Planning and Casual Capture

5/12 evening

I got a report from Lividia about the progress of her students, made more interesting by our continued nudity and close proximity; apparently two of them seemed to be taking to the ritual very quickly. Two of their recruits had been lower tier mages back on Draenor, familiar with arcane rituals. It wasn't one to one, but they should be ready to take on visages by tomorrow if they can be made into dragons. I put it down on my to-do list for tomorrow morning. They could serve as mentors for the ritual to the rest of the community, freeing up Lividia, who really didn't have the temperament for teaching.

For now though, she needed to head back to the draenei. If nothing else they were some of the only people in my retinue that could feed her as much as she wanted; she could subsist on only as much as a human ate, but she preferred to eat quite a lot of meat if she could get it, and the hunters were bringing in plenty of game and fish.

I went to Stormwind via Auffrey again; I was Erich this time, so no need for cloak and dagger, and I brought along Lillibeth as an invisible spirit and Keryn disguised as a night elf. She was fully recovered from the acid burns, thanks to me and a little thing called The Light that you might have heard of.

I specifically didn't sit with her when we got to the Pig and Whistle, an hour or so before Bartleby supposedly showed up most days. Instead I made a mild nuisance of myself trying to recruit people to the Rampant Lions for a bit, then retreated to a small table where I ordered some potatoes and a mug of beer. There were no takers, but I wasn't too worried. Cover story firmly established, rogue companion stationed in the corner like an edgy stereotype, and ghost on the lookout for people approaching the level of blackout drunk for an easy capture, I got to my true passion. Book keeping and planning.

I relaxed, and went over my app. It was a bit shocking to realize just how many people were in my retinue: more than thirty, if you included people still in the process of capture. The Rampant Lions weren't officially my property but that was another twenty people under my command, after the influx of new recruits. The Defias were under my sway even if they weren't under my command.

Most worth close examination, however, was how I was getting more draenei every day thanks to Mary and Lillibeth. Eventually I'd run out of draenei, but ghosts were still fantastic recruiters for anyone with weak or compromised willpower. People seemed to be driven insane or feral by all sorts of crazy shit in this world.

If I got the pale ladies to Gnomeregan, for example? I could set up a conveyor belt that takes in small irradiated psychopaths and spits out miniature tech bros and eccentric scientists directly into my retinue, who I could mold as I saw fit, including turning them into far more physically imposing, but equally intelligent, forms like dragons or Eredar. Or they could stay gnomes and make me a *fleet of tanks* or *mind control devices* while I came out of it looking like a hero, saving gnomes by the dozens from a dark fate as murderous brain damaged lepers.

If I could make my way to Quel'thalas, the wretched would also be a good option; I might need to get my hands on addiction defense for them, though. Elven magic junkies might be very interested in powerful magical necklaces like mine, especially ones that quiet the cravings. I was certain that there were more groups of fixer uppers that might be vulnerable to possession. Hell, I might even be able to get at least some of the worgen this way.

I kinda wanted to capture more ghosts, but they weren't exactly the easiest thing to pin down. I think the ruined city above Undercity might be haunted, but I'd just kinda lucked out with Lillibeth all but throwing herself at me. On a positive note, if I found any more friendly or at least neutral ghosts I still had that spool of ghost hair thread.

Short term though, I needed to focus on shoring up weaknesses and fixing internal problems, not on picking new fights for the sake of expansion. I realized that I was going to basically be the shadow-king of Stormwind within a week or two, and that was a bit daunting. If I was going to just walk up and assume power, I wanted to do so in a way that actually benefits the people.

I figured that the most important things I could do would be to get Westfall and Duskwood under control, and get the Stormwind budget in order. Coming in after those on a more personal note, I needed to get my own budget in order, see about making myself stronger, and get some people over to Kalimdor.

I figured the first thing on the docket would be to buckle up and deal with the zombie and werewolf infested hellhole about three days travel from Stormwind. Nice and noncontroversial. I vaguely remembered that the Night Watch eventually snaps and turns into a death cult for some reason, and my best guess why would be the multiple extremely expensive foreign wars during which Darkshire was expected to just deal with their shit alone. While I was doing that, I could have Vanessa and Onyxia deescalating tensions between the Defias and Stormwind. The meetings between them could be fifteen minute chats followed by a threesome with me half the time, but the nobles of Stormwind and the rank and file of the Defias would need to be pacified or I'd never hear the end of it. I mean, I could probably just keep collaring the new ringleaders repeatedly but that would be a drain on resources.

Speaking of resources: I was running out of money, everyone working for me was poorer than they were when I captured them, and the designers of this world apparently didn't think that usable and expensive magical equipment was quite as easy to come across while wandering around as I'd been led to believe.

I had to get into a better economic position. Of course, having Katrana Prestor and Vanessa VanCleef in bed with me would be enough to set me personally up quite comfortably, especially with my sweet new extradimensional pad, but this was a world on the gold standard. Governments couldn't just print infinite money, no matter how corrupt they were. I also assumed that the majority of the money they each had access to was already going to be allocated towards somewhat important things. I didn't want to pay for a new breastplate using money that was set aside for feeding starving orphans or giving the men in the field new boots. Onyxia may be misappropriating some funds, but probably not enough to instantly solve all my money problems.

So I needed rich people to capture or to start making some legitimate income. Capturing all of the nobles in Stormwind would be killing two birds with one stone, but would only help me in the financial sector so much. The nobility were better off than the peasants, but they weren't sitting on giant piles of gold here. Constant warfare is not good for anyone except outright war profiteers. If I wanted to retire in comfort or support a group of five or six people, almost any noble could arrange it without breaking a sweat. If I wanted to build up and feed an army? I needed more than that; a lot more.

The Lions were the most financially healthy part of my retinue, because they were actually making a bit of money and had their living expenses covered by the magistrate. It was a modestly lucrative military contract as legitimate mercenaries, where they were both doing what I would have them do anyway and making money in the process. Hmm. Maybe I could pull a repeat of that? Find some wealthy sponsors and rent out some tough guys? It seemed possible, but where would I do it? Darkshire seemed like the only real option unless I went abroad, and I was looking to become more entrenched, not spread out more.

Alternatively, I could start collaring business owners. Stormwind had plenty of artisans; a bit of pro bono work and some cash donations would be all I'd ask of most of them. I already had multiple people on the lookout for useful herbs to send to Abby for potion making, and I should probably start sending Eva some harvested body parts. If I committed to going to war with Morbent Fel, I'm pretty sure I'd be able to gather quite a surplus of skeleton fingers and ghoul teeth, and it would be good to actually start outfitting my people. Or selling the charms for profit; either way really.

If I wanted to capture truly Scrooge McDuck wealthy people I'd definitely need to leave Stormwind. Goblins would probably be the best place to look there; Gazlowe, Baron Revilgaz, and Marin Noggenfogger sprang to mind, and that was just people I knew how to find.

For personal power, I had two paths: personal training and company assets. Personal training relied pretty heavily on me getting powerful trainers; I figured that depth would be more valuable than breadth if I was going to stay this busy. Better to be a really powerful priest and warlock than a priest/warlock/mage/druid/shaman/necromancer that was only ok at any of them. I could probably set aside an hour each morning for personal development. As long as I actually had appropriate trainers on hand, I'd develop my core skill sets and build up my energy reserves using the same time slot I'd given Talaada these last few days. If I found myself unable to find anyone who could teach me more about being a priest or warlock, then I'd expand into something else at that point.

For that plan to work though, I needed trainers. Drusilla was working on the warlock coven, I assumed Ursula was some mid to upper tier warlock, and there was a giant fuckoff cathedral right in the middle of the city where I was certain I'd be able to find priests and paladins.

That brought me to my next thought: defenses and rebates. Missions would probably always be my best source for credits long term, but "human Paladin" was in the catalog. It was greyed out; I couldn't directly buy one, but it had a rebate attached to it for both information defense and stress defense. The beta UI was kinda shit, but if I was right then when I captured a human Paladin I'd get a retroactive discount on stress defense. 2 credits wasn't exactly going to make me a god, but it was more than I'd get for capturing a human priest.

According to the lore, paladins were really just priests that put on armor and specialized in quick spells they could cast in melee. I could probably cross train there without too much difficulty, and even if I didn't use them as a trainer, a Paladin would be another healer and another fighter, all in one package.

After Bartleby arrived I briefly walked over and asked him if he wanted to join; I gave him my best sales pitch, but he turned me down. No big deal, just planting the idea. When he left to stagger home or fell asleep on the floor here, Keryn would sneak the necklace onto his neck and I'd put in a command for him to have difficulty noticing the necklace. Until then, I'd stay here and have another beer. I wasn't drinking a lot, just enough that they wouldn't throw me out.

For future reference, I went through the catalog and checked what people had what tags, and came to a few conclusions.

First, I would absolutely never buy corruption or soul defense. Not if I needed to spend real credits. Not because they weren't good; they were a bit niche but I was pretty sure they'd come up. I wasn't going to buy them because if I turned Zelena into a demonic Pokémon master then I'd get them for free. There were six types of rank and file or officer tier demons who had just those rebates, and demons in general seemed a bit overrepresented in the "generics with rebates" category.

Second: unless I could get multiple rebates by copying the same type of individual twice, which would be so exploitable that I'd consider it a bug when I had to give my report after all this, I wouldn't be getting a ton of credits from this any time soon. If one of the Worgen I captured happened to be a druid straight out of the Emerald Dream I'd get two credits from body defense, the Paladin would give me two for stress defense, and the next easiest mark after that was an infernal, which would give me another two if I picked him up after I finished trolling a murloc.

Third: if I went to Tirisfal Glades and captured two of the most frequently sexualized women in Classic Wow, I could make my entire retinue mostly immortal for 10 credits.

Got your attention with that last one, didn't I? Fatality defense was tagged for both Sylvannas and Whitemane. If I was reading this right, it would allow me and my team to cling to life as very weak ghosts if killed, would make resurrection easier, and as a nice side benefit it would make things that destroy souls much less dangerous to us. Dead retinue members would probably be even weaker than Lillibeth was when we met, but between Vanessa's proven ability to render people clinically brain dead and Whitemane's powerful and canonical ability to resurrect her allies, they wouldn't be dead long.

Would I even need to bother with Livin the Emerald Dream if I had that combo in play? I kept delaying on moving forward with that mission, it was just so removed from anything I was currently doing, and it's reward might actually be less efficient, if slightly more certain, than something I could probably get my hands on a lot more cheaply.

I almost moved to purchase Whitemane then and there, to give me one hell of a jumping off point in Tirisfal Glades, but I restrained myself. If I was going to do this, I was going to do this optimally, and without wasting resources. I always needed more necklaces, especially if I had yet another organization to subvert. I decided to start slow, and put in my order for Extra Stock 2. I'd spend the rest of them tomorrow, when I wasn't slightly drunk.