One: Proton Piles don't use Uranium; they use horrendously unstable conjured atoms containing an absolutely ridiculous number of Protons and precisely zero Neutrons. This allows for significantly higher energy levels than could otherwise be attained.
Two: Yeah, Proton Beams pretty much are nuclear flamethrowers.
Three: Pretty sure I'd already mentioned somewhere that the new reactors I was using to power my Titan chassis actually were plasma core; I'm also pretty sure that I stated somewhere that instead of using a turbine, that model of reactor was using the magitech equivalent to a magnetohydrodynamic generator, which allows significantly higher energy levels in the plasma exhaust; since that doesn't require a working fluid, those reactors are simply kept cool by frost runes.
1&2: Lol. Though obviously not what I expected from the term "plasma cannon". Well, sounds suitably nasty.
"Safe approach distance is waaaay over there. Just let me get my seven league running shoes before it fires. "
EDIT: though wouldn't firing it also damage the Titan? It's still waving a nuclear firework around, the moment that weapon is turned on, the Titan would be standing at ground zero of a continuous nuclear explosion.
3: Ah, oops. So it is using a fission fragment style system. Though what about all the energy going off as gamma rays? Those would manifest as heat and would still need some way to capture that energy.
Hm. That's probably a hard problem given that gamma rays don't absorb well.
Although if you have frost runes, you can have the heat sink in a heat engine all the way down near absolute zero, so even older models could be cheaply renovated for much better efficiency.
EDIT: though wouldn't firing it also damage the Titan? It's still waving a nuclear firework around, the moment that weapon is turned on, the Titan would be standing at ground zero of a continuous nuclear explosion.
Yeah, that was taken care of by a combination of mana-tuning the material properties of the areas near the weapons to better withstand the absolutely hellish temperatures, and devoting some additional mana to self-repair systems.
Ok, sorry for nitpicking, but I got to object to the relativistic cannons.
Nuclear fission energies are not sufficient to achieve exhaust velocities of high C fractions unless you use the fission fragments directly. The only way you're getting high C fractional output is if you're venting raw fission product in their general direction, adding coolant or anything else would reduce the velocities greatly.
Also, that's less a plasma (heat and kinetic weapon) and more like a particle beam (energy weapon).
Secondly, particle beams don't work well in atmosphere. They'll end up generating a massive plasma sheath and peter out rapidly. Maybe this is what you mean by plasma? But that's not a cannon at all, more like some Titan-sized nuclear flamethrower.
>> Also, even if you still managed to somehow generate a relativistic projectile weapon from this, said projectile would just explode upon hitting the atmosphere right outside the gun. Sure, you'll still have a blob of high energy particles heading that way, but the backwash is still at nuclear explosion levels. See here.
Depending on how much nuclear fuel is used in the weapon, this can scale up from "can microwave food at 10 miles distance" to "continuous nuclear explosion". Your description makes me think of "continuous nuclear explosion" and not an oversized lightsaber. (oh hey! Titan sized lightsaber sounds pretty cool! Too bad your handy spectators/commentators are all roasted. As well as the odd mountain or two) Since you can conjure a nuclear reactor's worth of nuclear fuel with 20mp, a 200mp per second weapon would be 10 nuclear bombs per second.
If you're powering it with the energy equivalent of an RL's uranium reactor pile in highly unstable nuclei per second... that's the equivalent of 1 nuclear bomb... per second. This is exactly like the nuclear salt water rocket... without the water. It's still a continuous nuclear explosion, just without the thrust since there's no reaction mass.
Thirdly, firing this anywhere near inhabited areas is not a good idea due to the radioactivity. Even if the fission fuel's gamma radiation has low induced radioactivity, you are still dumping raw fission product into the atmosphere. Continuously. The fragments from the rapidly disintegrating nuclear fuel would be enough to irradiate small to medium countries.
The vented fuel would also shed gamma rays in all directions, handily giving anyone close enough to see you a fatal dose.
Now, if you're talking about confining the nuclear fuel and it's products and just funneling the gamma rays at your opponent, then you have a gamma ray torchlight. That's less radioactive flamethrower and more like a heat ray (not laser, think solar mirror but scaled up to insanity). The power levels are still going to be high enough to ionize the air on the way to your target, generating a nice lightshow (and if at "nuclear bombs per second" power level, generate a continuous explosion anyway). But you can get enough range to draw on the moon(s?) with that.
...
Also, if magic walls in the gun can contain the nuclear fission products and channel it, you can ditch the pissy solid fuel reactor designs and go straight to plasma core instead. Yes, that means you have your nuclear fission fuel existing as a high energy plasma contained by magic forcefields. Higher temperature in the reactor means higher efficiency in the heat engine (the turbine) generating the mana, meaning less waste heat and more energy captured for mana generation.
You might have to change your coolant to something different though, since water probably won't survive the insane temperatures a plasma core reactor could achieve. And your pipingand turbine would probably need to be more magic forcefields too.
Okay, so it isn't that easy, how about liquid core then? =P
So baisically, MC is the physical representation of Chernobyl right after the meltdown and the MAD theory.....
I'm seeing no downside beside not being be to fly.
Alo on the other side of the nuclear apocalypse....
Hey, what are the rules on your magical conjuration exactly? Can you conjure things outside your dungeon? If not, what counts as "part of your dungeon" and how big does it have to be? Could you make a flexible whip (e.g. a tube-shaped corridor that happens to be 1" in diameter) extending out from the arm that you can wield like a whip? If so, forget about those piddly knives for a melee weapon and try this:
Step 1: Flick whip at attacker
Step 2: As the whip comes in contact with enemy, conjure massive quantity of <X> at the end of the whip. This will blow off the tip but who cares?
Step 3: Enjoy a milk bone in an enemy-free world.
Fun things to conjure depending on how much overkill you want:
1) Chlorine trifluoride
2) FOOF
3) Large amount of your protonium (mind the minimum safe distance)
4) Antimatter (ibid)
Also, you really need an Orion drive.
Bonus points if you can toughen the outside of the whip with your "contain nuclear explosion" stuff and leave the inside vulnerable. Wrap it all the way around the target and you have a nuclear cutting charge.
Hey, what are the rules on your magical conjuration exactly? Can you conjure things outside your dungeon? If not, what counts as "part of your dungeon" and how big does it have to be? Could you make a flexible whip (e.g. a tube-shaped corridor that happens to be 1" in diameter) extending out from the arm that you can wield like a whip? If so, forget about those piddly knives for a melee weapon and try this:
Step 1: Flick whip at attacker
Step 2: As the whip comes in contact with enemy, conjure massive quantity of <X> at the end of the whip. This will blow off the tip but who cares?
Step 3: Enjoy a milk bone in an enemy-free world.
Fun things to conjure depending on how much overkill you want:
1) Chlorine trifluoride
2) FOOF
3) Large amount of your protonium (mind the minimum safe distance)
4) Antimatter (ibid)
Also, you really need an Orion drive.
Bonus points if you can toughen the outside of the whip with your "contain nuclear explosion" stuff and leave the inside vulnerable. Wrap it all the way around the target and you have a nuclear cutting charge.
I actually have two types of conjuration available, freeform and fixed.
Freeform Conjuration
-Limited to either extending the dungeon or creating stuff inside of it (dungeon is defined as the rooms and corridors I possess, as well as any systems which are under my control and permanently fixed to them).
-Can make anything with enough mana, but is relatively inefficient
-Is anchored to my core.
-Can be jammed by foreign mana signatures/souls, meaning that it cannot be used on the same floor as invading adventurers.
Fixed Conjuration
-Works anywhere.
-Is anchored to a physical machine or item which has to be manufactured; items or substances being conjured must be produced either inside such a device or in physical contact with its surface.
-Is limited to the items or substance specified in the rune matrix, but is highly mana efficient.
I actually have two types of conjuration available, freeform and fixed.
Freeform Conjuration
-Limited to either extending the dungeon or creating stuff inside of it (dungeon is defined as the rooms and corridors I possess, as well as any systems which are under my control and permanently fixed to them).
-Can make anything with enough mana, but is relatively inefficient
-Is anchored to my core.
-Can be jammed by foreign mana signatures/souls, meaning that it cannot be used on the same floor as invading adventurers.
Fixed Conjuration
-Works anywhere.
-Is anchored to a physical machine or item which has to be manufactured; items or substances being conjured must be produced either inside such a device or in physical contact with its surface.
-Is limited to the items or substance specified in the rune matrix, but is highly mana efficient.
Fixed conjuration works *anywhere* as long as there's a marker there? Cool. So, yes, the whip works. Also, you can litter a battlefield with ball bearings and anytime an enemy steps near one you conjure a ton of FOOF on the ball bearing. And release buoyancy-neutral balloons all over the battlefield so you can do the same thing in a 3-D volume. Or shoot the things out of a cannon to seed an enemy base from 100 miles away, then conjure nuclear explosives on them.
Fixed conjuration works *anywhere* as long as there's a marker there? Cool. So, yes, the whip works. Also, you can litter a battlefield with ball bearings and anytime an enemy steps near one you conjure a ton of FOOF on the ball bearing. And release buoyancy-neutral balloons all over the battlefield so you can do the same thing in a 3-D volume. Or shoot the things out of a cannon to seed an enemy base from 100 miles away, then conjure nuclear explosives on them.
You are severely underestimating the required bulk for a Fixed Conjuration device. In addition, such devices outside the Dungeon require their own onboard mana storage/source.
You are severely underestimating the required bulk for a Fixed Conjuration device. In addition, such devices outside the Dungeon require their own onboard mana storage/source.
How much bulk do they need? As to mana supply -- your proton piles are effectively free energy, so that works. The clockworks are able to go outside the dungeon so clearly there are batteries or else the piles can be miniaturized...and conjuring the 'piles is cheap, so you could bootstrap. Have a device with a small battery that is sufficient to conjure a 'pile that is sufficient to do something impressive.
I'm not trying to be difficult here, just offering ideas for ways to fight the dragon.
Titans have limited internal volume. Since volume roughly equals magic income and income roughly equals the available power, it might have been better to just expand a dungeon in all directions and build something insane like a nuclear rocket on the core room to prevent it from being attacked.
Full exponential replication go! Tile the world with nuclear reactors! There's even a nice anti-life zone that you can ramp in.
EDIT: don't forget to yoink whatever mechanism is generating that zone! It sounds eminently weaponizable!
Your dungeon doubles in size every 2 or 3 hours after all (once you add in things like walls and weapons). Crazy stuff like space elevator (the giant mountain sort) is not out of question. Then you don't have to worry about things like dragons on the land. You can conjure matter from nothing after all.
You see that? The dungeon is one of the few things that can feasibly build one in reasonable time. (though you'd need to develop some interesting materials for it, eg. magical materials that have artificially lowered gravitational weight -- That tower being a compressive space elevator is made of a fictional material called airmetal)
Of course, that wouldn't really be a Titan any more so eh? Maybe have a Titan that is connected to the ground via some sort of cord? (Can anyone say Evangelion three times fast?)
So why aren't you just building a spaceship? It's a fantasy world, so no worries about adventurers in space. Build your Dungeon on the moon, maybe, but the spaceship is better for mobility. Still, I guess a Gundam would more fit into the theme.
So why aren't you just building a spaceship? It's a fantasy world, so no worries about adventurers in space. Build your Dungeon on the moon, maybe, but the spaceship is better for mobility.
It took about an hour for me to reach the spot where the stricken Titan of Bone lay, my long legs allowing me to easily stride over almost all the terrain obstacles in my way once I got the hang of walking again. The dead landscape I passed through was... disheartening. Here and there, I could see signs of where there clearly had been something alive, such as a withered tree, or the skeletal structure of a long-dead animal, but as expected I didn't find a single currently living organism. Even after I destroyed the necromantic field, I predicted that it would quite possibly take decades to centuries for this place to truly recover.
As I stepped over the final ridge between myself and the life-sucking horror at the center of the Dead Wastes, I found myself gazing upon their emaciated, gruesome form. Where I had built my chassis with a sleek metallic hull, the abomination before me looked more like a partially disassembled corpse, completely lacking in skin in favor of an exposed skeletal structure with what seemed to be partially decomposed muscles anchored to it. Meanwhile, the monstrosity's chest cavity was far from a hollow ribcage, instead being filled with gory, rotting organs connected in a nonsensical manner.
I wasn't too worried as I readied my massive Proton Beam Rifle to fry this monster once and for all, seeing as all the math regarding this fallen Titan's mana flow indicated that it didn't have the power necessary to move. Still, as I pointed the massive weapon down at this creature and got ready to hose them down with nuclear fire, an unexpected message appeared in my interface, reading
message from: titan of bone
I have a request to make, fellow Titan.
Somewhat astonished, I found myself replying
sending message
If you want mercy, you won't be getting that. You will die by my hand, stealer of countless lives.
message from: titan of bone
That wasn't the request I wished to make; it is within the rights of the strong to do as they wish to the weak, and though it pains me to admit it, I rendered myself weak in my attempts to become strong. I simply have a request about the nature of the death you inflict.
sending message
What would that request be?
message from: titan of bone
We are Titans, but we are also Dungeons. I simply wish to be slain in the manner befitting a Dungeon, with monsters rampaging through my corridors and smashing my core. Dying by externally applied brute force is more befitting of a Grand Dragon.
For several moments, I pondered the other Dungeon's request. There was a not completely negligible possibility that this was some kind of trick to scrape together enough mana to get moving again, but on the other hand this could provide invaluable experience at commanding my minions in hostile territory.
sending message
I will grant your request. You still need to die so that this region can live once more, but it will at least be a death befitting a dungeon.
With that, I opened the entrance on my forehead, and began discharging my new flight-equipped Clockworks. Simultaneously, I knelt down as I drew my left knife, and with a single plunging stab I opened up the Titan of Bone's corridors for my minions to invade. Urist McSmith was, not to put too fine a point on it, scared out of her mind. That tended to be the case when you were unexpectedly snatched from your home, were bound, gagged, and blindfolded, and were then taken on a long, uncomfortable journey against your will. This was only amplified by the fact that Urist's home was in fact nearly half a mile below ground, in one of the most fortified locations the world had to offer; namely, a dwarf citadel.
The woman was just beginning to lose track of time since she had been abducted, when she was unceremoniously dumped butt-first onto a solid stone floor, and her gag and blindfold were removed. Urist looked up, and up, and up. Finally, their gaze met the truly enormous visage of a towering blue dragon, sunlight from the massive stained glass windows reflecting off their scales with a metallic sheen.
The dragon in question did not look happy in the slightest, as it said "Dwarf, I require the knowledge of your ilk when it comes to the best way to destroy machines. There is a new Titan on the loose, and it is a Titan of Steel, with many features indicating that their theme is mechanical in nature. As such, you will immediately set about devising a plan to slay that Titan, or I will devour you on the spot, is that clear?"
Urist was shocked into silence for several moments, which the dragon seemed to take as encouragement to begin reaching down towards her with those absolutely massive talons. They didn't get very far before Urist shouted "I'll do it, I'll do it! I'll need a better description of the Titan in question, but..."
Suddenly, the dragon shouted "ENOUGH! I accept your volunteering of your services. Guards, show this woman to her office please."
With that, the gag and blindfold were reapplied, and Urist felt herself being dragged away to who knows where, dreading what would come next.
So the disabled dungeon still has some intelligence and sense of honor despite being a mostly dead abomination. Also, Mr. dragon seems to have yet to (and probably never will) realize that kidnapping and alienating people who you want to do complicated and hard to examine jobs. Nonetheless, she seems to be taking this fairly well as far as things go and depending on how bad titans are considered in-setting, might consider working for a dragon to be better than permitting the continued life of a titan. On that note, it seems like a titan of steel is considered something of a bigger deal than other types, which lends some value to the expectation that this dwarf might decide that she's willing to sacrifice her freedom to kill it.
About when I got decently good at making spaceships in Children of a Dead Earth. Which is the closest I'll get to building real ones for the foreseeable future.
During my execution of the Titan of Bone, there were five main types of Clockwork minion which I deployed, all of which had rather unimaginative names, and a variety of capabilities.
clockwork soldier
Minion Type: Clockwork
Base Form: Humanoid
Strength: 0.25 MN sustained force
Speed: 0.85* peak human agility
Weaponry: Automatic Rifle, Automatic Pistols, Hand Grenades, Grenade Launcher, Bayonet
Armor: 1.2 centimeters Mana Enhanced Nanosteel A basic humanoid Clockwork with upgraded armor and a vastly improved motor system, Clockwork Soldiers are mostly ranged fighters, making use of both hypervelocity ballistics and copious amounts of explosives. To prevent hostiles from simply picking up one of their machine guns and going to town with the armor-piercing bullets they fire, the weapons for a Clockwork Soldier are fired using the operating Clockwork's IFF transponder, rather than a physical trigger. If a Clockwork Soldier winds up in melee combat, they will attempt to use their impressive physical strength to grab or pin their opponent, before breaking them.
clockwork angel
Minion Type: Clockwork
Base Form: Humanoid (Winged)
Strength: 0.1 MN sustained force
Speed: 4* peak human agility
Weaponry: Automatic Rifle, Automatic Pistols, Hand Grenades, Grenade Launcher, Bayonet
Armor: 5 mm Mana Enhanced Alumina CNT Alloy
Features: Armored Wings, Flight Resembling a Clockwork Soldier with the addition of a pair of wings and slightly bulkier leg sections, the Clockwork Angel is built for rapid flanking and harrassment, making use of a pair of thrusters in its feet to provide the thrust needed for flight. They use the same weapons as Clockwork Soldiers, but their melee combat subroutines are quite different, emphasizing fast, brutal strikes while also using their wings to block attacks.
armed clockwork v2.4
Minion Type: Clockwork
Base Form: Humanoid
Strength: 2 MN sustained force
Speed: 0.65* peak human agility
Weaponry: Dual 20mm autocannons (integrated), Plasma Dump (integrated), Rotary Claws (Integrated)
Armor: 5 cm Mana Enhanced Nanosteel backed by 2 cm Mana Enhanced CNT Standing tall at 2.1 meters, Armed Clockworks are absolutely brutal combatants, able to send upwards of 40 high explosive shells downrange every single second. They also have several nasty surprises in case someone gets close, including a chest-mounted Proton Pile behind a cosmetic turbine, able to easily blast the corridor in front of them with superheated reactor coolant salted with extremely radioactive Sodium-24. Further, their grasping claws are sharpened, and are able to freely rotate at 40,000 RPM, acting as an extremely deadly close combat weapon, especially when coupled with the raw physical strength exhibited by the rest of the machine's motor system.
clockwork knight v 3.1
Minion Type: Clockwork
Base Form: Humanoid
Strength: 8 MN sustained force
Speed: 1.97* peak human agility
Weaponry: Heavy Radsword, Combat Shield, Proton Beam Rifle, Plasma Dump (Integrated), Retractable 20mm Autocannon (Integrated) Armor: 8 cm Mana Enhanced Nanosteel backed by 3 cm Mana Enhanced Silica Aerogel and 4 cm Mana Enhanced CNT.
Standing at an imposing height of 2.6 meters, Clockwork Knights cut an imposing profile courtesy of the deadly weaponry they wield. They share the autocannons and chest-mounted Proton Pile of Armed Clockworks, but these are not intended to be primary armaments. Instead, the main weapons which a Clockwork Knight makes use of are a Proton Beam rifle and a massive superdense sword built with the ability to conjure a thin line of Protonium along the cutting edge of the blade, allowing them to slice through almost anything while also frying them with plasma and heavy ionizing radiation. Further, the motor system for a Clockwork Knight is extremely over-engineered allowing them to do such things as casually flip heavy armored vehicles into the air, so long as they are properly braced.
proton tank
Minion Type: Clockwork
Base Form: Vehicular
Strength: 1.2 MN sustained force
Speed: 110 MPH cruise (ground level), 240 MPH (aerial)
Weaponry: Proton Beam Cannon (Integrated), Protonium Missile Pods (Integrated), Omnidirectional Plasma Dump (Integrated)
Armor: 20 cm Mana Enhanced Nanosteel, 8 cm Mana Enhanced Silica Aerogel, 6 cm Mana Enhanced CNT
Features: Flight Far more mechanically simple than any of the humanoid Clockworks, Proton Tanks are effectively a heavily armored box with treads on the bottom and a weapons turret on the top. That said, they also have a set of Protonium-powered steam thrusters all along their hull which they can use for aerial maneuvering; these same thrusters can be seriously overclocked if need be, blasting anyone close to the tank with superheated plasma.
Entirely unsurprisingly, the first Clockworks to enter the Titan of Bone's fleshy corridors were my Clockwork Angels, for the simple reason that they were faster than the rest. These machines provided critical information from within the downed Titan's corridors, revealing that while it didn't have the power it needed to get up and move, it certainly had the power required to run a fully functioning Dungeon in its interior, with Minions and Traps galore.
That said, I found the defenses they had to muster highly underwhelming. The mana-enhanced materials I had made my mechanical minions out of were, to put it quite bluntly, excessively durable by almost any metric, meaning that all the crushing sphincters, geysers of corrosive gore, and sword-swinging skeletons that this necromantic Titan could throw at my creations were lucky if they even managed to inflict cosmetic damage on one of my machines.
My machines meanwhile, had a far easier time dealing with the opponent's skeletal minions, even if there was the occasional minor hiccup. As an example, bullets commonly wound up completely whipping straight through a skeleton and missing every single bone, or a skeleton would keep moving after taking damage that would have flat-out mission killed a Clockwork that was dismembered in a similar manner. Still, the Titan of Bone's minions were still quite vulnerable to the nuclear blow torch known as a Proton Beam, or simply being grabbed in melee and ripped to shreds.
After a few minutes of this drudgery, I figured I might as well ask the Titan of Bone about this, sending them a message.
sending message
I really have to ask why your minions suck so hard; if you had a Titan-level mana budget, shouldn't you have been able to design some crazily overpowered minions to make use of it?
The response I received wasn't quite what I had been expecting, but it made sense.
message from: titan of bone
I wish! Minions don't work that way; you can't just design them, they have to be unlocked by having a basic minion find various evolution conditions.
sending message
Huh, that's not how Clockworks work; I just design mechanical components, assemble them into a completed system, and there we go, new minion.
message of bone
Bah! Clockworks aren't proper minions! They have more in common with traps, save that they are self-propelled and have some level of autonomous decision-making capacity.
I resisted the urge to shrug, as that would send the next wave of Clockworks from my head-mounted entrance tumbling to embarrassing collisions with the ground, and instead focused on co-ordinating my army of clockwork minions as I continued to smash my way through the Titan of Bone's interior. It only took a few minutes longer for one of my Clockwork Knights to reach the Titan of Bone's core chamber, its massive radsword easily cleaving through the sphincter which made a poor substitute for even my first model of armored door.
As the Clockwork Knight raised its radsword over the glowing ruby core of the Titan of Bone, I sent one last message to the dying Titan.
sending message
Farewell, Titan of Bone. I draw no pleasure from this, but your death is a necessity in order to restore this region to life.
With that, the radsword came crashing down through the Titan of Bone's core, and with a blast of suddenly released mana, a Titan was slain. From my perspective outside the Titan of Bone, I could easily see their rotting organs suddenly cease in their convulsions. At the same time the oppressive aura of the Dead Wastes faltered, and with a final distinctive lurch, collapsed.
I quickly tested this by calling up a Basic Gremlin, and when they didn't almost immediately keel over, I burned the mana necessary to bring somewhere just north of 4,000 Gremlins into being; of these, 3,000 were Basic Gremlins, with the rest being my currently extant Gremlin Specialties, weighted heavily towards Health and Safety Officers. After all, the machinery I would want them to develop had the potential to be quite dangerous.
With my crew of budding mad scientists ready to go, I only needed a project to apply them to. Nothing came to mind immediately, so I simply told my Gremlins "You have free reign to undertake whatever engineering or science projects you think will be of use to me. You have Torso Bays one through twenty-three to customize as you see fit." Most people think Dwarves are immune to claustrophobia, due largely to the cramped tunnels they call home. Under normal circumstances, this would be an accurate assumption, but Urist's circumstances were far from normal. In the last day and a half, she had been kidnapped and enslaved by a Grand Dragon, and the dark, cramped office she was being forced to work in was not helping!
Even more stress-inducing was the disparity between Urist's career skills as a psychologist and the job she had been assigned, namely concocting a plan to bring down a Titan based on extremely sparse information. In fact, before this whole mess, Urist hadn't even believed Titans were real, simply being made up stories by those who longed for an end to the tyranny of the Grand Dragons. After all, there was a certain evocative flair to the idea of a massive construct rising out of the ground, harnessing immensely powerful forces to finally strike down the Grand Dragons.
Now, Urist was looking at what she was assured was an accurate drawing of a real, physical Titan, made of finely worked metal with jets of flame shooting from its back. And Urist had to somehow come up with a plan to kill it, or else the Grand Dragon would kill her. Urist held no illusions about what would come afterwards; she would never be released, forced to work on one project after another until she expired from one cause or another. It had been proven time and time again; Grand Dragons never let go of anything they felt they'd claimed unless they were physically forced to. And by default, a Grand Dragon viewed themselves as laying claim to all that existed.
Urist looked back at the drawing of the Titan laying on her desk. Grand Dragons may be innately programmed to be ruthless dictators, but she had no data to go off of whatsoever regarding Titans. It was a risky gamble either way, but if the Titan were to win, then Urist might possibly have a chance to go home. That done, Urist began poring over every possible detail she could glean from the drawing of the Titan, and began considering how she would do this. She needed to figure out the worst possible way to go about fighting her potential savior, but then she would need to present it to her captor in a manner that would be accepted as legitimate good advice.
For the first time since being abducted, the dwarven woman smiled. It wasn't a big smile, or a particularly hopeful one, but it was at least present. As she smiled, Urist thought to herself that she might finally have a part of this whole ordeal that her psychology skills could be useful for.
