Turn 0
Name: Hank Smith
Plane, world, time and place of origin: Earth, United states, 2019
Former Occupation:
[X] Other (please specify): Police Officer
+1
Yes, that's right. You were a police officer in the US. You spent a good deal of time patrolling, dealing with domestic calls, negotiating the sticky, human situations people create every day. You've gained a pretty good understanding of the mental states that lead to crime, the architecture that facilitates gang control and illicit dealings, the things hunger and desperation can drive people to do. On the other hand, you're no stranger to out and out violence, and you certainly know a good deal about guns and hand-to-hand combat. In short, you have firsthand experience dealing with the less pleasant side of human behaviour.
The office worker looks at your form.
"A police officer, eh? That's a good sign. We get a lot of writers, sculptors and wizards in this job. They make interesting afterlives, sure enough, and world-creation comes naturally to those types, but they don't know the first thing about dealing with angry people. Tend to just run away or throw fireballs. You'll have a better chance of dealing with your mistakes."
For the first time, he actually looks at you.
"Anyway... Hank, that concludes the hiring process. Congratulations. There's a training video somewhere here you can watch, but what the Hel, I'll walk you through the Underworld creation process myself. I haven't left the office in, what, two and a half millenia? Time is funny here. Anyway, I'll show you where your new realm is. Just through that door. Name's David, by the way. Now that's something I haven't said in a few hundred years."
You step out of the office, and out of space. Now, I'm not going to describe what it's like for a physical being to be somewhere without dimensions, or at least not distance in the usual sense, because it's impossible. Suffice to say that in the colourless, objectless not-place you and David are in, there's a quality like place and an activity like movement, and the two of you arrive in a different not-place by not-moving there.
"And here we are. Your very own plane of existence. The usual semi-Riemann Manifold or whatever they're calling it now. Currently, it's just a single point of space, completely without dimension. You just need to add some space to it, make it larger. Then you can start putting stuff in it."
You have a sort of awareness of the single point universe, floating in primordial nothingness. Like it's connected to you.
"Of course, nothing's free in life, so you're going to have to buy that space. As a supra-planar being, you're going to be using the very basis of reality, what is technically termed "essence". We use it as currency here in the Department for the Dead. You can buy or create just about anything with it, if you've got enough. As per your contract, you're going to start with twenty bits of essence. Don't waste it, you'll need every drop of the stuff you can get."
You feel a sensation that's so far from describable I'm not going to try. Basically, you become aware that you have control over thirty tiny bits of reality, each of which has a great deal of potential.
"Now, you've got a tiny bit of time before souls start streaming in and you have to give them new bodies to inhabit, or at least provide an environment their reanimated corpses can live in, so you'd better start creating your plane of the dead. You should have a direct mental link to the Essence marketplace, which is where you can buy... well, anything really, but most importantly the stuff you need for your world. Space, air maybe, solid ground, gravity, whatever. Your call."
Time to get to work.
As manager of a plane of the dead or underworld, your principal task is to take and provide for the souls of the deceased. You are paid for this in essence, which you can use to expand and improve your plane. You are paid varying amounts of essence according to the nature of the deceased and their requirements.
Normal soul: 1 essence
Heroes and artists: 25 essence
Scholars and Savants: 50 essence
Monarchs and rulers: 100 essence
Wizards: 250 essence
Evil souls: 5 essence
Evil wizards: 1000 essence
At first, you're just going to get normal souls.
Souls do not generate essence; for each soul you take on permanently you receive the above amout of essence once, just before the soul is pushed into whatever object in your world.
Note that instead of providing a body for a soul, you can for free recieve them in the body they died in. Such bodies take up space, and are seldom in the best repair, but will stay together for some time. Note that forcing a soul into anything much smaller than, say, a cat, may produce unforseen consequences due to the resulting concentration of vital energy. Vessels need not be anything like as complex as a cat though, that was just an example. You can put people in rocks if you want. Though they'll probably start rolling about, souls are pretty good at animating stuff.
Essence can be spent on various resources.
Space: 1 essence for 20 cubic metres. Space is needed for anything to exist in.
Force: 1 essence for 10 gs of force. Can be assigned to an individual soul, mimicking gravity.
Portals: 1 portal to the living world for 10 essence. Note that portals, once opened, can be rendered inert but never permenantly closed.
Law of Reality: 1000 essence to write a new law of reality that applies only to your realm. For example, "frogs can fly", or "everything is pulled with a force proportional to its weight in a certain direction". You start with the normal laws of physics, and the other laws of reality you're familiar with. No, I'm not saying precisely what they are.
Materials
Elements: 1 essence for 20 cubic metres of air, 2 tonnes of water, a ton of earth or rock, or 10,000kJ of fire
Construction Materials: 1 essence for 1/2 a ton of basic material like wood, or 1/4 of a ton for more useful materials like steel, iron, etc. Can order in any shape.
Creatures: Depends on the creature. Insects generally about 1 essence per 100. A sheep, say: 2 for 1 essence. A dragon: 100 essence. Creatures can also be obtained from living worlds, if portals are opened.
Light/Sound/Smells etc: 1 essence for thousands of lumens, a lot of sound, etc. Really cheap.
Automata: Mechanisms: 1 essence for enough clockwork for a very complex clock. 50 essence for an automaton complex enough to think. Can purchase automata in between these two.
Note that most materials (not fire) arrive at room temperature unless otherwise specified. Colder is generally free, but heat may be expensive.
Anything else: please ask.
Note that you may set up automatic payments of essence. For example, you might want to buy 20 cubic metres of space whenever 5 souls enter your realm. This is a very sensible way to deal with a constant influx of souls automatically: set up an automatic payment for sufficient space and resources and a vessel whenever a soul enters your realm. That way, you don't have to deal with souls manually, and you can determine exactly how much profit you make on each soul.
NB: You can have fractions of essence. So you can spend 0.1 Essence on 2 cubic metres of air.
You have 30 essence.
Your underworld: currently a single point. You should probably change this.
((If you have any questions, please do ask. I don't always explain things clearly enough.))
Author
Topic: Death and Taxes: an SG about managing the afterlife (Read 1942 times)