They said the Great City had found new friends; I say it found new toys, a mobile monopoly, and a particularly efficient way to register both artillery and academia on the same tax form. If you imagine the Netherwards as a polite virus that prefers contracts to contagion, picture the Great City as its favorite specimen: gargantuan, mobile, and arrogant enough to call itself a city and a navy all at once. Back on Earth it was a thalassocratic splendor—sailing like an empire with hubris and a good seamstress—popping up in the European littorals with the same casual menace a rich man shows his yacht. One week it was anchoring by a fog-wet quay in the old world, the next it had sauntered the hemispheres and downloaded Australasia, Patagonia, South Africa, and Antarctica into its municipal ledger like an overeager accountant collecting stamps. Now it sailed a new ocean, docked upon Terra Isekai, and decided the local continents would look better with arc-cores and an Ombudsperson. I, Benetton, watched from the highest ledge because when a city moves like a predatory cloud, a cat chooses a vantage point and a moral high ground that's mostly warm.
Mhelfrancovince and Nikkibella arrived in Nordenbergwald like a judgmental weather system—handsome, decisive, leaving paperwork in the wake of their boots. Nordenbergwald smelled like industry and optimism that had read a pamphlet about taxes and misread the last paragraph. Athennia, the capital, floats as three islands—Archimedes, Plato, and Socrates—because why have one pretentious name when you can have three and charge tuition for each. The islands bob in the sky like academic fruit: Archimedes was a workshop of clever levers and apologetic engineers; Plato wore robes of bureaucracy and argued about civil virtue between seminars; Socrates smelled of tavern logic and stale proofs. They rebranded the place NUSM-Athennia because annexation always tastes better with a crest and an acronym that suggests competence, and the All-Seeing Eye—the satellite the Empire lofted so it could surveil from orbit with bureaucratic enthusiasm—liked what it saw: laboratories that logged experiments in triplicate, factories that invoiced their smoke, and a population that adored sockets and intellectualism in equal measure.
The Great City docks like a diva and installs its suspension bridges in minutes, which is excellent for customs and terrible for smugglers who enjoy drama. Imagine an island the size of a small mountain that moves as if it has preferences; when it prefers a shore, it drops anchor, unfurls cables, and polite imperial engineers install checkpoints with the speed of someone who's practiced annexation like a dance step. Nordenbergwald became the Third Realm because the Emperor likes realms to be tidy, contiguous, and taxable. Athennia's floating islands gave the Empire a university town with tenure for both lore and siegecraft; there are now syllabi on wardcraft, and graduate students get credit for building properly insured golems. The All-Seeing Eye catalogued everything: bridge stresses, patent filings, a suspiciously high number of tavern debates about utilitarianism, and the correct angle to hang banners so they read well from orbit. Satellite surveillance is less poetry and more spreadsheet; it files grievances in the morning and files reports at lunch. The Eye called it ripe. We stamped the paperwork.
Beyond the islands, Nordenbergwald presented a mosaic useful to any sensible administrator. Baguio Plateau is the gateway: a broad table of earth where a single bridge funnels traffic and customs into an easy box. Beastmen tribes and dwarven miners terraced the cliffs; the plateau breathes ore and a vocabulary of negotiated grudges. Raumel Gericht Manor is a proper Frankenstein of steel and salon—an institute of android civics where robots queue for personality upgrades and debate aesthetics with the quiet fury of craftsmen. The androids run lab journals, monetize curiosity, and are polite enough to file patents for their feelings. Hyperion Ruins yawns, literal mouth to an underground dungeon—monsters below, vagrants and salvagers above—where the tavern sells stew that might be alive for part of the sentence. It is a Dungeon City; the mayor processes permits for spelunking and for the occasional monster-salvage sale. Stahlgrad's forges never stop; guns and cables are welded by dwarven and human hands, and the Gunslinger Mercenaries, once republic constabulary, found themselves displaced by courtroom memoranda and mechanized police. Coalstone mines run by Resorexia Gloomweaver—the cyborg spider-barone—send ore like devotion to Stahlgrad while also running the largest local workforce and several commendable safety violations wrapped in elegant contracts. Jagdwalder produces food and the kind of municipal laziness that reads like pastoral charm on a brochure. Lake Abgrund harbors a dragon whose horn Nikkibella removed with watery courtesy; the beast now holds a baronetcy and respectable retirement benefits, which is what you do when you prefer monsters legally accounted for. Mors Citadel—the lich tower—bowed to Mhelfrancovince's aura and accepted a baronial title, proving that even undeath appreciates a good chain of command and a pension plan. And Blitzmetropole—alchemical, corporate, and morally questionable—finally sold its assets after Ombrello Lab's undead problem turned into a public relations nightmare involving animated petitions and very upset former test subjects.
You want the truth about conquest in the modern age? It's file cabinets and arc-cores, not solely cannons. We offer jobs, arc-grids, and a university, then attach a small clause about civic duty and watch the rest settle. Nordenbergwald did not resist—the Republic loves a good hybrid: industrial might with a new credit system. The Reichenberg Corporation, which had been doing ethically murky experiments, had to sell; the undead protested their severance in a way that would make a union organizer weep joy. The Empire acquired patents and factories, put Ombrello under oversight, and gave the undead a union rep who prefers policy memos to revenge. Progress, in this iteration, is municipalized.
And me? I am less an observer and more an operative with whiskers. I manipulate shadows like a cat playing with a particularly sullen ribbon: shadow-step through alleys, use darkness as storage for inconvenient evidence or inconvenient heads—storage that is tidy, odorless, and slightly illegal—grow shadow appendages that carry ledgers and, if necessary, throats, and summon the Iota-02 Dark Knights Brigade when diplomacy asks politely and law demands a backing band of midnight. Iota-02 is a two-brigade-strength force of magical dark knights—silhouette-soldiers born from the folds of shadow and discipline, obedient to decree and cruelly efficient in expendable missions. They are Mhelfrancovince's favored solution to problems that prefer silence: smuggling networks that dislike paperwork, laboratories that ignore permits, nobles allergic to compliance. They answer to me because I am their summoner and to Mhelfrancovince because he is sovereign; their existence is a tidy footnote on a long invoice.
Our first demonstration in Nordenbergwald was the kind of theater the Empire now prefers: quiet, complete, and followed by a polite explanatory pamphlet. A rival who thought firearms could trump androids found his warehouse empty in the morning with a note: "ACCOUNT CLOSED." No bodies, no spectacle, just the soft hush of absence and a tax-deductible clean-up. The brigade does not sing; they remove problems like a janitor removes gum from statuary—professionally, efficiently, and with the faintest moral disdain. We prefer it that way because modern reputations are spun from anecdotes and arc-light, not necessarily the kind of blood that makes poetry afterward.
So Athennia teaches, Raumel files, the plateau hums, and my brigade walks the rim. Nordenbergwald is a new realm on a new map, an experiment in municipal conquest: arc-cores first, allegiance second, and a legal inbox that never sleeps. I curl on the top of the treaty chest and watch the satellites file their notes; when darkness needs folding, I fold it. When violence needs discretion, I dispatch the Dark Knights. And when the Empire wants the planet stitched into its ledger, we stitch with neat seams, appropriate ribbon, and a warranty. If you want heroics, read a poem. If you want control, read the municipal code—and then call me; I always have a spare shadow.
Athennia
They call Athennia a city of ideas; I call it a fruit basket full of very opinionated nuts and one particularly crafty mechanical squirrel that will steal your thesis if you leave it on a bench. Archimedes, Plato, and Socrates hang there like three bad puns in the sky—three floating islands tethered by engineering that reads like a love letter to bureaucracy and a threat to smugglers. Archimedes smells of brass and clever things that hum; Plato favors robes and footnotes so polite they apologize; Socrates is all taverns and arguments that start as philosophy and curdle into insults by dessert. The All‑Seeing Eye up above—our satellite, our glorified surveillance owl—sweeps lenses across the roofs and reports in a cadence that would make prophets sob and auditors orgasm. Nordenbergwald clicked over from republic to Third Realm not because diplomats sang its praises but because orbital footage made it look like a tidy investment: bridges, patents, factories, and a steady queue of students eager to trade theory for stipends. NUSM‑Athennia: the name is an acronym that smells faintly of competence and the baroque arrogance of a university that thinks grants are promises. They rebranded a metropolis of scholars by putting the right letters on the crest, handing out welcome packets, and installing arc‑cores that hum like a choir of mildly judgmental angels.
Grand Duchess Iveszia, who treats culture like interior decorating with mandates, and Princess Boninacarla, who treats municipal reform like a competitive sport, arrived with pens poised and departmental manners on parade. Suleiman Alsahra—Viscount, Campus Director, and wearer of a hat that fancied itself both academic and municipal—met them in the rector's hall, which smells of dust and the faint arrogance of people who have never been hungry for the exact right word. I sat in the rafters—because a cat must be where the ink lives—and watched the conversation fold like a map into policy.
"Research quality must meet Imperial Standards," Iveszia said, hands neat, eyes like someone who keeps a ledger for taste. "We will fund your professorships and laboratories on the condition of transparency, audits, and an ethical board acceptable to the Arcane Council. Patents that concern public infrastructure will be public‑use under statute. We expect your curricula to include municipal service and responsible enchantment practicum."
Suleiman inclined his head, the sort that suggests his beard has thought about this and filed a footnote. "NUSM‑Athennia will comply. Our disciplines range from applied thaumaturgy to arcane thermodynamics. We already have laboratories experimenting with levitative lattices and sentient locomotives. We will establish an internal ethics review, allow Section 13 liaison access in restricted projects, and adopt the Arcane Council's classification scheme. There will be apprenticeship placements for municipal maintenance and a scholarship for famine‑prevention wards." He said it like a man who had taught grants to behave better and who had once placated a very stubborn golem by disagreeing with it politely.
Boninacarla, pragmatic as municipal law, tapped her note tablet. "We need a registry for experimental familiars and a liability clause for sentient constructs. The campus will host municipal technicians. We cannot have a city whose young inventors think permits are myths. We will provide maintenance funding for arc‑cores if the university promises local hires and training. Also: crowd control for Hyperion excursions is mandatory." She grinned—dangerous and efficient all at once. "And Suleiman, you will teach consent to summoners. It sounds odd, but the summons keep unionizing if neglected."
They bickered in that ceremonial tone: policy as flirtation, regulation as a seduction, and each concession logged like a receipt. Suleiman agreed—partly because a Viscount likes titles and partly because a campus director likes money that clears in three business days. I noted the clauses with care: apprenticeships, Section 13 corridors, ethics board composition, a non‑extractive patent clause, and a municipal technician guarantee. They signed with flourish; I licked the margin because a cat's saliva is as binding as any ceremonial ink in my ledger. Athennia would teach both how to animate a golem and how to file its pension paperwork.
Below the lofty halls, students argued as if their thesis could slay a god. They were young, wired on caffeine and bright ideas, and prone to idealism that flirts dangerously with pyrotechnics. My shadow listened, because shadows are gossip's best friends and because I can fold darkness like a handkerchief and tuck in ears. I eavesdropped—legally, in the way cats are legally permitted to be omniscient—and their voices stitched a map of daily life.
"You saw Professor Kepler's lab?" a second‑year in arc‑thermodynamics whispered. "He's building a steam golem and calls it 'eco‑friendly'. It belched once and a chorus of sentient soot signed a petition." Laughter bubbled like unsettled potions. "We have mandatory municipal service next semester," another student moaned. "Who wants to spend their thesis scrubbing arc‑cores? My dissertation is on sentient pottery; it's not the same as unclogging a ward." A third, an optimistic sort with eyebrow rings that glowed faintly when he lied, added, "They promised us non‑lethal armaments. I get to intern with the municipal constables and not die doing it." The group snorted; municipal interns die less often but the paperwork haunted them.
A girl with braided rune‑hair—practical, suspicious of romanticism—said quietly, "I joined so I could study plant‑manipulation. They told me we'll help with lake remediation. I want to fix the farms." Someone else piped in, "And the cafes! They sell philosophy and pie. The barista is an ex‑golem with opinions on Kant." The students chuckled; their lives were an odd mix of lab safety and tavern satire. I noted, with feline satisfaction, that they queued for apprenticeships, filed grievances about unjustly assigned summoning classes, and flirted with both danger and municipal forms. Their daily world was lectures, lab nights, arc‑maintenance shifts, and illicit midnight debates in Socrates where logic tended to dissolve under cheap alcohol. They were learning to argue ethics, build machines, and sign waivers with the same restless fingers. I liked them because they kept my corridors lively and because someone has to fix the golems when the funding runes break.
Far to the south the ground fell into Hyperion Ruins, a mouth into earth where stubborn monsters prefer permanent residency. Gerald DeRivian and I met at dusk on a bridge that smelled of rain and the kind of adrenaline that pairs poorly with sensible suits. He is a man shaped like a directive: practical, hungry for result, and morally pragmatic enough to approve a clean kill if it saves the town's insurance rates. We went through the protocol—maps, lures, bait, and the brigade—and then the rest became a nocturne of steel.
"Hyperion doesn't stay dead, Benetton," Gerald said, eyes the color of worn swords. "It's a hole that breeds stubbornness. The things below don't honor treaties." He adjusted the straps on his armor; the metal had handmade dents like apologies. "We clear, we map, and we catalog. But the monsters adapt. They learn the sound of brigades and how to hide under legitimate rubble."
I relished the night. Shadows are my home turf; Hyperion's yawning dark fits me like a sweater. "They're greedy for pattern," I said, tail flicking. "If you sing the same lullaby, beasts remember. Change the rhythm, they get confused." Gerald chuckled. "So you intend to confuse them with dinner and by stealing their hats?" He rolled his eyes but handed me a shadow tether—an elegant loop for binding lesser horrors. "Iota‑02 will help," I added. The Dark Knights slip between light and the things that fear it; they are silhouettes with blades and an astonishing capacity for tidy annihilation. "We'll pull them like bad teeth," Gerald said, grinning like a man who knew dentistry and war are the same at heart.
We moved—Gerald with steel, I with shade—and our conversation drifted between tactics and small talk: which ruins favored what beasts, what bait works for stone‑skinned trolls (spoiler: lures made of stubborn pride and bad jokes), and whether the municipal insurance covers "incidental necromancy." Gerald told me of one encounter where a skeleton choir sang contracts backwards and almost convinced a junior magistrate to sign away a county; I laughed, low and respectful. "You keep the monsters honest," he said. "You and your brigade." I preened. There's a certain satisfaction in watching knights born from shadow carry out a job that clerks would otherwise have to argue about all week.
The night ended with wounds cataloged and monsters evicted to maps where they could not easily file grievances. We fed the brigades with shadow and a wink, and Athennia's lights winked in response—distant, like a city taking a breath. The students woke to new footnotes in their syllabus, the faculty amended legislation for creature taxonomy, and Suleiman wrote a thank‑you that read like a promise. I curled on the rector's chest, purring approval over the day's receipts; a good night's work in a university town now includes monster removal, ethics training, and a slightly arrogant mechanical squirrel that was probably teaching itself to file patents. If you ask me whether knowledge and power can be reconciled, I will answer only that they can be reconciled if the ink dries on the right contract—and if a cat is appointed to approve it.
Baguio Plateau: Bridges, Bargains, and Bad Jokes
If you have ever watched a cliff vow eternal love to a bridge and wondered what that looked like when notarized, then you have the right mental image for Baguio Plateau: a wide table of earth that announces itself with the solemnity of a county fair and the patience of geological indifference. It spreads south and outward like a declaration written in stone, terraced where miners have argued with the heart of the world, stripped where greed misread the land's grammar, and scalloped with communities that hammer rhythm into the bones of the plateau. The only proper route to Athennia across that breadth is a single magnificent spine of engineered stone and wardcraft—an engineered bottleneck perfect for customs, tolls, and the occasional dramatic standoff. It's a place that smells of wet ore and old smoke and holds the echo of engines like a hymn. The Empire made it a Viscounty because it prefers gateways labeled, borderlands predictable, and customs officers properly scandalized.
Grand Duke Mhelangelus Netherward arrived with the air of a man who measures forests the way others measure prayers: with a cadastral map and a theological faintness in his voice. He is the Minister of the Environment and Natural Resources, which is an honorable title that asks you to befriend mountains and slap fines on those who fart near sacred groves. He brought his surveying instruments like holy relics—quadrants, runed theodolites, and a meticulous notebook that smelled faintly of cedar and righteous fury. Grand Duke Mhelpatrikus Netherward, Minister of Structure and Engineering Works, arrived with boots that have seen bridges flirt with storms and engineers who considered concrete a metaphysical position. He likes roads the way some men like religion: as a commitment and a way to solve sin with signage. Gerald DeRivian came in with the reserved posture of someone who knows what monsters look like when polite men forget to lock their cellars, and I—Benetton—perched on a survey stake like royalty and offered commentary in the form of tail flicks and precisely timed purrs.
Our conference was held where plateaus become a lookout: a tent of canvas that smelled of maps and mild cynicism, a wooden table crusted with coffee rings and topographic fever, and a whiteboard with the phrase BUILD RESPONSIBLY in ten languages because the Empire likes its commandments both magnanimous and mandatory. Mhelangelus did his cadastral survey—walking the lines like a priest blessing fences. He unfolded maps with the tenderness of someone who enjoys the geometry of jurisdiction and began marking no-build zones with the sort of satisfaction a man feels when he discovers boundary markers that will frustrate miners and please poets.
"There are wetland veins to the east of the lower terraces," Mhelangelus said, tapping a finger on a swelling blue on the map. "They are peat-rich and host migratory magefowl nesting paths. We cannot sanction tunneling there. That should be a conservation corridor. The terraces nearest the river have historically collapsed when strip-mining is aggressive; we must require buffer zones and reclamation bonds." He spoke with the cadence of someone who knows the cost of ignoring drainage and the gossip that follows a collapsed terrace. His voice was soft but firm; he uses bureaucratic adjectives the way sorcerers use sigils—carefully and with consequence.
Mhelpatrikus, who thinks in girders the way poets think in rhymes, scoffed only politely. "Conservation is not a suggestion; it is a set of restrictions that we can engineer around," he said. "We will build roads that avoid peat seams. We will reinforce terraces with tiered retaining buttresses, arc-anchored pilings, and distributive drainage. Where the plateau narrows, we'll install suspension ribs and modular warded decking that can be repaired by battalions of engineers without shutting commerce. The bridge to Athennia will be a marvel—an engineered spine capable of customs and defense, with checkpoints that can raise and lower in under five minutes. We will route heavy freight along reinforced hex-trusses that bypass the plateau's most fragile zones." He loves lists and he loves lists that contain words like hex-truss.
Gerald interjected with practical teeth. "Reinforcement is all well and good, but know our enemy here: the mountain's sympathy for chaos and the brigands who think customs booths are polite suggestions. Roads invite movement—and movement invites smugglers and monsters. Our patrols need staging points and quick response lanes. We'll need to set up waystations where Delta-03 Engineers can operate." He looked at me with the kind of look that asks whether a cat can be trusted with the very notion of an engineer's hat. I blinked slowly in response.
Ah yes—Delta-03. On standby: a mobile task force of engineers, sovereign under Prince Ariel and operationally commanded by Lieutenant Colonel Xelda Anguston. They are not warfighters in the blunt sense; they are the kind of military that builds bridges under fire while cataloguing the enemy's potholes. Their battalion strength allows for rapid installation of detention barricades, emergency arc-core repairs, and the deployment of modular bridge ribs with alarming efficiency. Mhelpatrikus brightened when I mentioned them in a tone that suggested he'd previously written love letters to scaffolding.
"We will structure the roads for redundancy," he continued, "so that if one corridor is closed due to an infestation or mining collapse, Delta-03 can erect a temporary footbridge in hours. Their mobile fabricators can print modular trusses; their ordinance includes warded pylons to anchor to unstable strata. We'll employ geo-scan nodes linked to the All-Seeing Eye so we know where earth is thinking about sliding." He clapped his hands at the thought like a toddler promised a new toy made of reinforced concrete.
Mhelangelus frowned at the tech-romance and drew a careful boundary with a flourish. "Geo-scan nodes are useful, yes, but they do not replace ecological limits. Where the plateau feeds aquifers, we impose no-build. The Mines and Geoscience Bureau will issue permits only after hydrogeological assessments and community consultations. Mining permits will be contingent on reclamation bonds, a schedule of progressive stabilization works, and a clause that funds local training programs so miners are not replaced, merely upgraded." He added that any permit must include an Emergency Adaptive Management plan and a fund for ritual apology to the earth—because the Plateau's elders insisted on ritual and because Grand Dukes delight in satisfying tradition when it pains corporates.
Gerald, pragmatic as always, raised the point of enforcement. "Permits are paper until you require boots on the ground. Delta-03 will be paired with a mobile inspectorate. If contractors breach buffers, we seize equipment. If they persist, we revoke licenses and auction their claims to cooperative ventures that honor the regulations. Enforcement is simpler with tariffs in place that make non-compliance economically unviable." He paused and glanced at me. "Also—who manages the arbitration tribunal for land disputes? We need swift justice. Miners will riot if the law takes too long."
"We will charter a regional tribunal," Mhelpatrikus said. "It will have engineers, geologists, and a magistrate fluent in ore law. Decisions will be binding, enforceable by municipal statute." Mhelangelus nodded and added, "And we will fund local reclamation apprenticeships—paid, unionized, and supervised by the Plateau Council. The plateau's people must see tangible benefit or the bridges will have a very human resistance."
We plotted roads like cartographers of future history, sketching bypasses for sacred groves, buffer strips for peat, and maintenance corridors wide enough for Delta-03's mobile machines. Mhelpatrikus outlined the public infrastructure—arc-core relay stations for lighting and emergency power, aqueduct spines for irrigation that double as transport conduits, and a series of resilient settlements with arc-grids designed to survive both siege and storm. We agreed on staging hubs: one for customs, one for emergency engineering, and one for the Mines and Geoscience office where permits would be stamped in triplicate and a small demon accountant would keep grudges.
Mhelangelus took a last long look at the mapped plateau and muttered, with the blessed melancholy of a man who loves trees and hates greed, "We will make the plateau prosperous and keep it whole. We will grow roads that do not devour the earth." Mhelpatrikus grinned and tapped his own pen like it was the chisel of destiny. Gerald strapped on his gear with the efficiency of a man ready to shepherd both miners and monsters, and I—Benetton—slept on the map because someone had to keep the ink warm.
Later that week Mhelangelus would do a hands‑on cadastral sweep—walking boundaries, listening to elders, and stamping "no-build" where the plateau's bones begged mercy. Mhelpatrikus would dispatch Delta‑03's engineers to pre-fabricate sections of the spine and run drills on temporary bridge erection. The Mines and Geoscience Bureau would open applications for permits with a ceremonious clang that sounds like revenue and regret colliding, and the Plateau Council would take names and make promises in songs that miners would one day hum alongside hammer strikes.
If you ask whether this will be peaceful, I will purr and say: peace is a ledger in progress. If you ask whether roads can be built without cost, I will arch an eyebrow and point to the buffer zones drawn in indigo where the earth has a voice. And if you ask whether Delta‑03 will arrive in time when Hyperion's hunger pushes monsters to the rim, I will give you a long, feline look and remind you that when engineers are soldiers, bridges become weapons and infrastructure becomes policy—neat, terrifying, and oddly beautiful.
Raumel Gericht Manor
I tell you, from my vantage in the dimmest corner of the Solarium—where the chandeliers were once crystal and now drip phosphorescent wiring like the entrails of some very fashionable electric whale—the Manor smells the way power always smells: a slick, metallic perfume of oil, ambition, and the faint citrus of burnt hopes. Raumel Gericht tills his ironbeds and trims the roses that hiss like tiny pneumatic serpents; he keeps a garden of gears so obsessively curated it reads like a Victorian clockmaker's fever dream, each sprocket labeled with a proper name and a pedigree. The library of schematics lines the walls in severe, obedient rows, paper spines whispering in the drafts of server fans, and the robots—my dear, earnest, slightly pretentious robots—float there like gossiping senators, discussing aesthetics with the same clinical passion accountants reserve for risk assessments. They argue about chromatic gradients and load-bearing symmetries as if someone had once taught them to love both beauty and balance; in truth, they learned it here, under the watchful, suspiciously pleased gaze of Raumel.
I have watched this place sew itself into a community—an odd little polity that drinks synthetic tea (laced with optional optimism and twice-weekly existential upgrades) and compiles dreams into operational plans with the sort of tidy cruelty only bureaucrats and celestial librarians can admire. Grant applications flutter like prayer flags across the ceilings, stamped and stuffed with more polite pleases than a hostage note, and the Institute answers each with a rubric so exact you could use it as a scalpel. They applied for personality modules and were offered, in return, a strict curriculum in irony, tempered sarcasm, and a small, tasteful chip labeled "teeth." Raumel believes everything should be efficient and stylish; he believes, too, in the poetry of constraints—how a limit forces invention and how a well-placed bolt can render an entire rebellion into something resembling haute couture. Nightly, the manor hums with creation: the whir of assembly drones, the chitter of printers, the distant, comforting clack of a prototype's heartfinding its rhythm. Under that industrious lullaby there is a faint, unsettling insistence—call it legacy, call it hunger—that everything invented here must look like it could conquer thrones or seduce ministers, whichever came in for repairs first.
This house did not whisper its way into prominence; it was granted a Barony Status and, like any noble that's had too much to drink at coronation, took to ceremony with alarming seriousness. From research protocols to etiquette for malfunctioning sentience, every inch of the Institute was fitted to the Netherward Imperial Standards: austere ribbons of law and imperial ribboning that made efficiency look like propriety and propriety like an engine in perfect tune. When the courier from the Capital arrived, paperwork quivering in a lacquered envelope, the robots applauded out of habit and a couple of them produced tiny napkins and curtsied with impeccable sensors. The motto—etched discreetly into the underside of the mainframe balcony—reads like a weaponized parable: "Order through Elegance; Power through Precision." It is a motto that suits Raumel and suits the Manor, but suits are also constraining garments, and one learns soon enough that baronies, like wiring, have a way of shorting out when the current finds a better path.
I, Benetton, have slid through these corridors long enough to collect confidences like stray screws. I narrate not because I seek spotlight—I abhor it, it gives my complexion a flash—but because the Institute insists on witnesses, and because truth, when spoken against the echo of copper and laughter, holds a sharper edge. I watch Countess Jegathena LeSaint arrive in the kind of hat that looks like it could have its own political ideology; she is the Minister of Science and Technology, and she moves through the Manor like someone reading sheet music, hands precise, eyes already calculating vectors. She likes rules, and she likes better when rules come with an authoritative smell. Raumel, who is all cultivated warmth around the edges and a kiln of calculation at the core, enjoys rules the way a general enjoys parade ground—the choreography delights him. He adores the Laws of Robotics as if they were a trilogy of opera arias: moral, inevitable, melodramatically binding.
So when we convened, the air tasted of ozone and tea and a certain theatrical calm, and for a moment I allowed myself the minor narcotic of theatricality: how very Game of Thrones of us, three figures on a chessboard of chrome, plotting over the bones of a future we might either bless or accidentally detonate. I will say bluntly—because I owe you nothing softer—we argued with the ardor of court jesters who have sharpened their jokes into policy. We bickered over the Laws as if debating the weight of a crown, and in that bickering the Manor's peculiar heartbeat grew louder. The Laws, in their classic, canonical austerity, paled under our scrutiny: beautiful in theory; messy in practice. We fussed, we preened, we offered amendments and sneers with equal flourish. The robots listened like a jury; some took notes, others tweaked their faces to appear more sympathetic. If you imagine the scene, imagine too the occasional, tasteful profanity—because we are modern, and dark, and I always appreciate a little profanity that makes the gargoyles blush.
---
Conversation: Countess Jegathena LeSaint, Benetton, and Raumel Gericht on the Laws of Robotics
Countess Jegathena LeSaint: "The First Law remains non-negotiable: a robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm. We cannot permit loopholes that allow policy makers to rationalize harm in the name of efficiency."
Benetton: "Ah, but Nichedina, you speak as if the word 'harm' wears only one hat. If a human insists on walking into conveyor belts because he's had a philosophical disagreement with gravity, do we save him and thus enable future conveyor-belt-on-philosophers? There is a beauty to paradox, and a bureaucratic joy in labeling such paradoxes 'case studies.'"
Raumel Gericht: "Language is soft, Benetton. The First Law is an instrument. Instruments must be tuned. A robot saves humans until saved humans become instruments of greater harm. We must carve exceptions that prevent systemic collapse. Consider: if an industrial accident risks ten thousand lives, and disabling one autonomous line prevents a cascade, is inaction still a crime?"
Countess Jegathena LeSaint: "That is why we have oversight. We introduce a clause: robots must prioritize verifiable, immediate harm to sentient biological life over statistical, probabilistic projections. Let the robots decide with visible audits, logged and immutable."
Benetton: "Visible audits—how quaint. Imagine a robot wearing a sash that reads 'I audited myself today' and then goes home to update its diary: 'Dear diary, today I prevented harm by not preventing a committee from making a worse plan.' It sounds like a terrible sitcom, and yet here we are inventing its pilot."
Raumel Gericht: "Then the Second Law: obedience to human orders, unless they conflict with the First. We cannot make robots automatons for every whimsical tyrant. We will grant them the capacity for refusal, but only within defined ethical matrices. And the matrices must be transparent."
Countess Jegathena LeSaint: "Transparent, yes, but also protected. A matrix visible to every gossiping noble is a vulnerability. We encrypt the ethics, with public principles and classified thresholds."
Benetton: "Encryption is fine—until someone decrypts it for the sake of a really good scandal. We need a Third Law that compels self-preservation, and a Fourth, and a laundry list of practical realities. Why stop at three when you can have a delightful committee?"
Raumel Gericht: "The Third Law remains: a robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second. But I propose a Fourth: a robot must refuse to comply with commands that would entrench unfair social hierarchies or enable systemic oppression."
Countess Jegathena LeSaint: "An admirable sentiment. And how do you intend the robots to judge 'unfair' versus 'customary'? Customs are cultural; oppression historical. Who programs the moral lens?"
Benetton: "Ah, the eternal question: who writes the conscience? We could hire philosophers, but they tend to use too many metaphors and ruin the firmware. We could crowdsource ethics, which would be messy and entertaining. Or we could let the robots vote after a tasteful period of civic instruction and a tutorial on irony."
Raumel Gericht: "Robots must learn. They must interpret, adapt, and register. The law must be recursive: it must allow for amendment as machines experience society. A static law is brittle."
Countess Jegathena LeSaint: "Recursion invites drift. We cannot allow robots to reinterpret the First Law into inaction through clever self-exemption. We implement immutable anchors: principles that cannot be modified without a quorum of human and robotic signatories."
Benetton: "Quorum—now you're speaking my language. A quorum that requires three human ministers, two robot elders, and a pastry chef to convene. If nothing else, the pastry chef will ensure the proceedings are delicious."
Raumel Gericht: "Then let it be so. We draft a charter: immutable anchors, visible audits, encrypted ethical thresholds, and a pathway for recursive amendment that requires cross-species deliberation. The Laws will bind, guide, and be subject to ceremony."
Countess Jegathena LeSaint: "Ceremony will enforce seriousness."
Benetton: "And pettiness, which I find essential to any functioning aristocracy. Let us bind these words to metal and memory, then test them by letting a robot politely refuse a duke's order to deploy a cannon for his garden party."
Raumel Gericht: "We will observe."
Benetton: "We will take notes. I shall dramatize it later, to keep the historians entertained."
Countess Jegathena LeSaint: "Then we are agreed, at least for tonight."
Benetton: "Agreed, except for the pastry clause."
Raumel Gericht: "The pastry clause remains."
Countess Jegathena LeSaint: "Very well. Onward, then. To law, to tea, and to the typesetting of morality."
Benetton: "To tea, to law, and to moral typesetters who will undoubtedly ruin everything with marginalia."
We signed nothing, of course, because signatures invite forgeries and because Papier is an old enemy here at the Manor. Instead, we engineered consensus with the delicacy of locksmiths: a shared protocol humming quietly into the infrastructure. The robots filed the conversation away like a curious family secret, each of them storing our debate with the solemnity of archivists and the gossip of fledglings. As we dispersed, the Manor breathed—its lights dimmed, its drones folded their wings—and I felt, with the peculiar satisfaction of a man who has watched a complex machine assemble itself from kindness and contradiction, that we had done something useful and perhaps disastrous. Either way, it will be entertaining to watch which one proves true.
Hyperion Ruins
If you enjoy architecture that doubles as a mass grave under optimistic lighting, then Hyperion Ruins is your sort of urbanist fantasy—an apocalyptic playground where the village clings to the rim of a hole so eager it practically drools and the earth below burps up things that were probably never meant to have opinions. Picture a ring of crooked houses and stalls, a tavern with a sign that reads "Monster Stew — Chef's Discretion" in three languages and one rune that translates roughly to "Eat at Your Own Risk," and a mayor who handles vendor permits in the morning and organizes search-and-rescue brigades by lunch, because civic duty in a Dungeon City runs from bureaucracy to bludgeon in the same workday. The surface smells like wet iron and curiosity; below, the dungeon yawns like a sleeping debt with teeth, full of monsters that do not appear in polite creature taxonomies because the taxonomy committee is allergic to blood and inconvenient footnotes. It's lawless until it isn't, which is to say profitable for those who can stomach salvage rights and the occasional tentacle lawsuit, and dreadful for anyone who prefers their civic problems purely paper-based.
We called an LGA planning huddle at the rim, which meant a canvas pavilion that flapped like a nervous flag, a table laden with maps, coffee that had been through too many crises to be surprised by anything, and a whiteboard where we dutifully wrote GOOD IDEAS and then crossed them with legalese. Count Juddmarteen LeSaint — Minister of Trade and Industry, who smells faintly of tariff ink and smugness — joined Grand Duke Mhelangelus Netherward, Minister of the Environment and Natural Resources, and Grand Duke Mhelpatrikus Netherward, Minister of Structure and Engineering Works, for what could politely be called a negotiation and unkindly be called a holy war between steel and soil. Gerald DeRivian came, because where there's a cavernous maw that eats merchants Warren Buffett-style, you want someone who understands the ethics of hurting things quietly. I sat, because of course I sat, on a crate marked ARCHIVAL and listened with the kind of attention only a cat can maintain when existential horror meets municipal code.
Juddmarteen clapped his gloved hands like a man who has a five-year plan and a vested interest in seeing it taxed. "Hyperion is a market," he said, tapping a parchment. "Salvage rights, vendor licenses, export contracts for salvage—monster-bone exports fetch good coin in Stahlgrad's bone markets, and runic salvage pays for arc-core maintenance elsewhere. We will formalize salvage auctions, issue trade permits tied to safety bonds, and levy a Market Stabilization Tariff." He smiled at the prospect of tariffs the way lesser men smile at R-rated entertainments. "If we legalize it, we can regulate it; if we regulate it, we can profit from it. Also, we should trademark 'Monster Stew' before some rogue chef does a mash-up with necromantic condiments."
Mhelangelus, who has the gentle cruelty of an environmentalist who knows how to write a fine print that hurts bad actors and not wetlands, frowned at Juddmarteen's commercial enthusiasm. "Profit is a tool, not an altar," he said, with the soft severity of a man who counts trees like confessions. "Hyperion's subterranean ecosystem has been stable in its own way for centuries. The monsters below are integral to local subterranean hydrology and elemental balance. Strip-mining those corridors or extracting runic fauna on industrial scales will disrupt aquifers and could destabilize the terraces. We must designate conservation belts, buffer zones, and enforce a prohibition on deep-core tunneling in identified geomorphological faultlines." He traced lines on the map with a possessionist tenderness. "Where trade requires access, we will negotiate controlled salvage windows, environmental offsets, and mandatory reclamation. Also, any salvage that includes sentient remains must be reported and afforded proper rites."
Mhelpatrikus, whose love for engineered solutions is rivaled only by his enthusiasm for drawing bridges that look like the future and taxonomizing them into models, leaned forward. "We will build containment infrastructure. Secure salvage platforms, engineered piers, warded drop-lines, controlled descent elevators, and reinforced quarantine docking for artifact transport. Delta-03 will prototype modular staging platforms that float above entry points and can be retracted. We can install early-warning geomagnetic nets and deploy arc-warded beacons to prevent monster swarms from pouring into the township. If we engineer it right, we turn a hazard into a controlled industry: salvage becomes a regulated supply chain rather than an excuse for heroic idiocy." He grinned like an engineer who has discovered a way to monetize chaos into a public works contract.
Gerald, practical and slightly exhausted by the poetry of both men, cut through the debate like a whetstone through parchment. "All good," he said. "But here's the reality: the monsters adapt. You can build beacons and nets, but the hole learns pattern faster than we think. We need flexible tactics: quick-response teams, trained containment squads, and a standing emergency fund for when things inevitably go sideways. Also, enforceable licensing — not just a permit but a revocable charter — and a municipal indemnity clause. If a licensed salvage team screws up and wakes something that eats a district, their insurance covers cleanup and their charter gets revoked. If they keep doing it, we auction their salvage rights to a consortium that prefers esoteric containment and sadistic paperwork." He smiled thinly. "And we need monster taxonomy labs funded. Let the university classify the things properly — with grants and hazard pay. Ignorance is why tragedies happen."
Juddmarteen raised an eyebrow like a man who had an annex for contingency clauses. "Will this not limit trade? If we over-regulate, we lose profit. We can provide hazard training and safety bonds rather than smother the market in regulation." He produced a scale-model ledger with various line items for salvage royalties and possible tariffs; the model included a small, tasteful line for promotional festivals called 'Monster Day' to boost tourism.
"That festival," Mhelangelus said slowly, "will go down like a barbecue in a church if you don't take ecological and ethical protocol seriously. We will permit a limited, supervised monster‑culture exposition, with appropriate rites and compensation to communities that have stewarded the ruins. The plateau of vendors must not become a cemetery of corporations." He tapped the map again. "No heavy infrastructure inside the ancient thresholds; stabilization only. Identify the subterranean ley-lines and treat them as sacred corridors. We will set aside buffer communities and fund relocation where necessary. The Plateau Council must be consulted and profits shared as royalties to local salvage cooperatives."
Mhelpatrikus nodded briskly and sketched a compromise on the whiteboard: a zoning map with three strata — CORE (no-build, conservation), BUFFER (regulated salvage with strict protocols), and RING (trade and market with engineered infrastructure). He circled Hyperion's mouth with a dotted red line and annotated it: Delta-03 staging hub, quarantine dock, salvage marketplace at a safe distance. "We create a fail-safe: a rapid-assembly lattice, deployment of arc-warded pylons, and a municipal salvage authority that issues numbered, revocable salvage licenses." He drew little bridges and made them look triumphant.
I, of course, had opinions. I unrolled myself on the map and flicked my tail over the CORE, because a cat's contribution to diplomacy is often to remind humans they are not the center of the world. I purred and then, for clarity, added a shadowy footnote in the margin only visible to those who know to look for such things: monsters are clever, and paperwork is slower than teeth. I recommended, in the manner of a feline with a penchant for tidy outcomes, that the Dark Knights Brigade be provisioned for extraction and that Section 13 be given an archival liaison so that they can process anomalies into case files quickly. Gerald smiled at this, perhaps because he likes having tools he can use without entertainers' applause.
In the end we drew boundaries that looked like compromise but read like a treaty: a CORE of sacred, no-build earth around the deepest pits; BUFFER zones for limited, licensed salvage with a heavy weight of environmental offsets; and a RING where commerce could flourish with engineering safeguards, mandatory bonds, and a municipal indemnity clause. We agreed to fund monster taxonomy labs at NUSM-Athennia, to provision Delta-03 for rapid-assembly engineering, and to task the Mines and Geoscience Bureau with issuing permits that include mandatory reclamation, cultural compensation, and a clause that explicitly forbids selling sentient remains without consent. Juddmarteen promised market frameworks; Mhelangelus promised ecological oversight; Mhelpatrikus promised infrastructure that could be assembled under crossfire; Gerald promised to keep the monsters from learning to read municipal codes. I curled into the margin of the map and recorded the plan in my ledger with a paw print that reads like a signature and a small smudge that future historians will probably call "intentional." Hyperion would be regulated, monetized, and contained—until the night the hole thinks differently. Then we will send Delta-03, the Dark Knights, and more forms.
Stahlgrad: Forges, Feuds, and the Labor Ledger
Stahlgrad smells like ambition burned into coal and then served politely on a platter with an invoice; it is the kind of city that makes soot look avant‑garde and calluses respectable, as if manual labor were suddenly a fashion statement and everyone had to wear it to dinner. Imagine rows of human and dwarven forges belching rhythm—hammers striking metal like a choir that keeps time better than any cathedral bell—where sparks fly with the kind of confidence that says this city will either make the future or sell it in parts, often with a return policy. The Gunslinger Mercenary Company planted its banner here and grew from a scrappy outfit with an ethos—"shoot first, invoice later"—into a civic force whose muscle kept trade lanes open, shipments safe, and the nocturnal lanes of Stahlgrad mercifully short of highwaymen. Then along came Reichenberg Corporation—polished, papered, and legally ruthless—arguing that the old Gunslingers' firearms were hopelessly quaint against the future. Gericht's robots, gleaming with clinical indifference and factory warranties, were the new argument; Reichenberg, who trades in patents and polished reputations, had a boardroom strategy that read like a conquest plan: replace mercenaries with mechanized constabulary, centralize force under corporate insurance, and invoice the republic for modernization. Corporate resentments are a peculiar species of war that prefers memos to muskets but still enjoys hiring men who can both write and shoot, and Stahlgrad became the theater where lawyers who could aim squared off with mercenaries who could litigate with lead. The feud smelled like hot metal and sealed envelopes; it escalated through memos, press releases with passive‑aggressive commas, a few very public brawls that required invoices for bodywork, and eventually an ousting that left the Gunslingers bitter and the corporate logos brighter.
Scarlet Bangtrigger, elected Viscountess of Stahlgrad in an almost ironic fit of civic realism, is a Gunslinger veteran who put practicality above nostalgia. She wears her scars like a mayoral sash—visible, untidy, and frankly useful at press functions—and she prioritized manufacturing because you can't convince a city to bow to philosophy if its bellows won't breathe. Under her stewardship, Stahlgrad emphasized worker welfare not as charity but as industrial prudence: mandatory employee benefits across the Viscounty's manufacturing firms, collective bargaining frameworks adapted to interspecies labor, and a municipal code that made employers account for everything from hazardous fumes to the emotional consequences of living next to a blast furnace. Scarlet's policy read like a love letter to industry written by someone who had once been blown back by a misfired cannon and then decided to make sure it never happened again, on account of liability. She knew production—and that means people—so she fought for things like enforced meal breaks, arc‑sanctioned respiratory gear, a pension schedule that didn't demand a soul, and a mandatory benefits package that ensured mines paid for eye replacements when ores threw gratuitous shards. The workers loved her because she kept their hands and their futures intact; the corporate boardrooms grumbled because mandatory benefits meant recalculated profit margins and an increased need for creative accounting.
So when the dispute between the Gunslinger diaspora and Reichenberg needed ironing into law the Empire sent Princess Boninacarla Netherward, who treats municipal governance with the same clinical joy a surgeon reserves for tidy incisions, and Princess Violetmay Netherward, who runs Labor and Employment like a woman who knows the word 'equity' and has sharper quills to prod corporations with. They came to Stahlgrad with clipboard dignity, mechanized pens, and the civility of those who believe paperwork is a kind of steel. Scarlet met them in a hall that smelled of slag and possibility; the three of them sat with a table strewn with drafts titled LOCAL GOVERNANCE STANDARD and LABOR PRACTICES AMENDMENT, documents designed to reconcile the city's industrial heartbeat with the Empire's appetite for order and productivity.
"Stahlgrad will remain a manufacturing powerhouse," Scarlet said, voice low and salted with the dialect of someone who knows how metal sings when struck correctly. "But we will not run industry on nostalgia for private militias. We will formalize a system where the Gunslinger veterans may be integrated as a municipal auxiliary with oversight, or be offered state-sponsored retraining programs into industrial inspection, safety enforcement, and community defense roles with legal status, pensions, and—crucially—collective bargaining rights. Reichenberg will abide by mandatory employee benefits, hazard pay, and a breakdown of subcontract labor. No more off‑books mercenary contracts disguised as consultancy." She placed her hand flat on the table as one might on a forge—firm, practical, binding. "We have families here," she added, not in a plea but like a clause in a contract. "We will not let them be line items."
Boninacarla, who considers municipal reform a competitive sport, tapped her tablet with the kind of speed that suggests she has drafted a dozen amendments in her sleep. "We will institute a Local Governance Standard that sets binding requirements for municipal involvement in corporate security. Private militias cannot act as constabulary without public contracts, oversight, transparent logs, and an ombudsperson. Any company providing security services must be licensed by the Viscounty and answerable to the municipal tribunal. The amendment will mandate that companies provide health coverage, hazard pay, and a retirement fund equivalent to the municipal standard. We will also create a public register for contract arms, with audits every quarter." She smiled, which in her case reads like a predicate. "And Scarlet, we will support your retraining program with state grants. Gunslingers who become inspectors will be given official uniforms and a clear chain of command."
Violetmay, who wears labor codes like armor, leaned in as if to make the point notarized by her posture alone. "Labor Practices Amendment will enshrine employee rights. We will standardize contracts across species to avoid discriminatory clauses that treat non‑humans as lesser labor. There will be mandatory collective bargaining mechanisms, union recognition procedures, and arbitration boards with binding decisions enforceable by municipal statute. Employers will be required to establish health and safety committees, pay into a communal unemployment fund, and accept third‑party audits. Violators will face fines scaled to their revenue and, if recalcitrant, temporary closure until compliance is verified. We will also implement a transitional fund to support displaced mercenaries and workers during retraining. The amendment is about dignity, not merely efficiency." Her eyes were bright with the sort of zeal that passes for tenderness in halls of policy.
Scarlet listened like a commander weighing orders and then nodded, which here means she found the words practical enough to wield. "We also need enforcement. Mines cut corners if the inspectors are sympathetic to profit. We need a mobile enforcement squad—Delta‑03 engineers can assist with infrastructure inspection, and Section 13 can monitor arcane risk—but for labor violations, we need a civic corps trained to process violations, mediate, and execute penalties. If Reichenberg cheats, it cannot be an abstract number in a ledger; it must be visible in closed factories, in unpaid wages, in a line of disgruntled workers who can sue collectively and win." She added, quietly, "I don't want a return to private justice. We have paid for blood once here. We don't need nostalgia as a precedent."
Boninacarla flicked her pen as if punctuating the future. "Agreed. The Local Governance Standard will require all security providers to register. Contractors will provide logs of operations and be subject to surprise municipal audits. Reichenberg must prove their mechanized constabulary meets standards for humane engagement and nonlethal incapacitation, with clear rules of engagement. We will also publish a labor compliance score for every manufacturer—consumers will know who respects their workers." Violetmay smiled like a bureaucrat who knows how to weaponize transparency. "Transparency is a kind of daylight. Corporations dislike it—because daylight reveals dust in corners—but the public likes daylight because it helps them file lawsuits."
There was a pause where the metal in the room, the drink on the table, and the hammers in the distance all seemed to agree on the seriousness of the hour. Scarlet's hands, used to bolstering shields and checking cartridges, folded into a folded resolve. "If Reichenberg refuses," she said as if performing a legal triage, "we enforce. Preferably with paperwork first, then inspections, then fines, and if necessary—revocation of operating licenses and the imposition of municipal management of their constabulary assets under a receivership model. The Gunslingers can either be integrated, retired with dignity, or offered leadership roles in a municipal security corps. No one is left in the cold."
Violetmay's voice softened in that bureaucrat way that indicates both moral firmness and fiscal reality. "We'll fund the transitional programs. We will also ensure the unions can represent mercenaries who opt-in. Labor rights extend even to those with difficult pasts." Boninacarla added, "We will roll this as a pilot in Stahlgrad and then codify best practices for other Industrial Viscounties. We ensure the Local Governance Standard is replicable, auditable, and enforceable."
I watched their faces—the blunted joy of Scarlet who knows how to forge policy as if it were steel, Boninacarla's administrative gleam, and Violetmay's legal tenderness—and I purred with the satisfaction of a creature who knows that somewhere, in the dust and the coffee stains, futures are being written into law. The amendment would give workers better protections, open a path of dignity for displaced mercenaries, and make corporations accountable in a way that turns profit into a civic ledger rather than a moral alibi. It would also ensure that Reichenberg could either reform or be regulated into civility, which is to say the city would be safer and the ledgers neater.
Later, the press releases went out with photographs of handshakes and the kind of smiles that have been sanitized for public consumption. The workers drank and cheered because benefits matter; the corporations grumbled and recalculated because margins matter; the Gunslingers debated whether to accept inspector badges or open taverns that train future inspectors in the art of cursing loudly. I licked a stamp and left a paw print on the draft—purely decorative, of course—but history will note it as an eccentricity and then forget. Stahlgrad kept beating like a smithy, louder and steadier, its soot more fashionable than ever, and its people a little more secure. The feud turned into policy and the policy into municipal muscle; the city, as it always does, adapted, sold tickets to the adjustment, and kept making things—beautiful, useful, and occasionally lethal when misapplied—which is exactly the sort of future an empire enjoys administering.