Chapter 50: 31 + prologue
Chapter 31 Target Rich Environment
So Yi Ti declared war on me. I guess my raid wasn't discrete enough. Sure they had no real evidence, but their maegi could apparently use very sophisticated divination spells. A branch of magic they had labeled ancestral invocation.
It was very divination heavy, containing spells to view past events along with blocking other spells. War seemed a trivial price to pay for access to such a useful school of magic. My scrying division is going to become exponentially more effective once I incorporate it.
The raid had outraged them so much that despite my treaty both emperors had joined together to march against me. Loudly decrying my cowardly and dishonorable actions. With a lot of pomp and ceremony they had combined their armies and marched side by side against me.
Pointless.
Scouts and scriers gave me plenty of warning. I feel a bit like kicking myself for tempting fate. Seeing the massive column of giant constructs marching in formation makes me realize that my idea of aerial drake cavalry was still a few decades from full implementation.
Sure I had given them hundreds of eggs, but it takes time for them to grow up and even then they're divided between all three cities. No, it looks like I won't be able to rely on them just yet.
Still that wasn't my only defense. I still had the land cruisers in the area, particularly the arc hammers. I had them stay just ahead of the column, constantly raining down iron bars. A few others also harass them, launching showers of arrows and windlance bolts at them.
It doesn't stop them. I'm not sure if it's just stubborn pride or they're delusional enough to think they can win, but they march on. Even as my land cruisers whittle their numbers down they don't turn back. It'd be admirable if it wasn't so stupid. But if they're going to act like idiots I'm not going to stop them.
I pull most of the land cruisers back. The arc hammers keep attacking, but the rest circle around to get behind the army. When they finally do break I want to make sure to completely shatter the army.
The army seems almost cheerful despite still being harassed. Almost like they think they're winning somehow. It's annoying enough that I decide I don't want to defeat them, I want to destroy them. I send out my entire fleet of automated zeppelins. I hold them back until the enemy within sight of the walls of Bayasabhad.
Then I order the air fleet to attack. I have almost a hundred napalm-class zeppelins. A literal wall of fire slowly sweeps along the road and through the army even as thousands of arrows rain down.
Now they break.
It's too late though. They marched across sixty miles of desert and I just burned all their supplies. Anyone who does make it past the land cruisers will still be easily picked off by the air ships still chasing them.
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I can't just leave the situation alone. Yi Ti declared war on me. I need to respond. The problem was the reports I had just gotten. Reports I had trouble believing. Several of the remaining nobles from Omber had rebelled, taking advantage of my absence to declaring themselves independent and started raiding the surrounding areas.
The world has gone mad. There can be no other explanation. Why else would they challenge me? I've killed millions by this point, thousands personally. They can't realistically have any hope of winning.
I thought I had killed all of the idiotic nobles when I first took over, but clearly I missed some. I had been feeling like an armchair general recently so I decided to take care of it myself. I leave orders to have the air fleet assault every city save the capital, which I wanted to loot, and head back.
I take my helicopter, which had since been extended until it housed three pairs of rotors. It was also armed with actual guns.
Just because I couldn't mass produce guns doesn't mean I completely abandoned the concept. Over the years I had tinkered with various designs, steadily improving the ones I had. The final result was what I had mounted on my transport.
Automated gatling cannons. Two five barrel cannons that are continuously fed ammo out of a series of hoppers and chests. I set up an ender chest that my advanced golem crew used to keep the chests filled. The other end led to a small warehouse entirely stuffed with ammunition.
The ammunition was the most annoying part. Since my powers let my skip so many steps when crafting I ended up grossly over engineering the forty millimeter shells. They were closer to long skinny rockets then bullets.
Originally I planned on saving it for the Night King, but I shouldn't really use anything without at least one test run. In the newly christened Scourge I flew off to rain destruction on Omber.
You ever see those documentaries or even just movies of soldiers charging bravely across the battlefield, ignoring cannon and artillery fire and making it across? I remember looking it up once and it's true. True saturation bombing just isn't really feasible. For some reason, despite all odds, infantry charges often work when they shouldn't. That wasn't the case here.
If anything I had underestimated the effectiveness of my cannons. Maybe it was due to a quirk in the game mechanics my power runs off of or something else. Whatever the reason there weren't any survivors. All that was left were burned chunks of what used to be several small private armies.
I was more than satisfied. I was ecstatic. Just add in some obsidian sand I bet I can mow down white walkers just as easily. Too bad the ammunition is such a pain to make. Still, it's a good trump card.
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As if all of that wasn't enough I get word that the expeditions finally made contact with the raptormen in Sorthoryos. By this point I wasn't expecting good news so I wasn't surprised they were hostile.
Of course it couldn't be even that neat and tidy. The report revealed there are actually two intelligent races of beastmen. The raptormen and a race of giant ape men. Both hate eat other and are constantly fighting. They also xenophobic and attack any humans they run across.
They also both possess unique forms of magic. The raptormen can control insects and the apemen have some kind of necromancy. Thankfully neither has any form of divination blocking so I could view the encounters using the lore stolen from Yi Ti.
The raptormen have some kind of druidic magic. They can scout by taking to animals and control plants and insects. They can also cause plants to grow supernaturally fast. I'm not sure if they're summoning them or breeding them incredibly quickly, but they can also generate insects.
The apemen had possession of a branch of magic that was profoundly unnatural. Following one of the expeditions that had disappeared I saw them use what looks like a combination of flesh warping and necromancy on them. Each person was twisted into a feral clawed monstrosity that I recognized from other reports. Ghouls.
If they follow the same pattern they were just as feral as they looked. They were also very strong and could regenerate from most wounds.
They didn't just use me people. Captured brindlemen, natives to Sorthoryos, were also used. Raptormen were turned into something even worse.
Bloated grotesque versions of there former selves they housed swarms of manticores. It makes me wonder if the apemen had created the insects originally.
It also relieves me just a bit. At least their magic can't be traced back to myself. It's nice to run into a problem that wasn't caused by me.
I'd be tempted to mobilize my military and start conquering Sothoryos except for a couple of factors. First my military was still pretty small, especially in comparison to my territory. Secondly I don't have the population base to colonize new territory. Hell, most of the land I'm taking now is just sitting empty.
Lastly it looks like the Long Night is starting early. The probes from earlier had recently started getting larger and the wights are not acting like mindless drones. They're starting to use crude shields and formations. With how quickly their gear is developing I wouldn't be surprised to find them with siege equipment soon.
While it's nice to see my defenses were impressive enough to cause them to change tactics, I really hate smart enemies. Which may be why my response was a touch excessive.
I set the north on fire.
Over a hundred napalm-class zeppelins did their best to reduce all the land north of the Wall to ash. A pair of pyromancer-class land cruisers followed in their wake to take care of anything that survived the initial wave of fire.
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Several days pass as the Haunted Woods burn. I keep the air fleet concentrated on the mainland although I do station a few scouts on Bear Island and Skagos. Not going to discount a flanking maneuver at this point.
It was only once the smoke from the fires had gotten thick enough to render scrying useless that I realized I should probably rethink my strategy.
I needed to calm down. The wights are meaningless. The real problem was the Night King and maybe his white walkers. As long as they survive I haven't won.
So I need to hunt down the Night King and find a way to make sure he dies or at least is neutralized.
I should probably start with the basis for his magic.
To aid in that I build another airship, but not a zeppelin. An enormous quadcopter with animated metal arms along with rows of reinforced cages. Snatchers.
I only build two. The first is for wights. The second, with fewer but stronger cages, is to bag me a white walker. If they work out I can see myself building more to collect more specimens from around the world. I also want two just in case one gets destroyed.
They're a success.
Wights are pitifully easy to capture having no real special powers. White walkers aren't much better. Sure they can shatter normal steel, but the cages were made from heavily enchanted valyrian steel. More than enough to contain them.
I didn't see the Night King. I know he was there since several of the zeppelins had holes punched through them and even the Snatchers had a few dents from ice javelins.. Seems he was hiding. Pity since it would have been nice to end the war with a quick decapitation strike.
Still I got what I had been aiming for. The wight was a bust. Fairly normal zombie with specific weaknesses. Direct magic feed back to it's creator. Works like the zombies made with the Black Cauldron of Arawn.
The white walker was a gold mine. It opened up another branch of magic. This one built around the actual white walkers.
Combine a weirwood sapling, obsidian dagger and a baby zombie and instant white walker. It was exactly what I had been looking for. Intelligent magic wielding minions.
Seeing how efficiently the controlled the wights they can animate I'm almost giddy with the possibilities. Best of all they can animate and control manticoremen. Looks like clearing them out just got incredibly easy.
God bless the Long Night.
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With the proven success of the Snatchers I quickly start building more and sending them out to Sorthoryos. I'm not sure how useful their magic will be for me, but I still want it.
I send more out to Asshai and a dozen other places. Anywhere I hear a rumor of another type of magic I raid. It was reckless, but I no longer felt like I needed to be careful. With possible endless legions of manticoremen wights I feel like I'm finally safe.
The wights aren't much better then golems, but they're hivemind makes them unparalleled as construction. They also can function underwater. A white walker on each of my dreadnoughts makes them exponentially more dangerous.
They don't work everywhere. Sadly I can see why the Night King acted as he did. Wights need the cold to survive. Get them warm and they start to weaken. Eventually they rot and then you need a new wight. Even the white walkers got stronger the colder they were. So blanketing all of Planetos in an ice age makes sense for him.
Good thing I don't need to worry about that.
If anything, the metal founts and napalm zeppelins are warming the planet. If I wasn't worried about accidentally baking the planet I'd probably start dropping blocks of magma all over the far north.
So I to the next best thing. I start converting every manticoreman in Westeros into wights. I also convert numerous other creatures. I'm fairly certain that my empire is a much greater source of corpses than the bleak north. The graveyards alone mean I can probably match the Night King's numbers.
Let's see how the Night King likes it facing off against an endless army of wights.
Chapter 32 Epilogue
The Long Night was a disappointment. Perhaps I spent too much time preparing or I just deluded myself. I expected an epic battle, terrifying foes beyond anything I've ever faced before and a heroic last stand. Something like when I faced my siblings.
Instead I had a cakewalk. Seems the night king, without any wildlings to hunt down, had already consolidated his forces near the Wall. My burning of the Haunted Woods had destroyed a large portion of his wights.
What he had left never breached my defenses. They threw themselves in seemingly endless hordes and shattered. A single battle marked the end of the Night King. I sent out zeppelins and land cruisers to hunt down the scattered remains of his forces. In the end I didn't have to send out a single human soldier.
The Night King was a lot less intelligent than I had thought. I'm not sure what he thought he could accomplish with his insane cavalry charge. What good are giant spiders against land cruisers?
Further confirming his lack of intelligence was how he refused to retreat. Even as all of his minions burned and he found himself trapped he kept mindlessly attacking. I attempted to talk, but got nowhere.
It's just as well. I always did hate smart enemies.
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Without the Long Night hovering over my head all my problems seemed so much less pressing. I felt I had all the time in the world. I put the war against Yi Ti in hold. I have a strong border and after militarizing so much of my empire it wouldn't do to suddenly lack enemies. That's how bandits and warlords start. No, much better to slowly wind down tensions.
It was for that reason I also opted not to invade Sothoryos. Besides the use of snatchers I largely left it to small scale incursions. I also spent quite a bit of time spreading out my troops securing my territory and consolidating my rule.
Integrating the Summer Isles, Westeros and Ghis will take a lot of work.
The war against the Deep Ones was also making slow but steady progress. Against them at least I had no problem winning decisively. The problem was actually hunting all of them down. The sea floor was not the easiest place to scout.
I already had dreadnoughts and marines clearing the seas. Modified floating fortresses allowed marines to be deployed without constructing bases everywhere. But my greatest breakthrough was depth charges.
My recreation of the weapon from my past was fairly brutal. I didn't have the advanced chemistry to fine tune explosives. I stuck with what I had. TNT. Lots of TNT.
Since TNT isn't affected by water I used it by the pallet. Eight cubic meters of TNT was enough to demolish any fortifications my marines encountered. Still, it wasn't enough to win.
To win I needed to project my power. My answer was the Leviathan. Powered by redstone and turbines it easily matched the largest examples of the animal that shared it's name. Significantly out-massing even my floating fortresses it was designed to actually serve as a mobile construction site.
It housed everything needed to generate it's own blocks of TNT. It used metal founts for saltpeter and sulfur. It even had an internal grove for wood to make charcoal. Sand was made by grinding up glass. Funny how I can endlessly generate glass, but not sand. At least not directly.
It was even large enough to house offensive beacons on the same wings that housed propellers to aid in ascending and descending. Meters of armor meant it was the most heavily protected of any vehicle I've made so far.
It was by no means a perfect solution. It was a good start though. Like ancient Carthage I fully intend my walls to be my soldiers.
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Years pass.
Winter ends. The Long Night never really occurs. Even at it's coldest and darkest my people are well off. My powers allowed food to be grown and stored no matter the conditions. The only real concession is I have an increased demand for pickaxes so people can build underground levels to their homes.
I'm not really sure why I'm so surprised when spring arrives. I guess I still expected something to happen right at the last minute. I feel like I can finally relax now. Besides, it's not like there are any real problems left.
My borders are expanding in every direction. Despite my decision not to actively invade Sorthoryos it's still slowly being colonized for it's climate. Organizing and ruling all of that is tedious. Which is why I've largely leave my empire alone in favor of my projects.
I largely turned the burden of ruling over to my children. Aside from a little advice everything seems to be well in hand. Widespread literacy, printing presses and redundant libraries in every major city means the world is rapidly changing.
Ten years have gone by and I have yet to encounter any sign of higher powers. R'hllor, the Great Other or any of a whole host of supposed dieties there is no sign. I kept gathering new branches of magic. And in the end that's all I've gotten from each religion I've crushed. Another branch of magic. It's enough to make one doubt in the afterlife.
I guess I really am alone here.
Could be worse.
Slowly I'm molding Planetos into a futuristic society. I even have an underwater city. It's a fantastic construction of enchanted glass, weirwood and valyrian steel. If I didn't have to build so much of it personally I'd have a dozen more.
Halfway through the winter I finally made a breakthrough with shulkers and discovered how to permanently enchant items to levitate. New classes of massive airships started to become more common. Flying fortresses and even a single flying city were made.
That wasn't enough for me though. Given how strong valyrian steel is I'm attempting to build a space elevator. With dragon skulls to provide reactionless propulsion I've already built space ships. Although it won't be any time soon I've already started designing my first space station.
From space the view is fantastic and revealed just how little of Planetos I actually rule over. Only around a third of the world. Which is a good thing. I'd really hate to ever run out of new things to discover.
I doubt I'll live to see a colony on another planet. Even my fastest ships move at a fraction of the speed required to make the distance feasible. They'll be decades of not centuries in reaching even the closest. Still, leaving behind the beginnings of an interstellar magitech empire seems like a decent legacy.
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I was wrong. My kids are really too good to me.
It took countless attempts, but they've finally reached the closest planet which I had named Terra out of sentimental value. A chain of travel gates and nether portals based on space stations were slowly being built. When it finishes I was to be the first to use to walk in the new world.
Which is how I can to this.
I'm old. My powers have kept me fit but it's been over thirty years since I established my empire. My frequent use of the Nether hasn't helped my age at all.
However there is hope.
Research and experimentation has given me to means to convert people. It drives them crazy or mindless, but I'm gambling my powers will preserve me.
Two of my children are overseeing the process. If I come out rabid they are instructed to put me down. I doubt I'd enjoy such an existence.
If I succeed though...
Well, that can't be completely a bad thing. After all I am still the only source of valyrian steel and minecraft items. Surely preserving the empire is worth a few risks?
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