[starslayer]

Tombstone industries

Tombstone industries is a crossworld book publishing company.

It generally gravitates towards worlds in the TL5-9 range, setting up shop in the most poor and improvised districts of large urban populations.

Regardless of what the worldline thinks about such it primarily employs women, free breakfast, lunch, and dinner, free health care with its own doctors, provides free contraceptives, and hosts lectures and seminars about female empowerment, the right to choice, and sexual freedom as well as a huge number of skill building workshops hosted at the facility after hours.

The books it publishes are primarily magical in nature, focusing on demon summoning and control, trans-world travel, outsider summoning and binding, and other extra-dimensional topics. Books will contain both knowledge and applied content(IE actual working spells and rituals). Depending on the world it may present itself as being a novelty; but regardless of presentation the books have very real knowledge and power within the pages. The books are generally arranged very safely with instructions on multiple protective wards and redundant bindings. The books have enough inherent magic within them to offset low manna penalties (at significantly increased casting time), and allow non-mages to cast directly from the pages (again at significantly increased casting time)

This presentation is all an insidious lie. Tombstone industries is the brainchild of 'Demon Lord Grave' a medium to high powered demon intent on radically extending his reach inside multiple worlds and providing a profit stream. To accomplish this he has initiated several measures:

1. The bound summoning racket- By providing detailed instructions on how to summon and bind his enemies Grave diminishes there power by forcing them to tend to errands by mortals. The detailed instructions make it very hard for the demons or other summoned entities to twist requests and cause havoc.

2. The returning summon- Many of the books list a perversion of his own true name as a 'friendly' summon. Due to perversion of his true name anyone attempting to use the binding rituals when using his name will summon him 'free', and he can freely choose to ignore these summons- this helps assure that even when vanquished it is mere moments until he is summoned back to one of the worlds where his company exists, and it provides him with a near-constant gateway into people's homes for his own entertainment and appetite.

3. The returning summon(2)- For a suitable fee grave will put similar false notes in a few of his books for other demons.

4. Magically active materials harvesting. Each tombstone industries location is a carefully arranged magical and alchemical contraption as much as it is a book printing and binding facility. The water, food, and even the air are all spiked with aphrodisiacs boosting sexual desire and fertility. The contraceptives are all subtly flawed and actually encourage pregnancy rather than prevent it. The doctors monitor for those who have conceived, and finally the entire magical contraption painlessly removes the growing fetus via teleportation, and allowed it to develop in deep underground facility until it has acquired a soul. It is then summarily slaughtered, the flesh of the unborn used to make the pages of the books, and the primal sinless soul to empower it (or give grave a quick snack). The unborn flesh and primal souls are also sold in other markets directly.

5. Demonic seed incubation. When the doctors find that one of the women is attempting to conceive, they will take this opportunity to instill a demonic seed, either an aspect of grave's power or an outsider/other demon that was willing to pay his price.

6. Vessel sales. Sometimes nosy reporters get too close, an employee digs where they should not dig, someone in 'management' starts studying the books too hard, and they need to go away. Grave likes to take a personal hand in this, but he has multiple loyal vassals who he has trained intricately in the ways of demonic torture. Regardless of who does it, what's left after they are finished is a ruined being with virtually no willpower (will 1) and a soul that has literally been torn to shreds (bonuses for spells like soul-rider due to the extra space)- this makes them very useful as slaves, or as 'spares' for possessors or other things that need to overcome resistance to use there powers.

Tombstone industries as a front company runs at a net loss, it is only those extra services being sold to other demons, harvesting the magical power to create wealth, and selling vessels that keep the company profitable, anyone studying 'the numbers' in enough detail will be able to figure this out, but if challenged the accountants will say that the owner of the company is a philanthropist who is underwriting it.

Tombstone will slowly spread on worlds that don't take active measures to stop it, but it will restrain itself from growing too large. There are a few worlds where this seems to not be the case, and tombstone is a major player in the worlds politics. On these worlds Grave's grand scheme is to literally bring the whole world under his sway, for what purpose only he knows.

Relations with other inter-dimensional groups
Infinity- Infinity hates and fears tombstone industries, and they have no idea how evil it actually is, what they don't like is that it freely talks about the secret, disseminates books of power that lets others cross worlds, and mentions them by name as well as providing magical addresses to many of there worlds, including homeline itself. There attempts to disrupt operations on a few worlds is starting to give them the feeling that there is more to it than just a magical bookstore, but they are unwilling to push harder for fear of reprisal.

Centrum- Centrum does not believe any of this works, and regard Tombstone industries as a group that is at least trying to make things better. There pushes for absolute equal rights between men and women align with Centrum's. Where Centrum has absolute control tombstone generally packs up and leaves (its difficult to continue an operation that relies on being seen as 'good' in a society that has minimal concept of money and all companies are owned by the state)

Cabal- Many members of the Cabal are upset that they did not think of Grave's plan first, and this often leads to conflict on low manna worlds where the Cabal has much more practice operating than a demon that is used to being able to use its full supernatural might. Many other cabalists purchase the books, vessels, raw materials, or 'seed incubation' from tombstone.

The Abyss- Its unknown if Grave is from the abyss, but for those up to date on such things it is known that demons love the 'taste' of unborn child flesh and pure souls, so routinely purchase such when they are on worlds where tombstone exists. Tombstone does not take any direct measures to stop worlds from falling to the abyss, but there are instructions on how to permanently banish demons in many of the books as well as 'shore up' a worldline.

Technomancer- Tombstone was originally set up in the united states, but its secret was revealed and it was torn down, however the US government did not share this information, instead choosing to take the materials discovered and study the magic involved. The site has not been torn down, but it is no longer in production. It has other locations in the USSR as well as Africa.