The OP Lich is a Returnee, Book 6 Prologue (Patreon)

Yeah, we're back in the swing of things, now! Have some trade chat fun!

Prologue – Trade Chat

(Magical World Disharmony Server, General Chat)

UsualSuspect, manoutoftime, muon, MewTwo, Avariel, Chummer, Golddigger, CrazyCelt, Blaze, DoYouEvenLyft?, MarcoPolo, MightMakesRight, MacD, Inquisitor, OrangeQueen, Lizard, RedFox, SemiSolidSnake, BabyShark, Not_the_Face!, Scholar, Salty, Anonymous3, Anonymous4, Anonymous7, Anonymous9, TheLichQueen, WhiskeyTangoFoxtrot, DigDug, Backlog, DarkAvariel, Knocker, GrimDark, BloodForTheBloodGod, BackDat@55Up and DarkAngel are in the chat.

Blaze: And, fortunately, even though zombies don’t feel pain, they still burn.

GrimDark: Yeah, but until enough of them burns away, you have a bunch of zombies ON FIRE trying to eat you.

Blaze: It sucks, yeah, but it is more reliable for large groups than anything else.

TheLichQueen: Not if you’re dealing with a true necromancer, and not someone who just lost control of their undead creations.

Scholar: What’s the difference?

TheLichQueen: Any amateur can raise a zombie or two, just like pretty much anyone can throw a fireball, if they know the spell. Some have harder times than others, of course, but they can do it.

DigDug: So, what would you suggest?

TheLichQueen: Well, that depends on your talents. Low-level zombies are slow, and cannot leverage their strength very well. Bindings of stone or ice would work well. Wind blades strong enough to sever limbs could reduce them all to crawlers, making them easier to clean up.

TheLichQueen: Depending on the type of zombie, a priest could cast an area purification to cleanse them.

GrimDark: You mean whether it is from some kind of curse, or if it is a disease or fungus of some kind?

TheLichQueen: Yes. The curse would be cleansed by holy magic, easy enough. A disease or fungus would take more power. Better to just use death magic in that case and kill the source.

Scholar: Death magic to kill zombies. Never would have thought of that.

TheLichQueen: Well, that only works with those kinds of zombies, because the disease or fungus ones are due to Life magic getting out of control.

Golddigger: Wait, was there some zombie outbreak recently?

Blaze: Yeah, happened in Kazakhstan, near the Russian and Chinese borders, a couple weeks back. Took a while to get it under control, from what I heard.

MightMakesRight: That’s because no one wanted one of their mages or military units ‘accidentally’ straying into another country’s territory. That kind of thing can cause ‘misunderstandings’.

DigDug: Which makes it even more curious that a zombie outbreak started there, honestly.

BabyShark: Clearly, someone was experimenting, using people that wouldn’t be missed, in a place that they could have plausible deniability.

Golddigger: But why would they try and make a zombie outbreak? They aren’t exactly reliable, as weapons go.

OrangeQueen: Because LQ has shown how powerful undead can be if you give them time.

TheLichQueen: Well, you’re not wrong. And if they were trying to experiment with strengthening undead, that requires a lot of trial and error, until you know what you’re doing.

BabyShark: How do you strengthen undead, other than giving them time to grow?

TheLichQueen: The same ways you would strengthen a human. Only, because zombies are mindless husks, they can’t feel pain, so there are less ethical concerns if they blow up accidentally because you did something wrong.

GrimDark: Let me guess, pumping magic into them to ‘supercharge’ them?

Knocker: What about using enchantments or stuff on them?

TheLichQueen: You are both correct, but there is one more way out there.

OrangeQueen: Augmentation?

TheLichQueen: Yes! Any material has a limit to how much mana it can contain, whether it is an enchantment or funneling mana into boosting its characteristics. You go over that limit, and either the material breaks down, or it explodes.

GrimDark: I see. You get around that by changing the materials, right? Better materials means that you can do more with them.

TheLichQueen: Exactly. Even in mundane crafts, like sculpting, one piece of marble is not necessarily like another, no? If there are flaws, then that limits what you can do with the piece.

TheLichQueen: So, one way that you can augment your soldiers is by replacing the natural flesh and bone with something stronger. This can be done either with a crude swap, or by infusion.

Knocker: I get chopping off an arm and replacing it with something stronger, but infusion?

TheLichQueen: Essentially, you use arcane and alchemic knowledge to draw the essence of another material into the thing you want to strengthen. So, if you infused the bones with iron, suddenly the body you’re working on would be able to take a lot more damage before bones started breaking, and the quality of the bones would rise, allowing more magic to pass through.

GrimDark: And using undead to try this out means that you can wait until you have a viable product before you start wondering if you can make it survivable.

Blaze: That’s brutal.

TheLichQueen: Indeed. The next step would likely be animal testing, before going to human testing, if you were starting out fresh.

GrimDark: All your soldiers are augmented, right?

TheLichQueen: Oh, heavily so. My knights have bones that could shrug off a heavy tank’s main gun with minor injuries. They’d get thrown around, of course, unless they were using magic to counter the knockback, but they would still be functional and able to fight.

MarcoPolo: Hey, LQ, haven’t seen you in the news lately. Been like six or seven months.

TheLichQueen: You act as though you expect me to just always causing trouble, Marco.

MarcoPolo: More like, trouble looks like it is trying to find you.

TheLichQueen: HAH! Well, you’re not wrong on that, I guess. Honestly, there isn’t much to say. I’ve been working on my crafting business, training my apprentices, and offering some consulting advice for different groups. Oh, and taking a correspondence course on thaumaturgy.

Scholar: Wait. What? Why?

TheLichQueen: Call me vain, but in the old world I was the pinnacle of magical learning, save only for a couple elven archmages and some wyrms who made those elves look young. So, now that I’m home, I’d like to be the pinnacle of magical learning, again.

Scholar: I feel so inadequate, now.

TheLichQueen: Comparing yourself to me, Scholar, is like comparing a children’s league sports star to an Olympic athlete. If you must, then do so in an aspirational way, rather than judging yourself by my standard. I am, without any false pride or modesty, an exceptional existence. Anyone who goes through the Hero Summoning is.

OrangeQueen: That reminds me. Are you at all worried about someone deciding to pull a Hero Summoning, to try and escalate global conflicts?

TheLichQueen: I expect someone will try it, eventually. But they should know that I WILL notice, the moment the ceremony is completed, and I WILL take offense to that.

Blaze: That’s not ominous at all.

TheLichQueen: *shrugs* My stance on anyone performing the Hero Summoning ritual in this world is simple: fuck around and find out.

Anonymous9: So, you’d go to war to stop that?

TheLichQueen: War? War implies that there would be some kind of parity. I would ride to the slaughter, like the Grim Reaper, reaping lives and cursing the earth so that it will be one hundred years or more before even a blade of grass might grow in that land. I will not suffer another to be used, as the other world tried to use me.

GrimDark: So, um, about the zombies, can we get back to that? Please?