milliways_bar | (no subject)

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Sameth has been hard at work on the plan for Gaeta's leg, its a good distraction from thinking about all the Dead that were in Milliways. At home he's been reading up on prostheses, sketching legs and starting to build the basics of the leg.

When he finds a door for Milliways, he has a piece of metal in hand that almost looks like a bone and a few sheets of paper with notes on it.

At the counter, he asks Bar for some books on the topic and then sets down at a table to continue his sketches and at times, making Marks on the metal. There's also a plate of bread and cheese on the table since he missed lunch.

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"What are you working on?" Gavroche asks curiously.

He looks up and smiles, "Oh a prosthetic leg for someone."

"Oh?" He smiles back. "It looks better already than the ones I've seen."

"Thanks, I want it to be functional and look nice."

"Functional was about the best you could hope for where I grew up, in false legs. Mostly just lumps of wood."

"Yes, its only starting to change where I am but I made my aunt a hand out of metal. So I'm trying to do all I can to make ones that do more than expected."

"You've got a gift, I think. Did it have a working grip, or was it just unmoving metal?"

"Thank you. I'm a Wallmaker, which is a title that hasn't been used in my world in a couple of centuries. Working grip, it needed to have one with the work she does."

Gavroche nods thoughtfully.

"That's far beyond anything even the 21st century can do for most people. What was her work?"

"Her work is to fight the Dead with my mother."

"The Dead? Like zombies?" He considers. "Both working hands would definitely be needed for that."

"Yes, though in my world they're controlled by necromancers and only my family knows how to fully defeat them. We can go into Death to find them."

"To find the Dead? Or the necromancer?"

"The necromancer, they need to be taken down first since they're the ones who pulled the Dead back into Life."

"And if they're taken down, what happens then? You said first, so I'm guessing the Dead don't just go back to being dead?"

"No, they have to be sent back through the Ninth Gate. Its easier to do that with the necromancer back in Death where they belong. Necromancers are always Dead themselves who have pulled themselves back into Life. I was my mother's heir for a time so I learned all of this, but everyone in the Old Kingdom knows some of it to keep safe."

He blinks.

"The necromancers can do that? They have that kind of power, I mean?"

"Yes, they can. Over the centuries, they've done a great deal of harm to the Old Kingdom."

"Are they a problem that comes up often?"

"Not often but whenever they do, its always bad. Over two hundred years ago, one of them almost wiped out the royal family and most of the major bloodlines."

Gavroche winces.

"Done on purpose, I guess? To try and take their place?"

"Yes, he didn't succeed in destroying the Old Kingdom but came very close to it. We're still recovering and repairing the damage done during the Interregnum and it ended over twenty years ago."

"A major event like that, I'm not surprised. The Interregnum was until you found a rightful heir?"

He's a republican, but if Sameth's royals rule well, he isn't going to say so.

"That was when my mother found my father and released him from being a figurehead, a wooden one like on a ship. They rule now, my sister is my father's heir and my aunt is my mother's as I'm Wallmaker."

That gets Gavroche blinking again.

"Someone turned your father into a wooden figurehead?"