章 38: 19
Chapter 19 Problems and Projects
Things settled into an uneasy peace over the next few months. While I have no doubt Westeros is furiously rebuilding their navy, there were no more attacks. Even the Wall wasn't seriously attacked.
My empire seemed content to enjoy their prosperity and raise the next generation. A few families continued to jostle for recognition and position, but overall it seems everyone has seemed to realize just how large my empire is now.
If someone wants to become landed nobility it's as simple as moving out and claiming a patch of land. The population density slowly declined as people began spreading out. Of course they all wanted aid in getting started.
At least they were bright enough to never try demanding my help. Instead elaborate gifts started to stream in from would be frontiersmen who didn't want to actually rough it. Thankfully they quickly realized raw materials and other signs of wealth held little meaning to me. The gifts I appreciated were devices and specimens.
It worked out for me too. I was unwilling to order people to their potential deaths just for a single specimen. It just wasn't worth the trouble and ill will it would cause. However, offered a reward instead of pay and people would compete to risk themselves.
It was already paying off. My newest project was heavily reliant on flesh crafting. Animal products were the only resource my powers hadn't been able to create an unlimited supply for. It was irritating to have such a limitation when one of the primary aspects of my powers is resource generation.
So I was attempting to cheat. Combinations of odd creatures were tested to see if I could make my own product generators. Already I have had limited success with furs.
A shadow cat was successfully crossed with a large snake. Eventually. Luckily eggs worked since the attempts to force them to mate all failed horribly. The result was a snake with a luxurious fur coat. It also shed it's skin regularly, creating pelts. It wasn't fast enough for me, but worked for now.
The other aspect of my power was construction and sadly it wasn't as aided by the quests. I've been fairly consistently turning out assorted mechanical devices and spreading them around. I haven't recreated even a fraction of what I know how to make and my craftsman already have lists of projects to work on.
Very few devices surprise and impress me. Sadly most of them are geared more towards entertainment than utility. Of course a few don't qualify since I did specify it must fit within a box six feet per side. After all if there is a new invention I'd like to be able to add it to my recipes.
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Ironically it was the peace that caused the problems. For the first time in years my people felt safe. More they knew they were winning.
Some of it was my fault. A side effect of my quests. It's hard not to foster that kind of attitude when I'm actually rewarding people for reckless bravery. People don't notice the ships that come back. They see the ones who succeed. It makes them proud.
While the rise of nationalism is useful I could do without the egos that accompany it. Pompous, stuffy and all too obsessed with status. I had to deal with people like that before, but never this bad.
It's like now that they aren't any actual problems they feel to need to cause new ones. Why the hell are so many feuds springing up?
I wouldn't mind that much if they just bothered each other. No, they were causing me problems. Spies, bandits and other issues. Crime was on the rise and it was being sponsored. Worse even my samurai were being drawn into it in some cases.
They were supposed to be mine. Sworn and loyal above all to the throne. More than stupid petty family squabbles. It was the last straw from me.
I can sort of see how the clans got involved. It had been over a decade for them since I conquered the End. The youngest generation hadn't even seen what I was capable of. I'm not sure what excuse every else used. Maybe they thought distance would stop me?
It doesn't matter. It's time I reminded them of what I am. I'm a gamer with all of the sociopathic tendencies that come with that role. Sure, this is much more real, but it's not like my life here has done much to foster social connections. So I go with what works. Since I'm clearly not in an rpg I just treat this as an rts.
I move to destroy my problems. I bring my samurai, but only to watch. I want everyone to know that they survive and prosper only at my sufferance. And I can take it away.
In the end two families are wiped out along with an entire village. Not sure what the family promised them that caused them to face me. Don't really care.
At the end I actually was pretty pleased. Halfway through executing the second family I had an epiphany. These people had all lost their right to live. Lots of people did. These though, had betrayed me. Betrayed my trust.
They deserve worse than death.
The thought actually causes me to freeze. I probably creeped out the nameless person I was about to behead as I silently stared. At least he didn't interrupt. I was nice enough to finish killing him for that.
Everyone else had dragged back to my base. Flesh crafting humans had seemed so wrong before, a violation of basic human rights. But these traitors didn't have any rights. At least not to me.
I didn't hide what I was doing. I made sure to set up my experiments where anyone could visit and witness what was happening. I wanted people terrified of the very idea of turning treason.
With that in mind I didn't even mind all the failures I had. The grotesque hybrids just made everything scarier. I actually ran out of people before I had any successes. Still it wasn't a complete loss. People now know the few laws in my empire I made have teeth.
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Eventually I did succeed. People suck. They'll always be someone who do unforgivable things just because they can. It's worse of course in Planetos. It bothered me before. Now? It just means I have a very secure source of human specimens.
I have some standards. Only traitors and murders. Well and slavers. And rapists. Loads of crimes in actuality. I'm actually thinking about getting rid of the death penalty. Let everyone know to not execute their criminals. Sell them to me instead.
They get paid, I get specimens. Everyone wins! Only reason I hadn't was I really needed to make sure they were really guilty. Until I had some kind of reliable truth spell or something it wasn't worth risking.
Not like I lacked test subjects anyway. There didn't seem to be an end to the number of spies and traitors. I didn't restrict myself much. I had a number of people go around and 'recruit' spies for a variety of groups. Caught some actual spies that way.
With a steady stream of test subjects I managed to perfect my flesh crafting. It didn't take long before I had created my first new sentient race.
It was actually based on a giant. Sadly, despite a few specimens being captured, it turns out my plan for them wouldn't work. Giants were very independent. They didn't seem to like humans at all, even the babies growled. They also breed slow. It takes decades to raise a single child. Way too slow for me.
So I create a hybrid. I feel a bit bad for them. But I really can't take any chances. If they are important to magic somehow I was not going to risk it. Hopefully a beastman hybrid still counts.
I crossed them with snow bears. It worked perfectly. They were still intelligent but now grew quickly. After only a two years they were already adults. I even managed to minimize the physical changes. I knew it worked because their skulls still worked for my giant golems.
Feeling amazing with my success I quickly turned out other sentient species. Soon enough new beastmen based off aurochs, basilisks and other animals were being raised in the End.
It was soon apparent why the beastmen of old hadn't survived the fall of Valyria. They weren't stupid. They could learn mostly as easily as any human. The problem came from their instincts. Powerful instincts which caused problems when interacting with humans. Coupled with an inability to crossbreed and I could easily see them all getting hunted down.
I supposed if I didn't already have my samurai I might have settled for them. They physical characteristics were impressive. They just didn't fit in well with how I used my military. I couldn't find a solution either. Drawing from the beast side always brought with them their instincts. I suppose I just didn't realize how much the giants were affected by the process. Suppressing so much of the snow bear side had probably helped.
It wasn't a total loss. Minotaurs, created from aurochs, were very placid after some tweaking. Actually lots of tweaking. I probably spent too much time on them, but I really didn't want to stop completely empty handed. It felt too much like losing.
Eventually they did work out. They didn't even need to be gelded. They also largely seemed pretty content to serve as manual labor. Still determined to have a win I spread them quickly throughout my empire. There were a few minor problems, but overall they integrated fairly seamlessly.
There was even plenty of space for them. The Sarnori had already managed to secure Mardosh, one of their ancient cities and were busy expanding it. They eagerly welcomed the new help as well as new settlers.
The only real complaints were from some of my nobles who didn't feel as special anymore. Seeing as my minotaurs had encouraged even more people to strike out I didn't care. It's not like any of them are risking Dothraki to expand my borders.
I sadly ended up scrapping most of my projects with them. They just weren't worth it. I couldn't even use them to build golems. Too closely related to animals probably. I really lucked out with the giants.
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When I exhausted my work on humans I turned to the dragons. I wasn't aiming for anything specific with them. I just wanted to create a new breed.
Dragons were powerful, majestic, and magical. They were also giant, obvious and required large amounts of food. They were symbols of terror and might. Which is probably why they are almost extinct.
Given magic seemed largely dependent on their existence I wanted a species that was less likely to be wiped out so easily. So I experimented with my large cache of dragon eggs. I was aiming to create a few different versions and scatter them across the world. Well, everywhere except the north.
It was slow going. Dragons were very magical and resisted any change. I could only make small adjustments and even then they often died. I moved the experiments into the End since I needed the time.
It took years of frustratingly slow progress. Still I succeeded. I created two smaller breeds of dragons that I dubbed drakes. They were much smaller, but still obviously magical and able to breath fire. The first version was just a smaller dragon. I shrank it down to the size of a horse. Still large enough to ride if you are light and don't have armor. The second version was semi-aquatic. Like the basilisk it could swim quite well, although it was still clearly a land animal.
By the time I succeeded I had long since been a teenager. In fact I was close to leaving that stage of my life. Still, the work hadn't been without side benefits.
One of the random things I had noticed had been how thin and strong the membrane was on a dragon's wings. It was thin enough when young to actually be translucent, with the veins easily visible. It was also incredibly tough to be able to support a dragon's bulk. No doubt magic played a part, but their skin didn't seem to get any weaker after they died.
The most important thing about their skin was that it was extremely fire resistant. Not fire proof like their bones, but still extremely resistant to heat. All of which made it perfect for my hot air balloon project.
Hot air is definitely not the most efficient method of creating an airship. Unfortunately it was the only one I had available. Still, combined with warding and dragon bones I was able to build a large enough zeppelin to actually serve as an aerial platform.
The balloon took forever to craft, especially since the materials were so hard to gather. Thank god I could generate dragons so easily in the End. I have no doubt it was the single most expensive vehicle ever constructed.
It ended up using two large balloons. I wanted a single larger one, but the dragon skull set up didn't work past a certain size. So I settled for two balloons each of the maximum size which seemed to be six hundred feet long.
Even more experimentation was required to create the very thin sheets of netherbrick I eventually settled on. It still wasn't very light, but weighted much less than anything else I could come up with. Still it was yet another reason the cargo capacity was so limited.
The final gondola was small and cramped. It wasn't wicker, but it was a close decision. It was made from thin sheets of dragon bone. The largest zeppelins from my old life could carry several dozen people along with tons of cargo. I was limited to a fraction of that.
I made the most of it. Since I didn't have room for quantity I went with quality. I installed modified arrow storm turrets, each manned by a single golem. It had twice as many launchers, shooting twenty bolts at a time. It wasn't the literal rain of fire I initially envisioned, but it'll do for now.
Still wish I had cracked the levitation effect the shulkers used. With that I could have built entire flying cities.
I've been careful to keep all my test flights only around the Lorathi islands. They've long since gotten used to the normal hotair balloons and even have some on watch towers. I want to save the zeppelin for a nasty surprise. Especially since it might not be too useful after the first couple of times I use it. With how fragile it is it's unlikely I'll ever be able to use it as more than a terror weapon.
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When I finished my I felt a little guilty about neglecting my empire so much, but it wasn't like I had vanished. I still made small appearances and visits. Just not as often.
Besides it was only a couple of years. By my count there was still at least three years before canon start. Not like canon is relevant anymore. Still, when the Long Night begins I'll be ready.
One of the few things I had focused on besides dragons was my preparations for the Long Night. Enormous stockpiles of obsidian and golem heads were being gathered continuously. By the time the white walkers march south I aim to outnumber them.
I had also began a massive building project. A second wall, this time of stone was constructed just south of the Wall. It was less than half the height of the Wall, but still enormous at three hundred feet high. I equipped it very similarly to the Wall.
I had to fend off attacks a few times before enough defenses were constructed. I'm not sure why they even cared. It's not like area was inhabited. Ever since I destroyed the Night's Watch everyone had moved away.
The most obvious differences were the fortresses. They're slimmer, closer to large towers than fortresses. I clustered them thickly, constructing one every mile. They also extended downwards instead of just being perched on top. They extended down three floors for a total of five. They serve a different purpose too. Every floor contains a set of windlances.
The main differences are internal. The top third of my wall is hollow. Archer slits are spaced evenly along the length of wall, protecting thousands and thousands of archers. Enough to light up the night sky.
I also have an assembly team of golems stationed underneath each tower. They have a gate that opens to the north and instructions to only began building if the Wall comes down. It was to them the bulk of my golem supplies were being shipped. There was also no ladders. This defense was strictly intended for the wights.
I can picture it now. The undead army marching over and collapsing the Wall before victoriously charging ahead. The literal wall of fire that continuously rains down as they get in reach of my wall. The way the sky blackens under stone wings until even the stars are hidden as harpies blanket the battlefield.
Even if the Night King does get a hold of a dragon it'll die soon enough. The windlances have a range of almost a full mile. There isn't any place along my wall that isn't covered by them.
I'm actually looking forward to the Long Night. I'm prepared and the harsh winter will weaken my enemies while my powers will ensure my empire will flourish. I just wish I could see the look on the Night King's face when he realizes how screwed he is.
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