Titan of Steel (Dungeoncore)

[We Just Write]

Re-entering the planet's atmosphere went about as smoothly as could be hoped for, really. The ceramic heat shield mounted to the front of my escape pod handled the shock-heating admirably, superheated plasma sliding smoothly off the front of my current conveyance. Thanks again to a long time playing Kerbal Space Program, I had aimed for a fairly shallow re-entry trajectory, resulting in a fairly gentle deceleration as I streaked through the upper atmosphere. Seeing as I was coming down on the night side, I idly wondered how many people mistook me for a shooting star and wished on me.

Either way, my aerobraking maneuver was successful, and I quickly took active control of my descent again, diving through the cloud cover. Still, as I descended, the optical sensors mounted to the front of my pod began picking up... rainbows? A bit more brief examination indicated that no, this was more accurately described as rainbow-colored light. Soon, I burst through the bottom of the cloud cover, revealing what looked like a jagged cathedral of multi-colored stained glass, just floating in the air, a glowing point of light in their foundation.

I will admit I was fairly curious what this was all about, so I deployed my parachute well ahead of schedule. Remembering what I did to speak to the Titan of Bone, I sent the mass a message asking

titan of steel

Greetings! You wouldn't happen to be a fellow Titan, would you?

aether titan

Well yes, I am. I would say that 'fellow' might be stretching it a bit much, seeing as you're rather small to lay claim to that title.

titan of steel

Hey, I just got my chassis exploded by an enchanted bottle full of what I'd say was probably Dragonfire. To make a long story short, I thought building in orbit would keep Adventurers from raiding me. I was wrong; all it did was attract the attention of every party powerful enough to teleport to me.

aether titan

Wait, that was you!? What power source were you even using that could work away from the planet anyway? Even my planar rift requires fairly significant proximity to large concentrations of life to give me any useful amounts of power, and I'm less tethered to my power source than most Titans.

titan of steel

To be completely blunt, I'm using incredibly violent reactions powered by the conjuration of elements that should not be, and release incredible amounts of energy as they instantly destroy themselves. I prefer calling it nuclear power since it involves atomic nuclei, but as far as I can tell it's more commonly known as Dragonfire.

aether titan

Oh. That would explain it. So, was there anything else you wanted to talk about, or did you just drop by to meet me as you plummeted towards the sea?

titan of steel

I'll be completely honest; I didn't know you were here when I picked my de-orbit trajectory. Anyway, since I don't particularly feel like cutting my parachute until I actually splash down in a few minutes, we may as well talk. On that note, you mentioned getting your power from some kind of planar rift; mind telling me a bit more about that?

aether titan

Sure, I suppose. I've got a gash in reality leading directly to the collective unconscious of pretty much everything on the planet with a brain, a ridiculous amount of mana flows out of said rift, and I use it to power my chassis. Anyway, since we seem to be taking turns at asking questions, how long did it take you to get yourself mobile?

titan of steel

The first time, or on average? I'd wager I get my chassis trashed more often than the average Titan.

aether titan

The first time, I guess; that usually takes the longest, since new Dungeons usually have no idea how to go about procuring a suitable power source.

titan of steel

To be honest,it took me about a week to go from waking up as a brand new Dungeon to building my first Chassis to the point of being able to travel. Admittedly I promptly crashed the thing in the Dead Wastes since I had no idea how to fly the thing, but the point still stands. It's been about a month and a half since then.

aether titan

I call bullshit! No Dungeon is that knowledgeable about engineering and mana dynamics at such a young age! By all rights you should be a barely cognizant newborn! Seriously, it took me around twelve years to prepare for take-off, and I'm one of the faster Dungeons to reach Titan status on record.

titan of steel

Well, I'll happily tell you the truth, though I doubt you'll believe it. While I've only been a Dungeon for about two months right now, my mental age is a lot closer to twenty years, most of which was spent as a human in an alternate world where nuclear reactions were common knowledge, and there was no such thing as Dragons, or Dungeons, or any of this other bizarre stuff that I have no idea how to deal with and keeps trying to kill me! I just went to sleep one night and woke up as a Dungeon Core, and it's been one disaster after another since then! The only notable achievement of mine that will actually stick was killing the Titan of Bone, and they were literally a helpless target with no ability to actually harm me!

There was a long pause before I received a reply.

aether titan

Huh, never thought I'd get to meet another reincarnate. Admittedly my past life was native to this world rather than wherever you came from, but I understand at least part of what you're getting at.

titan of steel

Sorry for shouting at you; I really needed to vent, and doing it to Minions doesn't really work since they're kind of a part of me. Wait, what did you say about reincarnating?

aether titan

Don't worry, I understand that feeling. And people getting reincarnated as Dungeons is a known thing that happens around here, though it's extremely rare. Anyway, you look to be getting a bit close to the sea there; do you want to keep in touch, or shall this be it for now?

titan of steel

I would really like that; I've been keeping in touch with a Shepherd named Seth who helped me get going the first time, but he doesn't really get the whole Dungeon thing, you know?

aether titan

Yeah, I really do; meeting up with my past life family was awkward until we eventually called the whole thing off. Oh, good job taking out the Titan of Bone by the way; basically all of us Titans wanted a crack at him once we learned what he'd done, but none of us had a power source that could keep us going inside the Dead Wastes long enough to finish the job. Thank you for that.

With that, a glowing blue object flew out of the Aether Titan's jagged crystalline chassis towards my pod. I opened the door to admit the fragment of crystal, closing it just as I touched the waves. With that, I sent the ignition command to my parachute, and the nitrocellulose fibers I'd woven into it reduced the canopy to so much ash, erasing most evidence of its presence. The next step was simply making a beeline for the seafloor, before digging myself a new facility where I could prepare my next chassis. Diving through the water went fairly quickly, and I made it about 500 meters down before I thudded gently on the bottom.

Very quickly I hollowed out a room and got ready to move out of the pod I had descended in, setting up reactors and other such things that I would require in order to successfully launch. That said, I intended to stay here a fair bit longer than would strictly be required; before I tried doing anything else, I wanted some kind of anti-teleport mechanism, and I had an idea for getting some on-the-ground intelligence that I wanted to put through its paces.

---

Honestly, landing on the moon had proven easy compared to what the free Gremlins were having to deal with after arriving, as far as Shart was concerned. First on the list of issues was securing a supply of food, water, and breathable air; with fixed conjuration devices and the output of the several dozen reactors that had been repaired, the last two were easy, but food was proving a bit of an issue. After some trial and error, nutrition bricks that technically fulfilled all of a Gremlin's dietary requirements had been developed, but there was a growing consensus among many that if they had to eat those things for the rest of their life, they'd walk out the airlock without a suit.

Then there were the construction issues; without free-form conjuration being an option, everything needed to be built the hard way. Admittedly manpower wasn't too much of an issue thanks to plenty of Construction Clockworks, but it was still proving annoyingly time-consuming to get a significant habitat space set up. Said habitat space was still depressingly barren, seeing as it still wasn't easily doable to conjure organic matter.

On that note, many had come to the conclusion that they didn't want their new civilization to sputter and die as its founders reached their maximum life expectancy, and had taken to making sure there would be a next generation of Gremlins to succeed their starting population of around a hundred thousand. This had involved quite a lot of rather messy experimentation at first, but now the biggest question related to that topic was how to deal with the upcoming wave of children. It was still completely unknown to everyone involved just how long the resulting pregnancies would take, along with how long childhood would last, and the best way to educate young Gremlins.

Yes, it had been three months of toil and hardship for the new Gremlin Lunar Republic, but as the newly elected President Shart looked over a bill from the council suggesting acquiring farmable crops and livestock from the planet below, she couldn't help but think that it would all be worth it in the end. Thus, with a stroke of her pen, she authorized the launching of spaceplanes loaded with Clockwork Soldiers to surreptitiously acquire suitable stocks of both seeds and livestock.

 

[We Just Write]

Corenzite's wounds had not yet healed fully since their battle with that Titan. How could they possibly do so in such a short time, considering that the Supreme Leader had come far closer to death than ever before? As such, even three months later he could not muster the strength to fly on his only barely healed wings, and he still suffered from a limp. Making it even worse is that apparently the explosion that ended the fight had permanently damaged one of his more important organs, meaning that he was now incapable of using his Dragonfire without injuring himself. And without Dragonfire, could Corenzite even call himself a Grand Dragon?

Thus, the blue-scaled Dragon had thrown up a wall of bluster in an attempt to keep his rivals away, stating that if any were to intrude upon his territory, he would destroy his enemy's treasure horde, the gravest possible threat it was possible to level against a Grand Dragon. For some time this had worked in preventing raids, but now one of Corenzite's rivals had called his bluff, a red-scaled upstart from the north going by the name of Ophey.

Thus, the blue Grand Dragon trudged their way out of their capital to intercept Ophey, dreading the encounter that was about to occur; fights between Grand Dragons generally went until one party decided to disengage and flee, but if they were incapable of fleeing then battles almost always ended in the deaths of one or more of the Dragons involved. In his present state, Corenzite would find escape nearly impossible, and his lingering disabilities already had him at a massive disadvantage. Indeed, the only reason why Corenzite hadn't tried to slink off and find somewhere to hide is because Regno had a distinct absence of rough terrain or suitably large caves, leaving him with very few options in that category.

Thus, the red dragon bore down on the blue Supreme Leader of Regno, the old king's injuries dooming him just as effectively as if the Titan had made the finishing blow. The resulting battle was short, brutal, and there were no illusions on either side that both parties would survive. Almost instantly, Ophey determined Corenzite's inability to breathe Dragonfire or fly, before taking ruthless advantage of both infirmities by simply blasting Corenzite repeatedly from the air until he eventually keeled over.

In the immediate aftermath, Emperor Ophey dropped Corenzite's severed head on his former palace, proclaiming his dominion over Regno, and that any dissenters would soon face the wrath of a Grand Dragon. He still hadn't finished consolidating his power base when he spotted a mass of steel on the horizon, approaching at speeds faster than even the greatest of Grand Dragons could manage in level flight.

---

The World Shall Turn A New ChapterOver the couple months I spent buried on the bottom of the seafloor, the truly vast number of Gremlins I put to the task of figuring out a way to block teleportation made only two notable advances. The first was a general purpose Blink device that I could fit to my Clockworks, allowing them short-range tactical teleportation. That immediately went right in the next model of all my main-series Clockworks; I had a feeling they'd need it.

The second advance of note was something I found myself grudgingly tolerating as a form of teleportation defense, being a floor tile that would redirect nearby inbound teleport attempts to itself, allowing me to guarantee that unwelcome visitors beaming aboard would arrive in extremely undesirable conditions. Admittedly said tile had no form of IFF, meaning it would jam my own teleports as well, but I considered that an acceptable trade-off.

Experiments regarding using a pair of the 'attractor' tiles to telefrag someone into pieces simply resulted in the victim arriving unharmed at whatever tile was closer to their destination. Further, it had been demonstrated in testing that the more mana was put into the teleport, the easier a time it had not getting re-directed; at the levels of mana inherently used in teleporting to an orbital structure, they just flat out would not be effective at keeping a space station secure. Providing the tile with more mana wouldn't have helped, as part of the way they functioned was by pumping all the ambient mana out of the arrival zone.

The other major project I had the Gremlins working on was some way to finally be able to make serious use of Mutants outside my structure without them immediately going into full crush-kill-destroy mode. Almost immediately I had figured that the most reliable option would be to simply de-brain them and integrate a Clockwork's processor core for decision-making, but doing so had been proving surprisingly difficult to get right, with the peripheral nervous system simply refusing to synch up properly. Gradually, over the course of the project more and more components of the final Cyborg had been made Clockwork, until eventually the end product reminded me of a Terminator more than anything else; a cosmetic tissue layer concealing a robotic endoskeleton.

This conveniently let me fit my newest creations with a lot of the gadgetry I would normally only be able to cram in a Clockwork, including the new Blink device, some concealed automatic weapons, and a toggleable radiation source that would both regenerate the mutant's squishy parts, and allow for easy elimination of most assassination targets.

With much cosmetic surgery courtesy of my Gremlins, and a quick burst of radiation to make the Mutant tissue regenerate the surgical scars, I was ready to send my infiltrators into the world.

infiltrator cyborg

Minion Type: Clockwork + Mutant
Base Form: Humanoid
Strength: 0.3 MN sustained force
Speed: 2.1* peak human agility
Weaponry: Concealed Submachinegun, 4 kilowatt omnidirectional Gamma radiation source
Armor: 2.5 mm subdermal Mana Enhanced Nanosteel
Features: Human Appearance, Tactical teleport
Designed for infiltration missions, this unit consists of a mechanical endoskeleton with a layer of surgically altered Mutant tissue grown around it. When coupled with advanced behavioral heuristics, this allows these cyborgs to convincingly pose as human for fairly prolonged periods.

With my infiltrators on their way, I finally turned my attention to what I would be building for my next Chassis. This time, I wouldn't be wasting effort on excessively complex humanoid mechanisms; instead I would be building for raw, brutal combat effectiveness, focusing on firepower and mobility. Thus, the hull profile I ultimately selected would best be described as a flying battleship; I had briefly considered cosplaying as a Bolo, but in the predicament I found myself in, I needed all-angle weapons coverage and enough mobility to stay well out of melee range with the stupidly powerful dragons I'd be going up against.

The most notable property of the hull, aside from being almost as excessively durable as my last humanoid chassis, was that I'd used some additional Mana to reduce its effective mass, leaving it neutrally buoyant in air at around 2 kilometers altitude. This low effective mass combined nicely with the horrendously overpowered engines I had mounted to the ship for both forwards thrust and turning, meaning that if absolutely necessary, I could get 100 gees of acceleration. Of course, this would have been immediately fatal to any unfortunate Gremlins who happened to be aboard, necessitating water-filled suspension tanks with breathing gear, which could protect biologicals from utterly absurd gee forces.

Weaponry was also upgraded to a degree that some would consider rather excessive. First, I had a main battery of twenty four Pulsed Proton Cannons, with each bolt delivering a terajoule of energy to the target and each gun firing once per second. For a secondary broadside, I had several kinetic weapons that conjured projectiles moving at 50 km/s; I called them Relative Conjuration guns. Then there were the 32 missile tubes I was mounting, firing missiles equipped with Nuclear Shaped Charges, which I considered a secondary weapon system for no reason other than collateral damage. Point Defense meanwhile was handled by dozens of smaller Relative Conjuration Guns. I didn't bother with any melee weapons; if this chassis wound up in close combat I had severely messed up.

Some other miscellaneous systems that bore mentioning included an escape pod, an experimental defensive force field, and an emergency mana storage system that worked using a cubic meter block of the same compressed mana material as composed those Beads that Seth had given me some time ago. I really hoped I didn't need any of them, but better to have and not need than need and not have.

As I underwent my final launch preparations, the twenty thousand or so Gremlins who had been working on my latest round of engineering projects climbed into their suspension tanks, ready for the extreme accelerations I would be pulling in my fight against the draconic dictator oppressing the people of Regno. The chats I'd had with the Aether Titan had been quite informative in that regard, and it was quite clear to me now that Grand Dragons as a species were simply too dangerous and megalomaniacal to be allowed to live.

Thus, when my sensors informed me that the Grand Dragon over Regno's capital was red rather than blue, my resolve regarding my course of action didn't falter for a millisecond. Instead, I simply ordered my fire control computer to give me a firing solution for every single weapon my chassis was equipped with, while also adjusting the criteria slightly to herd the Dragon away from the city they were currently flying over.

Spoiler: Battleship Hull Profile

 

[We Just Write]

Im only in the first few chapters, so I'm sorry if it's already been stated. But you realize by supplying the energy source for your reactor, you should be getting either the same or less mana out as you put in? Especially since you are venting some energy as steam. Unless making something through mana takes less energy than it releases through degradation. (Just a little nitpickyness as a engineering major with thermo in mind, as this is magic I'm perfectly willing to throw it to the side through sod. TL;DR version. It seems like you are getting more mana out of a closed system than you put it, where do you suppose that energy/mana came from? Secondly, don't waste steam! Steam has heat, which can be used as energy. Better to have a river spout of your dungeon than steam. Especially when you can produce psuedo materials that make heat exchange highly efficient.

Click to shrink...

Ah, basically there's this in-universe magic phenomena known as the Conjuration Imbalance; it's based to some degree on how in video game magic it can have the same mana cost between zapping someone with lightning or conjuring an improbable amount of ice to encase them. Basically, for roughly the same amount of mana the amount of mass you can conjure vs the amount of energy you can evoke is grossly unbalanced in favor of mass being cheaper, considering E=MC^2. As such, if you can conjure a sufficiently energy-dense fuel, it's possible to get a net mana positive system. For the purposes of this story, the imbalance is around 145 MJ = 1 kg.

And yes, the Generation Zero reactors were awful in most ways; the reactor designs get much more optimized as the story goes on.

 

[We Just Write]

An excerpt from the writings of the veteran Dungeon-delver Janise Cher

A monster found in the now-defunct orbital Dungeon known as the Celestial Palace (also referred to as the Titan of Steel), Clockwork Knights are quite formidable opponents for any adventurer who should be faced with one, seeing as they have incredibly high base capabilities along with extremely lethal weaponry.

First are the basic capabilities; Clockwork Knights have quite bluntly excessive amounts of physical strength, decently good speed, and an extreme amount of physical durability for a monster their size. In my fights with them, I had to sink significant chunks of my mana reserve into each hit just to dent their armor, and whenever they managed to get a hit in, my protection field nearly collapsed. If I hadn't thought to bring along a few Mana Beads to recharge myself, I would not have survived my third encounter with these constructs.

As for weaponry aside from sheer physical performance, Clockwork Knights have a mixture of integrated weapons and handheld items. In the integrated category, they first have a pair of rapid-fire guns mounted to their arms; these are pretty standard for a Clockwork Dungeon, but have a higher muzzle velocity than normal. The other major integrated weapon they have is that turbine in their chest, through which they can fire a massive explosive blast. Said blast also delivers a nasty damage-over-time effect that can stick to its victims, the general nearby area, and the Clockwork Knight itself for nearly a week; I was dependent on mana beads for a significant time afterwards to keep my Protection Field up, or I would have surely died.

Carried weapons fit into the general categories of sword, shield, and rifle. The sword is long, heavy, and has a much broader blade and thicker handle than many swords; it is just as excessively durable as the Clockwork Knight itself, but that isn't its only nasty trick; when activated, the sword is capable of sheathing itself in Dragonfire, and I mean the real stuff that can melt cities into slag if enough is used at once. There is no visible activation switch, but after prodding the sword with my mana for a few hours I was able to get it to turn on.
WARNING: Just because Dragonfire isn't touching you doesn't mean it can't hurt you! It also emits an invisible light that can lethally poison you with minimal exposure; fortunately, regenerative magic can save you if applied in time.

The rifle is another Dragonfire weapon, firing either bolts or continuous streams of Dragonfire at extreme velocity, depending on the setting. These shots are more than capable of penetrating almost any defense an Adventurer can carry, short of temporarily boosting their durability with the mana contents of an entire Blue Bead at minimum. Getting it to work was much the same as the sword; the internal mechanisms have to be prodded with mana just right in order for the weapon to activate.

Compared to this, the shield is almost boring, for the most part just being a single massive slab of whatever absurdly durable materials the Clockwork Knight is made from. All but the strongest adventurers will find it too heavy to wield properly, but if you can you will find few shields superior to it. It also has the additional feature of self-repairing when supplied with Mana, but the levels of mana required are so absurdly massive that a normal adventurer would be hard-pressed to fix a significant gash in the shield with even a week's worth of exertion.

Monster parts that can be harvested from a Clockwork Knight are fairly typical for Clockworks, being large quantities of refined metal, several dozen motors and other mechanical components that Tinkers tend to find useful. That said, the Clockworks from the Celestial Palace have two fairly notable properties that stand out. First, the material they are made from is absurdly durable and nearly impossible to work; it was quite clearly conjured in place, since there wouldn't be many practical ways to forge it. If you can get the parts out, they are therefore likely to last in projects for an extremely long time without replacement.

Second are the parts my party started referring to as the 'Dragonfire Cores', for lack of a better name. These parts are near-perpetual mana generators that make use of conjured Dragonfire to violate the Perpetual Mana Prevention Principle. As such, they can provide easy re-charging for any adventuring party that acquires them, and a near-perpetual power source for Tinker projects. A Clockwork Knight contains two Dragonfire Cores, and seems able to operate at full capacity with only one core functioning.

Thus, Clockwork Knights (if you can find them) will prove an extremely hazardous challenge for all but the most experienced adventuring parties, but taking them down is extremely rewarding.

 

[We Just Write]

The first indication that the Red Dragon had of my intentions was when I turned broadside and unloaded a full salvo of twenty-four Pulsed Proton Bolts into their left wing, my targeting computers enabling near-perfect placement of the c-fractional plasma shots, delivering a total kinetic energy roughly equivalent to six kilotons of TNT. Even the excessively durable scales of a Grand Dragon were hard-pressed to withstand such a pounding, and the plasma shots shredded the joint keeping the lifting surface attached.

Obviously, this caused the Dragon to immediately lose control of their flight path, tumbling out of control to faceplant in a field just outside the city walls of Regno Prima. This presented a minor issue, as with that proximity to the city I could not fire my main battery without causing unacceptable damage to the citizens of the place. On the other hand, I had my secondary weapons to make use of; swiftly, my Relative Conjuration broadside clicked into place for its firing solution.

I was indeed almost about to fire when the Red Dragon momentarily recovered, opening fire with the Grand Dragon's take on Proton Beam weaponry. The mana field I had surrounding my chassis held up to the blast admirably, but I didn't want to take any chances with how fast it was being worn down. Therefore, I slammed my thrusters to maximum acceleration, quickly dodging out of the beam.

notification

Adventurers have teleported into the dungeon!

Briefly, I split my focus to the attractor panel in my forehull, even as I ordered my Relative Conjuration guns to fire. It looked like I had a group of about thirty heavily-armed individuals aboard, all wearing a distinctly familiar model of armor. Drake Guard.

Outside my hull, the first salvo of RC gun shots slammed home, shattering bones and punching large holes in the Grand Dragon's hide, though the dragon' skull and forward ribcage were apparently tough enough to bounce the shots. Seriously, who even designed these creatures!?

Internally, the situation was significantly more dire; the radiation trap in the teleport receiver room had fired for all of a few seconds before the boarding party had disabled it, applying healing magic before they continued on into a corridor. A corridor which I had coincidentally ordered obstructed by about eight Clockwork Knights. The casualties quickly began to mount among both my constructs and the adventuring party, as radswords removed limbs, various weapons put dents in Clockworks, and the corridor quickly became caked with a thick layer of deadly Sodium 24.

The situation with the Dragon outside meanwhile quickly resolved itself, as a Relative Conjuration shot went right down their throat in between bouts of nuclear firebreathing, punching a massive hole out the back of their neck in the process, and probably severing the spine since the Red Dragon stopped moving and keeled over.

This only left the contingent of Drake Guard, who were still going strong despite the quite bluntly excessive amount of radiation they were being exposed to, and had almost made it to the end of the corridor where they were currently held up. Admittedly they'd lost six members, but still. Fortunately, there wasn't anything too important in the room they were about to enter, but I would rather end this sooner instead of later.

Therefore, I pumped out all the oxygen present in that room, and replaced it with a mix of Hydrogen Cyanide and Hydrogen Sulphide. As the Drake Guard eventually bashed down my excessively reinforced door, I commented over the intercom "You know, both the blue dragon and the red dragon are dead now. If you surrender I'll let you live."

The first few to enter the room went down from the deadly cocktail of poison gas, before the rest quickly put up air bubble spells. One of them replied, saying "You lie! The country of Regno will ALWAYS be ruled by a Grand Dragon, for no other being can claim the life of one such as them!"

In response, I projected the footage of my final deadly shot against the Red Dragon against the wall, and noted "That image is not faked. It was pulled directly from my memories; I killed the Red Dragon myself, and if I'm not mistaken then the object he dropped when I shot his wing off was the severed head of the Blue Dragon who used to be here."

The Drake Guard continued on their attempt to reach my core and end me, unheeding of the advice I had offered; they lined up at one of the other armored doors, and began bashing away at it. Fine, if they wanted to be that way, I'd stop playing around. In the room opposite to the one the Drake Guard were attempting to enter, a Proton Tank was diverted. The door clicked open, and my war machine fired an unfocused continuous blast of nuclear death into the room, rated at around fifty gigawatts. When the Proton Tank stopped, the only sign that the Drake Guard had ever been here were carbon silhouettes on the opposite wall.

---

The long stint in her... cage for lack of a better term had not been kind to Urist McSmith. She hadn't been informed of anything whatsoever, and aside from the person assigned to feeding the potentially useful prisoners, it seemed that basically everyone had forgotten about the dwarf in the tower. As far as Urist could tell, a few hours ago there had been several extremely loud booming sounds, including the roar of a Grand Dragon, but she didn't dare hope that the Titan had come to her rescue.

Still, something unusual was definitely going on; she heard the footsteps of the person charged with feeding her approaching, but there was a second set of footsteps following them. A set of footsteps that sounded distinctly metallic.

There was some muffled conversation outside, before the door swung open. Not the small hatch that food was shoved through either, the big main door that hadn't opened since the day Urist was put in here. The man with the food tray entered, accompanied by a light gray automaton with a rifle slung over its shoulder. Unbidden, the machine spoke, saying "You're free to go; the hallway has been painted with arrows leading to the exit, though you can take your time if there's anything you wish to do in here before you depart."

Afterwards, Urist would swear that she had not impulsively hugged the cold, unyielding metal, merely that she had jumped in surprise, happened to collide with the automaton, and held on tight as she could. That didn't make the return hug any less well-received, if a bit lumpy.

It was the man with the food tray who spoke up and interrupted the moment, saying "Not that this isn't touching and all, but there's still about fifty prisoners who need to be freed today, and only so much time to do it in."

A bit embarrassedly, Urist released the automaton, grabbed her food tray, and headed for the hallway. As she passed through the doorway though, she couldn't help but ask "Curiously, why am I being released today all of a sudden?"

The automaton answered simply "Because there will never again be a Grand Dragon ruling this country." before continuing on to the next cell.

---

The newcomer to the town of Rofe was strange; they just showed up one day, with no apparent history of any sort. They weren't seeming to do much of anything, aside from collect gossip, hang out in the tavern, and generally just be around. They had proceeded to set up a machinery store and were indeed selling small devices of varying usefulness to anyone who came by, but they never seemed to require any actual time to make their devices, and there were none of the tools in their shop that a Tinker might normally be expected to have.

For Sherry Rosotz, everything about this situation screamed that this was a Deceiver, but other things didn't fit. First, the behavior pattern made no sense for a Daemon of any sort; they just sort of existed and did what they did without hurting anyone. Sure, there was that one idiot who tried to pummel the newcomer in a bar fight and got decked, but they started it.

However, the final nails in the coffin of the Daemon hypothesis were revealed by Sherry's sensory magic. First and foremost, her anti-illusion Eyes of Truth spell showed a being that still looked human, while a Deceiver would have been easily found out by such a method. The other major piece of evidence was the theme-ping spell, revealing that the oddity had a thematic type of Atomic Clockwork. No Daemonic components whatsoever.

As she looked through her previous writings to find where the theme Atomic Clockwork might have come up, Sherry's gaze happened upon her latest issue of the Titanomicon. It took her mere minutes to recollect that the theme had apparently only so far been used by the Titan of Steel. From there, it was a simple matter of deciding on a course of action.

The next day, Sherry went to the mystery man's store, and as soon as the other customers had left, she said bluntly "I know you probably aren't actually human. That said, you haven't yet hurt anyone, so I just want to know what you actually are, and what your intentions are for this town."

The newcomer tensed and relaxed, before they noted "This might take a while, but you are indeed correct about the fact that I am non-human."

It took several minutes for Sherry to tease the whole story out of the newcomer, revealing that he was a Dungeon minion working for the Titan of Steel, that he was in fact a Clockwork hybridized with an organic minion, and even the fact that the Titan of Steel did in fact run on Dragonfire.

Still, when she was done, Sherry couldn't help but ask "Curiously, would you be able to get me in contact with the Titan of Steel? I think that a text describing things from a Titan's point of view would be a great addition to the next edition of the Titanomicon, and I generally do like talking to interesting people."

 

[We Just Write]

You absorb them to Blueprint the Breed & get a "Favored Enemy" stat when fighting more.

Also, Twin Dragon Skulls Hood Ornament/ Titan Shoulder Dragonfire Weapon Mounts.

Make Dragon Shape Titans, you know you want Kaiju...

Click to shrink...

Item Assimilated: Grand Dragon Corpse, severely mauled

Great, I can conjure oversized cadavers now. So what?

 

[We Just Write]

After my killing of the Red Dragon, I had an extremely short time window in which I could continue my current offensive without the Grand Dragons realizing something was up and moving back towards my liberated areas. Fortunately for me, my network of surveillance satellites from the ill-conceived Space Station project was still intact, which rather handily informed me of the locations of the nearly 130,000 Grand Dragons who continued to bicker over the planet.

As such, I dropped four shuttles full of Clockworks from my hangars on Regno's capitol, and set them the task of freeing political prisoners and taking over the machinery of state as effectively as they could. With that, I activated my main engines and rocketed off towards my next target, a young gold-scaled Grand Dragon who seemed to have done an even worse job of running their country than the Blue Dragon! At least the Blue Dragon had assembled some moderately functional state institutions, but this particular Dragon was just a thug.

Said Grand Dragon was over sparsely populated countryside when I found them, so I didn't bother with collateral damage mitigation in the slightest; instead of blowing a wing off to try and control their trajectory as they fell, I just shot them in the face with energy equal to a few kilotons of TNT, caving in their skull and killing them instantly. With that, it was off to the next target, a purple-scaled Tyrant who I was absolutely sure had no sort of heroic destiny whatsoever.

As I flew, I also took the opportunity to launch a salvo of around twenty missiles at another Grand Dragon some distance away from my current main target; my guided munitions had an extremely long range, and satellite target data had revealed that a certain Green Wyrm was sufficiently far from any sort of civilization that I didn't think smashing them with a couple megatons would hurt anyone else.

Thus, flying in a concentric pattern around Regno, I quickly managed to take out around thirty Grand Dragons with surprise attacks overwhelming their defenses quickly enough for an instant kill. During this little blitzkrieg of mine, I was boarded five times, most often disposing of the boarders by spinning into some insane maneuver and letting gee-forces do my dirty work for me. In one case the group of Adventurers managed to abscond immediately after mugging a couple Clockwork Knights for their weapons, as I didn't react fast enough to keep them from escaping.

That said, after clearing out a region nearly 300 miles wide I began retreating back to Regno. I had no illusions that I would be able to take on the entire world all in one go, for a few major reasons. In order to clear out room for my development of the country, I had been flying in a concentric pattern; this meant that the further out I got, the longer it would be before I got back to a given angle relative to Regno, meaning there would be more and more time for news to propagate to the still surviving Grand Dragons. This was especially the case as the effective velocity of news was likely boosted to a significant degree by magic; after all, I had real-time global communications, so it wasn't much of a stretch for there to be other methods of magical messaging.

Quickly, I fell back to a radius of about one hundred and fifty miles around Regno Prima, and began hurriedly constructing defensive emplacements for Anti-Grand-Dragon use; this pretty much amounted to a copy of one of my main turrets, a battery of Relative Conjuration Autocannons for defense, enough reactor capacity for running everything including self-repair, and an armored casing that could stand up to Dragonfire for plenty long enough to finish the job. Each such emplacement except the ones directly on the coast had line of sight to two other emplacements, meaning that they could give each other supporting fire if needed. I had just put the finishing touches on the last one by sunset on the day of my offensive, before flying back to Regno to actually get down to the business of nation-building.

As I returned, I made a resolution to myself; there would be elections for the government in six months, those elections would be as fair and democratic as I could manage, and I would be making damn sure no would-be authoritarians would be using this as an opportunity to grab power.

---

On the opposite side of the planet, Grand Dragon Samathin was subduing an upstart, intending to add them to her Draconic Empire as a subordinate. Normally, this would be a risky endeavor, since most Grand Dragons were fairly evenly matched when it came to combat capabilities. Samathin was not most Grand Dragons, being one of the only members of her species who was also an accomplished spellcaster. Samathin intended to keep it that way; if any other Grand Dragons learned to cast like she did, her empire would surely disintegrate, and so would she, in all likelihood.

Today, Samathin's newest subject-to-be was a black-scaled Grand Dragon by the name of Rost. As she closed in on Rost's capital, the feel of the Mana easily informed her when her opponent noticed her presence. Samathin was of course ready for Rost's retaliation, as the black-scaled dragon launched themselves into the air from the arena where they had been resting, blasting Dragonfire at the intruder the instant they had Line Of Sight.

Samathin simply grinned savagely as the spell circle lit up in front of her, capturing the stream of Dragonfire and using it to pull her opponent in like it were a rope. Roth quickly cut off the stream, but the damage to his flight control was already done, sending Roth tumbling downwards. Samathin ruthlessly capitalized on this, as a dozen carefully focused streams of Dragonfire lanced out from her spell circle, shearing away the membranes of Roth's wings. It would heal in about a month or so, but until then Roth's mobility would be seriously impaired.

Thus, the black-scaled Dragon tumbled uncontrollably to earth, only barely managing to lift his head out of the dirt when he felt the weight of the gold-scaled Samathin press onto his back. The gold-scaled mage quickly retrieved an object from her harness with one claw, while the other slammed Roth's head back into the ground. There was a click as Samathin placed the specially-prepared collar around Roth's neck, and informed him "The collar around your neck contains a sealed vial of Dragonfire more than sufficient to blow your head clean off. If you attempt to remove it, it will kill you. If you disobey me, it will kill you. I hope you understand."

Reluctantly, sounding defeated, Roth answered "What is your command, mistress?"

Samathin grinned a vicious grin exposing all of her extremely sharp teeth, saying "Well first, I really don't trust you not to try removing that collar sometime, so I'll be needing to give you a kill switch that's a bit harder to remove. Given that, I am ordering you to swallow this device."

 

[We Just Write]

From time to time, everyone has fantasized about how they would run the world if they took it over, and I was no exception. However, very few people also were able to predict all the problems that came with having to run even a small fraction of said world. Sadly, I wasn't much of an exception here either.

The instant I got back to the city where I had killed the Blue Dragon, I immediately burrowed myself into the ground. Despite the sheer mobility and firepower afforded by my battleship chassis, the fact was that I would be needing way more power generation than it could provide if I wanted to build enough infrastructure to hold together an entire freaking country!

Mostly, I let the facility-building run on autopilot while I focused on churning out VTOL transports stuffed with Clockwork Knights and my Infiltrator Cyborgs, though with the way I was about to be using them they wouldn't be infiltrating so much as providing a face that didn't immediately send the locals running in terror. Within thirty minutes, the flying machines were launching from the massive sunken hangar in the ground by the hundreds, with one shuttle landing at each town that I found.

There was one major reason that I was doing all this so quickly, and that was because I needed on the ground information about the territory I had just de-dragoned as quickly as I could possibly get it. I wanted to get the people here to the point that they could beat every single Grand Dragon that came at them into a pulp even without my help, and that meant I needed to proliferate my tech-base as hard as I possibly could. In order to do that, I would need to know where I was even going to be starting.

The information that was coming back was extremely disheartening, and I should really take it piece by piece if I wanted a good shot at explaining it correctly.

Let's start with the realm formerly ruled by the Blue Dragon; in a lot of ways, this place was one of the better off locations. There was a coherent national identity between all the various towns, an official system of communication (if heavily slanted towards propaganda), a semi-functional educational system able to turn out a good number of Mages, and very few bandits or monsters running free to torment the innocent. On the other hand, the educational system did everything in its power to stifle innovation on pain of death, the law enforcement was the Drake Guard, only the highest tier of society had access to healthcare (by which I mean healing magic), and sanitation was a joke.

There were about eight other areas like that where the Grand Dragons had taken an unusually intense interest in building a power-structure around themselves, but for the most part the Dragons had been content to simply pummel anyone who looked like they were building up a power base and take anything they wanted by force. In places like these, conditions were even worse. Large cities were non-existent aside from the Dragon's dens, all manner of scum and villainy roamed the countryside, and individual villages often viewed themselves as having zero common interest with their neighbors. On the other hand, it was only in these places that I was able to find Adventurer Towns, populated by monster-hunters and magic users of all stripes.

Much to my shame, it was only after getting a pretty good picture of how things were going for the humanoid species out there that I thought to check on the other Dungeons around these parts, recalling the Drake Guard's policy of repeated and thorough plundering.

Oh, the Dungeons in the places where the Grand Dragons really didn't give a shit about statecraft were doing rather well for themselves, if rather confused when some of my Clockworks showed up to give them the news and ask them how things had been going. It was the Dungeons in Regno that really infuriated me.

The first sign that anything was off was that the Drake Guard had universally vacated their bases outside every single Dungeon, but things simply got worse from there. Time after time, my creations marched through shattered corridors littered with th corpses of slain Dungeon inhabitants, every single item of value having long since been carted off. Stone walls and floors had been smashed and entire family units of Goblins and Fae had been put to the sword, leaving only a grim tableau of devastation. However, it wasn't until I thought to check why none of the Dungeons had talked to me that I discovered the depths of the atrocity that had just been committed.

Deep at the bottom of every single Dungeon, where a living, personable core once rested on a pedestal, there were only fragments. All across Regno, the Drake Guard had smashed right through the savaged defenses of the Dungeons they had spent years torturing to extract powerful artifacts and magic, and slain the being bringing the structure to life. Only once did my Clockworks encounter a Drake Guard contingent while they were still inside their victim's halls; I left a single survivor to interrogate, before checking to see if I had been too late here as well. I had.

How in the world are you even supposed to react when you find out that not only has a genocide just been committed against your own species, but also that you didn't even notice it happening until it was too late to stop it? Silently, I gave the member of the Drake Guard I was interrogating a carefully measured dose of gas-form Sodium-24; they wouldn't notice anything until long after I was done interrogating them, but neither would they be in the world much longer to keep spreading misery.

Once that unpleasantness was done and I had turned the man loose to die an agonizing death in a few days, I pretty much broke down at the enormity of what I could have prevented if I had just changed the order I had done things in. Quickly, I delegated temporary command and construction authority to my twenty highest-ranked Gremlins, ordering them to set about installing proper sanitation, travel and communication infrastructure immediately. That done, I retreated into myself to grieve. I really needed some time to process what had just happened, or I was likely to do something extremely counterproductive like set my Clockwork Knights to interrogate the entire population for Drake Guard loyalties.

---

Clockwork Knight #0824971 was operating severely outside their originally designed mission parameters. Said parameters normally amounted to excessively lethal combat in which it was perfectly acceptable to reduce everything in sight to so much radioactive slag. Instead, #0824971 was acting as a visible bringer of good news and security to the people of a moderately large town near a river, a task where nuclear-powered plasma weapons were most emphatically not acceptable to use.

Currently, the human-like mediator platforms were meeting with the town's council of aldermen in the combination church and meeting-house that dominated the center of the town. #0824971 and the other Clockwork Knights had meanwhile needed to stay outside, after one of their number had crashed through the floor and into the basement due to the sheer weight of the metal making up their bodies. They had of course offered to repair the damage after hauling said Clockwork Knight out of the basement, but the whole incident was largely being glossed over by everyone involved.

Still, this left several bulky and imposing combat automatons standing in plain view of everyone in the town, most of whom looked really quite fearful regarding the whole thing. Given what these people had previously been subjected to, #0824971 figured it made sense. Their only frame of reference for what a government did was thugs backed up by a nuclear-powered dragon. The fact that the town's Drake Guard contingent had promptly been forced to either disband or be arrested for a later investigation into their actions likely hadn't made a very good impression either.

It was after an hour of general tension regarding the whole affair that events began to really occur. A woman was walking by with a small child in tow, carefully averting her gaze and gripping the young girl's hand tightly in order to keep them from escaping. The blonde-haired child in question had no such fears, calling out "Mommy I wanna go look at the shiny people!" the instant she saw #0824971 and their fellow Clockwork Knights.

#0824971 watched impassively as a brief tug of war ensued between the two, the child trying to slip out of her mother's grasp, and said mother desperately attempting to hold her child back. Ultimately, the child won and ran straight towards Clockwork Knight #0824971, her mother following desperately behind.

For the briefest of moments, the automaton measured the threat level presented by the child in order to determine an appropriate response. It took only a second in order for #0824971 to prepare the appropriate countermeasure to ensure their safety, even as the unknown child closed to within arm's reach with the extremely lethal combat automaton. The resulting encounter was over as swiftly as it began, as #0824971 offered the child an apple and asked "What is your name, little one?" crouching down as they did so.

The child snatched the fruit out of the Clockwork Knight's hand almost instantly, answering "My name's Emerald! What's yours?" before she swiftly set about demolishing the delicious fruit she had been given.

Clockwork Knight #0824971 pondered this for a few moments. They had a designation, yes, which kept them from being confused with other Clockwork Knights, but that was different from a name. A name implied identity and individuality, concepts that were quite foreign to Clockwork Knight #0824971. Eventually, the automaton answered "I was not provided with a name."

Emerald looked up from the fruit she had mostly consumed by now, before saying "Your dad must have forgotten something then." She didn't get to finish what she was about to say, as that was the exact instant Emerald's mother caught up to her, and hauled her away.

For the next several minutes, #0824971 found their thoughts persistently looping back around to that brief encounter with Emerald, and the idea of names as a signifier of personal identity. It was this persistent line of thought that lead the Clockwork Knight in question to make their first ever decision not dictated by the ethical framework they were imprinted with, the directives from the Command Network, or even the necessities of combat. With great solemnity, #0824971 sent a message into the Command Net that would have repercussions they hadn't even considered.

clockwork knight #0824971

I am requesting a name and cosmetic alterations to facilitate an individual identity.

 

[We Just Write]

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.

---

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.

---

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!

Oh ROB, why did I ever think trying to run a country was a good idea!?

 

[Graviator]

As Gart crested the hill, he came face to face with the absurd sight of six people pushing a Dungeon up the other side.

The Dungeon itself was obviously mature. Its ground floor was made mostly of wheels and axles, and a stair-step motif decorated some of the armor panels covering its upper flanks. Yet it was barely five floors high in total. If it was one of the legendary Titans, it must have been the runt of the litter.

Still, that left each of the pushers bearing the weight of a building. Clearly, something more was afoot, even if these were Adventurers; there were plenty of people in the caravan of wagons and two-wheeled clockwork vehicles behind it, and their involvement wasn't necessary.

As if to demonstrate, one of the pushers stopped and held up a hand. A woman with wings fluttered out of of the caravan to relieve him, and he fell back and climbed into one of the wagons.

The dungeon barely slowed its climb during the exchange.

Gart turned around and didn't stop running until he reached the village.

---

Aniva funneled one last burst of her mana into the Titan's rear engine as it crested the hill. Then she heard the clutch pop and the Titan accelerated down the far side. A great cheer wafted up the path behind her, but she kept her eyes on the Titan until it came to a stop a few hundred feet short of the crossroads. A few more Groupies joined her to watch it settle. Backs were slapped, congratulations exchanged. Then everyone got to work.

A dozen diggers got to work on a pit, joined by a couple of Clockwork excavators from the dungeon. Cyclists took reams of leaflets from the printers' wagon, then fanned out through the local road network. Other workers marked out avenues, erected tents and, when the first cyclist returned with brewery recommendations, sent out a convoy of freshly unloaded wagons to purchase beer.

Meanwhile, the lazy and exhausted were treated to the rare sight of a transforming Titan. Armor plates folded up to form a deck twice as wide as the Titan's body, and struts materialized to support them. The stair-step decorations detached and slid into place as actual staircases. When the pit was finished, the Titan rolled itself astride it and lowered its bottom four decks below ground. Then the wheels came off and carried the drivetrain up a ramp to the deck, where the scraps rearranged themselves as railings and benches.

The real show, if anyone had been there to see it, unfolded below ground. The great tubes of the engines themselves crawled through the halls and assembled on the second deck. Then the floor above them slid aside an elevator lifted the newly built pipe organ into view.

As the console wove itself together, Aniva swooped in and seized the microphone that came with it. As the last pusher, she got the honor of performing the sound check.

"Testing, Testing." The Titan blasted her voice from the tallest pipe. Then she leaned over the console, pulled out a few stops and hammered a chord.

Gart was at home, trying to decipher a copy of the "concert programme" leaflet, when a strange melody rippled over the hills.

"Oh."

---

The last few fans filed onto the VIP deck, handing their mana beads to the box-equipped Clockwork Clerk on top of the stairs. Another swung the gate closed at the bottom. Meanwhile, a third Clockwork Clerk prodded the last of the previous crowd towards the Loot Deck's exit, almost stepping on a little girl as she dashed back for one last souvenir. Behind them, the murmuring crowd hushed themselves as a man came up the stage elevator - a technician, it turned out, to check the connections between the instruments and the magical amplifiers.

Down below, Gart drained the last of his beverage and palmed the pad to order more. It flashed red, indicating that he'd hit his limit.

"No fair," he complained to the Groupie next to him, "How come you got to order a third?"

"The Titan knows my limit," the Groupie replied with a chuckle. "Most people don't have the mana reserves to pay for more than two beers."

"I guess I'm out then, see you tomorrow."

Gart made to leave, but lingered in the doorway for a moment as the band began to play upstairs. A local act, if the glowing sign above the bar was to be believed. Gart didn't, honestly; although the tune seemed to be a variation on a hometown ballad, he didn't know of any local that skilled with Electric-tier instruments.

He slipped into the crowd on the lawn in front of the Titan. He recognized about a quarter of them - half local and half from the Titan's caravan. The lawn had a scattering of Adventurers as well, but most of the unfamiliar faces seemed to be pilgrims from the lake towns. He guessed that about a third of them were there for the music, and the rest came for the opportunity to see or even enter a Titan without fear.

Gart pushed through the turnstile at the exit - fortunately, they only made you pay beads on the way in - and the sense of crowding eased. He appreciated the wide lanes of the temporary town that had sprung up - lodging, shops, cycle rentals and the all-important bead makers without whom nobody could enter. He was just about clear of the town, too, when he heard some chanting from the final alleyway.

"3, 2, 1, go!" followed by the pop of a teleportation spell.

---

Naomi flashed in less three strides from a hulking Clockwork. She snapped out a shield spell with one hand, while working up and firing a rust ray with the other. The ray caught it in the knee, but it still made a final lunge before Boaz got behind it, punched his battle-pick through its hull and wrestled it to the ground.

Naomi kept the rust ray on target, corroding through its chest plate and locking up its control gears, while Boaz turned his attention to the bin it dropped, and looted a few garments. Satisfied that the threat was neutralized, Naomi turned her ray on the steel floor when someone grabbed her wrist.

"I wouldn't do that if I were you."

Naomi had half a mind to put an energy bolt through the stranger's head with her free hand, but tradition stopped her. Assuming he weren't flagrantly violating one of the laws of Adventuring, he was trying to save her life.

"Who are you?" Boaz asked.

"Call me Bubs, the bouncer. Congrats on scoring a backstage pass, but you really shouldn't go any further."

"Why not?" Naomi asked. "For a high level dungeon, this place is barely defended at all."

Bubs winced. "You're telling me you didn't even notice the main defense upstairs?"

Naomi did a quick scrying, then reported, "Upstairs is just a concert, and about four minions."

"It's a concert with a bunch of Groupies in the audience. These Groupies follow the Concert Titan around the land and hang out inside it a bunch. You know what that makes them?"

"Adventurers," answered Boaz, "probably really strong ones."

"Yep," said Bubs, "But also music fans. If something stops the music, they get really mad. Now guess what happens if you breach the lower deck?"

"Err, the music stops?" Naomi guessed.

"Smart gal, got it in one. The exit's over there. Keep the shirts if you want."

Boaz unfolded one of the t-shirts he'd looted, black with white block letters on the front. It read, "I raided a Titan and all I got was this lousy shirt."

---

As the sun set and the last of the festival-goers trickled out of the lawn, the Concert Titan assessed its gains. Nearly fifty thousand mana in beads, seven probable new Groupies, topped off mana batteries, twenty-seven barrels of beer and improved elevator blueprints from a visiting Tinker. Outside of its influence, the caravan also seemed fully replenished.

It also counted its losses. Fourteen hundred and eighty mana in renovations, twelve of its bicycles lost in action, and one Heavy Lifting Clockwork totaled by invaders. Altogether, a major improvement over its inbound situation.

It still felt a twinge of embarrassment. It always took pride in rolling into town under its own power, even if it needed to tap its Groupies in the middle. If only the eastern pass hadn't been blocked by heavy snow, it would have arrived at this junction with about four thousand mana to spare.

Tomorrow, though, it needed to pack up. While the pilgrims could keep profitably trickling in for weeks, the firstfruits had already been reaped, and so the enterprise's further income would be much less. That'd still be fine for the Concert Titan, but not so much for the caravan.
The wanderers that made up its core audience were already growing restless. Too much more delay and they'd move on themselves. Or they'd get too comfortable and the caravan would leave them behind. And the local food-distribution network had already run out of cheap reserves, forcing the caravan to cart in grain and beer from ever further away. For the sake of the party, it must move on.

It examined its map of the region, freshly obtained from a wandering cartographer. One town looked particularly promising - a trade junction at the base of a river delta. At 94 mana per mile over level ground, and allocating nine thousand mana to refill its emergency reserves, it should be able to reach the junction with several thousand mana left.

The Concert Titan piped a sigh through the smallest tube of the grand organ. For all the work it put into moving, the best parts of its world tour were the short periods where it could bury its wheels.

(Fin)