Reroll

Eventually, Vinny gives me his answer, “I hate it.  I'm probably going to be the most hated Vlad in history.  But…” he pauses a moment, “You seem to understand what you're asking of me. You're honest about it. I don't have a better plan.” He pauses again, looking me straight in my eyes, “So yes. I choose life.”

“Good. I'll get started on making those amulets in earnest, then.” For every fifteen Crafting builds I can put out one a day.  We have room for some nine hundred of them aboard the main ship, so that's sixty a day… provided Betty is willing to manage the fifteen hundred Fabricate castings each day to feed the machine… about two and a half hours’ work for her each day… or I build a Creation sphere minion with Create Materials and Expanded Creation then feed that spell points so it can create materials to feed the machine… hmmm… ballpark three thousand vampires worldwide, so about two months to make enough to feed them all, assuming I can use all the space on board… but we have refugees… hmm, “I'll need some time to run the numbers and set up production lines.  I'll be in touch once I figure out how quickly I can pull it off.  In the meanwhile, please figure out how many we'll need, what laws will actually work, and so on.”

“Yeah,” Vlad nods, “I'll get on it.”

“Also…” I pause, “I do have some support I can give you - make you harder to injure, a little more persuasive, that kind of thing.”

Vlad considers, “Hmm… if you wanted to kill me you already could have… fine; let's see what you can do…”

So I get out my Library and buff him up: Regeneration stopped by Acid (Eternal Steel, from Nature) and a bunch of things from Alteration: Immunity to Acid (Energy Manipulation), of course, but I also increase his Diplomacy and Perform checks (Appealing Visage from Alteration), give him a better chance to avoid injury (Dodge, Evasion, and Uncanny Dodge from Agile), set him up to keep moving when he should be unconscious from injuries (Ferocity, from Bestial Spirit), resistance to poison (Glow of Health from Vitality), tougher skin (Fey Skin from Fey Body… I figure cold iron is less common than silver), and the ability to breathe a cone of acid (Breath Weapon from Dragon Transformation).  I make sure he can see my friends lending me their power when I do it: After all, I've told him it's my friends with the cool tricks, so that needs to be visibly true... and it IS true, but I make my own friends... oh yes, and Betty and Ed have coil tricks too.

When I'm done and putting my Library away, Vlad looks at me sideways, “And you can just hand this kind of power out, just like that?”

I chuckle, “Just like that. Don't worry, though: I can still put you in the ground if needed.”

He pauses, “That is exactly what worries me. You're a mess of contradictions with more power at your beck and call than we've seen in…” he shakes his head, “...if you weren't such an idealist we could win this practically overnight.”

I shake my head, “That victory would cost too much.  Suppose, for a moment, that I did rain down fire from heaven and obliterated the Inquisition. What would happen after?”

“We’d win! I’d get to feed whenever I wanted, as often as I wanted.”

“That's completely unrealistic, but sure. Let's go with that. Setting aside my personal feelings on the matter, you eat at least one human a month, right?”

“Bare minimum before your amulet, yes.”

“It takes like twenty years to get a human to proper breeding age, and most only have a few children. Vampires need to be outnumbered two hundred and forty to one… or worse… in order to be properly fed that way long term.”

“Yeah, so?  There's billions of them.”

“And how often does a feeding produce a new vampire?”

“Once or twice a year.”

“So a fed vampire population will double in numbers - or more - every year, and must be outnumbered by two hundred forty to one for survival. There's only seven or eight billion humans on the planet.”

Vlad raises an eyebrow at “only”.

I continue “With a starting population of a thousand vampires, after year one, there's two thousand. After year two, four thousand. After year three, eight thousand.  And so on. Your kind would outnumber the humans in just thirty-three years. You'd all starve before then, though, as you'd break that two hundred forty to one requirement at about year twenty-five.  Your victory is your own death sentence: If you win your way, you still lose.”

The vampire purses his lips, “Your math is off.  There's thirteen full moons most years, and the new vampire rate is slightly higher than that.  So it's two hundred sixty to one… we feed more when we can, so five hundred or so… which also drives the spawn rate up… and there's more of us than just a thousand right now… ugh.  Okay, I get it now.”

I shrug, “...and that's ignoring the other breeds that convert baseline humans. Yeah. It's a mess.  In the end, I'm trying to save everyone I can, yourself included.  There isn't really a way to do that without also saving the humans.  I admit my best plan hits the vampires harder than most… if you can come up with an actually better plan, I'm willing to at least entertain the notion.”

The vampire considers, “Yeah… will do.  How do I get in touch with you?”  I make a business card from stable Shadowstuff (it's technically an illusion, but it'll last forever and is actually solid), and take his information down similarly. We then part ways… at least I have his actual buy-in now, so he'll keep the vampires and more monstrous types in line.  

I still need a solution for the werewolves, as they have a very similar problem with the mindless rage hunting… but I have obedience from them already, so I can hit the books on that as I have time.  I will need to walk Ralph through it at some point, preferably after we have a tested working solution.

For now, though, I need to get buy-in from Marty, the current Merlin… which requires sorting out his beef with humans. For Vlad it was obvious enough: He eats them, because that's how the Vampire myths work.  I expect similar from Ralph, really: Werewolves turn into ravenous rampaging beasts on the full moon and hunt humans, that's just how most of those Myths go.  Merlin, though? I have a sneaky suspicion his beef is deeper than that.  I really hope it's something I can address: I'd hate to have to kick him off his throne and take over.

In the meanwhile, though, I'm done here, so I head up to the ship.  I have my own vacuum rating and Starflight capability… oh.  Huh.  I don't need to use up the space on the ship… I just need some space where my minions can work… and that's easy.  

I use my armor's comm to flag Betty and Ed: “Heading to the moon. I got buy-in from Vlad on the ‘don't eat humans’ plan, and need to set up a factory where I won't be disturbed.”  Yes: I have orbital weapons; neigh-limitless minions; have dealings with vampires, werewolves, and wizards; Mag8c and super tech... and now I'm going to have a moon base.  

How many more movie villian stereotypes can I check off?

I also call my ship and instruct the pilot to meet me there.  While my minions are vacuum-rated once I'm done buffing them… they don't start that way, so I'm going to need a staging ground to kick everything off, and that will need air: My ship will do just fine for that, and can actually land.

A few hours later, I'm at the moon, and find my ship.  I get inside, go to an empty cargo bay, and build a Mage to build the base.  I give her the Mage archetype for casting and the Magic Vessel form talent so I can feed her spell points.  For her feats, I have her pick up Spheres talents: Gaseous Generation, Create Materials, and the required talents from the Creation sphere… also the Destruction sphere with the Disintegrate talent, using a sphere specific drawback so that's the only form of it she can use.  For skills, I set her up with Knowledge (Architecture and Engineering) so she can build tunnels and things that WON'T collapse on their own, during moonquakes, or when there's a nearby impact.  As for buffs, the standard set is fine: Earth Glide is already in there, and will let her start digging deep underground without touching the Moon’s surface. I then give her orders, and send her out and underground to begin her work, digging tunnels and rooms, filling them with breathable air.

While she does that, I make a Supplier (a Mage with the Creation sphere, including Expanded Materials and Create Materials), and a whole mess of Crafting builds: The idea being that the Supplier will make materials (drawing from my essentially unlimited spell points to do so) which the Crafters will then use to make Amulets of Undead Persuasion. It takes my Supplier two spell points per block of materials, each of which works out to six hundred twenty-five gold pieces of value for magic item crafting. Twelve casts supply enough for one Amulet, so over the course of an eight hour shift, she can make sufficient supplies for four hundred amulets… far more than I need in a day, really.  That costs nine thousand six hundred spell points… but only two per round, and I can do thirty per round: A single Supplier is fine, I'll barely even notice the spell point cost, same as my Builder.

I'm still making Crafting builds and starting them in on Amulets when midnight school time rolls around, and I smell sulfur….