Dark Fate, Book 10 Prologue (Patreon)

Yes, folks, it is time for some more Trade Chat!

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.

daytrader: Holy shit! Are you seeing the reports out of Moscow?

BagOTrix: No, I’ve been too busy trying to get in touch with my cousin in St. Louis. They’re saying it has been a massacre there.

Scholar: I have been looking at the reports. Oddly enough, the cities that reacted the best to the attack were New York, Tokyo, Beijing, and Moscow.

Faraday: Why those four, and not the others?

Scholar: St. Louis does not have a strong Adventurer’s Guild, and the local officials have been trying to keep things as ‘normal’ as possible, by pre-System standards. Most people in the city were level 5 or so, with no real combat experience, since someone figured out how to ward the city to keep out random monsters. Police weapons were ineffective. SWAT barely slowed them down. It took three hours for the Army to get there from Fort Leonard Wood. It was Apocalypse Day all over again.

FusionGal: I got a cousin in LA. The Adventurers there are all under the control of this sexy lady that runs the local guild. She and the local gangs worked together, keeping the scaly bastards out of low-income neighborhoods, so they basically went to town through the rich neighborhoods and business districts. Cops couldn’t stop them, and like with St. Louis it took a while for the military to arrive.

Faraday: Why did it take the military so long to respond? Were they just sitting on their fucking hands?

DarkLord: They had twenty minutes warning that the ships were coming. Mobilizing people and vehicles takes time. Google tells me that Fort Irwin is 2.5 hours from LA, even if you don’t hit traffic, and it is a bit longer from Fort Leonard Wood to St. Louis. 20-40 minutes to scramble a military convoy and get it on the road is good time, IMHO.

Scholar: Indeed. And there are similar stories in London and Berlin. The levels of the locals were not enough to fight the lizardfolk one on one, so they were basically just trying not to die until the military showed up with heavier weapons.

RadicalEdward: Then what made those cities different from the others?

daytrader: Well, I don’t know about the other cities, but Moscow’s defense can basically be summed up with one phrase: bear cavalry.

Faraday: What.

daytrader: No lie! Seems like the locals got REALLY drunk after the Apocalypse, and figured out some kind of spell that lets them summon a mount. And the first thing one of the crazy bastards did was summon a big ass bear to ride. Thing kind of spiraled out of control after that, and now half of Moscow has bears.

Scholar: And getting the food to feed their bear mounts has meant more of them went hunting in dungeons, so their levels were all in the twenties. Plus, their bears leveled with them. So, the ship lands, and the Russians literally charge the thing with bear cavalry.

Tracker: I’m too sober for this shit.

Scholar: So, anyways. Beijing and Tokyo have similar stories. There are a LOT of people who saw the System come online, and then started grinding levels to be the biggest and baddest anime protagonist that they could be. And that was before one of the Chinese summoned Son Wukong, or Son Goku, as he is sometimes known.

bento: The anime character?

Scholar: No, not the guy from Dragonball. The mythological figure from the Chinese classic Journey to the West, among other things.

DarkLord: I assume the aliens had a bad day after that?

Scholar: The ‘dragons’ offended him, and so he smashed what remained of their ship after the engines got blown up, transformed it into a mighty pavilion for himself.

bento: Oh, wow.

Scholar: Tokyo was relatively tame, compared to that. Just an army of otaku wannabe samurai all armed with the power of anime and the System on their side.

Faraday: Huh. What about those fighters that blew the engines? I heard they appeared in each city?

Scholar: I don’t know. Current scuttlebutt says that it has something to do with the base out at Ceres before Ceres just DISAPPEARED shortly before the aliens showed up in the system.

DarkLord: That would be the Kingdom of Ceres, and the fighters are part of the Ceres Royal Navy.

RainyDayze: The WHAT now? Since when has there been a Kingdom of Ceres, and since when did they have fucking X-wings?

DarkLord: I made the mistake of giving my design team access to pre-Apocalypse science fiction. The designer immediately fell in love with the Star Wars movies, and designed X-wings for me. But it was the pilots who decided to call them Rogue Squadron.

Faraday: Wait, ‘your’ design team? What do you have to do with Ceres?

DarkLord: Oh, right. You could say that I am Zayn Greene, First of His Name, King of Ceres and the Belt, Lord of the Outer Worlds, and Protector of the Realm.

bento: What? But you were just that guy who was helping the APD with the System cases until they could get up to speed.

DarkLord: I was. And now I am the CEO and Owner of Dark Lord Industries, based on Ceres, and King of Ceres, as well as leader of the Ceres Royal Navy.

THE_MERCHANT: You enjoyed that a little too much.

DarkLord: Well, sorry, if Rogue Leader got to say she was locking s-foils into attack position, I’ll be damned if I’m not going to get another quote out.

RainyDayze: Uh, wow. So, if I join, will I get to fly an X-wing?

DarkLord: It will depend on your talents, Rainy. But we are definitely looking to expand our military. The forces we had were just barely enough to hold off and delay the enemy, since they came in overwhelming force.

Tracker: Eight ships is overwhelming force?

DarkLord: Fifty ships invaded. Eight made it to Earth. None made it off Earth, and only twenty-five of the remaining escaped, some of them barely holding together enough to go to FTL. My forces included a few torpedo boats, a squadron of fighters, and a single warship.

Faraday: How did you do that?

DarkLord: Sorry, national security.

RamblingWreck: So, what about New York? How did they do?

Scholar: Oh, yes. Well, there were a lot of casualties, more even than LA or St. Louis, but fewer fatalities. Some power duo stepped up to lead the cops and adventurers. The Black Knight and his White Queen, they’re calling them. They somehow empowered the people to fight harder than they should, and anyone that wasn’t killed outright was stabilized, even if their wounds should have been mortal, like having their guts spilled out on the ground. They ended up finishing the battle before the military could get to the area.”

DarkLord: Ah, so that’s what she’s been up to. Interesting.

RamblingWreck: Wait, you know this White Queen?

DarkLord: Oh, don’t mind me. Just thinking out loud.

RamblingWreck: Well, that’s not ominous. Maybe I should take FSM up on her offer of a massage.

FullServiceMassage: Yes, you should. Always good to relax. We’ll get you comfy, so you can just let out all your pent-up energy and feel better. Would you like to schedule an appointment?