kathy the lowborn human:
Mistrusted. She knows you are weak
Undefined BtC ratio.
No store credit.
Will not buy wight souls for more than 3 souls each.

Robert Rothwell the young Ice Elementalist.
Neutral.
1:4 BtC ratio.
Providing 3 net curses.
No store credit.

Week 4:

Negotiation phase:

As usual, you are contacted by some clients again:

1) The communication is opened by a male goblin, which claims to be the Dark Lord of Fort Hollowscreams, and is looking for some kind of deal with souls, but he wants to judge the quality of your work first. He asks if he could borrow one of your works, as he has a Drow Soul Maniulator nearby who could judge how good you are at cleaning souls. If everything goes well, he could become a regular client of yours. The few things you know about goblins tell you that they have access to lot of slaves, and thus, souls. This leads to believe that this individual is indeed powerful. But you also know that goblins are the most treacherous individuals around. You look at Penelope for advice, but she only raises an eyebrow and looks at you, like hinting that you should know something by this time.

2) Next, you are surprisingly contacted by Yaugus. He is asking if you know something about the following names: Melissa Skorn, Silvia Alleye, Lady Fauris Skorn, John Skorn, and Farquad Skorn. You don't know about any of them, but maybe bringing up Damian will be useful for him, or just get one of your contacts killed. Penelope says that if Damian dies, you would only lose some few net curses, so it wouldn't be a great problem for you.

3) Now you are contacted, oddily, by a young drow boy. He wants to buy some scrap souls to show off, and is offering you to pay in enchanted gems, which you could eat to increase your vigor, but that don't hold souls that you could sell. The trade is going to be beneficial to you, he assures, but the fact that you can't process and resell whatever he gives you as payment is a downside.

How do you answer to each customer?

Spoiler: Yxcransprunrtolmsxrcilp "Yxcran" (click to show/hide)

Health: Healthy
Vigor Level: 2 [8/15] curses to advance to the next level.
Available action points: 30
Skills:
Elementalism level 2. [13/25] to next level.
Demonic assets:
-Minor soul vault: [28/30] souls:
Unprocessed:
2 goblin lasher souls.
9 goblin slave souls.
4 human conscript souls.
5 miscelaneous commoner souls.
1 orc potioncrafter soul.
1 human prostitute soul.
Processed:
2 scrap souls
1 Human smith Wight soul.
1 Human warrior Wight soul.
1 Goblin Lasher Wight soul.
1 Chimeric Abomination 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.
-Penelope the Sorrow's Daughter
-Pim the ugly imp.

[ATHATH]

Our (or at least my) Goal For Our Character (minus the incompetent successor part, and replacing mercenary work with trading and/or soul-processing): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kAfNQ_XiPjQ

1: Lend the Goblin the best non-goblin soul that we've processed. Ask him if we may meet with this Drow Soul Manipulator- perhaps we can exchange knowledge.
2: No, we don't know of them. But if the Skorns are as bad as Yaugus said they were, perhaps our Skornish contact (whose name will not be revealed to Yaugus) might be able to be persuaded to rat the rest of his family out. Then again, he might just warn them that an inquisitor is hunting them. Ask Yaugus what he thinks that we should do.
3: How many scrap souls does the Drow boy need? Where did he get the gems?

[Tomcost]

3: How many scrap souls does the Drow boy need? Where did he get the gems?

Two or three, he says. The gems are cheap gems from a nearby mine, and infused by him via enchanting after extracting some energy from a lava vent he found in the caves. You can abosrob that energy just like souls, but you can't prepare them to be resold.

The other things are actions, and I'll wait a little bit until I roll with them.

[ATHATH]

3: How many scrap souls does the Drow boy need? Where did he get the gems?

Two or three, he says. The gems are cheap gems from a nearby mine, and infused by him via enchanting after extracting some energy from a lava vent he found in the caves. You can abosrob that energy just like souls, but you can't prepare them to be resold.

The other things are actions, and I'll wait a little bit until I roll with them.

Can we also do that (infusing the gems)?

[Tomcost]

3: How many scrap souls does the Drow boy need? Where did he get the gems?

Two or three, he says. The gems are cheap gems from a nearby mine, and infused by him via enchanting after extracting some energy from a lava vent he found in the caves. You can abosrob that energy just like souls, but you can't prepare them to be resold.

The other things are actions, and I'll wait a little bit until I roll with them.

Can we also do that (infusing the gems)?

You know how to clean souls, which is a branch of soul manipulation related to undead. The other one is related to fusing many souls and creating demons, but you don't know how to do that.

Moving energy around inanimate objects is enchanting, and you don't know anything about that.