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In a dimension both adjacent to and the antithesis of the Realm of Souls, an obsidian-black taloned figure sat on a throne made of solidified pain and torment. This being was Jartham Gorebringer the fourth, an Inquisitor Daemon in the upper-middle levels of the Fiendish Realm's hierarchy. He didn't dare rise any higher than his current position; the life expectancies for the higher offices in the infernal bureaucracy were quite disquietingly short.
Still, that largely meant that most of the actual decision-making fell to those on Jartham's level, as those ostensibly their superior were largely too busy fending off assassination attempts to get anything done. As such, Jartham was currently receiving a report regarding goings-on with the Material Plane. Said report was in writing of course- most Daemons in messenger roles either learned to flee immediately after dropping off a piece of bad news, or they died. Seeing as the Carillist who had left this particular report behind had not only fled, but had taken great pains to conceal their identity from Jartham, it was likely this would be news of some seriously inconvenient occurrences.
As Jartham began reading the report, they immediately snarled in frustration at what had been going on since the last twice-yearly checkup. Apparently, not only had a new Titan surfaced, but they were one with a power source that didn't have any of the nice limiters that kept the other Titans in check. Furthermore, said Titan had apparently taken it into their agenda to both liberate a large region from the Control System and greatly increase the standard of living for those mortals who resided there, threatening to drastically reduce the misery levels that could be extracted from the Material Plane.
Another complicating factor had to do with one of the elements of the Mortal Control System going rogue for as of yet undetermined reasons, enslaving other Control Elements to do their bidding, and building up their mortal servants into a genuinely effective force for order and domination. Control Element #671098, taken name Samathin, would need to be dealt with before they could build up to a point of posing a credible threat to the Fiendish Hierarchy.
Much to Jartham's consternation, neither of these developments could be solved by simply having a Deceiver loiter near them until they flipped back to advancing Daemonic goals. In the case of the new Titan, mature Dungeons were not only usually behind defenses that would easily shred a Deceiver, but they were largely immune to thematic drift. After all, they sat right at the middle of a massive structure that constantly reinforced their existing themes, backed up with a literally titanic amount of magical power. This was completely discounting the fact that Clockwork and Necrosis dungeons were largely considered by magic to be mechanical and dead respectively, thus rendering them even more immune to mental tampering.
Then there was the rogue Control Element. Entirely disregarding the fact that Control Elements vastly outclassed almost any true Daemon in direct combat abilities and were extremely quick to anger, thematic drift wouldn't be terribly effective here either. After all, Control Elements were already innately thematically aligned with Daemons, and corrupting them more wouldn't change that.
This left Jartham in a rather frustrating position; both of the current problems were ones that would require an extreme amount of brute force to dispose of, since any self-respecting Titan would have a combat chassis ready to launch at a moment's notice and the Control Elements were rather infamous for their excessively destructive combat abilities. Meanwhile, there was a practical upper limit on how big a portal to the Material Plane could be without requiring a prohibitive amount of power to hold open, meaning that the Fiendish Hierarchy couldn't easily deploy heavy enough combat assets to do the job. They couldn't just sic the Control Elements on the problems either, since they weren't actually under Daemonic control aside from remaining within acceptable personality bounds.
Really, what was needed was a Titan willing to work with Daemonic goals. But again, subverting an existing Titan was quite firmly outside the realm of the practical. Mature Dungeons were largely immune to thematic drift after all- and then Jartham got a terrible idea. If mature Dungeons were beyond the ability of Daemons to bring over to their side, then what about newborn ones? With that, Jartham began penning a message for one of his colleagues, writing in blood drained from tortured innocents on stationery shaved from a block of solidified pain. After all, it paid for one's official correspondence to have a distinctive personal touch.
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Nearly a month had passed since Clockwork Knight Ironfruit had opened the floodgates for Clockworks beginning to express themselves, and they were quite pleased with the changes so far. First of all, flush toilets with a functioning septic system had been installed for all the buildings in town. After it had been explained to the townsfolk just how immensely useful keeping clean and properly disposing of feces was in preventing disease, they were taken to with great enthusiasm.
Other projects were coming too, but more slowly. The gremlins in charge of most civic infrastructure had quickly proven to be massive railway enthusiasts, thus making the decision of what type of transport infrastructure to build first extremely straightforward. That said, the railway network was still in the process of expanding radially out from Regno Prima, and the station planned for this town hadn't yet been constructed. The deal with the Dwarves for assistance with setting up an advanced educational system in exchange for Proton Pile technology was still in the works, and the newly-installed public telegram/telephone stations still hadn't really caught on.
Thus, after that first interaction with Emerald, Ironfruit found themselves roped into the role of community teacher/role model/storyteller in between the occasional wandering monster that needed to be prevented from hurting anyone. This was a task that Ironfruit found rather stressful, but that they performed regardless. They were built with combat in mind, so being constantly swarmed by small humans was making their proximity alerts go off constantly. Ironfruit had long-since cataloged the children and occasional adult attending his classes as friendly, but the lack of the IFF transponders Ironfruit's fellow Clockworks carried lead to a constant sense of unease.
Today, Clockwork Knight Ironfruit was about halfway through a combined physics and mathematics lesson for anyone who wanted to listen, when a call came over the tactical comms about a stampeding herd of thunderbeasts rapidly approaching the town of Brassbell from the southwest. Silently thanking reality for a chance to do something less stressful than teaching to a crowd of small humans, Ironfruit addressed the class, saying "Sorry, but I need to go deal with a problem. I should be back soon."
Thus, they swiftly strode across the heavily reinforced floor of the town hall, reaching the door in mere moments. From there, Ironfruit simply began to run towards the issue, despite it still being nearly three miles away. A baseline human has a distinctly limited amount of time they can sprint before lactic acid buildup in their muscles forces them to stop. Ironfruit's motor system required no such metabolic considerations, effectively eliminating fatigue as a concern. Further, since Ironfruit's joints could move at nearly three times the theoretical maximum speed for baseline humans, they could sprint at speeds that would easily be illegal on most highways. Thus, Ironfruit was set to easily cover that three mile distance in a mere two minutes. Four other Clockwork Knights were accompanying Ironfruit for this mission, eager for a chance to get some very violent stress relief.
Soon, Ironfruit and the rest of his team crested the ridge directly over the oncoming thunderbeast herd rumbling towards them. True to their name, the high-voltage bison immediately began firing electric arcs from the tips of their horns at the quintet of Clockwork Knights, who immediately used their teleportation modules to flank the herd and evade the thunderbolts.
Then, it was the machines' turn to act, as they opened up with their all-purpose conjuration rifles in machine gun mode. Hypervelocity bullets flew downrange at dozens of kilometers per second, punching through the thick but still mundane hides of the thunderbeasts as if they weren't even there, completely obliterating internal organs as they disintegrated inside the targets. Further, the real-time comms the Clockwork Knights enjoyed allowed them to flawlessly co-ordinate their fire to effectively thin the herd. Within moments, it was over, the herd that had formerly been on a direct path to charge right into Brassbell and cause major loss of life being removed from consideration.
The job done, Ironfruit began jogging back towards town at roughly 30 miles per hour, taking longer than was strictly necessary to enjoy the experience of not being in uncomfortable proximity to a bunch of beings without inbuilt transponders. Still, they couldn't help but start considering what knowledge they'd be imparting to the locals next. Perhaps radioactive decay would be an interesting subject? Best accompany it with a crash-course on radiation safety too, just to avoid any unfortunate accidents.
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A month in, and running the newly founded Socialist Republic of Amali (named after the general geographical region I had liberated) was still utter misery. I found myself dearly wishing that Dungeons retained the ability to collapse from fatigue, since then at least I would have a few hours to rest every couple days when my physiology forced me to sleep. As it was however, that most definitely wasn't the case, meaning that every hour of every day I was constantly bombarded with requests for my opinion on some matter or other, no matter how I tried to foist my assumed responsibilities onto various hastily formed departments, administrations, and other bureacracies.
As an example, a typical day of mine could see something like the following spread of assorted things that insisted on needing my attention, listed in chronological order. Please bear in mind that this only covers half of the day; I had more shit to deal with afterwards.
12:00 AM: Asked to sign off on a proposal to reforest the Dead Wastes, now that the Titan of Bone is dead. Approved.
1:00 AM: Informed that a serious defect in the new miniaturized Proton Piles used in most of the new infrastructure leads to dangerous radiation leakage under certain conditions. Approve recalls for the flawed reactors and order the gremlins who made the error temporarily re-assigned to an unpleasant but non-hazardous job.
2:00 AM: Told of a large group of Drake Guard remnants planning to sabotage the perimeter defenses to allow a Grand Dragon entry. Ask why this hasn't been referred to the Public Defense Administration, before being informed that I'm just being asked to sign off on a PDA-designed plan to get rid of them. Approved.
3:00 AM: A proposal to build a space elevator is presented. I shoot it down on the grounds that shuttles powered by Protonium thrusters are far faster, can be built and repaired more easily, and aren't anywhere near as susceptible to damage from orbital hazards. Also, we aren't close enough to the equator.
4:00 AM: NO, I WILL NOT THROW PEOPLE INTO PRISON CAMPS JUST BECAUSE THEIR SECOND COUSIN'S UNCLE IS IN THE DRAKE GUARD! SOD OFF!
5:00 AM: The census comes back, providing plenty of demographic data on the new Republic, and a hundred-page manual of background information required to make sense of it all.
6:00 AM: Having finished reading the demographic report, a check reveals five more reports on various inane things popping up in my inbox. Slogging through them proves that all were requests for increased mana budgets for various industrial projects. I point out that if they want more mana, they're perfectly able to spend some of their existing budget on building more reactors.
7:00 AM: Receiving a complaint about the heat from the exhaust of all my reactors. A firmware patch is issued making all my reactors conjure temporary Protonium that vanishes from existence in 0.1 milliseconds, eliminating the exhaust problem at the cost of 0.5% efficiency.
8:00 AM: Some people want to open a newspaper. Fine, as long as they can verify that all information they provide is objectively accurate truth, go for it. Anyone who tries to shut down a paper just for providing criticism of the government will be prosecuted, so long as it is criticism based in fact.
9:00 AM: The delegation from the Deep Kingdom of Ruth arrives to discuss the formal opening of relations. I'm fine with that, until the diplomat starts breaking out the legalese. I immediately inform her that my main concern is that at the moment I am a single point of failure holding this entire slapped-together country together, I want help setting up an advanced education system in order to fix that, and I'm willing to share several important technological developments to sweeten the deal, most crucially Dragonfire, and that I am not a trained diplomat so if she would please just use plain language it would be much appreciated.
10:00 AM: Some people show up asking if they can help with anything. They're hired the instant the background check reveals they aren't Drake Guard, and are assigned to the ever-important task of keeping the seemingly ever-expanding bureaucracy in touch with what people need, rather than just making paperwork for paperwork's sake.
11:00 AM: I receive a letter from another Titan referred to as the Storm Titan congratulating me for my efforts in freeing people from the Grand Dragons, and asking that I take over anti-Dragon defense for the Isle of Storms once they die. I order a Remote Chassis constructed to go visit.
12:00 PM: Another group of about two-dozen random citizens shows up and asks if they can enlist in the military; I hadn't considered the idea of recruiting organics into the military before, so this bears consideration. I ask if they're experienced adventurers. Their reply is that since Adventurers get strong in Dungeons, and I'm obviously a Dungeon, they just need some time for training. I quickly re-design about half of one of my shallower levels into an impromptu boot camp, task about twenty Gremlins and a few Clockwork Knights to Drill Sargeant duty, and assign a discretionary mana budget for training purposes.
1:00 PM: WHY WOULD YOU EVER THINK THAT WAS A GOOD IDEA!? I'm trying to make people's lives NOT suck horribly, rendering the planet inhospitable to human life IS THE EXACT OPPOSITE OF WHAT I'M TRYING TO DO!
2:00 PM: Some other Drake Guard remnants are trying to rally a mob in Regno Prima to invade the wretched hive of steel and bureaucracy that my structure has become. Yeah, no. I order the PDA to dispose of them in a way that makes them seem like a laughingstock instead of something to be feared. Ten minutes later, a hastily built trapdoor in their stage drops the Drake Guard into a pit, complete with comedic sound effects.
3:00 PM: Theme Update: You have gained the secondary theme Governmental! No new features unlocked! No new minions unlocked!
Ugh, why did I ever think trying to run a country was a good idea!?
Still, that largely meant that most of the actual decision-making fell to those on Jartham's level, as those ostensibly their superior were largely too busy fending off assassination attempts to get anything done. As such, Jartham was currently receiving a report regarding goings-on with the Material Plane. Said report was in writing of course- most Daemons in messenger roles either learned to flee immediately after dropping off a piece of bad news, or they died. Seeing as the Carillist who had left this particular report behind had not only fled, but had taken great pains to conceal their identity from Jartham, it was likely this would be news of some seriously inconvenient occurrences.
As Jartham began reading the report, they immediately snarled in frustration at what had been going on since the last twice-yearly checkup. Apparently, not only had a new Titan surfaced, but they were one with a power source that didn't have any of the nice limiters that kept the other Titans in check. Furthermore, said Titan had apparently taken it into their agenda to both liberate a large region from the Control System and greatly increase the standard of living for those mortals who resided there, threatening to drastically reduce the misery levels that could be extracted from the Material Plane.
Another complicating factor had to do with one of the elements of the Mortal Control System going rogue for as of yet undetermined reasons, enslaving other Control Elements to do their bidding, and building up their mortal servants into a genuinely effective force for order and domination. Control Element #671098, taken name Samathin, would need to be dealt with before they could build up to a point of posing a credible threat to the Fiendish Hierarchy.
Much to Jartham's consternation, neither of these developments could be solved by simply having a Deceiver loiter near them until they flipped back to advancing Daemonic goals. In the case of the new Titan, mature Dungeons were not only usually behind defenses that would easily shred a Deceiver, but they were largely immune to thematic drift. After all, they sat right at the middle of a massive structure that constantly reinforced their existing themes, backed up with a literally titanic amount of magical power. This was completely discounting the fact that Clockwork and Necrosis dungeons were largely considered by magic to be mechanical and dead respectively, thus rendering them even more immune to mental tampering.
Then there was the rogue Control Element. Entirely disregarding the fact that Control Elements vastly outclassed almost any true Daemon in direct combat abilities and were extremely quick to anger, thematic drift wouldn't be terribly effective here either. After all, Control Elements were already innately thematically aligned with Daemons, and corrupting them more wouldn't change that.
This left Jartham in a rather frustrating position; both of the current problems were ones that would require an extreme amount of brute force to dispose of, since any self-respecting Titan would have a combat chassis ready to launch at a moment's notice and the Control Elements were rather infamous for their excessively destructive combat abilities. Meanwhile, there was a practical upper limit on how big a portal to the Material Plane could be without requiring a prohibitive amount of power to hold open, meaning that the Fiendish Hierarchy couldn't easily deploy heavy enough combat assets to do the job. They couldn't just sic the Control Elements on the problems either, since they weren't actually under Daemonic control aside from remaining within acceptable personality bounds.
Really, what was needed was a Titan willing to work with Daemonic goals. But again, subverting an existing Titan was quite firmly outside the realm of the practical. Mature Dungeons were largely immune to thematic drift after all- and then Jartham got a terrible idea. If mature Dungeons were beyond the ability of Daemons to bring over to their side, then what about newborn ones? With that, Jartham began penning a message for one of his colleagues, writing in blood drained from tortured innocents on stationery shaved from a block of solidified pain. After all, it paid for one's official correspondence to have a distinctive personal touch.
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Nearly a month had passed since Clockwork Knight Ironfruit had opened the floodgates for Clockworks beginning to express themselves, and they were quite pleased with the changes so far. First of all, flush toilets with a functioning septic system had been installed for all the buildings in town. After it had been explained to the townsfolk just how immensely useful keeping clean and properly disposing of feces was in preventing disease, they were taken to with great enthusiasm.
Other projects were coming too, but more slowly. The gremlins in charge of most civic infrastructure had quickly proven to be massive railway enthusiasts, thus making the decision of what type of transport infrastructure to build first extremely straightforward. That said, the railway network was still in the process of expanding radially out from Regno Prima, and the station planned for this town hadn't yet been constructed. The deal with the Dwarves for assistance with setting up an advanced educational system in exchange for Proton Pile technology was still in the works, and the newly-installed public telegram/telephone stations still hadn't really caught on.
Thus, after that first interaction with Emerald, Ironfruit found themselves roped into the role of community teacher/role model/storyteller in between the occasional wandering monster that needed to be prevented from hurting anyone. This was a task that Ironfruit found rather stressful, but that they performed regardless. They were built with combat in mind, so being constantly swarmed by small humans was making their proximity alerts go off constantly. Ironfruit had long-since cataloged the children and occasional adult attending his classes as friendly, but the lack of the IFF transponders Ironfruit's fellow Clockworks carried lead to a constant sense of unease.
Today, Clockwork Knight Ironfruit was about halfway through a combined physics and mathematics lesson for anyone who wanted to listen, when a call came over the tactical comms about a stampeding herd of thunderbeasts rapidly approaching the town of Brassbell from the southwest. Silently thanking reality for a chance to do something less stressful than teaching to a crowd of small humans, Ironfruit addressed the class, saying "Sorry, but I need to go deal with a problem. I should be back soon."
Thus, they swiftly strode across the heavily reinforced floor of the town hall, reaching the door in mere moments. From there, Ironfruit simply began to run towards the issue, despite it still being nearly three miles away. A baseline human has a distinctly limited amount of time they can sprint before lactic acid buildup in their muscles forces them to stop. Ironfruit's motor system required no such metabolic considerations, effectively eliminating fatigue as a concern. Further, since Ironfruit's joints could move at nearly three times the theoretical maximum speed for baseline humans, they could sprint at speeds that would easily be illegal on most highways. Thus, Ironfruit was set to easily cover that three mile distance in a mere two minutes. Four other Clockwork Knights were accompanying Ironfruit for this mission, eager for a chance to get some very violent stress relief.
Soon, Ironfruit and the rest of his team crested the ridge directly over the oncoming thunderbeast herd rumbling towards them. True to their name, the high-voltage bison immediately began firing electric arcs from the tips of their horns at the quintet of Clockwork Knights, who immediately used their teleportation modules to flank the herd and evade the thunderbolts.
Then, it was the machines' turn to act, as they opened up with their all-purpose conjuration rifles in machine gun mode. Hypervelocity bullets flew downrange at dozens of kilometers per second, punching through the thick but still mundane hides of the thunderbeasts as if they weren't even there, completely obliterating internal organs as they disintegrated inside the targets. Further, the real-time comms the Clockwork Knights enjoyed allowed them to flawlessly co-ordinate their fire to effectively thin the herd. Within moments, it was over, the herd that had formerly been on a direct path to charge right into Brassbell and cause major loss of life being removed from consideration.
The job done, Ironfruit began jogging back towards town at roughly 30 miles per hour, taking longer than was strictly necessary to enjoy the experience of not being in uncomfortable proximity to a bunch of beings without inbuilt transponders. Still, they couldn't help but start considering what knowledge they'd be imparting to the locals next. Perhaps radioactive decay would be an interesting subject? Best accompany it with a crash-course on radiation safety too, just to avoid any unfortunate accidents.
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A month in, and running the newly founded Socialist Republic of Amali (named after the general geographical region I had liberated) was still utter misery. I found myself dearly wishing that Dungeons retained the ability to collapse from fatigue, since then at least I would have a few hours to rest every couple days when my physiology forced me to sleep. As it was however, that most definitely wasn't the case, meaning that every hour of every day I was constantly bombarded with requests for my opinion on some matter or other, no matter how I tried to foist my assumed responsibilities onto various hastily formed departments, administrations, and other bureacracies.
As an example, a typical day of mine could see something like the following spread of assorted things that insisted on needing my attention, listed in chronological order. Please bear in mind that this only covers half of the day; I had more shit to deal with afterwards.
12:00 AM: Asked to sign off on a proposal to reforest the Dead Wastes, now that the Titan of Bone is dead. Approved.
1:00 AM: Informed that a serious defect in the new miniaturized Proton Piles used in most of the new infrastructure leads to dangerous radiation leakage under certain conditions. Approve recalls for the flawed reactors and order the gremlins who made the error temporarily re-assigned to an unpleasant but non-hazardous job.
2:00 AM: Told of a large group of Drake Guard remnants planning to sabotage the perimeter defenses to allow a Grand Dragon entry. Ask why this hasn't been referred to the Public Defense Administration, before being informed that I'm just being asked to sign off on a PDA-designed plan to get rid of them. Approved.
3:00 AM: A proposal to build a space elevator is presented. I shoot it down on the grounds that shuttles powered by Protonium thrusters are far faster, can be built and repaired more easily, and aren't anywhere near as susceptible to damage from orbital hazards. Also, we aren't close enough to the equator.
4:00 AM: NO, I WILL NOT THROW PEOPLE INTO PRISON CAMPS JUST BECAUSE THEIR SECOND COUSIN'S UNCLE IS IN THE DRAKE GUARD! SOD OFF!
5:00 AM: The census comes back, providing plenty of demographic data on the new Republic, and a hundred-page manual of background information required to make sense of it all.
6:00 AM: Having finished reading the demographic report, a check reveals five more reports on various inane things popping up in my inbox. Slogging through them proves that all were requests for increased mana budgets for various industrial projects. I point out that if they want more mana, they're perfectly able to spend some of their existing budget on building more reactors.
7:00 AM: Receiving a complaint about the heat from the exhaust of all my reactors. A firmware patch is issued making all my reactors conjure temporary Protonium that vanishes from existence in 0.1 milliseconds, eliminating the exhaust problem at the cost of 0.5% efficiency.
8:00 AM: Some people want to open a newspaper. Fine, as long as they can verify that all information they provide is objectively accurate truth, go for it. Anyone who tries to shut down a paper just for providing criticism of the government will be prosecuted, so long as it is criticism based in fact.
9:00 AM: The delegation from the Deep Kingdom of Ruth arrives to discuss the formal opening of relations. I'm fine with that, until the diplomat starts breaking out the legalese. I immediately inform her that my main concern is that at the moment I am a single point of failure holding this entire slapped-together country together, I want help setting up an advanced education system in order to fix that, and I'm willing to share several important technological developments to sweeten the deal, most crucially Dragonfire, and that I am not a trained diplomat so if she would please just use plain language it would be much appreciated.
10:00 AM: Some people show up asking if they can help with anything. They're hired the instant the background check reveals they aren't Drake Guard, and are assigned to the ever-important task of keeping the seemingly ever-expanding bureaucracy in touch with what people need, rather than just making paperwork for paperwork's sake.
11:00 AM: I receive a letter from another Titan referred to as the Storm Titan congratulating me for my efforts in freeing people from the Grand Dragons, and asking that I take over anti-Dragon defense for the Isle of Storms once they die. I order a Remote Chassis constructed to go visit.
12:00 PM: Another group of about two-dozen random citizens shows up and asks if they can enlist in the military; I hadn't considered the idea of recruiting organics into the military before, so this bears consideration. I ask if they're experienced adventurers. Their reply is that since Adventurers get strong in Dungeons, and I'm obviously a Dungeon, they just need some time for training. I quickly re-design about half of one of my shallower levels into an impromptu boot camp, task about twenty Gremlins and a few Clockwork Knights to Drill Sargeant duty, and assign a discretionary mana budget for training purposes.
1:00 PM: WHY WOULD YOU EVER THINK THAT WAS A GOOD IDEA!? I'm trying to make people's lives NOT suck horribly, rendering the planet inhospitable to human life IS THE EXACT OPPOSITE OF WHAT I'M TRYING TO DO!
2:00 PM: Some other Drake Guard remnants are trying to rally a mob in Regno Prima to invade the wretched hive of steel and bureaucracy that my structure has become. Yeah, no. I order the PDA to dispose of them in a way that makes them seem like a laughingstock instead of something to be feared. Ten minutes later, a hastily built trapdoor in their stage drops the Drake Guard into a pit, complete with comedic sound effects.
3:00 PM: Theme Update: You have gained the secondary theme Governmental! No new features unlocked! No new minions unlocked!
Ugh, why did I ever think trying to run a country was a good idea!?