All around me, a strange city was beginning to come into existence. A city made entirely of metal and other inorganic materials was gradually beginning to come into being, deep within the Heart of Darkness. I was aware that it was a strange sight, but I wasn't especially focused on it. Instead, I was playing with my own powers, especially the newest ones.
In front of me, my eyes lazily followed the motions of my two creations: the drone and the praereptor demon who possessed it. I wasn't really paying attention to them either, but I was glad they were having fun. My mind was elsewhere. In a more... immaterial place than here. My attention was focused inward, on the conversation I was having with one of the many conceptual entities who lived within me.
"Being able to create creatures like that freely... What a power to gain right out of the gate." I mentally muttered, voicing my thoughts in such a way that all of the domains and subdomains could hear me. My remarks were met with amused chuckles by a few of the domains and subdomains who resided in my mind. I could hear the distinct chuckles of the domains of physics and creation and the subdomains of technology and evocation.
"You think this is powerful? If you master me you will see true power." The entity whispered, attempting to stoke my ambitions. This time it was my turn to chuckle.
"Oh, I fully intend to master you. I intend to master every domain and subdomain." I replied, speaking ambitiously. There was a smile on my lips, and it was audible in my mental voice as well. This time I heard a soft chuckle from the subdomain of corruption.
If I could hear the voice of the vice of sin, I'd no doubt hear it chuckling as well but to date, the sin had not made itself known to me in the ways that the sin of lust had. That aside, I knew that my words were more than the eager boasting of a young person, but were fact. I would patiently master each and every domain and subdomain. I had all the time I'd need to one day become the greatest overgod to ever live. It was while I was thinking about the nature of my pride that the voice of the subdomain once again reached me.
"That sort of ambition is good. That's the attitude that may one day, in the incredibly distant future, result in you actually succeeding. Now let me ask you, what else do you seek?" The subdomain asked me, curiously.
"I seek to create a multiverse spanning empire, one that is so unimaginably vast that every single being in existence knows and worships me." I replied, speaking of my comically ambitious goal freely.
Meanwhile, a small part of my mind began to stop thinking about militaristic might, or so-called "hard power" and began to think a bit more subversively. The technology subdomain wasn't just a militaristic subdomain just like technology itself wasn't solely about military might.
I had knowledge of a few fascinating worlds, Htrae, Mercy, and other worlds in solar systems outside of Htrae's and that of my birth, where technology was at least Htraen levels. In those worlds, I was incredibly powerful even without the need to invade militarily. This was due to the technology present in those worlds being susceptible to my influence and my ability as a god to ignore distance. Even now if I wanted to use my powers on worlds that I could detect I could do so despite the fact that I was in the Heart of Darkness.
One of the most interesting aspects of this ability of mine was that it meant that I could remotely manipulate say... the internet on Htrae if I wanted to. If I had wanted to I could do a lot with just the power to alter the internet on the human world. Htraens were extremely fond of the internet and were overreliant on it for information to the point that in more "advanced" nations like Htrae, libraries and other physical sources of knowledge were both underfunded and underused. This was a weak point I could exploit if my plans for Htrae ever changed.
That said there was another angle to the Htraens and their fondness for the internet. Their fondness for it meant that it was a treasure trove of knowledge that was readily accessible to anyone with the means and the time needed to do so could learn almost anything known to modern Htraens. I could easily create an artificial intelligence and task it with absorbing and aggregating every single fact that the Htraeans stored on their "world wide web". After a moment's hesitation, I decided that I would do that. And a little bit more.
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I took a deep breath and activated one of my newer powers: the ability to create artificial intelligences. When I first activated this power, nothing happened. At least not immediately. However a second after I activated the power my vision was subsumed by a large notification.
Alert: Artificial Intelligence Creation
Hello! Welcome to the technology menu, or rather one specific subset of it. This table will assist you in creating your first artificial intelligence.
Artificial intelligences are the equivalents to minds possessed by robots, machines, androids, and other complex technologies. The term itself has a few different applications. The most simple application is as a generalized term which refers to the overall intelligence demonstrated by machines, robots, and androids. One of the more complex applications is what I, the technology subdomain refer to when I discuss artificial intelligences: an individualized mind-like component of a machine, robot, or android.
Creating an artificial intelligence, or an A.I., without a mechanized body to host it might strike some as odd but as a god there is a lot you can do with an individual A.I., especially since you can influence a wealth of domains and subdomains right away. A solitary A.I. you create could infect a starship or a planetary defense-grid and wreck havoc. Or you can use an A.I. to turn technology on a planet into your minions before you invade.
Alternatively, you can use your own more or less unbound A.I. to save lives such as stopping a conflict in space between two different starships nonviolently or taking control of a malfunctioning facility by repairing existing programs and fixing glitches using your minions.
Now, to help you create the most precisely designed A.I. please tell me what sort of functions you'd like for this A.I. to have and what it's intended purpose would be.
I read through the notification and sighed. Of course this was more complex than creating robots was.
"I want to create an A.I. that infiltrates the Htraen 'World Wide Web'. I want it to be an... ultimate hacker that has as close to unlimited power, in the internet of Htraens, as possible." I told the notification, before pausing for a moment.
"I'd like for it to be able to edit, copy, shut down, or otherwise modify any website or web-page on the internet freely. I also want it to obsessively log information and note any and all changes that occur to even the smallest pages throughout the entirety of the 'Web'. I want it to have the capabilities to be used offensively but for it to defer to my judgment as for when to actually begin to affect Htraens." I told the subdomain.
I would begin to articulate my specific vision over the next few minutes, while I physically experimented with my other powers. The first one I'd experiment with was my ability to create new sorts of items.
My demon-drone stayed close to me and began to fly around excitedly when I created the first of the new items I could create: a gun. I created a simple gun, a mundane one that fired bullets. The thing felt light in my hands, but also quite boring. I chuckled as my drone found the weapon more exciting than I did, closing in on me to study the item closely.
I gave the item to the demon and began to create items more complex than a gun that Htraens could have created over a century ago. As I customized the A.I. I was creating, I spent some time, three hours to be precise, idly creating an array of technologies.
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I created a series of androids, all of whom were more or less human in appearance, and ordered them to patrol the mechanical city. I created a variety of weapons, from guns that fired plasma, to weapons infected with diseases that would weaken organic, mortal foes, to sonic armaments meant to stun and disable enemies.
My second most noteworthy achievement during this time was my creation of a series of robots. These robots were all totally inhuman and were actually large vehicles such as tanks and aerial ships that were sent on missions to patrol the plains so that I could begin to understand and map it accurately.
It was while I was working on a tank that I made the choice to try and win the rest of this war using robots. This was more to test the potential of the newest inorganic additions to my forces than anything else. I made this decision shortly before discovering something truly exceptional: the actual powers of my "Customization" ability.
"Customization" was a power that gave me the power to apply all sorts of abilities to my technological creations and servants. It was mentioned in the ability's description that it was a multi-synergistic power which was the first tip I got that the abilities I could apply to technology were related to the domains and subdomains I could influence.
When I had first activated this power I received a new notification. It reminded me of the first time I activated my "Divine Presence" power and received a long notification alerting me to some of the "Divine Presences" I could utilize. The notification was long, but more than a few of the abilities I could attach to technology were amazing.
I could attach all sorts of attributes to technology, and freely at that. One example that I quite liked was that I could give robots, including automated turrets, the ability to fire bullets that were infused with alignment-based energies. For example, I could attach an automated turret to a tank and give the turret a machine-gun-like firing mode that hit enemies with lawful bullets. These bullets would have healed devils and dealt critical damage to demons.
In terms of non-destructive abilities, I could attach to things, I could bestow robots and androids with natural magical capabilities. I could create robots whose missions were terraforming and grant them access to potent ecomantic spells, or robots designed to non-violently pacify enemies and give them access to illusion and enchantment magic.
Some of the stranger things I could do with robots included things like make them extremely adept doctors of organic lifeforms by filling them with knowledge from the life domain and the healing subdomain, or fill them with a desire to self-replicate by filling them with lust-based corruption and instincts from the life domain.
That said, perhaps the most groundbreaking thing of all that I found I could do with them in just a few minutes of experimentation was that I could give them the power to outfit themselves in an anti-magic forcefield at will. This was due to my powers over two subdomains: contractual magic, and alteration, both of which granted me some anti-magic capabilities.
That said this felt almost too powerful as these anti-magic forcefields canceled out as many magical effects as those who used them wanted against all ten of the basic schools of magic. Magic was in all likelihood the most powerful weapon a world like Torus or Retribution would have had against my machines but if I wanted to create an invasion force that was basically almost invincible on such worlds I could do so with ease now since the next tier of magic and magical schools had extremely few users both in Torus and in Retribution.
If I wanted too, I could give some of these robots to inhabitants of the world known as "Mercy". I had no doubt that once they knew of the anti-magic capabilities of my machines they'd use them to launch attacks on Retribution. That was of interest to me, but I suppressed those blood-thirsty thoughts for now.
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During the three hours I had spent experimenting with my abilities my angels had been hard at work. I glanced around, focusing on myself for the first time in hours and began to visually explore the city.
It was an odd, quiet place. I saw sleek, angular buildings all around me. They were all solidly colored and were most often colored shades of silver. Many of the buildings were powerful, efficient factories that were churning out basic but powerful robots, lesser machines, and androids in incredible numbers. Only a handful of buildings were anything but factories.
As I visually explored the city I was amused to see all sorts of angels getting up to various sorts of mischief. I could see angels of the arts tapping buildings and changing their colors, angels of life studying the robots and androids who left their birthplaces, angels of technology hard at work expanding the city itself, and other angels doing miscellaneous tasks.
The angels themselves had various body types. Some of them, particularly lesser angels, were more often than not humanoid-like in appearance while other, greater angels tended to more closely resemble something related to the domain or subdomain they represented.
The city was very pretty and I was quite fond of it. It was a place of order in a dimension of disorder, and in hours it would become made up entirely of inorganic life dedicated to following my instructions and for the moment to winning the war I was fighting. I allowed a day to pass without making another offensive move and I recommitted myself to thoroughly mastering my new abilities. For once I was determined to master my abilities and to figuring out creative ways to use them before I continued on my adventures.
During this time I also became a whiz at creating artificial intelligences. And by a "whiz" I mean an expert at creating different archetypes for artificial intelligences which allowed me to mass-produce them and thus gain a new and subtle tool for manipulating technology. I combined this with my ability to create starships that moved at the speed of light and gained an excellent tool for exploring the universe, as well as for combat on a vast, interplanetary scale.
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Back in the mortal plane, the portion of the universe inhabited primarily by mortals, a number of things began to happen, millions of light-years apart from each other. All of these events were caused by the ambitions of the lone living god and were events that he orchestrated from another dimension. To him, distance was not an obstacle.
In different portions of the universe, robots came into existence spontaneously. These robots were all given the same directive: find a place fit for a factory, mark it, and then build a factory there.
Some of these robots came into being on asteroids, on moons, and in a few cases even on lifeless planets. In every case, these robots had the ability to create the materials they needed to build both helper robots and the factories they had been told to build. Mere seconds after they began to exist, they set about achieving the first of many instructions they'd were destined to receive over the course of their lives.
Another, far more subtle event was going on as well. In different portions of the universe, across dozens of worlds in different solar systems, a horde of artificial intelligences immaterially infected countless bits of technology. Every from so-called "smart cars", to things as advanced as defense systems against nuclear weapons were abruptly infected by alien A.I.'s who cared only for their master and creator, himself an alien entity who for now was content to merely and calmly usurp technology but not make himself known.
The single most direct thing that happened though was the abrupt appearance of a few hundred starships in distant corners of the universe. Althos, in an unusually exploratory move, created the sorts of ships that marked the very edge of his "basic technology lordship", starships capable of traveling at the speed of light, and sent them throughout the universe. He also gave the A.I.'s on board those ships an excellent tool: the power to project a phantom copy of himself that would be able to trigger "Stellar Awareness" when it reached a solar system's star.
In the dimension known as the Heart of Darkness, the quiet god grinned when he felt his servants beginning to go to work throughout the mortal plane. He silently connected the minds of all of his machines in the mortal plane to his own using his ability to establish hiveminds and then he did the same for the machines located in the Heart of Darkness. Before he did anything else, the curious god performed a minor experiment.
He projected his mind into Infernius, specifically onto the surface of the world. He found himself in a ruined city, and his sensory abilities allowed him to detect countless machines, robots, and androids, all of whom were in disrepair, disarray and were deeply damaged or broken. That said this gave him an idea, one that was reasonably certain would work.
That said, his physical body issued a command to all of the offensive robots located in his inorganic city. The god chuckled as he began to speak.
"Offensive robots, machines, and androids, ready yourselves! The time has come for us to continue our war against Agustino and his servants. We can and will crush him! Assemble yourselves and go out into his lands so that we may destroy him and his armies." The god commanded, a cruel enjoyment of his new powers visible in his gaze and his smirk.
The city came to life as factory doors opened and an assortment of robots, androids, and lesser machines began to march in unison towards their leader, and then towards the outside world. One of the more unusual members of this otherwise orderly army was the small praereptor demon, who was still possessing the drone and wanted to participate in the war against the enemies of its creator, as well as thousands of other drones and aerial vehicles, all of whom were tiny and armed with a frightening variety of weapons.
The Althonians, now more varied than ever, marched off to continue the first true war the god had ever waged. And their god himself was allowing them to fight with minimal guidance to see how they did, while he himself was preparing to make his first moves to affect a mysterious new dimension.