Dark Fate, Book 11 Prologue (Patreon)

Prologue – Trade Chat

(Community Building and Civil Defense Chat, formerly Life in the City Chat Room)

abby_gail, bento, RainyDayze, GringottsGoblin, DoritoMan, D.VaLuvr69, RadicalEdward, DarkLord, FusionGal, NotACop, Scholar, RamblingWreck, Anonymous4, Anonymous6, SevenNationArmy, BagOTrix, DarkLord, Faraday, BackpageGal, FullServiceMassage, daytrader, shadow_clone23, THE_MERCHANT, jenny8675309, Rabbit, Angelus and Tracker are in the chat.

bento: Holy shit, are you seeing this stuff coming out of Washington?

FusionGal: Serves them right.

Faraday: Come on, you can’t mean that! Six of the nine justices of the supreme court were just murdered!

Scholar: Worse. It would seem that they were vivisected.

Rabbit: What does vivisected mean?

Scholar: In this case? It means they were dissected. Except that they were alive when the person started. In the end, though, they were all cut open and displayed like a frog in a biology classroom. The parts were even in trays marked with individual organs!

Faraday: What could possess someone to do something like that?

FusionGal: Didn’t you hear about the ruling they were preparing to make?

Faraday: What, the abortion thing? Come on, there’s no way that was real, right?

Anonymous4: It was real. Of course, now that the court has been… temporarily reduced, the remaining members just published several rulings, coming down on the side of established precedent.

Faraday: So, someone kills two-thirds of the court, and the court’s rulings change?

Scholar: Yes.

FusionGal: Couldn’t happen to a bunch of nicer assholes. Conservatives already lost most of their power after their idiocy caused Congress to get basically wiped out, with only a few members managing to escape the building before it was destroyed. So, the court was hurrying to try and get things overturned before anyone could codify stuff.

RainyDayze: Well, anyways, what about the person who killed them? Any news on that?

Anonymous6: Their own families did it, apparently. It was on camera, and everything. There’s video of the actual procedures being done! And none of the justices were unconscious or restrained.

Scholar: The fuck? You do not just lie back and let someone cut you open like that. That’s not natural. Something had to be going on.

Anonymous6: Looking at the videos, it appears that the family members were moving in a slightly jerky manner, especially at the start. Might indicate some form of mind control.

DarkLord: Were they all in the same room, at the same time?

Anonymous6: Yeah, it was in a ballroom. All six justices, with their killers, as what had to be a camera crew moved around, taking in the scene.

DarkLord: That tells us a few things. For anyone in Tier 1, that kind of thing would have taken an entire team of mages using mind control spells to pull off. A team large enough that it would have been impossible for there not to be some evidence of them on camera. So, it wasn’t the normal kind of mind control.

Scholar: So, if not magic, then what?

DarkLord: Class abilities. You’re looking at the work of either a Dominator/Dominatrix or a Puppet Master/Mistress. Those classes focus on that kind of thing. It is possible that a clever person with the Slave Master profession could have pulled it off, especially if they combined their profession abilities with mental magic, but that is a real niche case.

Rabbit: How do you know that?

DarkLord: I’ve seen it before. Not so brazenly, against such high-profile targets, but I’ve seen this kind of thing before. A single, half-mad Puppet Master managed to coordinate thirty people in a fight at level 5, and he wasn’t even particularly talented in the field, using it more as a hammer than anything else. A skilled Puppet Master, at a higher level, would be able to pull this off, easily.

Scholar: And this Dominator class?

DarkLord: Same idea, different flavor. Instead of mindless puppets, the Dominator shackles a person’s will, and makes them a thrall. The main difference is that they are capable of actual thought, can act somewhat naturally to things.

Scholar: So, how does a Dominator differ from that Slave Master you mentioned?

DarkLord: A [Slave] is magically compelled to follow their Master’s orders. However, they can resist in small ways, following the letter, not the spirit, of the commands. Especially if they resent being a slave, and haven’t been tamed to the point where they serve willingly. A Dominator’s Thrall, on the other hand, serves willingly, like a religious zealot. They will only question the commands when they start receiving conflicting orders, or something of the sort.

Rabbit: Scary. Is there any way to protect yourself from things like that?

DarkLord: Unless you have a race or class ability that confers an absolute protection, then no, there is no way to completely guard against such things. However, a high WIS helps fight off mental magics. There are skills you can gain which also increase your resistance to outside control. Dominators take time to make a Thrall out of someone, so it is possible to escape before conversion. Puppet Masters, though? Don’t let them touch you. Ever. If you get hit by their [Puppet Brand], it is game over, unless you are in a couple real edge cases, or have someone who can break the effect on hand. Even if the brand is removed, you’ll likely end up like a puppet with its strings cut.

daytrader: Jesus.

DarkLord: Coincidentally, Puppet Masters in particular are not allowed in the Kingdom of Ceres without submitting to certain binding contracts to restrict the use of their abilities, and keep them from abusing their powers on the citizenry.

NotACop: So, they are just guilty until proven innocent?

DarkLord: Ceres is not the US. We have laws to restrict the use of all weapons and attack magics, based on how dangerous they are. We don’t need a couple dozen school shootings a year to tell us that weapons are fucking dangerous, and need to be controlled.

D.VaLuvr69: Hey, DarkLord! You know anything about that big blast that happened in the desert? It is all over the news. Something about a terrorist camp getting nuked.

DarkLord: I can only say that, while the Kingdom of Ceres does have ships with nuclear weapons, none of those ships have fired said weapons since the pirate fleet was defeated.

D.VaLuvr69: But that means you know something, right?

DarkLord has left the chat.