Grand Battle S3G1! (Round Four: City of the Dead)

As anyone who's been around long enough to shake the dust off could tell you, the liches run this town.

What, because they're necromancers? Commanding the legions of undead is their thing? That's rude, very misinformed, and quite the inadvisable opinion to knock about in corpsely company. How could anyone think a populace would tolerate leaders who performed regular mass mind control?

Jetsam just bared his teeth in response, though this was more due to his not having lips.

"If anything," continued Dr. Octavius, clicking about their office on steel high heels (spot-welded to her own heel bones), "our propensity to lead arises from a lich's greater agency in the creation of its unlife. Most souls in this city sprung up in the wake of mediums, necromancers, always on someone else's terms." The lich was paying her guest little attention, considering she'd caught him raiding what had been a nicely-concealed jewelry cabinet. A quick chat with the distressed and confused lich eventually convinced her he wasn't a threat, though she'd need to figure some way to pay for the broken window. Jetsam just toyed with a ring most the while, attached to a rib with a length of chain. It was blackened silver, inset with a large cushion-cut onyx.

So, paperwork and giving this fresh body a crash course in lich-hood. Atlas Octavius, hospital administrator, sticking post-its over everything, and printing out more forms to stick more post-its upon. She was the kind of lich to constructively channel her latent megalomania rather than reject it outright, the result of which was one of the world's best public hospitals being a place that had never saved a life. Actually, blame her lack of high-strung attitude on the fact even the ER was pleasantly paced for a major city hospital. Hard to call it an emergency if you could mop up the blood, put it through the wash, then pump it back in after the patient had time to call into work sick and fill out all the paperwork.

Back in the office, Atlas' workspace was a hodgepodge of generic office cabinets (tidy) and respectable if mismatched furniture. A little plaque underneath a faux-Baroque painting of the hospital's founder, Lord van Utrecht, could be pressed to open a wall-set drawer with a decent collection of amulets, rings, and an emerald-studded tiara which was Dr. Octavius' phylactery. The drawer was rigged, of course, and Atlas had broken her "No magic at work" rule and teleported on in there.

"Of course, we canvass for anyone interested in local politics - proportional representation I'm certainly behind, never mind the naysaying of Chancellor L'écuyer and his ilk - but they too often lack the zeal for it like we do, you see?"

Jetsam did see, in the passive sense to be distinguished from looking. He was more focused on figuring out an escape route out of the hospital, and necropolitics didn't seem all that relevant to his immediate predicament. "LISTEN," he boomed with a part of him that certainly wasn't his vocal tract, before stopping out of surprise. Dr. Octavius waited politely. "I- I- GODDAMNIT-"

"Try project from your mastoid portion," offered the lich, tapping the back of her own skull. "It helps to stop thinking of the chest as the source."

Jetsam tried taking a deep breath, found he couldn't do that either, then leaned forward and snatched pen and paper off Dr. Octavius' desk. The crackling fire in her right eye socket spat out a thin quiver of electricity in the shape of an arched eyebrow. It was gone by the time Jetsam stuffed a note in her hand, though the urge to bring it back as she read was there.

"Well, you're keen," she chuckled. "I don't quite understand about the ring, though, nobody wears them on their fingers anymore, not since the late Chancellor Morrigan-"

"I DON'T WANT any place in your city's politics," Jetsam pre-empted, his metacarpals making a protective grab for the ring. "And I don't want to wear this, I want someone who can take my soul out of it and put it back in ME."

Atlas looked up from the depths of a filing cabinet. Jetsam had his hands clamped over his mouth, still figuring out volume control. If she still had muscles on her face, she wouldn't have gone so far as to look disgusted, but definitely judgmental. "you want to be your own phylactery?"

Jetsam shrugged, realised he'd stood up at some point, and sat back down again. "Listen, lady. Let me start by saying thanks for not interrogating me about my life story-"

"Don't mention it," leered Dr. Octavius in what was meant to be a friendly expression, trying to make heads or tails of a misfiled x-ray. "We liches deal with enough heckling from both sides of the veil, the least we can do is look out for each other."

"-but I've had shitty experiences with detachable pieces of self, so. I didn't mean to be a lich, I don't care if demoting myself to walking skeleton is social suicide. Trust me, I'll be happier that way."

The hospital administrator tossed the x-ray on her desk, gave Jetsam an incredulous look, and made a noise like a sigh. "I can refer you to L'écuyer. He's chancellor of Rigorous Mortus College; if anyone can do it it'll be someone in his necroethics department. At which point you, Lord Jetsam, would owe me a favour. Lich law."

The traveler flinched at the title. "I'M NOT- I'm not interested. In machinations with you- your lot." He tried to add a desperate tone to his voice; it came out as the shared wail of a dozen fettered souls instead. "Please. Just help me with the ring and then I'll go find a quiet desk job. You'll never hear from me again."

Dr. Atlas Octavius, chief administrator and chief of staff (liches need a lot of mental stimulation, ok) summarily ignored Jetsam, scrawling a missive to L'écuyer and sending it off with a hwooooo of ghostly flame. She raised a spectral fire-brow at her fellow lich, a polite warning to not disagree, then went and fetched her coat. Warcloak. Wearing corpse-clothing's hard if you don't have the musculature, damnit. Cut a lady some slack.

"Lunch," she explained, pulling a spare cloak out of her desk for Jetsam and tossing it in his nonplussed direction.

"Do we even eat?"

Dr. Octavius chuckled, a professional little noise. "Jetsam, you're clearly the kind of man who won't believe anything he's told until he sees it for himself. Skeleton eye sockets don't glow with infernal fire. You wouldn't survive a day in this town, and I always spend my lunch hour at Burnt Offerings."

"I really don't think-"

"It's quarter to. Lunch."