this is crazy

[from_scratch]

Cam is watching a new recording of Atriama, tail swishing in the gap in his couch, and doesn't stop to pause the show when he feels a summons go by.

Comments

[wormcan]

"Cassava flour is more of a staple than wheat. But, yes. That sounds fantastic."

[from_scratch]

"If people know more about what to do with cassava I can do cassava." Cam finds a suitably empty space. He appears a granary. "Cassava's in red bags, wheat's in blue, two to one ratio, keep an eye on what the demand looks like for when I come to refill that."

[wormcan]

Cam's new employee or minion or accomplice or whatever nods and starts spreading the word. (The parts of the word that aren't self-spreading. Spontaneous granaries are traditionally hard to miss.)

[from_scratch]

Cam hover-drags the sleeping warlord-and-friends elsewhere and sets them up with long-term coma equipment and leaves them all little leaflets about what happened in case by some mechanism or other they should happen to wake.

And he starts flying village to village in their territory radius, looking for comparable employees and leaving similar granaries. He checks his grocery list messages routinely.

[wormcan]

Those get updated with gradually more ambitious requests as people realize that anything really does mean anything.

There isn't much resistance until he starts encroaching on other people's territory. Even then, the neighboring warlords aren't major players any more than the last one was.

[from_scratch]

Eventually he has rather more comatose warlords than he'd really like. He inquires of the Birdcage management if they would like a bunch of Angolan warlords or if he needs to handle them himself.

[wormcan]

The actual operation of the Birdcage is (publicly, at least) a program written and overseen by Dragon. It's good but not so good that it can take his calls. The PRT people he ends up talking to refuse, on the grounds that the Birdcage is a one-way trip and no matter how guilty these people are they haven't had any kind of trial, Cam isn't representing a nation that has ratified any of the relevant agreements, and being a warlord isn't always a Birdcage-worthy crime anyway.

[from_scratch]

Okay.

One day when his granaries are all full up and his other requests have slowed down he starts waking up capes one at a time.

[wormcan]

They're all parahumans, and most of them are parahumans who have been pre-selected for wanting to be top dog. But the handful of warlords and their teams of lieutenants do know they're outmatched. The last thing most of them remember is losing something that doesn't count as a fight.

No one wants to be his loyal right hand, but everyone involved understands force.

[from_scratch]

Well, what Cam would like them to understand is that it's inconvenient to keep them in comas but only slightly, that he is going to put tracking devices in them, and that they're on a one-strike Cam's-personal-opinion sort of probation if they would like to wander the area and can earn a little more leeway if they make themselves useful and also those coma drugs can leave a weird taste in your mouth have an ice cream cone. Can they understand this?

[wormcan]

The part about the ice cream is hit and miss. (Cam's power is weird even by power standards.) Other than that, his point is very much taken.

[from_scratch]

Oh good! Off they go, then.

Cam notifies his various people that he's letting the capes go, that he can find them and remotely knock them out if necessary, and that he should be notified at once on the emergency messenger if any of them steps out of line.

[wormcan]

They aren't exactly capes in the same sense, but it's not like that distinction matters.

Cam has got himself a pretty substantial territory now. Normally when someone ambitious triggers and is lucky enough to vastly outgun the nearby competition, they go through a phase where they're limited by their own mobility (in Cam's case: very high) and then by the competition. Inconveniently, none of the competing warlords have any idea how outgunned they are and might think Cam falls into this pattern.

[from_scratch]

Cam expands at a fairly sedate pace. He doesn't want to bite off more than he can chew. But he doesn't sleep and he doesn't stop moving and if he meets a warlord they are probably going to have an argument.

[wormcan]

Daeva have quite a lot of figurative chewing ability. But as long as his territory is small enough that he could hold it without personally being a world power, people are going to have to find out he's unassailable the hard way.

The conclusions of the inevitable arguments are foregone enough to not need repeating.

[from_scratch]

Expand expand expand. Cam does speak Afrikaans and Swahili and French; he has never picked up Tshiluba or Kituba or Lingala or Kongo or Sangha or Teke or M'Bochi, and this affects how readily he can expand in some directions, although he can rig up serviceable computer translation and is finding it nice and easy to hire people.

[wormcan]

Eventually the opposition will be teams of allies, who can't easily be beaten by walking into a single location and conjuring coma drugs. Fighting openly is a Bad Idea, as they've learned from the ones who went before, so they work out other ways to antagonize the newcomer. Like wrecking his creations and then blending in with the locals. It won't stop him, but they can't just do nothing.

[from_scratch]

Well, they could, but he didn't really expect them to. He can replace stuff. And he fancies that his locals might like him enough to point out the strangers.

[wormcan]

Apparently not. It's probably just because of the threats.

[from_scratch]

Well, that's inconvenient. Cam decides not to implement draconian police state measures over it at this time. He does start lacing some of his more vulnerable-looking architecture with dye packs.

[wormcan]

Dye packs in architecture? Who does that? (It works.)

[from_scratch]

Oh good!

[wormcan]

Once he finds them, one of the bright orange offenders collects the nerve to talk. "They sent us because they think we're expendable. But if you don't stop soon, you're up against everybody."

[from_scratch]

"Gosh," says Cam. "Who's everybody?"

[wormcan]

"Everybody. So far you've been replacing people who got there by being scarier than everyone else, but past Lubango that stops. People hold cities because they have permission, and one of the conditions is that they band together and keep outsiders out. Maybe we can't beat you, but you know we can bring down buildings. Think you can hold off armies of capes like us?"