A Solitary God In A Dark Multiverse - 215 Lesser Matters

Animation: You can use the life and mind domains to give life to even inanimate machines such as Htrae-level planes and trains. This power will obviously turn them into your worshippers.

Core Creation and Manipulation: By utilizing a number of domains such as the law domain and the eldritch and faith domains you can create dungeon cores and manipulate ones you own. Dungeon cores are efficient power gathers and dispersers and can be used to control cities, larger pieces of technology, and other spaces. Once you increase your power over the correct domains you’ll be able to immediately seize control of dungeons upon entering them, or even from a distance.

Corruption And Purity Transmission: You can transmit corruption and purity into all sorts of lifeforms and undead beings aside from vestiges. This means that you can corrupt or purify machines using your virtue and your vices.

Cybernetic Necromancy: By infusing a corpse with the proper machines or even by killing someone with the proper technology, you can create undead-machines. You can also revive a piece of technology with necromantic powers rather than healing powers. Undead-machines are more naturally suited to utilizing technology and if you seek to wage war on a technologically-gifted civilization is one of the most horrifying things you can do to instill them with fear.

Fuel Manipulation: This synergistic power takes from the domain of faith, the eldritch domain, and the technology subdomain. This potent power allows you to manipulate the amount of fuel present in a machine and allows you to do other things such as give a machine infinite fuel.

Repair Manipulation: This synergistic power takes from the domain of life and the subdomain of healing. With it you can efficiently repair any machine or other bit of technology that has been broken, destroyed, or deactivated.

Enhanced Illusions: Taking from the subdomain of enchantment, this ability allows your enchantments and illusions to fool machines, robots, and androids.

Killswitch: You can immediately kill any technology or technological lifeform that is within the realm of what you can manipulate.

Illogical Technology Modifications: This synergistic power takes from the eldritch and chaos domains. With it you can apply nonsensical modifications to technology, such as giving a robot with a gun infinite ammunition. Incidentally, if seek subtlety you can also drive intelligent technology insane which causes them to obey you without realizing they are obeying you. This works by causing them to hear your commands as quiet and irresistible whispers in the back of their minds.

Pain Transmission: You can cause technological lifeforms to feel pain.]

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As I floated back down to ground-level my robotic servants took the elevator of the building I had left them in and met me right outside of the building. Once on the ground I could more clearly hear the sounds of the city coming back to life. It was odd for the city to be so alive without a single organic lifeform but I mean my inorganic city in the Heart of Darkness would soon be the exact same way. That said at least my city will originally be an inorganic one and not a city where all inhabiting organic lifeforms were killed or fled.

I glanced at my robotic servants, but only had the briefest of moments to focus on them before my senses picked up movement relatively nearby. And I detected a lot of movement. I couldn’t quite detect the entire city at once, not from the ground at least, but I could feel that hundreds of thousands of mechanical lifeforms were on the move at once and that their hearts, insofar as they had hearts, were filled with awe and gratitude, their hearts turning towards me in worship out of sheer joy for being well and truly alive once more. It was an awe-inspiring sensation.

For a moment I simply enjoyed the sensation. I quite liked the fact that I was expanding the type of creatures who worshiped me. This active expansion of my worshiper base and the new abilities I possessed were both quite exciting to me which was why I had chosen to actively learn about them immediately rather than wait as I often did. I found the new things I could do with this subdomain extremely exciting and I had already made moves to begin to affect the mortal plane utilizing these newfound powers. In time I intended to make aggressive use of this but for now I was content being patient.

The reality was that until this point I had avoided interacting with the few high-technology civilizations I had learned of. That was because I didn’t want to interact with them until I had powers that matched their technologies. Some of these civilizations could be found on gas giant planets, though in many cases they simply maintained outposts on such worlds, which I had come across and knew of thanks to “Stellar awareness”.

That said I now had the technological powers necessary to at least begin to interact with them safely. They were the only interplanetary empires I had seen to date, and I would be patient around them as I didn’t plan to get embroiled in two conflicts even though I had more than enough power to handle two different conflicts at once.

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As the robots continued to approach me I continued my interactions with my distant servant, Andrea the Htraen I had met a long time ago. I chuckled as I interacted with the girl and sensed her greed.

“I have a business opportunity for you.” I told her, a grin on my face as I did so. I sensed her amusement and her curiosity be piqued in response to my words and I sensed that she was listening. She stayed silent, so I decided to keep on speaking.

“I have no need or even interest in the money and wealth of mortals but I know how important money and wealth are to you all. I am interested in starting a business but I am trying to remain subtle and thus would need a public face. I think you would do well in such a role, and I am prepared to offer you a chance to gain all the wealth and fame you could ever desire.” I told her, sensing her interest spike by the time I was done speaking to her. That said I also sensed suspicion in her, due to her cautious and almost cynical nature.

“I… am interested, I’ll freely admit that, but I fail to see what benefits you would gain from this.” She told me, honestly.

“I see your skepticism hasn’t changed, even after seeing my powers firsthand,” I remarked, chuckling.

“The truth is that I desire subtlety. I seek to expand my influence in small ways and to test how a business that is created and supported by my powers works in practice, and I don’t care to reveal my connections to the business so I seek a proxy. I know that ultimately you value wealth and money and I figured you’d make a perfect fit for this.” I informed her, speaking to her honestly. She went silent for a few moments, before transmitting her thoughts to me again.

“Why do you seek to act subtlety? Is there a reason for it?” She asked, surprisingly directly though politely enough I suppose. That said, I didn’t like the question. There was a directness to it unbefitting someone of her station towards someone of my station.

For a moment I considered instilling fear in her. I considered transmitting images from the world I had scarred while gaining greater power over nature, Ryths and thus showing her what I could do to those who questioned me. I didn’t consider killing her but I did consider hurting her. That said the flash of violence, even hypothetical violence, didn’t last long. Eventually, I calmed down. When I did, I merely sighed.

“I seek subtlety. That’s all you must know.” I said, my mental voice sounding far older and more powerful than it often did. This was unusual for me, but I sensed her weighing her desire for knowledge versus her sense of self-preservation.

Inwardly I smiled. I knew her well enough to know whether her curiosity would win out or her self-preservation would. A few moments later I was proven correct and she mentally sighed, accepting my cryptic remarks. I immediately began to plan to reward her even more handsomely for her efforts in all of this as a result of her wisdom.

“I know better than to not accept a deal this heavily laid in my favor. That said I’d prefer to meet you face to face, or even in a dream, to further discuss this. I am a bit surprised to be saying this, but stop by sometime soon and we will iron out the details.” She told me, though I heard a hint of trepidation in her mental voice as she “thought” that.

I smiled and began to focus. Now the fun would truly begin. The robots were nearly done gathering around me and in the buildings that surrounded me.