5/11
Vanessa's father was captured quite quickly. He trusted her in a way he trusted no one else, and under normal circumstances he would have been right to. The old Vanessa would have died before betraying her father, and in a way she had. This new Vanessa, however, was eager for the opportunity to prove her devotion.
Vanessa hadn't met many members of the retinue, but she had seen the list. Erich had mostly women in his thrall, and with the amount of information she had access to it didn't take a genius to make the connection between Abby the beautiful necromancer and Abercrombie the missing hermit. Clearly her Lord had no use for men in his harem, with the odd exception of Tony. She didn't know why that one was allowed to keep his masculinity, but her father could not be assumed to have the same qualities. Especially when Lord Bismark had entrusted to her the same tool used to reshape the old necromancer.
She loved her father, she truly did. She would love him even more when he understood his true purpose for existing: service to Lord Bismark.
••••••••••
It hadn't been so hard to shuffle her father into a closet in her chambers and handle all of his meetings for him. At the end of the day, she had woken him up just long enough to get him to sign a document saying that he was going on a top end mission, need-to-know only. He wouldn't lie to the Defias like that normally, so Vanessa had been able to place him under again posthaste, first barrier broken.
5/12
Vanessa had kept her father on stimulants all night long, to both keep him awake and break down his resistance further. She had tinkered with the settings on his collar until she found a combination that properly expressed the mindset of an ideal woman.
Fulfilling Lord Erich Bismark's orders: euphoria
Acting as instructed by Lord Erich Bismark: moderate euphoria
Acting in the interests of Lord Erich Bismark or his retinue: mild euphoria
Existing: emotional numbness
Acting against Lord Erich Bismark or his retinue: deep shame
With these settings, her father would be molded into a person whose sole joy in life came from his, later her, blessed collar, which would reward only obedient service. An automaton who was happy so long as she was serving; the commands were broad enough that, for someone as intelligent as her father, at least the third command could be active all the time. The punishment would make all other emotions fade away, save those needed to serve.
Knowing her Lord's eventual intentions to end the war with Stormwind, she pressured her father to write several letters giving orders to de escalate the war. The most important, save the one scouring Lady Prestor's quarters in Lord Bismark's name, was the order to start collecting the Harvest Golems. The terrifying cybernetic scarecrows would be nothing but poison at any negotiating table.
She received quite a lot of pushback for it; it would be a massive undertaking and would severely weaken the Defias's tactical position, as they had been stationed to make it impossible for the enemy to use any of the largest farmsteads as an outpost or base of operations. Even just sending the order to start gathering them up at the Dead Acre, near the militia stronghold of Sentinel Hill, was enough to break the second barrier.
••••••••••
Father was being kept in the hazardous materials part of her lab. Everything was perfectly safe if it was kept in sealed containers, so she felt confident leaving him there where no one would intrude. Even if he was exposed to trace amounts of deadly substances, the damage would be undone once he was captured.
She moved forward with her new plan: she wanted the harvest golems primed to go into Duskwood. Officially they would be useful in taking Raven Hill for the Defias. It was an outright stupid idea by most standards, though they would likely be better off against a necromancer than most human soldiers. Raven Hill was a death trap and there was very little of use there save the grave moss, which only Vanessa and a dead goblin knew the full value of. It would help her Lord in his long term campaign, though, so of course it needed to be done. She hoped Lord Bismark liked surprises.
She had explained that to her father, and he had grudgingly come around to giving a speech on the subject. He was at least as good as she was at persuasion, at least when he had leverage over someone. Because they were his direct subordinates, for example. Sneed and his engineers hadn't liked the idea, for obvious reasons, but father had managed to talk them into it on the grounds that a fleet like the one they were building needed lumber, and Duskwood was still a rather large forest despite its unpleasant inhabitants. You can always trust a goblin to listen to the economic argument. With the third barrier broken by that commitment to the plan, Vanessa allowed her father to sleep on her couch that night.
5/13
Vanessa woke her father early this morning and gave him some swiftthistle. He wouldn't be fully rested, but he was in a slightly better state than before. She'd put some effort into reminding him of how important it was to maintain operational security. Four of her silk masks had gone rogue, and needed to be captured for questioning. She deliberately didn't give him any further explanation, and he didn't ask for one.
Her men were still searching for Prudence, though they were probably hoping more for an identifiable corpse at this point. They were absolutely not expecting to be ambushed by her father.
Edwin VanCleef preferred shock tactics when fighting. They had been moving as a group, and suddenly he was among them, leaving stealth with a head blow that concussed one of them and a kick that had another doubled over in pain for several seconds. As the remaining two turned on him, he shifted so that the three of them formed a line and unleashed a flurry of sword swipes in the second it took for the two of them to arrange themselves to fight him together effectively. He got in one good cut, and faded back, casually swiping his blade at the man recovering from his kick. He played keep away for a few moments, letting the poison on his swords, provided by Vanessa, do it's work. Once their muscles had seized up and they were spasming uncontrollably, he dove in and made quick work of his last fully functional opponent. It wasn't hard to pacify the two poisoned men, and Vanessa came in and sedated them all for capture. For some reason his daughter touched her amulet and smiled at him; it seemed to be a new habit she'd picked up somewhere.
••••••••••
The decision to eliminate the only four free individuals who knew about the necklaces while breaking her father's fourth mental block had been inspired, In Vanessa's humble opinion. She needed to think long and hard about the last breakpoint. It became obvious when she saw the portrait of her mother that father kept in his office. She rushed back to her chambers; nothing was more important than processing her father into a perfect slave.
It was the most involved thing she'd done yet, but it was worth it. Over a few hours, she spoke to her father and swapped his idea of himself, and of Vanessa's mother. In the morning, she would make the physical changes and Edwin would think himself Doris VanCleef. This new Doris would have all of her father's memories and skills, but would remember a life dropping out of SI:7 to marry a young male architect, becoming his partner and excelling in that field. She would remember founding the Defias Brotherhood as a single mother of a young teenage girl after her husband's entirely avoidable death by illness, and training her little girl in poisoncraft and espionage because she wasn't sure how to raise a normal child in a life like this. She was Doris in name and face, and Edwin in body and mind. Vanessa kept her pacified with the orb. The breakpoint would come in the morning.
5/14
The very moment that Doris was captured, Vanessa used the picture to turn her into a perfect copy of the portrait. Doris hadn't exactly been ugly, but she'd been a short, heavyset woman with frizzy hair and a very round face. Cute. Not good enough for Lord Erich's harem though, which Vanessa made sure she knew and internalized before she came out of her trance.
They proceeded to spend the next hour ripping apart Doris's appearance, remaking her into a slim beauty with perfect skin, long straight hair, puffy lips, and an hourglass figure. They even reworked her mannerisms, stance, fashion sense, and way of moving to be more conventionally attractive using the orb. As a living effigy of his beloved wife was reworked into a pinup girl for the titillation of another man, at the request of his own mouth no less, the last vestiges of Edwin VanCleef's resistance died and Doris became an open book to be rewritten at Vanessa's leisure. She took full advantage of that.
••••••••••
I teleported to Vanessa when she said everything was ready. I had a full day today, but I'm always up to get some good news, and I'd been quite impressed with Irma's fusion of sexy and practical. When I arrived, I found two beautiful women in their underwear waiting on a bed for me. One was Vanessa, the other was new to me, but clearly had been Edwin VanCleef once, based on her necklace. She had an extremely generous figure; her breasts were massive, and her hips equally large beneath a tiny waist. She looked at me with a gaze of vapid desire, and leaned towards me to show off her assets to best effect.
"Hello, Lord Bismark" they said together in obviously rehearsed unison. Vanessa continued, "I hope you find her to be to your liking. We have remade her, and can do so again as many times as you wish. This is Mina; she is here to please you or anyone else you wish to reward, but there's more. Doris, come out."
Mina got a faraway expression, clutched the gemstone of her necklace, and changed. Her breasts went from the size of her head to a comparatively modest C cup, her figure became streamlined and athletic, her arms and legs becoming toned and muscular. Even her hair shortened from a wild mane going down to her ass into a short bob. The most drastic change was probably her expression, which resolved into a focused, intense gaze. She was still attractive, but this looked like a fighting woman, not a bimbo.
https://imgur.com/a/B4VFs1R
"I've only made these two plus the default. But she's intelligent. She can make herself into whatever you want her to be. Any task you give her will make her happy; she lives to serve in any way you dictate to her, and will adopt any role. She's best at fighting, leadership, tactics, administration, stealth, spycraft, wilderness survival, sailing, and engineering. She will need to either fake or be taught anything outside of those fields."
I was pretty sure I could work with that.
Jerynboe
Weekly Patreon Plug! Currently I'm polling my patrons to see what cheat power the MC in my next story will have. His equivalent to the necklaces. All the options are much weaker than the necklaces by design; I enjoy this story but have found it's power level to get very, very high later.
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