“I think the reason should be obvious,” My… father?... smiles, bemused, “Also, why can't you shift, and what were you doing while Charmed?”

  Oh. That's. Umm. “I'm pregnant, then?”

  “You're not wrong,” Mom… Dad… came up with the workaround for the knowledge rule independently long ago.

  “So I'm going to be stuck like this until the birth…” ugh. “I won't be able to go out in public….”

  “That's not entirely true,” My mother gives me a sideways smile, “but you know how this game works.”

  “You taught it to me for dinners at Grandpa's, yes; you know something you can't tell me…” I think. Okay, so if it's partly true, but not all true, then… “I'm limited to forms that will support the growing child, but can shift within that range. So if I use Shapechange to turn into a close approximation of this form, I can at least go out in public.”

  “There you go,” my mother… father… whatever, he just said she doesn't care… nods, “I'm also going to be very close by for the next several months, of course.”

  “Yeah, well…” I shake my head, “I was pnning on speaking that phrase soon anyway, because….”

  I stop, because the outsider I presume is the familiar is at the door, along with the currently Ms. Woudrazed. The beast is telepathic, so I can't overhear what it's saying, but I can guess it's puzzled by it's master's changes as they open the door… and I spam four spells in rapid succession: Two castings of Enervartion to tank the creature's ability to resist magic (and I REALLY want it to nd, so Divine Providence delivers, making both absolutely perfect shots), followed by two castings of Flesh to Salt. Maybe I should have done that with Woudrazed… nah, he routinely keeps up Spell Turning on himself, that might not have ended well. Not that my pnned strategy did any better…

  Chard catches the creature as it falls as a simple salt statue, and I give her a command, “Bring it here.”

  She complies, and I toss the statue into my Warp Storage… it should be hard to steal in there.

  Mom nods approvingly, “He's not dead, and so won't reform in the lower pnes to report back that way, and he's not alive to report back normally… that'll do. As for him, though….” she points at the nonverbal naked woman, “don't kill him, it'll make things worse.”

  My uncle jumps in, “He needs to enter the cycle of souls and be properly scrubbed.”

  “Killing him won't do that,” Mom responds, “I can expin in your office.”

  “Certainly,” Death replies, and a moment ter, “Your mother is right. We can't kill him. The problem was already showing up in your mother's domain, and hadn't crossed mine… yet. Killing him won't work.”

  Hmm. I wonder how long they took at that conversation? And I'm curious. If they could tell me, they would… time for the game “thinking out loud here… if the problem hasn't shown up in your domain yet, but has in Mom's… it has something to do with children, and will have something to do with death or undeath. If it was simple death, it wouldn't be a ‘problem’, so we're looking at undeath that can't be easily solved by destroying the beast, which means we're talking a lich or something.”

  “You're not wrong yet,” Mom confirms.

  Okay, so… what kind of lich needs a zillion kids… Divine Providence works wonders with magical skills, “He's done all the steps needed to become a familial lich, save for properly dying, hasn't he?”

  “You are zero percent wrong,” my uncle confirms.

  Ugh, and I thought he was evil before. Okay, so… a lich is an undead spellcaster that hides it's soul in an enchanted object, which then reforms the lich's body if it gets destroyed. A familial lich doesn't use an object: Instead, when the body is sin, the negative energy mimic of the caster's soul - which is actually dragging the soul around and constantly torturing it for power, but nobody figures that out before it's too te - finds a blood retive (specifically a direct ancestor, immediate sibling, or direct descendant), and then attempts to possess said retive, eventually taking over completely and warping said retive’s body into an undead abomination. Fully killing the lich means killing everyone the evil beast might take over. Genocide, basically.

  So of course, this evil, evil gnome has spent the st long time making as many babies as possible.

  “How many kids?” I close my eyes and breathe slowly.

  “More than I am willing to murder…” the cold voice of Death whispers in my mind, “...which isn't saying much, admittedly.”

  Right. Back to the game, “More than a hundred.”

  “You're not wrong yet.” Mom speaks up… it's her domain, after all.

  Okay. Keep going up… we can binary search once we have an order of magnitude if I want, “More than a thousand.”

  “You're not wrong yet.” I open my eyes and see Mom slowly shaking her head.

  “More than ten thousand,” wow, this guy… but gnomes DO live for two to five hundred years naturally, and he had a fertility ‘curse’ to speed things along… how many paid dies a night would it take if they all get pregnant on the first try despite precautions? Probably still too long. If he can bed more than one a night, though, and reduce the odds of them overdosing on night tea after via mond control... it could go pretty fast.

  Mom nods, “You're wrong, but only just.”

  I consider that; knowing Mom, that means at least nine thousand, “I suppose the specific number doesn't much matter, does it?”

  “Not really,” Uncle C answers in my head, “killing people when their only real sin is ‘having the wrong father’ isn't a good solution, no matter how few or how many.”

  I nod, “The monster will die eventually… another salt statue, I suppose.” I frown, “Still, putting her on pause forever doesn't feel like enough for such a monster.”

  “Stoning as salt doesn't trap the soul properly forever… it will be undone eventually. But that's not the only option,” my mother speaks up, “there was a reason I was deying dealing with him myself. You see, your command of your thralls is soul-deep, so…” she pauses, “...rules are annoying sometimes.”

  That's okay. I think I can pick up what you're ying down, “Any long-term orders I give will survive her death and persist across possessions,” I consider, “so if I order her to, say, immediately release her retive after starting the first possession on said retive, and never posess the subject again, then she becomes a passive witness to her victim's life, trapped for that one's lifespan, moving on to the next when that child passes away on their own terms, only to repeat the process. Forever watching life go by, never able to participate… that… that could work.” It works that way because it takes three consecutive failures to resist the possession on the subject’s part for the villian to take over. If the idiot can't try again after the first… he's stuck.

  “It's not ideal,” my uncle comments, “as he's not going back into the cycle.”

  “You did say that aspect was negotiable,” I point out.

  “True,” Uncle C admits, “I don't have a better option, and I can live with this one.”

  “All right then…” I switch to telepathically addressing my spawn, “From now on, you are to be a good person. You are to physically injure no person, even in self-defense; you lost the right to live through your actions. You are to be generous; if anyone needs an object you own for purposes that are not evil, you are to give it to them cheerfully if they so much as ask. You are to always speak kindly to anyone to whom you speak, and you will always speak kindly of anyone of whom you speak.” I consider, “Those items include all forms of communication, whether that is speech, writing, telepathy, sign nguage, or any other form of communication. You are to always be honest; you are not to deliberately deceive anyone by any means, nor are you permitted to lie. Every time you die, and every time find your closest suitable retive, you are to attempt the possession… and then immediately release your retive to controll him or her self, and are to never again attempt a possession on that person. You are also never to control another's mind. If anyone ends up serving you of their own free will, you are to give them these same rules, and make it clear they should be followed in the spirit of their intent, not just the letter.”

  My spawn sends back a garbled message… freshly turned apparently are not thinking straight. Still, the control seems to work just fine anyway.

  My mother raises her eyebrows, “You're not pnning on killing her?”

  “Nope,” I reply to my mother, “Oh, and hold still for a moment…” I cast Remove Curse on the woman in front of me, followed by Bestow Curse to make her sterile; it takes three tries for that to stick “...okay, you can move again. For the rest of this life, do not get rid of the sterility curse, and if anyone does remove it, repce it as soon as you're able.”

  My mother nods slowly, “There's some loopholes in that, but it's a bit tricky to actually use them.”

  I look at my mother, “I cannot think of everything, and I'm hoping she never tries; my spawn don't seem to notice they're following orders unless someone points out the absurdity of what they're doing… and they still follow them. This is, admittedly, some pretty evil mind control, but it's just to prevent one person from being evil after they've VERY clearly demonstrated they're extremely prone to abuse having free will, so…” I shrug.

  Mom chuckles, “Fair enough.”

  “Great,” I pause, “Home next, I guess… and I don't think I should let her wander about like this, so…” I switch to my spawn, follow me… then, of course, I loot the gnome's discarded clothing… and the tower... before teleportating home.

  She was loaded: Now I am.