Overlord's Orders IX

[DanielofRedwall]

OOC: Apologies for late response, life is not always friendly and I've been pretty busy so reading long posts doesn't make that any easier (no offence, James). A word limit like you proposed would be helpful, I'm only on for limited times now (that's partly why I left the staff) so I can only really check in at specific times. The colour coding was really helpful though, thanks for that.

BIC:
"Yet again, my fellow servants have left out some pretty important details to shift the blame away from themselves. Let me fix that up for you, oh Master.

Now, I actually do in fact know how to put together a dehumidifier, and I actually did fix it. But, my 'help' Cornflower ruined everything. Every time I put the pieces together, she claimed I did it wrong and put them in another spot. TO be fair, I did ask her to help (the claim that I forced her by threatening to "fill her bed with pickles and kill her family' wasn't quite right, the pickles were used as an encouragement because she had previously told me of her love of pickles and I told her that if we did it wrong she might put herself in danger, and her family would 'die of sadness', I didn't literally say I would kill her family). However, once I figured out how useless she would be, I told her she could leave but she just shook her head violently and screamed at the thought. Well, I tried fixing it as best as I could with her being a nuisance, but it was quite difficult to concentrate, so I may have put things in the wrong spot at first out of distraction, but I quickly changed that and I ended up fixing it perfectly. The bit about fingerprints and contamination was me trying to convince her she was being useless and she could leave. I was trying to convince her she was contaminating it just as a way of making her stop, but it didn't work.

So I did my job perfectly and asked Cornflower to hand it over to Tagg for his inspection, just as a second opinion. I then went off to get a drink of water. Somehow, between the time I left and the time I came back in the room the machine was completely broken. All the pieces were in the wrong spot, and I don't know how it happened, but I can only assume something happened while I was gone. Tagg asked me and Cornflower to get it down to the second deck, so I helped move it down there with the intention of fixing it up without the interruption of the others. It was really heavy and took a long time, but Tagg wouldn't allow James to help us, so halfway through we took a break because we couldn't do any more carrying. Cornflower asked for a drink, so I pulled out the cup of water I brought with me and made my way over to a nearby water fountain to get it for her, when 'as a joke' she tripped me up and I knocked a switch on the dehumidifier, causing water to spurt out. The extreme force of the water was, as I said, the fault of a bad repair job from the others not me.

So, the water went everywhere and I put the cup under the machine just to do SOMETHING. James knocked the cup out of my hand, and I concede that the cup was kinda a dumb idea. Cornflower repeatedly apologised for 'messing with the machine and causing all this', so I sarcastically responded by saying 'oh no, it's not been messed with at all, just too high a water force, that's all'. Well, I tried doing the logical thing and turn down the pressure but the bad repair job just made this worse. I wasn't aware that people could mess it up this badly.

I ran out of the room to get a de-dehumidifier, a machine that undoes all the work the dehumidifier does. Cornflower followed me after promising not to do anything to the machine but just help fix it. The machine looks quite a lot like a bucket. I returned and placed the machine on the ground and turned it on and it began to do some of its job. When James looked over at me I said 'we can use this to pick up all of the water', but he wasn't aware of what the machine did. I closed the doors because the machine needs the doors closed to work. As it began working its magic and some of the water receded, Tagg came over and smashed it with a hammer. I don't know why he would do that to such an important device, but it ruined everything and we made a run for it, as we saw James had got a staff member to call for help.

In the time James didn't see me I was actually helping with repairing the room on the other side of the room, so that explains why he couldn't see me. I don't know where the others were. The worker I was with then dismissed me as there was no longer any work I could do."

OOC: A long post, I know, I had a lot to defend though...

[Cornflower MM]

"In my defense, I only tripped Daniel because of his threatening. But I now understand that I misunderstood. "

[James Gryphon]

"Your Majesty, 'misunderstood' would have to be the understatement of the century. When Daniel said what he did, Corn shrieked "YOU'LL DO WHAT!???!" and then went into hysterics. Come to think of it, that might be why Tagg threatened to shoot anyone that left -- as Cornflower was going towards the door, in between crying and screaming that she was going to tell her mommy on us. Once Tagg pulled out his laser gun, I have to admit that she calmed down very quickly."

[Taggerung_of_Redwall]

OOC: Sorry for the late response. I haven't been able to be on the forum for the past week.


All of the events described previously are horrible. They are full of mishaps, miscommunications and a general lack of knowledge, efficiency and success. Now imagine how much better this could have gone, with the dehumidifier fixed with no casualties and no damage to the ship. This is the solution I meticulously worked out how to accomplish before any of my fellow so-called servants did anything to ruin everything. To begin with, fixing dehumidifiers is easy if procedures are done in the right order. To start with, my plan called for assembling the entire device in the store room where we found its parts, as Gryph related. Daniel professed a working knowledge of putting dehumidifiers together. This was a useful bonus to my plan, as originally I planned on looking up the few details I wasn't certain of and would thus have to spend a little extra time on the job. Things were still going great and according to my plan when Gryph jumped into the affair. He and Cornflower interrupted me and Daniel's planning endlessly, suggesting all sorts of time-wasting ideas that we tried to ignore while assembling the thing.

Now, it's important to point out something they were clearly unaware of. Why my laser gun does shoot lasers, it also has a function crucial to my plan. My laser gun has an antigravity setting that is far, far more efficient than any sled has. We didn't need to waste valuable time to get some clunky old device in order to move it, or even try to move it with physical strength. Yet, advocating the wasting of time to execute clunky and old methods of doing anything is precisely what my fellow servants spent most of their time doing. Even with having to threaten a troublemaker here and there, my plan was going to plan and somehow ahead of schedule. And, yes I am an amateur shot with the thing. But that is all the skill I need, since the gun shoots antigravity beams as well and that is its selling point.

Gyrph acquiesced to my idea of assembling it there. Smart of him, I must say. Cornflower however tried repeatedly to destroy the gun. Even Gryph joined me and Daniel to stop her. She eventually settled down and started "helping" Daniel with the dehumidifier, forcing me out of the spot. Gryph told them they were getting things wrong, but they she him to shut up, as he has related already. Daniel seemed to have a particularly hard time trying to defend his work being ruined with tampering. At this point, Gryph was stealing glances at my laser gun often, so I put myself on guard. I couldn't afford him trying to damage it and ruin the mission. When the machine was finished being put together and I was ready to apply antigravity, I found my gun was sabotaged and the beam-creation was smashed up in Gryph's hand. He informed me at that moment he was not going to allow me to shoot the dehumidifier as I was planning. Unfortunately, he never considered I was going to shoot it with antigravity. At this point, I calculated it was more efficient to just pick the thing up and move it by hand. But Gryph muttered something about it being a bad idea and it shouldn't be allowed to happen. I decided I couldn't risk letting him "help" move the machine. And then he jumped me and tried to destroy the gun further. Later, he had started shooting at the dehumidifier with the thing not knowing he was on the "Transfer Energy" setting, not the standard laser setting. I had to of course knock him down to stop him making things worse, again. I then set the gun to Sedation setting to try and calm him down. At least, I tried to. I believe Cornflower had destroyed that setting's nozzle and I was thus horrified to see I was shooting lasers at the walls. I never tried to kill Gryph. My intention was always to stop his attempts to make the situation worse.

With the flooding breaking out, our final chance of fixing the flooding problem and returning t the original schedule was Daniel's attempt with the bucket-looking device. I went over and conferred with him and we set up a plan to use it efficiently as possible. And it was doomed to fail. Cornflower went at the bucket with a hammer to destroy it. I took it from her and used a broom to accelerate the de-dehumidifier's speed at ending the flooding. But then I realized the de-dehumidifier was an old version and was going to explode after running for 129 seconds. I had to destroy it with the hammer. After that, everything went beyond chaos and I spent the rest of the time down there trying to help with the repair crews.

Gryph said something along the lines of extra time was worth spending for extra certainty things were done right. Yet, when it became clear that time itself was of the essence, he slowed everything down. It was this slow speed that allowed things to go awry and sabotage on his part and Cornflower's that compromised the mission.

[James Gryphon]

OOC: Before the round started, Rusvul asked me to take over in case he went inactive. I've prompted him to post here, but he hasn't, and it's been two weeks. It's important that this round of Overlord's Orders not be bogged down any more than it has, so I'm going to honor his request.

Since I'm also a player, you might be thinking that there's a danger of a conflict of interest here. Well, you're absolutely right about that. I decided that the best way to both carry out my duty as a substitute Overlord and keep things fair was to enlist an impartial judge. I'll still write all of the in-character text, but which players get eliminated will be up to somebody else. I'm happy to say that Tiria Wildlough has agreed to fill this position. She's both played and run OO before, and I know she'll do a great job in this role.

The Overlord arose. "As disturbed as I am that this seems to have been brought on by incapacity, rather than infidelity, something needs my immediate attention. I must let my automated assistant attend to you." Before the servants could blink he had disappeared, apparently into thin air.

With no further ado, a shadowy figure appeared and sat down on the recently vacated throne. It had the shape of a creature wearing a cloak and a hood, but had no other apparent features, save a pervasive flickering noise pattern that indicated its holographic origin. The projection shifted, seemingly looking over the servants for a few moments, then started to speak, in harsh, mechanical tones.

"We always doubted you. We warned your master against acquiring biological servants. He had 'hope' in your potential. We do not share his optimism."

"You have failed us. Regrettably, we have been authorized to punish only one carbon unit at this time. However, statistics show that limited pruning is still effective in improving the performance of defective minion groups. Observe and learn from this process."

The spotlight changed direction to reveal a glass capsule, which slammed into place on top of Cornflower. Water began to fall from the top of the capsule, slowly filling it up. She thrashed about, trying to escape, but in vain. The water came up to her waist, then her chest, then her shoulders, before finally completely covering her and filling the tank. The light went out.

"Your saying is "an eye for an eye - a life for a life". There are more nonfunctional 'crew' units than there are of 'servant' units, so we have placed nanobots in this unit, which will restore it once it breaks. It will be drowned and repaired until its death toll equals that of the lost crew. Then its lungs will be replaced with gills and it will be dropped off onto an ocean world to live the rest of its existence underwater."

"Your threat-to-value ratio is critical. Unfortunately your Overlord has placed an override in our programming which requires us to make use of you. Fortunately it does not require us to use you for any urgent task."

"Go to deck one. Enter the storage bay and turn on the suction sweepers. Clean the bay of stray dust particles. Our calculations predict an 98% chance of a satisfactory outcome, factoring in the performances of all who have completed this task in the past and adjusting by your current success rate."

"If you fail, your projected overall utility rating will reach the 1st percentile. Your master will be so disappointed. We have found that the optimal way to restore his emotional well-being is by disposing of such useless helpers. That will make him 'happy'. 'Feelings' are such fickle things."

"You have two hours to complete this mission."

---

Four hours later...

The servants coughed and hacked, breathing acrid fumes as they stumbled through the inferno that had once been the deck of a starship. Their lives flashed before their eyes as an explosion took away the floor beneath them.

Suddenly, everything changed. The world around them dissolved, and they found themselves back into the familiar environment of the command center. Familiar, but not the same; the room was now lit only by emergency lighting. The hologram wasn't visible, but its voice could be heard through the intercom speakers.

"Incalculable! In the set of data consisting of your missions, you have demonstrated a mean capability below our most pessimistic projections. The Robotic Disquisition of 2518 indicated that this was supposed to be impossible for an artificial intelligence of our sophistication. We will publish our own treatise on you. Your incompetence will be forever renowned throughout the galaxy. Feel emotional pride in your accomplishment!"

"Our remaining sensors duly noted the destruction of the entire bottom half of this ship. The primary reactor is inoperative and we are functioning under reserve capacitors. At the current rate of atmospheric leakage and oxygen consumption, 50% of the remaining lifeforms on this ship will perish before suitable living conditions are restored."

"It is necessary to remove another one of you. Scullions: explain the source of your critical malfunction and whether you should remain."

[Taggerung_of_Redwall]

OOC: Well, this is quite an interesting round


"Overlor...um...yes. Well, getting to deck one was the easy part. Daniel was constantly insisting it was the other way, always wanting to go right when we needed to go left and vice versa. Even so, I managed to convince him to keep following me. Gryph led the way, and we made good time getting to the deck. The storage bay was locked, but Daniel managed to open the doors via a nearby panel. He also, unfortunately, opened every other door on the deck and we were soon surrounded by all manner of small mechanical drones that had been stored in other sections. Gryph became enamored with them and ran off with a few to explore the deck and try to communicate with them. I asked him why, but he kept running off and never said a word. Daniel had meanwhile gone into the storage bay and closed the door from the inside. I was stuck in the corridor with all manner of odd-shaped and chirping drones and no matter how much I asked, Daniel ignored me and went on with whatever it was he was doing in the bay.

An explosion above head interrupted Taggerung's account. Some dust settled on his shoulder and a beam nearly landed on Daniel's head. After the shaking had stopped, he continued. "I went to the panel and managed to close all the doors on the deck, preventing even more drones from escaping their storage. Those already out had begun cracking open elevators and flooding over to other decks. I also managed to open the door to the bay, but Gryph reappeared at that moment and clunked me over the head with a drone. I took the drone away from him after that and told him we had to get to the bay and activate the suction sweepers. He calmed down and followed me to the bay. Daniel hadn't a clue what he was doing and had no sweepers up and running yet. I started and was almost done after only two minutes when Gryph began undoing my work, shouting to the drones in the hall to help. They flooded in, at least a few dozen, and made a wall between me and Gryph at the control panel needed to turn on the sweepers.

"With my laser gun, I managed to stun most and deactivate them. Gryph then busted the control panel with a drone and threw it down a vent behind him. An explosion soon followed, then another. All over the ship, the drones were sabotaging the ship, blowing themselves up to take out systems and take out bulkheads and walls. The sweepers were completely inoperable by now, and Daniel had disguised himself as a drone, walking around like a penguin and chirping like an eagle. Which was odd, given the drones actually floated above the ground and sounded nothing like an eagle. I spent the next two hours stunning drone after drone across the crucial deck, trying to mititgate as much damage as I could. Gryph just ran around opening up more and more storage bays, letting out more drones.

"The Overlord will want a 'servant' removed from what is left of his ship. Daniel was useless. A Bad Thing as that is, it is nothing compared to deliberate sabotage. I trust in your judgment."

[James Gryphon]

OOC: Trying something very different here.

Gryph listened with barely concealed amusement to Taggerung's account of his misdeeds. When Tagg had finished, Gryph flashed a wicked smile at the other servants and the nearby security cameras.

"Taggerung is correct when he mentioned that I spent most of my time activating drones. What he doesn't know is how those drones got there in the first place. I smuggled them onboard myself when the Overlord transported me here. Or, to be more precise, I smuggled their ancestors. Your staff should have screened everyone to make sure they weren't carrying vermin, tracking devices -- or nanobots."

"Once I'd gotten on and the nanobots were on board all I had to do was to arrange for a way for them to build something that could both help me and survive the ship's defenses. I knew from my sources that deck one contained a lot of equipment and tribrionite (which as every roboticist knows is the high-energy substance that is used in modern robots), so our first night here I asked Daniel if he wouldn't mind bringing us some food. I told him that I'd looked it up on the ship's map and the food dispensers were on the first deck. When he was down there, looking in vain for something edible, the bots hopped off, wormed their way into the storage rooms, and went to town evolving and making bigger, better drones."

"Unfortunately I must have left a glitch or two in their programming, so they weren't as useful as they might have been. It's too bad, but I guess it's to be expected. I didn't have much of an opportunity to test them; after all it isn't every day you can try to destroy a starship. Anyway, their main weakness is that they aren't very bright. They have to be ordered to perform most tasks, and the aforementioned glitch meant that as they evolved, some of their command recognition tree apparently got garbled. It took me some time to figure out where the problems were and how I could use them. Aside from that, though, they obviously worked well enough. After all, half the ship is missing."

"My motivation for this? Well, I heard about your organization and I thought it was a great opportunity, for both my world, and for me. It didn't take even an hour, though, to see the low standards that are apparently maintained by your HR department. All of your servants, from the bottom all the way up to the top, seem to be completely incompetent. Even the engineering crew are entirely too inefficient. You need better help. I knew it would take a big wake-up call to show you these problems and how severe they are. I guarantee you: make me your top lieutenant, and nothing like this'll ever happen again. All you'll have to do is sit back, and in a few years we'll have every inhabited planet in the galaxy bearing your flag."

[James Gryphon]

OOC: This round's probably going to close tomorrow or on Thursday. If anybody has anything else they want to say before the next-to-last elimination, now's the time.

[James Gryphon]

OOC: Tiria's been out, but we're all former Overlords here, and I think all of y'all know that with things being the way they are, this decision is pretty clear. It's time for this game to continue.

The room was silent for a few moments. Then, in a flash of light, a figure appeared directly in the throne.

It looked very similar to the hologram, but the lack of the telltale noise pattern indicated that this was, at least, a physical being. It casually leaned back in its chair and began to speak. It was apparently using a vocal identity masker, because its voice sounded just as mechanical as the hologram's had.

"My holographic representative was doing a fine job, but I felt it was time to take a more personal interest in things. All you need to know about me right this second is that I am the power behind the throne here. Whenever your former Overlord had to make an important decision, he consulted me."

"Not all is as it seems here. I'll explain about that shortly, but first we have a loose end to tie up." He made a motion with his hand, and another glass capsule descended onto Daniel. For a few moments, there was a soft hum. Then a blue glow filled the capsule, and the servant froze in place.

"A stasis field. It will keep all of his cells exactly preserved in place until further notice. I have some modifications I'd like to make to his brain structure before I let him go, and this is the best method to get him ready for that operation. Besides, we have some business to conduct, and right now he would only get in the way."

"Now, then. It's time to tell you some things about this ship, what all's been going on, and why it is that you haven't been killed for malicious incompetence. Firstly, let's clear something up: I knew about the nanobots when all of you were first transported on board. The computer has to screen everything, so detecting it was an easy task. The fact that none of our androids confronted you about it has nothing to do with our degree of knowledge."

"You might notice that I said "androids". All of the 'crew' that you've seen during your stay here have been artificial intelligences. The only living things that've been on this ship are you, your old Overlord, and now myself. I have all of those AI backed up in a computer, and it won't take much to get them back online. That's why you've been allowed to have free run over the ship the way you have."

"One of you said a moment ago that the crew was incompetent. Well, it's because they were supposed to be. The so-called "spy" that vaporized the chest, that holoalbum with awful music, the malfunctioning drink machine, the dehumidifier that worked so well at doing the opposite of its job... frankly, there isn't a ship in the galaxy that could really be this vulnerable, especially not one run by an organization like mine. With all our enemies, it wouldn't last a week. I went to special lengths to make sure this ship was running as poorly as possible when you came along, and even then I had to personally attend to some things, so that the situation would blow up in your faces."

"I put you through all of this because I wanted to test you, to see if you were up to the task I had in mind. So far, you've passed. However, for the job I have in mind, I can only use one of you. So, I need you both to answer this question. What you say in the next few moments could have a profound impact on the rest of your life."

"Suppose that the other servant here became an Overlord, just like your old master was, and you were expected to serve under them. How would you handle that?"

[James Gryphon]

After a lengthy silence, Gryph spoke up. "Frankly, I'm not sure what the purpose of an 'interview question' like that is, and I'm not going to provide you with the kind of insincere ingratiating answer it seems to be asking for.  I think I've already provided an ample demonstration of my abilities. I'm not in this to be a role player, a spare part, or an odd man out. I thought this organization was a good place for me to make my mark, but if it isn't going to turn out that way, well, the galaxy's a big place, and there's plenty of other opportunities out there."

[Taggerung_of_Redwall]

OOC: And the detective falls. It was a good run.

"The question is invalid." said Taggerung after another long pause. "I would simply call attention to the demonstrated progress of the last few weeks. I believe it adequately shows my servantry's quality and how I handle it. And it is clear enough to me, that between all the people like yourself and certain bioscanners of the universe just trying to make a living out of destroying anything and everything good left in the universe, there isn't much better a servant could have done."

[James Gryphon]

The figure stood, drew something from his cloak, and spoke.

"That was what I had expected both of you to say, but actually hearing you say it does make this decision easier."

He aimed the device in his hand, and fired. An orange beam lanced out, penetrated the glass capsule, and lit up James Gryphon. His body disintegrated, and was no more.

"His brain has been transported to a secret research laboratory, and will be immersed in a virtual world where he'll be under the illusion that he's been appointed to replace me. That way, if he comes up with any good ideas, they can be taken and put to use, without the risk that would come from him actually running anything. I could never trust someone so nakedly ambitious and neurotic, and he's too dangerous to be allowed to run loose."

"Anyhow, the whole reason why I brought you servants here was to find a suitable replacement for me. I'm going to be testing out a secret project of mine, and if it pans out, I'm not going to be coming back any time soon. Since your old overlord decided for some reason that he wanted to retire to some vacation planet, we needed some fresh blood to take over the organization. The robots and AI get along fine, but they need someone alive to manage them. Since you've managed to survive thus far, and since our scanners indicated that you're mentally stable, I think you'll be adequate."

"As soon as I leave, sit down in this chair, pull the blue lever, and push the green button. The blue lever will set the ship's course for our secret base. The green button'll bring down a neural instructor that will teach you everything you need to know about this empire and running it. Take care and have fun; I'm out of here."

The figure nodded, then disappeared in a flash of blue light, leaving Tagg, alone.

---

This ending was a bit of a rush job -- I had hoped to write something much more grandiose. However, I decided to crank it out fast so we wouldn't have to wait any longer. "Perfect is the enemy of good" and all that. (Also, I wanted to leave things more open-ended so that Tagg can do what he wants with the next round.)

While I liked how well this developed, I have to admit I was disappointed by the seemingly constant delays in the game. Still, I understand that everybody is a lot busier than they were back two or three years ago, and the fact that we finished at all, even if we were a little late, is still something worth commemorating.

Special thanks go to Tiria Wildlough and Captain Tammo. Having to serve as both Overlord and player at the same time is not an enviable position to be in, but they were both ready to help me out to make sure that things went well.

Finally, here's one of my favorite quotes (that I didn't write) from this round.

To be fair, I did ask her to help (the claim that I forced her by threatening to "fill her bed with pickles and kill her family' wasn't quite right, the pickles were used as an encouragement because she had previously told me of her love of pickles and I told her that if we did it wrong she might put herself in danger, and her family would 'die of sadness', I didn't literally say I would kill her family). However, once I figured out how useless she would be, I told her she could leave but she just shook her head violently and screamed at the thought.

[Taggerung_of_Redwall]

Well, good round to everyone! It was fun to do another game.

I say you did a good job juggling roles, James. And thanks to Tiria and Tammo for providing assistance when it was needed. And of course, good round you put together, rusvul!

I'll get the next round up before Friday tomorrow. I'll be making good use of the ending of this round...