The OP Lich is a Returnee, Book 20 Prologue

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, Lichwatcher, Not_the_Face!, TheLichQueen, Scholar, Salty, Anonymous3, Anonymous4, Anonymous7, Anonymous9, WhiskeyTangoFoxtrot, DigDug, Backlog, DarkAvariel, Knocker, GrimDark, BloodForTheBloodGod, BackDat@55Up and DarkAngel are in the chat.

DarkAngel: So, the new President looks to be trying to walk back some of the dead guy’s policies.

MacD: Well, at least on the surface. We’ll see how well that holds. Wouldn’t count on any real change happening, though.

muon: Why did he do the sudden reversal? He was part of the group that campaigned on those isolationist and nationalist policies.

GrimDark: Because he likes being alive.

muon: Are you saying the gas leak wasn’t an accident?

Scholar: While the specifics are obviously classified, everything we know says that the White House should have pretty advanced sensors to detect a gas leak. If the alarms didn’t go off, then either someone inside turned off the detection systems, or it wasn’t a gas leak.

Inquisitor: Also, initial reports are that everyone died within thirty minutes of each other. To get that kind of lethality, throughout the building? You would need multiple ‘gas leaks’ for that story to hold. However, when you consider that the Secret Service agents outside the building (on the roof and patrolling the grounds) also died in that timeframe? There’s no way a gas leak did that.

RedFox: So, things point towards someone taking action, but not gas. Some kind of ritual magic, maybe? Those are supposed to allow people to do more than any one person can do.

Scholar: If it were a ritual magic attack, then the deaths would have happened within seconds, rather than within half an hour. And while the US is lagging behind in non-CAD magic technology, they still know how to make sensors which detect spells like what you’re talking about.

UsualSuspect: So, we’re thinking, what, assassination, but not through gas attack or overwhelming magic? Which means a team of assassins infiltrated the White House?

Backlog: You know, in stories, that’s the kind of question that leads to loose ends being tied up. Just saying, if someone did manage to slip assassins into the White House and kill everyone there, then asking too many questions could be unhealthy.

Avariel: The ‘how’ is not the important part, anyways. The real questions are ‘who’, and ‘why’. Once you get those answers, the ‘how’ will probably become obvious. Or it will be one of those ‘better not to know’ situations.

BabyShark: Well, the jackass didn’t exactly go around making friends. But if we’re talking about who could do something like this, then that list gets really short. Even a special forces team would have left some evidence behind.

MarcoPolo: Not quite. If they hit fast enough, possibly with inside help, they could have disabled alarms and erased logs, before striking. Would be high-level stuff, but possible. However, a special forces team would have shot or stabbed people, not ‘puppet with the strings cut’ or ‘gas attack’.

Anonymous4: I don’t know if this is connected, but there were a couple ‘incidents’ before our favorite Lich Queen left New York.

Salty: What kind of incidents?

Anonymous4: There was a security alert at the hotel she was staying at. According to police reports, someone attempted to assassinate her ambassador to the UN.

Not_the_Face!: Do we know who got a terminal case of stupidity?

Anonymous4: No. The ambassador’s guards stopped the attempt, caught the individual, and then ‘rendered justice under Athelian Law’ before the police could even arrive.

Golddigger: What does that mean?

TheLichQueen: It means that the assailant was killed and raised as a wraith, bound to answer all its sire’s questions and obey their commands, and the ghouls got a free meal. They were even polite, and used cleaning spells to make sure the hotel staff did not have any extra work. At one time, part of the culture of Athelia-that-was said that those with power were best judged by how they treated those beneath them. That attitude had faded by the time my classmates and I were summoned, reduced to symbolic gestures. It saw a resurgence in Risen Athelia, primarily because none could argue with my power, and I had made it clear that I would treat my new minions as they deserved, based on their actions, not their titles or birth.

Salty: So, does that mean you know who ordered the attack?

TheLichQueen: Yes.

Anonymous4: What about the other attack, the one near your ship?

TheLichQueen: I was informed that some idiots attempted to pass through the wards around the Queen of the Damned, and discovered that simply being underwater and hidden from normal sight was not enough to shield them from my guards. One of my pets, Tiny, chewed a couple of them up, and their friends attempted a rescue, and were captured.

Anonymous4: The reports say that the zombie shark that attacked them was the size of a large yacht.

TheLichQueen: Well, yes, Tiny is only an average size for his breed. Megalodons can get larger than Tiny’s mere 24-meter length.

Scholar: How did you get a megalodon body to turn into a zombie?

TheLichQueen: Well, I managed to find a fossilized megalodon jaw buried in one of the atolls of Athelian Samoa. Had to dig a bit, but magic makes that easier. After that, a bit of time magic to ‘rewind’ the fossil into a corpse, and then raising it as a zombie was simplicity itself.

Scholar: Time magic? You have TIME MAGIC?

TheLichQueen: Yes, though I would probably have been unable to pull off such a reversal before I became the Heroine of Elements Undivided. That title is not just for show, you know.

Scholar: So, you couldn’t just hit it with a rewind of as much as you could do, and then hit it again and again until you got what you wanted?

TheLichQueen: The spell works (HAS to work) by altering the time of the object in question from the baseline in reality. Multiple castings would not be additive, but would instead shatter and replace the former spell. And, once you change the object in question, such as by raising it as an undead, the baseline reality is shifted, so you can no longer rewind from that point.

GrimDark: So, you could just go to a bunch of museums, and get yourself an army of dinosaurs?

TheLichQueen: Don’t be silly. Most of the fossils on display in museums are replicas. Plus, turning dinosaurs from this world into undead would not be worth the effort, honestly. The only ones I’d even consider would be different sea creatures. Even then, aside from special cases like Tiny, existing creatures would be more useful, as a rule.

muon: Why only sea creatures? T-rex too tame for you?

TheLichQueen: Because when it comes to land and air, my army already has answers for that kind of thing. A big stompy Skeleton Tyrannosaurus Rex would just get in the way of ground troops, and zombie crows are more effective as spies and scouts than an undead pterodactyl. But you need aquatic creatures to truly rule beneath the waves, so I may look into getting a shiver of undead Great Steel Sharks to protect the underwater colony when construction begins. And a Zombie Giant Squid or two would not be amiss. Especially if I give them some kind of ranged spell attack, so they can ‘discourage’ submarines from poking their noses where they don’t belong.

Salty: I did not need the image of Zombie Jaws or Zombie Sharknado in my head.

TheLichQueen: Well, then you probably don’t want to hear about my ideas for making undead chimeras by adding legs to the sharks, so that they can run around on land? After all, undead don’t need to breathe.

RedFox: I need several drinks.