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5/12 noon

With a giant shit eating grin on my face, I walked a short way away and willed a portal to my new pocket apartment into existence. It didn't work initially. It took a few tries for me before I realized that like most of my company assets, it was tied to my amulet. I sheepishly summoned the portal, thankful that nobody had seen that.

I stepped into a mid size room with stone walls, ceiling, and floor. It seemed like dwarven architecture from what I could remember. A fireplace was crackling away happily in the corner. The room itself was pretty sparsely furnished; the main room had come with a table and six squat wooden chairs. There were several alcoves carved into the walls for storage, and brightly glowing crystals in the corners of the room evened out the illumination. The corner of the room next to the fireplace had a countertop and an alcove full of carved stone bowls and plates, as well as some silverware and a basin that proved to be a sink with running water. I can not adequately describe to you how happy I was that my extradimensional apartment had indoor plumbing.

Across from me was a hallway with five doors. The first door led into a pretty average sized bathroom. The bathtub did not appear to include a shower, sadly, and was extremely similar in construction to the sink, both being deep stone basins with a spigot on one end. I had a toilet that flushed though, and some kind of toilet paper; I'd been forced to shit in the woods with a light-cleaned handkerchief often enough to appreciate the blessing. No I didn't tell you about it; I do things without telling you sometimes, you know. Especially stuff like that.

Next room, going clockwise, was a bedroom. I noted that it had locks on both sides of the door, and furthermore the locks seemed to close or open on their own whenever I thought about doing so. It was just a room with a bed; a big bed, in fact. It was a huge stone slab, enough for five or six occupants, with a mattress that was just slightly too firm for my taste and eight pillows. There was a smallish closet with a hanging rod and a trunk, and a mirror on the wall. The next room was almost identical, the only difference being that the mirror was positioned in a different spot.

Up next was quite a surprise after the fairly mundane rooms. There was a giant glass box the size of a wood shed in the middle of a large room, stuffed full of perfectly still bodies, food, some wine bottles, and several pieces of free floating clothes. I stood there for a solid five seconds, stress resistance abandoning me because I wasn't in danger, before recognizing one of the bodies as Prudence. Oh. Shit. This was my inventory. It was substantially more weird when I could actually look at it, and see the wine bottles and food wedged in between the large collection of girls in armor.

That just made me feel awkward now; I should probably start experimenting with these girls whenever I have a minute. I could move them up in the sequence if they are helping me do research on accelerated capture, right? Maybe I could move one of my ghosts in here?

I checked the last door, and found a large walk-in closet. It seemed pretty empty, only containing some hanging rods with a handful of womens clothes on them. A white and gray dress, red leather armor with spiky shoulders, and some kind of red leotard with trailing cloth over the crotch and ass. That last one was the clue I needed to put it all together; these were all of Vanessa's official outfits. Vanessa, the only person in my retinue so far who had high enough billing to make it into the catalog proper.

Speaking of which, I had 19 credits to spend. Which was a hell of a lot more than I had expected. My plan had been to capture that one night elf chick so I could get an easy teleport to Kalimdor and an easier path to the higher ranking night elves, all for 10 credits. Good deal, right?

But for 20 credits there were all sorts of things up for grabs. To name just one I could instantly capture Sally Whitemane, an exceptionally powerful priestess who can resurrect the dead; more importantly, she could teach me how to resurrect the dead. It wouldn't replace the insurance plan from Living the Emerald dream, but it was just a bit more accessible short term, would let me take a few more risks, and I doubted that was all I could learn from her. Plus she was in a position of authority as the absolute highest authority in the Scarlet Monastery, which was near the northern tip of the Eastern Kingdoms: almost as remote as Kalimdor from my current position.

20 credits was also the price for quite a few of the Lures, which would allow me to look, smell, or sound super attractive, automatically seduce anyone I beat in an open conflict, or turn "hot for teacher" into an ironbound law wherever I was concerned.

There were also several powerful upgrades to my jewelry. Hybrid runes would let me power up everyone in my retinue by infusing them with superior genetics, like giving them troll regeneration or a Draenei's affinity for magic. Aggressive initiations would let me massively reduce the capture time for people wearing my jewelry if I dominated them in bed, or had someone in my retinue do so for me. Jewels of discord was pretty much only not an automatic pick because it cost 25 credits. It wasn't quite as powerful as the ritual I was planning to use to capture Onyxia, but it would disguise my jewels and allowed me to make them intrinsically attractive to "targets," whatever that meant. Even if it only meant mission targets, it would be almost constantly useful. If it meant anyone I specified, it would be insane.

I put all that on the back burner for now. Nothing I had in mind to buy would impact my plans in the immediate future. Right now I had enough places to put necklaces, enough enemies to fight, and enough stuff to do to last me another day or two, easily.

••••••••••

The island was getting a bit crowded; the Defias didn't actually have enough supplies for an extra hundred people sitting around. At Irma's suggestion, many of the low profile members of the brotherhood were loaned out to the Rampant Lions. They were told that having Lakeshire under Defias control would be a tremendous boon, but they needed to maintain good behavior.

In keeping with her analysis, Irma handpicked mages preferentially. They tended to be a bit more even tempered and thoughtful than the bruisers, and magical support was what the Lions needed most. Of course, most of the Defias wizards available were basically just novices and hobbyists who had practiced casting frostbolt until it became legitimately threatening, but that was still a dangerous ranged attack.

I sent Em and Hamhock back to the ogre mound together, and Darcell popped in almost immediately, seeming extremely relieved to be back. Looking over my options I asked Auffrey for advice. I needed to know if there was a time of day when Lady Prestor was reliably standing very close to a group of people, including the king if possible.

"Well in the evening she tends to vanish unless she's spending time with the king, but from around noon to dinner time the king is holding court and she is always there as an advisor. Just as reliably as when Anduin held court." I sent Irma a memo; we would be starting the ritual just before noon tomorrow. It looked like I might be able to toss in a few extra points of resonance thanks to Vanessa, so I wanted a splash zone with a few useful people in it. I didn't think that the ritual would have many visible manifestations, so hopefully doing it while she was in public wouldn't cause problems.

Irma had slid into the role of project planner, so I just gave her the list of things and people I needed ready tomorrow at noon.

Me, Lividia, Talaada, and the Katrana Prestor Lookalike Vanessa claimed to have.The lookalike needed to look as much like Prestor as possible, in dress and style.Some blood or hair from PrestorThe paintA blindfold and chairsome of that happy juice Vanessa had used on Abby and Lividia.A free Necklace that we could enchant.Absolutely no distractions or witnesses beyond the ones I greenlit.

She took all of my requirements in stride and promised that it would be ready at the appointed time. I was feeling pretty good about the whole thing, and I had two necklaces left to play with today.