I’ll send it out next week, but this is donezo.
Liberated Salt Lake City
Republic of Deseret
2803 AD
Orson Smith, Friend of Serpents, Executive Administrator of the Pacific Trade Confederation, Lord Protector of Old Vegas, and True President of Deseret, had been sorely tempted to just order every mage in the Bitterwater Sephiroth hanged from their own tower parapets. God knew the sick bastards had already installed cruel-looking gibbets up there, back when the First Usurpation Circle took over the occupation. In the end, he decided that simply putting them on trial, having them found guilty by somebody else, and then hanging them was the more moral option.
That it could also be seen as more insulting was merely a happy accident. Besides, this way he didn’t have to look at their bound, gagged, struggling forms every day of the war crimes trials. If he did, he probably would order the whole lot hanged; or possibly take a sword, and start whittling random Dominion mages down to size. His subjects wouldn’t mind, but Jesus probably would.
Still, if he didn’t show up too often, he could maintain his composure. Mostly Orson just wanted to see each mage’s face at least twice: once during the trial, and a second time, when they were being led to the conversion pits. It really bothered Dominion mages to know that, after their execution, their corpses would be then reanimated and used against the enemy.
Personally, he thought their reaction a bit overwrought. The Universal Dominion did much, much worse, and it wasn’t like the mages would be sacrificed for their life energy. Recycling bodies was a perfectly ethical way to employ necromancy.
Oh great. Zombies.
Mew
Don’t worry, they’re ethically sourced.
Does that mean that they are either volunteers or covicts?
.
And I agree with his assessment that Jesus might object to randomly beheading dominion mages; Beheading them systematically is much more just.
In the latter stages of the War, the Alliance actually does have an opt-in system where soldiers can authorize the raising of their corpses for one last, post-mortem use against the Universal Dominion. They can also temporarily bind wounded soldiers’ spirit to their corpses if their injuries are beyond the ability of battlefield medicine or magic to heal, if the soldier freely agrees to the procedure. Neither practice is considered to be black magic. Nor is just using a corpse to make Undead, in and of itself — although killing someone just for their raw materials is black magic.
Why? Because, to paraphrase Terry Pratchett: the Dominion doesn’t make friends easily.