Dark Fate, Chapter 67 (Patreon)

Chapter 67 – Minions

Once again, buying through the System allowed me to get my items where I wanted them to go. I still didn’t have the technical knowledge to manage the satellites or get any actual information off them, but the four big satellites were positioned at their Lagrange points, and the spy satellite was currently in a geosynchronous orbit over Atlanta. Having the equipment in place was nice, but I needed someone with expertise to run it. And that meant it was time to head back to the System Shop, and see how the Minion Market was working.

“Ah, my friend! So good to see you again!” Shadraus was waiting for me as I stepped into the System Shop, with one of the catgirls I brought him curled up squirming as he played with her behind the counter. Which was fine, since there not any other people in the shop at the moment.

“Hello, again, Shadraus. Good to see you’re keeping busy. I was hoping to check out the Minion Market. Didn’t get to play with it too much, last time, you know, so a bit of a primer might help.”

“Of course, of course! Come into the business meeting room. We’ll be needing it, anyway, once you start making selections.” He led the way through a door into the back of the store, leaving the catgirl to man the counter. In a short hallway with three doors coming off it, he ushered us towards the one marked ‘Conference Room’. I knew that the ‘Lounge’ room led to his private quarters, but the third door, ‘Processing’ was one I’d never been in before, in this timeline or the last.

I didn’t ask about it, though. Shadraus would tell me, if he thought it important. Anyways, I could guess about the room’s purpose. After all, the System Shop received many items, not to mention slaves to be sold and more. It stood to reason that they would need to be processed, at some point, before they could be properly part of the System Shop network.

Stepping into the conference room, it was a fairly standard affair. Tables, chairs, TV screen to display whatever was needed, and so on. Nothing that you wouldn’t see in any business anywhere in the galaxy, though the chairs were normalized for humans, given that this Shop was on Earth. System Shops tended to keep their furniture normalized for the local dominant species, after all.

Shadraus slid a tablet to me as I sat down. “All right, so, there’s some standard forms on that you’ll need to fill out before you can use the Minion Market. Liability clauses, and other things to keep someone from trying to backdoor bugs into the system by effectively dividing by zero or calculating pi to the last digit. Things like that could rip the universe a new one, and no one wants that.

“Now, the Minion Market itself. There’s buying and selling, obviously, which are for standard stock. You can also put up ‘bounties’, or ‘commissions’, which you can use to have someone with the appropriate licenses go out and recruit (forcibly or not) a minion according to your specifications. Now, so far this is all basically like dealing with any slave market, but there are a few differences.

“First, and most obviously, is that this is a System venture. That means that any exchanges in the Minion Market can be recorded, tracked, and researched, just as all System things can be, provided you have the requisite knowledge. This is one of the primary reasons that independent markets and so-called rogue traders still exist, obviously, for when people want to do anything with discretion.

“The Market also differs from an independent market due to the lack of an in-person element. The independent markets are typically going to involve merchants renting space in the local facility, displaying goods or purchasing them, and haggling with the customers to get the better deal, and work that little bit extra to turn a prospective buyer into a paying customer. With the Minion Market, on the other hand, unless there is an auction being run, the price of the goods is listed and set beforehand, and the prospective buyer either chooses to spend their money, or not.

“Because of this, the price you see is the price you’ll get. But you also get delivery to the store upon purchase, and you won’t need to travel to the market and all that. Unfortunately, it also means you can’t try to get discounts or package deals unless they are put in ahead of time, making it far more difficult to get the best price.”

I nodded as I scanned and signed the documents. “But, since there isn’t really a slave market on Earth that has what I need, I’m going to need to spend a bit more.”

“Exactly. Now, that tablet will let you examine and sort minions based on race, class, skills, tiers, and so on, to filter out ones that don’t fit your needs. I know you need a technician who can cover the satellite feeds, right? Or perhaps more than one, if you want twenty-four-hour coverage? Anything else you’re looking for?”

“Well, I’d like to start checking out what I need for starship crew. I’m sure I’ll be able to find some ‘recruits’ from the raiders, when they show up, but I’d rather not rely solely on that as a way of filling out all of the skilled positions of a crew.”

“Right, that shouldn’t be too hard. Once you’ve got a purchase record on the Minion Market, I can update your Shop tablet to allow Read-only browsing of the Minion Market. You won’t be able to buy remotely, but you can at least sort through things.”

Shadraus leaned back and let me turn to the tablet, and start filtering my choices. Filter out any species that couldn’t easily survive Earth’s atmosphere, gravity, and so on. Filter out anyone that didn’t have the skills I needed. Filter out Contracted, Enthralled, and Bound resource types. Filter out incorporeal creatures. Filter out very nonhuman species…

That was a good start. 1228 options. Still too many. Filter out male. 574 options. Hmm. Filter out angelic beings. Too much potential for conflict there. Filter out shifters. Could make things happen if I needed to put them in with the werewolves. 398 people.

Now, I guess I needed to start making some choices. Huh, choice of deity followed? I knew that gods had power in this new world, but, well, I didn’t really follow any of them last time, and I still didn’t. I checked one. Goddess of freedom, named Pofmis? Yeah, that wouldn’t bite me at all. Filter out, along with other gods that had similar ideas in their portfolio. 287 left.

So, what about the opposite side of things? What if I looked for people who followed gods that would make them inherently fine with being owned? Hmm. Brought it down to 5 names, all following some god named Darkmore.

*ding*

Make that 6 names. New person just popped up in the search, a follower of someone called Kuronoth. Never heard of either god before, so I looked up at Shadraus. “What can you tell me about these gods, Darkmore and Kuronoth?”

“Ah, going for slaves that follow a god of slavers, in hope that they take their fate better, and don’t give you any trouble? I completely understand. As for those two, well, Darkmore is the more established god. Called the Chainmaker, he is all about spreading slavery, and controlling those around him. Fairly standard, for the archetype, but his followers are more professional slavers than those who just snap up whoever they’re lusting after.

“Kuronoth, on the other hand, is something of a special case. The number of people who follow him in this universe could be counted in the hundreds, maybe. However, when a god ascends in one universe, that has ripple effects across all universes, though, because of the veil between worlds, they rarely form in the same place and time as they did in their home universe. For instance, the god Webris, patron of science, actually ended up ascending in his home universe and then manifesting in a couple other universes a full two millennia before his birth as a mortal in another world, leading to that world’s science advancing quickly, even though, technically, Webris had not even been born for the first time, yet, much less ascend to godhood.”

“Ugh, temporal mechanics give me a headache.”

Shadraus laughed. “But, to answer your question, Kuronoth is a god of pleasure and domination. Basically, he is more in the slave marked for sex toys and to break the will of his enemies.

“Neither god will care, over much, that you have one of their own enslaved, unless you force them to convert away from their chosen patrons. And the individuals themselves should, at least, be familiar enough with their new station that it won’t push them into doing something stupid. That’s the best I can offer you, though, without specific contract clauses.”

Minion   Market

Name

Price

Description

Maylin   Gennala

20000   gp

Race: Knelfi

Level: 38 (Tier 1)

Class: Fighter

Profession: Soldier

Deity: Darkmore

Skills: Satellite imagery,   swordsmanship, art

General: War hero of 3rd Ykadian   Revolt, captured during 4th Ykadian Revolt.

Ciliren   Fanorin

150000   gp

Race: Knelfi

Level: 2 (Tier 2)

Class: Space Mage

Profession: Courtesan

Deity: Darkmore

Skills: Carnal Arts, Satellite   imagery, plasma weapons

General: Obsession with space   led to enslavement due to outstanding debts.

Durguda   Blooddelver

9508500   gp

Race: Gauz

Level: 12 (Tier 3)

Class: True Battleforged   Alchemist

Profession: Analyst

Deity: Darkmore

Skills: Satellite Imagery,   Brewing, Recipe Knowledge

General: Considered a walking   war crime, after the Olderthen IV Incident.

Snak

2000   gp

Race: Orkad

Level: 2 (Tier 1)

Class: Supporter

Profession: Analyst

Deity: Darkmore

Skills: Satellite Imagery, General   Maintenance, Vehicle Maintenance

General: Low-leveled, due to   capture at an early age, and Orkad nature rebelling against forced   class/profession changes.

Fenkla   Glassceiling

20000   gp

Race: Rodaini

Level: 25 (Tier 1)

Class: Priestess

Profession: Analyst

Deity: Darkmore

Skills: Satellite Imagery, Divine   Spellcasting, Carnal Arts

General: A devout follower of   Darkmore, she became a slave following a lost bet.

Aezrelle

125000   gp

Race: Succubus

Level: 49 (Tier 1)

Class: Battledancer

Profession: Courtesan

Deity: Kuronoth

Skills: Carnal Arts, Satellite   Imagery, Mettle

General: A brothel worker who   was sold to a military company. Self-taught in multiple fields, primarily pleasure   or technology.

Hmm. The Space Mage and the Succubus both stood out immediately. One would be very useful for an obsession with space. I could possibly get her to do research or something for me? The other, of course, was a sex demon, who also had an apparently wide range of skills, for a courtesan. That could be very useful.

Then, there was the war hero. Well, war hero would probably be a bit generous for someone who, according to her more in-depth file, was best known for brutally putting down a slave rebellion on her home planet, and her hand in the fifty-something years of oppression before that. She’d been a ‘priority target’ when the surviving residents target her in specific when they rose up again, but they’d decided that enslavement and exile was a better punishment for her.

“All right, I’ll pick these three. That’ll give me one per shift, and they all look to be of an acceptable level in strength.” I indicated my three choices by clicking ‘Buy Now’ on the screen.

“Excellent! I see that the funds are already deposited in the escrow account for the sellers, since they wanted at least a shred of privacy, so let me just step out to grab your choices from the Processing room. They are shifted from the long-term facility once you buy them, but there is still a bit of a wait as we transfer the control structures as well as physical ownership of the items.”

“That’s fine. I have plenty of time.”