After clearing out the lair and leaving some spider golems to keep an eye on the chamber, Alissa hauled the creature's corpse back to her main cavern. Here she planned to get to work creating her goblins while recovering.
The pale, hairless corpse was quite frankly disgusting to look at. Long limbs with multiple joints that were completely out of proportion arms nearly long enough to touch the ground topped with wicked claws, legs also jointed weirdly. A thin torso that exposed ribs with a distended belly. Lipless mouth revealing long pointed teeth, and eyes completely red with no apparent lids. Her neural implant had named it a Necrarch due to some correlation it found. Dark, hateful thing, that used “evil” magic and was consumed by hunger while retaining some intelligence.
Alissa was bringing the corpse back because too much of her encounter with it didn’t make sense not the fighting itself so much as the situation that brought it about. She needed to speak with Nova about that after she got the goblins started up.
The creation of the goblins was straight forward and power costs aside she didn’t have difficulty calling them into existence. She had tried to create the more powerful versions that she encountered a few times but was unable to do so. While she had expected it, the failure still confirmed some things.
Her intention was to create several “tribes”, three to be specific, the conflict that would arise between them would both provide her and the core with mana as well as force the goblins to evolve. That was the current theory on how the stronger versions came to be. Pulling thirty or so breeding pairs, with some extra females for each of the three groups, from Krystal’s magical powers she filled the newly created cages.
Cages might be a slightly misleading term, as they combined living space with challenges to be overcome, all while keeping the goblins isolated from her main cavern. Similar to a rat maze getting access to necessities was a matter of getting around extremely basic obstacles. The caretakers would guide the newborns in the initial development, giving both rewards and punishment when necessary. Mostly she was going to be hands off, once the first generation was mature she would release them into the cavern and continue to reward good behavior. All that would take is a simple study on what the goblins valued, and what they particularly disliked. Throw in some additional magical creations to pad the numbers and she would have tribes capable of donating fighters to her cause.
She had noticed that while she could control the domain’s creations it required an unusual amount of focus for living creatures and the more intelligent those beings were the more focus was required. Those same creations would remain non-hostile to her and the domain in general. Alissa hadn’t noticed any of the creatures preforming actions that were detrimental to the core.
The largest problem she foresaw was keeping the tensions balanced so that one tribe didn’t become too dominant or enslave the others. Not a huge problem but requiring constant monitoring, Nova would probably hand that off to the second of her creations when it became viable.
Already a small channel from the river in her main cavern was snaking its way to the goblin chamber to give it, both a water source and a place outside of her farming project to get food. The expected brutality of the goblins situation didn’t bother her too much. From what she had seen, it wouldn’t be any different from how they lived in the wild. Most importantly this was a start point, she needed to know more about the goblins before she would even think about changing things up. For all she knew they needed such a hostile environment to fully develop. That it would likely make them more useful in combat was a reasonable expectation. Otherwise she had no current plans to alter natural development of the goblins’ society.
Later after they had established themselves she would look at turning the no man’s land that should be present into a proper training area for tunnel fighting. Each tribe would provide fighters and they would be fed into the meat grinder. The survivors would return passing on knowledge and skills to the rest, and use those skills against the competitors in their home so that those tribes could also benefit from the experience.
As the caretakers were beginning the first feeding of ground down meat paste to the newest members of their community she moved on to the next task.
This one likely unpleasant. “Ok… Nova, I think we may need to take this a little more seriously than we have been.”
With a heavy and annoyed sigh Nova replied “Why is that. Is it because you ignored me… risked yourself unnecessarily, got injured… or because of that thing.” She highlighted the corpse before Alissa for good measure.
“All of the above but not perhaps for the reasons you are thinking.” Waiting for a signal to continue she spoke on. “ I think we need to consider this thing a very high danger rating, and we need to rate magic up there with powerful psionic abilities. We have until now considered magic to be mostly on the level of basic psionics, a different way of manipulating elements like fire. I am starting to think that maybe magic is as potent and versatile as any psionic we have seen.” Alissa sat down on her favorite perch in the cavern, the edge of Krystal’s platform. “I think that thing may have been influencing me… you know like a psionic.”
“That’s not possible. You have neural shielding and a strong mind it would take an extraordinary psi-… No… How?”
Seeing Nova was catching on Alissa continued. “There was too much wrong with the whole scenario. First, your right it wasn’t psionics. I think it was mental or emotional magic that influenced me. All we know about magic is what we have tested, if magic is as versatile as psionics… We know nothing. Beyond what we have in fantastical stories from novels/holo-vids and the laughable amount of testing I’ve done. That is quite frankly a pathetic amount of tangible information. I have no protection from magical influence and if those kinds of magic exist. It explains a lot. Including why it failed once my implants kicked in, that magic is unable to influence a machine at least at the level it was at.”
“That makes sense.” Nova dropped her rant for now, it was better to work with Ally as she debriefed herself and bring up her concerns when relevant.
“What if I was influenced when did it start? I think it was right after we arrived. I don’t want to think of what could have happened had we been able to leave.” She glanced at the disturbing creature with a shudder, as she went on. “Why did I send so many drones that way? Why was I so unconcerned about command and control? Why haven’t we focused on upgrading? Why did I push my troops out so quickly and into the unknown without proper preparation? How did we miss things that should have been obvious? Why have I not been thinking about the depths magic might have? Its potential. Even studying Krystal and the effects of the corruption have been murky.”
“The best answer I have is that it wanted me to drop my guard and to lure me into its lair. I think that it was a passive draw and not focused. Maybe it was part of its lair rather than the thing’s own abilities. We probably can’t know until we get a bigger sample size but we should keep it in mind. So many questions that I think might be related.” She finished her basic debrief with her companion.
“That fight was won based on luck, if it had been more experienced, or more careful, less quick to anger, used its magic more efficiently, and hadn’t made the mistake of jumping out to attack me. I’d probably be dead now.” She continued with the last relevant point.
“I failed to expect that the energy it released on death was both magical in nature and controlled. It caught me out, that’s why I was injured. We need to begin really studying magic and testing things out. I also need more practice for when this happens again. That means that you need to go over all the things we know, what is available from novels, what psionics can do, and predictive models for possibilities. That should give us the best capacity for learning. I will try out any experiments we have until we get a better idea of the limits of magic.” Alissa finished grimly, she wasn’t looking forward to how much work this would require.
~ * ~
Each of the goblins when created needed approximately four hours of accumulated mana, Alissa fully expected the next bit to take significantly more. She figured that the first batch of commanders should be six to eight strong, the growth of her new creations would take a long time and she fully planned to invest the time to make them useful. Even then she would be sending children to the front lines, after the initial growth period where she would be teaching them basic communications and how to use their implants as needed she would send three out. One to CP1 to hold the last line of defense, and coordinate the logistics for the other points. The other two would go to the two tunnels leading to the goblins. The remainder would be with her continuing their training. By rotating them out she expected to get a good amount of experience for each of them.
Regardless of the power cost she didn’t think that making more would be helpful as it would split her focus and she didn’t currently have places to put them. As they became more self-sufficient she would create few new kids to boost the numbers and let them worry about raising each other. That was much the plan with the goblins she would add to their numbers over time to fill them out after the began to reach maturity. The rest of her focus would be on upgrading the back-lines and infrastructure.
As Alissa was wasting time thinking about these things she slowly approached Krystal and drew her blade forming it into a knife. Cutting open her hand she bled on the crystal. As she watched the blood was slowly being absorbed into the floating rock. A few minutes of this and she got the sense that it had enough to work with. She allowed her natural healing to stop the bleeding and begin closing the wound, the same process that occurred with her injured side which had already pulled itself together.
After a deep breath she began pulling the magic for her new creations together. The draw was significantly more than for the goblins. She had formed the six balls of magic for her soon-to-be commanders and was somewhat stuck. They weren’t coalescing into living beings, they were still potential but something was missing. As she thought about what precisely was going on, and as the strain of holding this magical construct together began mounting. A helpful tendril of magic escaped the core and floated over to the dead Necrarch she had brought back to examine. The corpse dissolved into motes of magic that drifted into the constructs before her. Which promptly collapsed into six naked children of about five to six years old.
Three boys and three girls were staring up at her, and occasionally looking around curiously. The available power of the domain had dropped to nearly nothing, the ambient mana was lower than it had been since she had begun helping the core.
As she handed the kids clothes made from the same fabric she used for skin on her guards she was secretly rejoicing inside. Not only was she no longer alone, but she also felt the click in her head that signified her neural implant had connected to the children.
A quick test proved that the experiment had been successful she could now look through their eyes and issue commands to her golems from them. It seemed her broken chain of command was now fixed. She would need to study the neural implants to get a full picture of the capabilities.
She could analyze as time went on, for now she needed to give them names and work on getting them a basic education. While fighting would be a secondary concern she also need to teach them the basics of fighting and command.
“All right Nova. Time to get to work although I am not looking forward to being a teacher.”
~ * ~
Almost two months had passed according to the HUD in Alissa’s implant and she was getting worried. The goblins surrounding her domain were not acting in a predictable manner. They had begun to push into her domain but they were not acting like an invading force. They seemed more focused on harvesting the domain than in attacking the core room.
Small units had been pushing in killing what they could including the random assortment of creatures Alissa spawned from CP1. She had been creating and sending out a full array of spiders, lizards, snails, and other insects to take up places in the tunnels and offshoots. This was to buy time and to kill off the rest the non-domain creatures. It would also populate the domain and generate some more mana for her to use.
After realizing that monitoring the goblins was going to be a full time job she built an overhead platform and causeways near the ceiling. Periodically she sent one what she was calling her firstborn to monitor the situation. Again her implant had provided a helpful name for their species it called them Vampires, like Alissa they needed energy to survive and they could get this through food or by biting and pulling it from their prey the blood was irrelevant to the energy but they did get nutritional value out of it.
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They had to write reports with Nova’s help as part of their training and to help her get a coherent view of goblin society and how it worked. It would also give them management experience as they could propose solutions within the constraints she gave them, and work together to find a solution.
In order to manage the exploding goblin population as well as to make them self-sufficient she presented them with several deadly challenges to their homes, between the monsters and each other she felt they were making good progress. She flooded the goblin cave with the more of the same creatures that were encountered in the tunnels. The lizards and spiders had been a stroke of unplanned genius. The goblins had both tamed and domesticated some of the creatures, this also solved some of the supply issues Alissa was having. The spider limbs and carapaces had become armor and weapons, their insides became food. The lizards bones and hide served the same purpose.
Alissa was even forced to admit that when properly prepared the lizard meat was something of a delicacy. As for where the monsters got their food, well apparently goblin tasted just fine. The tribes fed defeated enemies to their creatures as well as what could only be described as sacrifices. Killing off the weak of their own tribe.
The wild monsters would pick off the raiding and hunting parties in the massive cavern. Including a particularly vicious nest of colony spiders that inhabited the far roof and corner of the cavern. Hunting spiders, not ambushers, or web-weavers. Large but low lying to the ground the both moved insanely fast as well as highly camouflaged picking off most of the goblins that entered their territory. Luckily the goblins also killed off the smaller, younger spiders that hunted outside of the territory.
The success of these spiders had her creating and dispatching another two “queens” to both the dead cavern and the mole-rat caverns. This largely put her mind at ease that those avenues of attack where sealed off. It also got her the template for the mole-rat which she had just added to the sides of her goblin cave. The creatures were not particularly deadly to those paying attention, unless in numbers.
The goblins had to actually be dissuaded from attacking until the nests and territories of the mole-rats had been established. She accomplished this by sending some of her golem drones to murder the goblins that tried to get in the nesting grounds.
The small river she created had flooded the lower parts of the cavern by this time and she had similarly populated the waters with every type of aquatic lifeform possible. The goblins had already built themselves up on the high ground and now had only a few carefully selected land bridges to other unoccupied islands. That was as close to tunnel fighting as she was willing to get for now. The rolls of the cavern had also created both shallows and deep spots in the waterways with a little artificial help and careful design she had created currents.
Some of the creatures inhabiting these waterways had grown and developed into terrifying river creatures that prowled the waters. On most of the islands the goblins could get to she had placed advantages whether large or small she wanted the goblins to fight over the islands. For now it was mostly better positions, on some islands there were actual forts and land bridge defenses. Each tribe had some more defenses near their main settlements to prevent them from being overrun easily.
Alissa was tempted to put resources on the islands but didn’t have the variety she wanted. Mineable resources sounded good but the goblins appeared to have no interest in them or in mining them out. She also didn’t have a solution for a non-magical smelter or forge. The goblins were not going to get precious coal and she still didn’t have a wood analogue, giving them things they wouldn’t use and wasting the domains magical resources on them made this a non-starter. The voracious creatures were barely capable of tending the domesticated creatures and more than once had killed them off only to have to start from scratch.
On her end Alissa had finally settled down into creating a long term crafting process. A smelter sat in the corner of her workshop fueled by mana from the domain it was consolidating the material from her personal mine. The slow but steady accumulation of materials coming from the area under the core room harvested by micro-bots and going into the smelter. The molten material was then released from the smelter into a half dozen basic molds for her golems. At first Mk1 variants made of stone were refining the rough models into shape and assembling them for activation requiring a forge to reheat the metals as needed, as well as an anvil and tools. After assembly the corresponding material was fed into the living metal wellspring to create an activation seed.
Alissa didn’t push to have more varieties simply trying to build upgraded version of what she already had access to, she only made one exception. She made a ranged guard variant for her forces arming it with a small shield and an atlatl basically a stick to give it more reach for throwing arrows down the long corridors.
Much to her disappointment she was stuck with Mark two models made of copper, and the occasional Mark three made of bronze. The smelter and forge simply couldn’t handle higher level materials and she didn’t yet have sufficient amounts of better metals at this point and she lacked the processes to make more technologically advanced ones at this time.
The upgraded models started by replacing those in the core room. The older Mark one versions pushing out to bolster the front lines. Which had seen surprisingly little action from the goblins attackers. Although the slaughter of the small attacking forces might have something to do with it. The goblins hadn’t pushed as long as she sent out monsters who didn’t need fine control. She saw very little of the goblins as they avoided hardened defenses. She would change that as she pushed out, but for now the breathing room was nice.
Her next actions were to continue improving first the mana network expanding beyond her caverns and into the tunnels trying to claim everything in the domain. Beneath the thin covering of stone her swarms were pushing to the limits of their abilities to carve out more channels to draw in and contain the corrupted mana. Now they would feed the growing needs of the domain’s inhabitants.
~ * ~
As for the actual teaching of the firstborn Vampires that was surprisingly easy. While incredibly basic the neural implants they were born with had drastically shortened the learning time. Language only took a few days to become fluent, writing took longer mostly due to the need for tactile practice. Reading came along just as fast as speaking. Basic math and science was mostly a matter left to Nova, and getting them access to her databases. Once they had understood basic principle that was easy.
Training was harder, on two levels. The vampires didn’t have her physical augmentations, they had to gain muscle memory the hard way, as well as building up their physical strength through conditioning so the kids had been alternating between drills and playing in the core room interspersed with lessons and time studying the goblins.
The other obstacle was magic, mostly because Alissa herself didn’t have good access to the knowledge. They mostly learned together, although the kids which she had begun to think of as both her children and her subjects did have a strange capacity to compel other creatures.
They lived with her in her now modified house, she would tuck them in read them stories, and treat the injuries they accumulated. It was all rather homely, despite the expectations she had for them.
The girls Isabella, Carmilla and Maria. The boys Vlad, Conrad, and Karl. Her family, they had filled a void Alissa hadn’t seen growing in her, and what was more they gave her a renewed purpose. She would do everything in her power to allow them to survive.
~ * ~
Isabella followed her mother with her siblings towards checkpoint one almost six months had passed since her birth. They had just drawn decided who would take the first rotations at the front lines. Isabella, Maria, and Vlad had been the lucky winners. Karl was staying back in the core room for this excursion while the rest of them followed Alissa.
For these first rotations all of the available firstborn would accompany each other to gain some experience. Karl was listening through the implants so he wasn’t left out. Behind the group marched a strong company of new model golems to take up active positions at the front as well as the mark three models to be the leaders bodyguards.
While it was not a long walk they stopped at checkpoint one.
“Alright first homework assignment while we wait for the goblin forces to join us. Vlad this is going to be your position, I want all of you to pull up World Designer and begin to create a template for this room. So far we have focused on getting you ready to fight with your training now we focus on your ability to act as independent command and control.” Alissa gestured for them to take a seat. “In order for this to work long term you are going to have to work within constraints. For that I have given you a simplified objective system with primary, secondary, and optional goals. Primary objectives are the main objective of your mission, secondary goals are objectives that you need to pursue while maintaining the primary. Optional objectives are optional and unlike primary or secondary they are not tied up with your specific duty station. Research, planning, expansion, or recruitment optional objectives can be helping each other out, but will mostly be low priority tasks that you can do to help the domain overall.”
As Alissa got into lecture mode Isabella stored a question for the inevitable pause, she also split her attention and focused on her implant to begin the work assigned. “You each will see a list of every type of unit available and next to these are three numbers divided by a slash, from left to right those are your units, units available for requisition, and my units. The total column tells you how many of each are in the domain. That column won’t add up to a total you see as you do not have access to the units of your siblings in this simplified mode. Your units are those already assigned directly to you and those present at your duty station. The units available for requisition require you to submit a request for either permanent or temporary requisition, this will bolster your forces economically or militarily allowing you to complete your objectives. To start I will be keeping a much larger force as my troops, it will be a reserve force to cover the inevitable mistakes.” Pausing to give the group a serious look Alissa continued gravely. “You will tell me if you need help, at some point in the undefined future there will be serious consequences to needing these troops, but I will tell you when we get to that point.” Letting that sink in she moved on to the next part.
“The goal is to keep the requisition number as low as possible, that means that we are utilizing available resources efficiently without overdrawing or stockpiling too much. If we are this will tell us where we need to expand our production or where we need to think outside the box and find a use for the surplus resources, possibly shift some focus away from those thing we have too many of. Basic resource management. All of you need to know both your challenges as well as have some idea what you siblings are going through. That is why you will rotate for now, it is to prevent you from getting stagnant and force you to deal with different challenges. Any questions?”
Isabella’s hand shot into the air. “Why are we doing all this paperwork? It seems like its wasted effort.”
“Short answer is yes its unnecessary, long answer is more complicated. Administration and bureaucracy are unfortunately important, to the point that they may “control” a government if they get out of control. These measures are practice at this point we are too small for them to be truly effective, anything you can do with this paperwork you can communicate to me directly. It would likely be much faster to simply ask me or Nova if you need something, for now that is. As the domain grows so do its needs, and it draws on resources, this is the start of supply chain management for you, as well as management in general. You need to learn how to do this, because later it will become a necessity.” Alissa replied.
“Does this have to do with governments and how does that apply to us?” came a follow-up.
“Right now we are a family, not even a tribe. This is all related to long term planning, small benefits now… possibly even losses in efficiency in the short term. All traded for long term gains, we are looking at three guarded locations now and four separate forces including the core room, what happens when that number is thirty or forty. How can we manage and distribute resources to so many areas without information. Why do you need this? What are you bringing in? Which areas are more important? Why are you losing so many troops? All these questions and more can be analyzed and answered with enough information. Logistics can make or break a country.” Alissa paused to get her thoughts in order. “For now I am aiming at something close to a feudal monarchy as a governing style. It isn’t entirely accurate, but it does work for the moment. What we do now is a foundation, our actions will help us evolve and avoid some of the stumbling blocks later on. When the bureaucratic parts become an absolute necessity you won’t be caught off guard and will be experienced in handling it… Also I have no intention of wasting your talents, at some point if you want or are proven to be unsuitable for this job we will find you another. That is not an attack, not everyone is suited for this.”
Alissa continued. “Isabella you will establish check point two down the leftmost tunnel, Maria will establish check point three down the rightmost tunnel. Vlad will maintain and improve checkpoint one and build up a supply point here. Vlad your job is to maintain a smooth flow of resources to your sisters.” At his nod she continued. “Isabella and Maria I want you to focus on defending the checkpoint and contesting the goblins that are raiding our territory, this includes pushing them out of their little war camps. We will do full rotations every month until you have all gotten a chance at each position. You will continue to work with Nova and me for your training. Vlad remain here and begin working on your proposals for Nova to review. The rest of you send your progress for Vlad to look through. Hold the next group of goblins here. Isabella your up first we will do the same thing at the location for checkpoint two, Isabella will remain there and begin her work. Then Maria after words Carmilla and Conrad will return with me to the core room.”
Alissa paused. “Do not join in the fighting, you have little to no training and your equipment is not up to the task of frontline combat.” She gave a bit of a glare at Maria who was the more tomboyish of the girls. “There is no reason for any of you to be involved in personal combat, you have weapons simply because sending you out here unarmed is stupid. Rely on the golems at your disposal to do the fighting, use the goblins as you wish, try to get some back to their clan but if they all die then it is what it is. same goes for the golems but you will need an explanation. Nova and I will be watching and avoiding interference beyond a certain point I cannot baby you too much or you will become reliant on us, it will hamper your potential. We cannot always be watching and it is best to build good habits. Aside from the core myself and you all everything else is expendable. That means it is more important for you to survive than fight to the death over territory or resource loss. Understood?”
The children nodded obediently, and Alissa had to keep a poker face to avoid scrapping the whole idea and just keeping them at home. She was liking this plan less and less as the time she spent with her creations grew. However she lacked options and really needed to get the borders and territory under control to get the resources she needed in the quantities she required as well as defenses for the territory the core was claiming that she didn’t have control. Leaving the kids with the core also wouldn’t work as she couldn’t do this on her own.
The goblins had begun arriving, the first tithe pulled from the clans. To keep the goblins competitive each tribe sent their fighters for now mixing the tribes on the front lines was going to be prevented. It was time to truly start down the path of conquering this hell hole of a panet.