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[piecewise]

They're probably asking themselves what our motive is.

Our motive probably is that Esme and Bruce were kind to us so we want to return the favor. Plus we need to find out who we really are. And the government probably wants to kill us.

So both selfish and selfless reasons and quite simple at that. Then again, what can one expect from someone who was literally born yesterday?

+1 telling them this will hopefully clear things up

Yeah +1

+1

You explain to them that you aren't entirely sure what you're supposed to be doing in this life, but that you would like to return their kindness. You add that you'd also like to find out who you are and get rid of this government that wants to kill you, for completely selfish reasons really.


Bruce leans back in his chair, staring up at the ceiling. "Even just saying stuff like that is a good way to get killed, you know." He says, distantly. He sighs and looks over to Esme. "Whatcha think?"

"If he wants to fight, I see no reason to stop him. If he wants to do it on our side, all the better."

"Right." Bruce says after a long pause and sits up. "Whats the plan?"

"First we get him those papers. Then we hit a soft target; if my intel is right this should give him some materials to work with and some memories to use. We work from there."

Bruce grunts. "Not exactly a master plan."

Esme shrugs. "We'll play it by ear, unless you have a better idea."

Bruce slaps his knees a few times and stands up. "Nah. I'll get these done. Should only take a few hours."

"Thanks." Esme says and looks to you. "That soft target I was talking about is a police patrol. Three men, lightly armed. I've got Intel about their route so we'll be able to ambush them. The question is how you wanna do it. Any ideas?"

[Egan_BW]

Heh. A good way to get killed.
It's funny because we're already dead.

[Dunamisdeos]

Well I'm excited.

I think our first order of business is some manner of higher-end construct, or the like. Frankly I see no reason to engage anything directly while we can command a proxy to do it for us.

Also, what does she mean, hit? Are we going to vaporize these guys? Beat them up and take their shorts? Water balloon them and run? What's the usual MO for this particular resistance?

Heh. A good way to get killed.
It's funny because we're already dead.

Ach-ha

[Egan_BW]

Well, I'm rather partial to submachineguns, but those are probably expensive and might be a little unsubtle. Maybe we could build some trash golems and give them sharp things?

I assume that the objective here is to deprive these follows of their lives for the sake of repurposing their meat and minds. Along with whatever equipment they happen to be wearing.

Maybe it would be a good idea to make a nice construct, but I'm tempted to sew some trash bags together into a roughly humanoid shape and giving them pointy sticks. They'd be camouflaged, at least~


Plan Literal Trash Army: Raid some dumpsters for full trash bags, sew them together into trash golems, puppet them and arm them with sharpened broom handles. Leave the whole thing dumped on the side of the street by the patrol and ambush the police.

[Dunamisdeos]

I assume that the objective here is to deprive these follows of their lives for the sake of repurposing their meat and minds. Along with whatever equipment they happen to be wearing.

Yeah probably but like, are these actual bad guys? Or are we talking just regular local constabulary? I'd rather not re-purpose what amounts effectively to rando locals. Maybe these guys are like the cops in V for Vendetta and they are all comically evil, maybe they're all about community outreach and coat drives.

If they bad, we gets 'em.

[Naturegirl1999]

I think I have to go there in person, so I can actually collect the memories. Maybe make some constructs to act as guards or helpers, but to collect the memories I should do the finishing blow. The constructs could restrain them while I do this

[Egan_BW]

I assume that the objective here is to deprive these follows of their lives for the sake of repurposing their meat and minds. Along with whatever equipment they happen to be wearing.

Yeah probably but like, are these actual bad guys? Or are we talking just regular local constabulary? I'd rather not re-purpose what amounts effectively to rando locals. Maybe these guys are like the cops in V for Vendetta and they are all comically evil, maybe they're all about community outreach and coat drives.

If they bad, we gets 'em.

A necromancer gets stronger by killing people. If we want to fight the government, we fight the government. We're not going to get away with doing that without fighting the police.

[Naturegirl1999]

I assume that the objective here is to deprive these follows of their lives for the sake of repurposing their meat and minds. Along with whatever equipment they happen to be wearing.

Yeah probably but like, are these actual bad guys? Or are we talking just regular local constabulary? I'd rather not re-purpose what amounts effectively to rando locals. Maybe these guys are like the cops in V for Vendetta and they are all comically evil, maybe they're all about community outreach and coat drives.

If they bad, we gets 'em.

A necromancer gets stronger by killing people. If we want to fight the government, we fight the government. We're not going to get away with doing that without fighting the police.

 Think we do this, we can have constructs and minions with us, I’m just saying that we need to be there too to collect the memories. I don’t think we can extract memories from our minions without something getting changed, it’s lrobably like telephone. We need to get them from the source. Yes we need to kill them, they are part of the government

[Mathel]

Well, I'm rather partial to submachineguns, but those are probably expensive and might be a little unsubtle. Maybe we could build some trash golems and give them sharp things?

I assume that the objective here is to deprive these follows of their lives for the sake of repurposing their meat and minds. Along with whatever equipment they happen to be wearing.

Maybe it would be a good idea to make a nice construct, but I'm tempted to sew some trash bags together into a roughly humanoid shape and giving them pointy sticks. They'd be camouflaged, at least~


Plan Literal Trash Army: Raid some dumpsters for full trash bags, sew them together into trash golems, puppet them and arm them with sharpened broom handles. Leave the whole thing dumped on the side of the street by the patrol and ambush the police.

What level technology are we talking about exactly with the trash bags? If we use them, they have to be either cloth or thick plastic. Thin plastic is too easily torn.
If the trash in not in bags bags or in trash bags with low durability, let's supply cloth bags for purposes of trashing. After all, we want golems that will be able to kill someone, not fall apart an the slightest pull.

[King Zultan]

We need to make sure that the trash golem is made out of Hefty Bags, because we don't want it to be made out of wimpy bargain brand trash bags.

[Parisbre56]

You should remember that golems are more expensive than normal corpses, which means they also hurt much more if we lose them. Plus golems are much easier to identify as the work of a necromancer than corpses are.

I say we go for quantity over quality for this first raid. Try making a contract with one of those magical entities that keep floating around by offering it the mouse memories we absorbed (or maybe some of that useless knowledge we absorbed from some of these books). Make it "pilot" a rat corpse (could start with the mouse we animated). Do this until we have a small squad (say 4 rats).

Then we send them into the sewers and have them gang up on rats and other critters like raccoons or bats or even cats and seagulls. Then they bring them back to us and we reanimate them. Assuming the memory cost is cheap enough for such weak creatures, we could use this to make a small snowball and end up with a small army (say 30 minions). Then all we need to do is find a dark spot near their patrol route with easy sewer access and overwhelm them with numbers. Even if they have grenades or flamethrowers they can't use them without hitting each other, the only defense likely to work is anti-magic, if there is such thing. And anybody who happens to see would be less likely to think this is the work of a necromancer.

We can be on standby nearby with Piecewise, ready to eat their souls, provide directions or provide support if necessary. And if the raid is successful we now have much more useless memories we can use to pay magical creatures.

As for our choice of target, it doesn't matter if they are good people or not. What matters is that they or the group they belong to are considered acceptable targets by a significant part of the population (e.g. if taxation is high, then this might be a group that forces people who can't afford their taxes out of their homes) or are unlikely to be worth the media's attention (I.e. their death won't become a big deal).

EDIT: Alternatively, we just find where they eat, get a job there and choke them by serving them reanimated food.
But I like the army of rats better.

[Egan_BW]

The point of trash golems is to strike and get access to those three human corpses quickly. Once we're done, we sever the connections to the trash golems and the only evidence is some wierd trash bags laying around. Hardly strong evidence of a necromancer.
A swarm of dead vermin will strain our bandwidth more and have less killing power. We don't have any great way to feed a large number of phantoms right now, even small ones, so they might go rogue and try eating people. A plague of hungry dead sewer rats would be pretty conclusive evidence that there's a necromancer messing around.

[Parisbre56]

Actually, golems would be more likely to cause strain to us since:
a) it costs much more magic to animate a golem than a corpse.
b) we would actually have to control them ourselves, instead of leaving the job to spirits, since we don't have enough useless memories to feed them with. On the other hand if we can use rat memories to recruit rat-level spirits and they are happy with eating animal memories, then we have a self sustaining population that can go out and hunt vermin for food, at least until we run out of rats in the city, which is very unlikely. There's bound to be hundreds of rats here, so a few dozen undead rats should hardly put a dent to their population.

And they can't become a plague because they can't posses corpses and multiply on their own, they need us to perform the reanimation, at least as far as we can tell.

Furthermore, if an undead rat is seen during the attack by, say, a civilian that happens to be nearby, then:
a) they might not even notice that they are injured in the darkness.
b) they are much more likely to be horrified and scared and run away before they notice they are injured.
c) even if they do notice they are injured, they might just attribute it to rabid rats that keep attacking even after their target has injured them.
Best case scenario they never suspect a necromancer is involved and attribute the attack to wild animals. Worst case a necromancer is one of many possibilities. Hopefully not something that warrants a deep investigation unless more incidents are reported.

On the other hand, trash bags that move around on their own are very definitively supernatural, so anyone that happens to witness them would be likely to report that. Not to mention the fact that depending on their method of attack, there might be blood involved. Best case they think necromancer is one of a few supernatural possibilities (e.g. telekinesis, if that's a thing in this world). Worst case they are certain it's a necromancer because golems have a specific way of moving. Either way, an incident that certainly merits attention. Unless they just dismiss the testimony as absurd, but given that this is a world where the supernatural is most definitely real and everyone is afraid of (or at least knows of) necromancers due to state propaganda I wouldn't get my hopes up.

If we are to use trash golems we should at least perform a test on their cost, strength and durability to see if it's even worth it.

[Naturegirl1999]

Using rats sounds like a good idea

[Mathel]

If we use a Un-rat army, what will we feed them with?
We have 1 day worth of (our) memories and some mana.
Does feeding 30 phantasmal Un-rats cost less than powering 6 Trash Golems?
To absorb memories, we need to be there when something dies, so having Un-rats kill rats in sewers will not help.

While anybody seeing trashbags attack would make it obvious magical attack, when they are deanimated, they look like regular thrash bags in a dark alley.
If the patrol manages to destroy a core of some Un-rats and we do not remove all of them, a later investigation could reveal that a rat was already dead when it attacked.

But the test is a good idea.
Create a trash golem (self powered) and an un-rat (phantasm). Compare the Mana cost.