From the Desk of the Dictator:
Welcome back from your weekend, everyone.
With previous Technefarious leaders Dr. Crankpot and D.O.C.T.O.R. hanging around the home base again, it feels like old times. Unfortunately, those old times seemed to have extended into our operations. The list of dead from Project Bucket Run is longer than I want to include here. A permanent memorial I commissioned for them will be placed in the courtyard once it is complete.
Project Bucket Run was supposed to be a simple assault, steal, and retreat operation. Ruffle some feathers, do some property damage, take what we came for, and get out. Instead, after three days, only three of us survived.
We were just trying to steal the Bucket of Pure Water, a magical object that would be useful for some of our other projects. We had received a tip that it was among the horde of the dragon Metalhead. Our intelligence indicated that he was not a natural dragon, but one cursed into the shape of dragon by his excessive greed. Driven by their favorite vice, greed dragons are not noted for their excessive intelligence. Unlike the natural fire-breathers, their monomania can be used to trick or distract them during negotiations and battle. They don’t have much use for sacrificial virgins, but gold is something they really like.
We missed the fact that Metalhead wasn’t a normal victim of such a curse. He used to be a petty criminal. After an accident, most of his body was replaced by cybernetic parts, including three-fourths of his brain. It wasn’t our handiwork; we aren’t the only practitioners of superscience in the world. With his enhancements, his inorganic brain left Metalhead capable of plotting even after his dragon-cursed organic brain was crippled with greed.
He used that awareness to build himself one of the deadliest lairs I have ever been in, and my supervillain moniker is the Killing Man. Our initial penetration of his perimeter went smoothly. About halfway to his treasure trove, everything shifted. The after-action report from Extraction Teams A and B suggests that the lair itself teleported to another location. On the inside, our team suffered a sense of disorientation and then were attacked. Of course, between Frigid, Bleach, Elite Beta, Elite Gamma, the heavily armed Extraction Team C, and myself, we destroyed the laser turrets, giant robots, and miniature helicopters that jumped us. From there, we had just enough time to patch ourselves up and determine that our communicators weren’t working before we got attacked again. This time, our attackers were lava-spitting stone centipedes, gremlin cannons, and flying swords. Immediately after we finished with those came the poison ghosts, flaming zombies, and mobile ballista.
For seventy-two hours we fought. When we ran, acid pits, storms of explosive arrows, and crushing walls sprung up around us. When we stood our ground, wave after wave monsters and robots wielding every type of weapon and enchantment came at us.
Remember a couple of months ago how easily I penetrated the SuperMaxed prison they were keeping Bleach in? Well, those weaknesses existed because of the necessities of moving things in and out of the prison. Sustained by his curse, Metalhead could cover those gaps and create a setup to hammer any intruder into paste. Interlocking fields of magic and technology stopped our unblockable communication systems and cut us of from the Soul Catchers back at our home base. We didn’t realize the latter. The full cost of the mess we were in did not catch up to us until after we had finally conquered the facility.
I want to pause here to offer a special remembrance for Frigid. We lost her on the second day. Half of the Extraction Team were dead by that point, and Elite Beta had been reduced to his memory drive. The walls of the hanger we were crossing had turned into one giant heating element, dumping a punishing amount of radiation into us. Frigid’s endothermic powers blunted its effects but took far too much of her concentration. When the energy eagles dove into the room, she wasn’t able to avoid their claws. Injured, she reached out with her powers to a dangerous degree, drawing the radiation and the eagles to her like moths to a bug zapper. My powers tipped me off to what the end result of that would be. She wouldn’t let me stop her, and her command, Bleach suckered me with his powers and dragged me from the hanger. When we had reached a safer location he restored me, but it was too late to save her. In expressing my displeasure with the sequence of events, I may have gestured at Bleach too intently with a sharp implement, causing him to dash off into the next trap. We saved him, but I’ll admit that my reaction to Frigid’s death made that more complicated than it needed to be.
By the time we finally confronted Metalhead, only Bleach, one member of Extraction Team C (Rick), and myself remained. Compared to the effort it took to reach him, it wasn’t much of a fight. I had Bleach and Rick stash themselves safely and called upon our sadistic host myself. It wasn’t the first time I’ve gone dragon slaying.
The Bucket and the rest of Metalhead’s treasure are ours. So is his lair. If you ask me, though, we paid too high a price for a mere dragon’s horde.
At times like this, I like to remember that our real goal will put us in a position where we can keep this kind of thing from happening. Our fallen will not have died in vain.
Your Leader,
Dr. Photius Callaway
The Killing Man
Tags: Beta, Bleach, Bucket of Pure Water, D.O.C.T.O.R., Dr. Crankpot, dragon, Elite Triad, Extraction Team A, Extraction Team B, Extraction Team C, Frigid, Gamma, greed, Metalhead, Project Bucket Run, traps
From the Desk of the Dictator:
Welcome back from your weekend, everyone.
There was no post from last week, because our computer network was preoccupied installing some software. With our computers down, we put off Project Bucket Run. We’ll resume trying to steal the Bucket of Pure Water later this week.
The software that took over our system originated from the hard drive the Golden Web delivered two weeks ago. Our rivals certainly know our weakness. Give us a nice black box, and Technefarious will start playing it to see what makes it work. If the world ends because of it? “Oops.â€
I can’t fault our computer department for the problem. They hooked up the hard drive to a computer that was not tied into our network. The hard drive immediately hijacked the machine, and the computer department patted themselves on the back for their caution. Unfortunately, the computer was plugged into the wall to power it. No computer can send signals across the power cord. Certainly not without adding some special hardware to the computers sending and receiving the information. There’s no way a regular machine could do that on its own.
Some of the older Technefarious personnel may recognize the problem with that assessment, because we do know a computer that could do exactly that. Technefarious built it. In fact, our recently not-dead-and-still-agitating-to-be-put-back-in-charge founder Dr. Crankpot oversaw the compiling of its code as part of Project Delta AI. It is, of course, Technefarious’s second most famous leader, D.O.C.T.O.R.
It was D.O.C.T.O.R.’s children, the Elite Triad who first figured out what was going on. With the network under assault, they assisted in the counterattack and recognized that the details of the attack strongly resembled the restoration of D.O.C.T.O.R. from one of his backups. When they reported that to me, I ordered a stop to our attempts to disrupt it. As people of science, sometimes you just have to see how things turn out with knowing all the end ahead of time.
And now I have two of my previously deceased predecessors demanding to be reinstated as the head of Technefarious. That’s gratitude for you.
Oddly enough, my first job with Technefarious was to kill D.O.C.T.O.R. after he was already dead. Dr. Occultomancer was in charge at that point, and he told me he was hiring me to ensure that D.O.C.T.O.R. would not be able to reclaim his control over the organization. He was lying. He had somehow discovered how my powers worked and was using my ability to determine how to kill anything to ferret out any lost backups there were of D.O.C.T.O.R. I had to go back to Occultomancer and tell him I would not be able to fulfill the contract since I could not find any. He said he was sorry to hear that, and then explained his real aim was to recover D.O.C.T.O.R. The AI had fallen to Queen Quantum in an attack that had obliterated every copy of him in this universe and time-hardened the destruction to make it nearly impossible to recover him using time-travel. Occultomancer was looking for a way around the issue and had hoped I was that loophole.
Looks like someone else may have found the gap in reality needed to bring D.O.C.T.O.R. back. I wonder who it was?
Have a good week, everyone. Remember, the world is already ours – it just doesn’t realize it yet.
Your Leader,
Dr. Photius Callaway
The Killing Man
From the Desk of the Dictator:
Welcome back from your weekend, everyone.
I suppose I could have taken down Dr. Crankpot’s post from last week, but I’m leaving it up. I think it puts Crankpot’s deficiencies as a leader on display. He’s certainly technically competent, but he hardly shows the temperament of a leader of men, women, robots, and tendril creatures that live in our plumbing.
Shenanigans from the previously deceased former leaders of Technefarious aside, it’s time we implemented another project. Project Bucket Run will consist of two operations performed by Extraction Team C with Extraction Teams A and B serving as backup. Our goal is to steal the Bucket of Pure Water.
The bucket was an ancient attempt to develop a Philosopher Stone. Unlike a proper Philosopher Stone, it cannot create an elixir that extends the drinker’s life. Instead, any liquid poured into the bucket, no matter how foul, will turn into purified (i.e. distilled) water. Not the most earth-shattering power in the world, but it is uniquely suited to fit several of our ongoing needs. Distilled water is used extensively by the science department for chemistry and the occult department for alchemy. Those two departments also produce an impressive amount of hazardous waste that I would prefer to not just leave lying around. No sense in conquering the world if it is a giant dumpsite. Finally, we have at least one world-conquering project that involves an exceptional amount of distilled water, so having the Bucket of Pure Water would be useful that, too.
The bucket also turns lead into gold like a Philosopher Stone, but at a rate of one nugget a month, it’s easier to dig if you want gold that badly.
And yes, a Philosopher Stone does sound like it has the powers of a certain stone of sorcery. That would be because that’s what it actually was. It was rebranded in the American market, because philosopher didn’t sound actiony enough for the bloody Yanks.
There was a decent turnaround on our package exchange with the Golden Web this time. They just sent us a simple external hard drive with some sort of encrypted data on it. The computer department is trying to figure out exactly what is in there.
There was a decent turnaround on our package exchange with the Golden Web this time. They just sent us a simple external hard drive with some sort of encrypted data on it. The computer department is trying to figure out exactly what is in there.
Your Leader,
Dr. Photius Callaway
The Killing Man