Vigor Mortis

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.

On the Sky Island of Verdentop, in the city Sky Hope, lives a Street Urchin with no Talent in anything. After an attempt to steal bread goes wrong, she discovers her Talent - Necromancy.

Vigor Mortis was the name of a Quest by Thundamoo. The quest was played here here; while the website has a lot of NSFW stuff, this quest itself is SFW. Unlike the only other quest Thundamoo ran, Vigor Mortis had no dice rolling. The QM has decided to stop running it as a quest and start writing it as a regular story (with some tweaks) here.

Tropes used in Vigor Mortis include:

Maybe having parents wasn't all it was cracked up to be after all.

  • A Mind Is a Terrible Thing to Read: Penta has a hard time not reading her host's mind. Her host is Vita, who often has murderous thoughts. And a considerable amount of these murderous thoughts are about killing Penta. Vita doesn't consider these thoughts to have much sway on her actions (particularly the ones about killing Penta), but it's not clear how much Penta believes Vita on that. What is clear however is that Vita's thoughts give Penta a great deal of anxiety.
  • Con Crew: Vita has played the Shill in Rowan's shell game.
  • Confessional: Lark confesses her sins to Preacher Gregory. Preacher Gregory never actually promises that the information will be kept secret, and he does indeed share at least some of it. He does say that what Lark says won't be held against her (he does hold it against her for a few minutes tops, but he tries to hide it. Dude is only human). The people he divulges the secret to don't hold it against Lark either.
  • Creepy Child: Vita thinks she is 16, but has yet to go through puberty because of malnutrition. She is also a soul eating necromancer, which creeps Rowan out. Rowan is relieved that mind controlling living people is outside Vita's natural talent. Norah doesn't know that Vita is a necromancer, and still finds Vita spooky.
  • Disposing of a Body: Lyn helped Vita get rid of Grig's reanimated corpse.
  • Foil: Vita and Lark to each other. Both are soul-eaters; Lark does so through eating living flesh (which has some soul in it), while Vita eats the disembodied souls of the dead. Both also start off as hunters of the other's kind (human and monster, respectively). Vita grows more monstrous and becomes a prisoner of the Templars, while Lark is becoming more human and training to be a Templar.
  • Gambling Game: The game "King’s Dominance".[context?]
  • Green-Eyed Monster: Penny was determined to make Penta die in large part because of this:

She takes all my memories, all my experiences, and becomes an actual fucking person instead of an emotionally deficient shell. She robbed me of the ability to pretend I’m a victim of circumstance. She was proof that all my failures are my own.

  • Heel Realization: After Penta learns she is probably a bioweapon, she realizes her conduct definitely fell short of being a decent person. She then apologized to Vita for not being a better Nawra passenger/partner.
  • I Let Gwen Stacy Die: Vita largely blames herself for Angelien's death.
  • Incompatible Orientation: Norah says Bently is attracted to Orville and that Orville is straight.
  • Inverse Law of Fertility: Vita taunts her prison guard over getting pregnant, while she was still hoping her period was just late.
  • Justified Criminal: Lyn, Vita, and Rowan. Rowan hasn't really done much that is out right illegal except help a necromancer.
  • Made a Slave: Penelope declares Vita to be her fiancé's slave as a legal maneuver to keep Vita from being executed. Then again, Penelope said that maneuver cost her clout and plans to make Vita earn it back for her.
  • Necromancy
  • Outlaw Couple: Rowan's activities are legally dubious (aside from harboring a necromancer which the public and law enforcement don't know about), Lyn's activities are definitely illegal.
  • Pre-Mortem One-Liner: Just before Vita killed Seong's Nawra, it asked Vita's non-existent controller if he should refer to Vita as older or younger (since Seong's Nawra was younger, but its host was older by its understanding). Vita's response?

"I wouldn't worry about it."

  • Puppeteer Parasite: Nawras.
  • Rage Breaking Point: Vita taunted her prison guard Vicki. Eventually Vita hits a nerve that gets Vicki to hit her. Vicki then tries to wrap things up again and leave, but before she can wrap things up Vita taunts her again, at which point Vicki gives Vita a beating.
  • Reassigned to Antarctica: Jelisaveta had occasional crippling fits of Sensory Overload that last for about 10 seconds. She kept it a secret to keep her job. One time she had a fit in combat, which not only exposed the secret, but put her entire team in danger. She was then offered a position in the inquisition. She is then made a prison guard in a very remote prison. This wasn't just a punishment, they also thought they were legitimately putting her where her personality and skills would work well. If she didn't indicate she was "positively disposed to a long-term deployment" she probably wouldn't have been made a prison guard.
  • Restraining Bolt: Site 4 has collars they put on all inmates that are gamma class and above. These collars give a warning shock if the wearer tries to use mana and knocks them unconscious if they try to use more mana. The guards (or at least inquisitors) have a button that knocks out all people wearing the collar nearby. The anti-magic measures don't work on Vita and Vita is able to make the collar useless whenever she wants. Not that Site 4 knows how pointless it is to force Vita to wear it.
  • Sky Island: Where the story's setting is located. Another floating island called "Hive Rock" passes over the protagonist's island four times a year and attacks it.
  • Spit Take: Wasn't nice of Rowan to keep spitting on Vita in the chapter The Mistwatcher.
  • Street Urchin: The kids that Rowan and Lyn take care of. Vita counts too.
  • Traumatic Superpower Awakening: Vita discovers she is a natural mage as she is getting beaten to death.
  • Whatevermancy: Going beyond necromancy, the QM is very fond of ending types of magic in 'mancy'. The only type of magic that has showed up that doesn't have that name is chaos magic, which is just shooting raw magic.
  • Your Soul Is Mine: Types two and two B. Vita can rip the souls out of living things. From there she can eat it or use the soul and corpse to create an undead slave. She can also do the same thing if the creature dies before she rips their soul out (in which case the soul is probably floating above the corpse), but in such cases she has to get the soul before the Mistwatcher takes it.