Federation-Apocalypse Session 96a – Towards the Necropolis

   Well, it looked like they’d found someone to try and unite the Linear Realms – even if he did take along a dozen or the Arrancar / honorary “Knights” whom had started following him in the Negative Energy Realm. It looked like they’d been getting more out of the Shao-lin teachings than Arthur himself had.

   Of course, they would need inner balance a lot more even after they’d patched them up the last time around. They dropped Arthur off in Kadia for a more extensive briefing – and to see if there were any meme countermeasures that he could use personally other than visiting Kadia regularly.

   Back in Kadia things were going extremely well. Recruitment was still going strong of course – and probably would be for some time; more Thralls out recruiting, more incoming, more go out to recruit – and they were nowhere near the limits of the possible recruiting pool yet, even if the biggest source by far was still the Linear Realms.

   Arthur did seem to be highly resistant to the memes… He credited that to having Merlin as a tutor; he’d always had to take everything with a grain of salt.

   Kevin and Marty speculated wildly for a second… If it turned out that the perfect countermeasure was eating pretzels – and perhaps drinking beer – while watching, they were going to be most annoyed. Besides, it would raise an awful lot of questions as to what the hell was going on.

(Arthur) “Mind if I direct some of these kids to some of the problematic areas I happen across? Even my charisma is not omnipotent.”

(Kevin) “Not at all. I’d assigned you a couple of hundred to start, if you need more there are several thousand in reserve for deploying to the Linear Realms. You’re certainly free to call on them… How many do you think you’ll be likely to need in the next week or two? It may be a bit before I can get back to recruit any more.”

(Arthur) I can’t imagine more than several hundred in that time – but it is also hard to anticipate these things beforehand. A lot of this depends on how rapidly I can get a full identity going and start making a presence.

   Next up: Santiago Columbar at the Terminal Café… It looked like the route would be the New Imperium-> Classic Empire Korriban-> Necropolis-> the “Jesus Worlds”.

   Oh dear. The Sith Tomb World? Then the Necropolis? And then a religiously-themed world? Those were always awkward… Oh well. Maybe they could hook up with Darth Plageous again; he’d been sensible enough.

   The Necropolis was a sort of menagerie of the dark gothic-necromancy realms. Lots of vampires, liches, undead, underground cities of the dead, huge cemeteries, and some of the demonic influences of the Victorian era as well. Not a pleasant place to be in if you were living and weak.

   Oh yes… They’d intentionally avoided opening an office there, given that the welcome mat pretty much said “enter and die”.

   The “Jesus Worlds” – at least according to Thrall reconnaissance – seemed to be an old sci-fi realm. Probably from a book written in the late twentieth century… Humanity was just reaching for the stars and had a good hold on most of the solar system. The biggest theme seemed to be the “Jesus Tanks” – nano-replicator tanks where a full body reconstruction could be processed. Dead bodies were frequently placed in the tanks and “resurrected”. Those resurrected had to pay the fee for the process or be put into indenture to pay off the resurrection. The system had quickly become a plaything of the wealthy – who had died repeatedly doing stunts and had themselves rebuilt into the latest style afterwards. The indentured resurrected or walking dead were confined to special necropoli in the city centers during night hours and the living were prohibited from entering at night.

   The group thought about that, but didn’t even want to try to figure out the original authors rationale… Ah well, at least it wasn’t apparently a religious-mania world.

   The “Terminal Café” was one of the more prestigious cafes in the largest Necropolis in New York. It was recommended that living customers order off the “Living and wish to stay that way menu.”

   It should be an interesting place to visit.

   Korriban, of course, probably still had that pesky negative-energy shield, and none of them knew how the positive-energy shield-circuit had worked… They’d have to find another way around it.

   Hm. The Necropolis did do some trading; they bought slaves and corpses buy the truckload. They also imported food for said slaves as they have no luck growing any. Interesting flora and fauna, as well as exotic magics and psionics, were also valued. They exported plagues, undead minions, obsidian, precious metals, and rare gemstones, as well as magical and psionic items from time to time.