Deuteronomy 17: 14-15
14 “When you come to the land that the Lord your God is giving you, and you possess it and dwell in it and then say, ‘I will set a king over me, like all the nations that are around me,’ 15 you may indeed set a king over you whom the Lord your God will choose. One from among your brothers you shall set as king over you. You may not put a foreigner over you, who is not your brother.
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“That’s actually my third Quest as well. Negotiate that last one.”
“Third?-” I waved that away and she moved on, “How?”
“Just tell Gabby that you want a better reward for doing his job for him.”
“Gabb… ArchAngel Gabriel, I… request a better reward for the third task.”
“Nothing’s happening… Maybe I should just ac-”
I stopped her with a hand and looked disapprovingly up to the sky, “Don’t be a stingy bastard!”
I felt a disapproving eye watching me from somewhere far, far beyond where I was sitting. Annoying bastard.
“Don’t give me that! Fair work, fair pay. Extra work, extra pay!”
Something changed and she squealed, “Enhanced Water Affinity! Minor Earth Attunement! Accept Quests!”
“Does it…”
“No! No mention of Gaia.”
Well… I’m pretty sure that was good. I was also, perhaps, just a bit jealous that she got two rewards and I got barely handed out the shit I needed to live. I had a feeling that he did that just to chap my ass a bit more. ‘Oh, here's your stingily given reward and now that you’ve told someone else that they can bother me, they’ll get a better reward than you!’ I suppressed the chafing feeling.
Now, we just needed a town defensive plan.
I only knew one way to figure that out.
Order of Operations.
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Lena gathered everyone up in the auditorium, I was waiting on the stage and eager to finish this off. The numbness kicked in whenever I sat too long and the one in my shoulder seemed to be advancing faster as well. Multiple curses speeding up each other or some crap like that. Choose the most inconvenient answer and extrapolate from there.
I had gained Feats in Body, Mind, Will, Fortitude. I wasn’t sure if having 4/6 skills go up a level was enough to bring the other ones up as well, but I didn’t want to waste time figuring that out as well. There was a niggling concern that Feats would be harder and harder to come across. I suspected that it would be near impossible for me to get an additional Body Feat for killing zombies unless it was a truly ludicrous number. I didn’t imagine that the Penitent System would just let someone farm Feats.
Every fucking point just had to be a life-or-death thing apparently. Even if it didn’t have to be an edge of your seat thing… I had a few other theories I was starting to unspool, but Lena walked up the stage to join me at that point. I filed them for later.
My order of operations settled on ‘figure out townsfolk capabilities, kill the zombies with everyone to get them some feats and level them, and then kill the Mortician’.
“Hey everyone!” She waved and all the old ladies waved back and the old men, friendly-waved in the way of old men, gave her firm nods.
“We have some things we need to discuss and Thomas is willing to help us with them.” She looked at me but the look I gave her back communicated that I didn’t think she was done with setting the stage.
“There have obviously been a lot of changes, and we should talk about them. But not right now. Right now, we have our town-”
I caught her use of ‘our’, that was good.
“-is in trouble, and so will we be if we don’t take control of what’s happening here. Both Thomas and I have a Quest to kill the Mortician.”
Some grumbles at that.
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“If we don’t, he will get stronger. The future looks tough, but this town and we’re made of tougher stuff than a little apocalypse.”
That hit some pride in the crowd.
“We need to take our town back. We live here. Not the zombies and I don’t plan on staying in here until the Mortician opens this place up like a can of beans.”
The crowd buzzed, I waited for the inevitable…
“Don, why don’t you tell your gir-”
“Fred, shut the fuck up. She’s done more in the last day than you have in a week. She ain’t that young and you can ask her yourself.”
Damn Gramps, nice backup. At least his only use wasn’t being an ass to me.
Here came another, “Young lady, why do you-”
She shouted the ornery old woman back down, “Mrs. Jones, you used to babysit me, I hope you don’t mean to forget my name because I know you know it.”
The older woman quailed. I stepped in.
“Hey everyone! I hope you don’t mind me telling you my story, I know some people have been curious…”
I told them my story, of camping, being trapped in my car. I guess old people had a penchant for a good story and telling it to Lena earlier had helped settle it and smoothen out the retelling. I rounded it off with the story about the Church.
“The fact is, that we’re the ‘left behind’. God didn’t want us, or maybe He wanted us here. Maybe you don’t much care about Him anymore, I know I’m certainly not inclined to be that appreciative.”
I let that hang for a moment, “BUT. But, what I do know is that the Mortician is dangerous. Look around you.” They didn’t, “LOOK DAMMIT! He isn’t just going to kill you, he’s going to use your body to kill your friends, the people next to you. Then he’s going to use all of you to kill a bunch more people. I don’t think I’m a good person, but there are some things that I can’t stand, things I won’t stand for, and that’s just because I’m a human being. Damned or not.”
I looked around the crowd, it was no Ren-Faire final speech, but I hoped it was good enough. I needed someone… then I locked eyes with the old sneaky trading cowboy. He raised an eyebrow and I knew what he wanted. The rest of the .45 rounds. His own personal apocalypse eh? The man was a rat and I didn’t trust him for a second. I quickly pushed the slime around my eyes. Nothing there… Well, alright. I just hoped he didn’t expect me to save his life if the going got too tough. I nodded slightly and his grin spread then wiped off to a stern face as he stepped forward.
“I’m with Lena and the boy. Dammit, this is our town and I ain’t getting turned into no puppet by that damned Mortician creep!”
More stepped forward. There wasn’t a ton of room to step forward but they all moved closer as individuals and then in twos and threes. I gave Lena a look.
“Alright everyone, we need a strategy now. Don’t you want to be back in your homes? Able to sit in the sun? Make this place safe f-, a safe place to live?!” She stopped herself and I was pretty sure she was going to bring up their families. That would have been a big fucking no-no. It seemed like some had caught it, and maybe it would have been a good thing, but I wasn’t that good at reading people. I had an idea about that for after. If there was an after.
I whispered to her, “I’ll be by the side of the stage to talk or discuss anything specific with anyone who needs it while Tom discusses specific strategy with all of you. I trust him and he has the same goals as us.”
She repeated that line and put a bit of her own spin on it. Dang, she was pretty good. Did I say ‘dang’ in my head? These old timers were getting to me.
I nodded and stepped forward as she moved to the side, it only took one teary old lady before a bunch went over. The guys were old fashioned, I figured that a bottle of whiskey and an old friend and they’d crack themselves. For now, they’d do just fine.
“Alright everyone, my Quest is to kill the Mortician as well and make the town safe. Just so you know a bit more about my goals; I’m sure everyone knows I’ve been bitten, right? I get healed if I do it, so I’m getting it done.” Just because I was being a bit more forthright didn’t mean that I was going to be revealing my Light Affinity in a group that contained… 2 Dark Affinities? Where’d the third go?
“Was anyone able to choose a specific class?” More nods than I was honestly expecting. Dammit. Lena must have told people when she overheard me choosing my own. More ‘free info’, everyone gather round, Dumbass Doubtin’ Thomas giving it all away for free! He chaps his ass, you get it for free!
“Are they all combat classes?” Surprisingly, not everyone nodded.
“Alright well the first thing we need to do is figure out what we can all do best. If you have a combat role, please step up to the stage!”
I sorted through the 10 that approached, mostly gunslingers, but there were a few that I kind of was able to guess were something like the ‘Average Camper’ class, which in hindsight, actually sounded awesome and apparently came with some melee skills, which made sense the more I thought about it.
So we had 7 gunslingers and 3 campers. I told the campers that they would work with me in the front and the gunslingers would form the heart of the firing line. I assigned them a ‘battle-buddy’ that would act like a spotter. That way, the experienced shooters would be able to help them shoot, as well as not be completely helpless themselves while reloading.
Another concern one of my new favorite people, ‘Joe’, a Camper brought up was that the gunslingers should make sure that their battle buddies didn’t shoot us in the back. In this organization I focused in on two of the women who stood out to my Evil Eye as possessing Dark Affinity. I put them with the more trustworthy-seeming of the gunslingers.
We had to redistribute a few things. Every Camper got the pick of the best machetes or axes we could scrounge up as well as a shockingly large number of Bowie knives. What the fuck, there were a lot of them. I even got one, and in a sheath too. I wasn’t going to spit in a gift horse’s mouth. Huh? Was it ‘kick a gift horse in the mouth?’ Whatever it was, it sounded close enough.
I sat on the edge of the stage and we formed a half-circle to discuss strategies. We settled on opening doors and feeding in a few zombies at a time for people to kill and reduce the numbers before pushing out as a group and taking the town itself. When and if the Mortician appeared, the gunline would do as much damage as possible to him while myself and the Campers would make sure that the gunslingers were protected as much as possible.
I emphasized the fact that you could likely double purchase a weapon competency and waste the point. A few bitter looks told me that it had already happened, but what? I was supposed to hold everyone’s hand all the time? Better they wasted a point and actually learned the lesson.