From time to time, everyone has fantasized about how they would run the world if they took it over, and I was no exception. However, very few people also were able to predict all the problems that came with having to run even a small fraction of said world. Sadly, I wasn't much of an exception here either.

The instant I got back to the city where I had killed the Blue Dragon, I immediately burrowed myself into the ground. Despite the sheer mobility and firepower afforded by my battleship chassis, the fact was that I would be needing way more power generation than it could provide if I wanted to build enough infrastructure to hold together an entire freaking country!

Mostly, I let the facility-building run on autopilot while I focused on churning out VTOL transports stuffed with Clockwork Knights and my Infiltrator Cyborgs, though with the way I was about to be using them they wouldn't be infiltrating so much as providing a face that didn't immediately send the locals running in terror. Within thirty minutes, the flying machines were launching from the massive sunken hangar in the ground by the hundreds, with one shuttle landing at each town that I found.

There was one major reason that I was doing all this so quickly, and that was because I needed on the ground information about the territory I had just de-dragoned as quickly as I could possibly get it. I wanted to get the people here to the point that they could beat every single Grand Dragon that came at them into a pulp even without my help, and that meant I needed to proliferate my tech-base as hard as I possibly could. In order to do that, I would need to know where I was even going to be starting.

The information that was coming back was extremely disheartening, and I should really take it piece by piece if I wanted a good shot at explaining it correctly.

Let's start with the realm formerly ruled by the Blue Dragon; in a lot of ways, this place was one of the better off locations. There was a coherent national identity between all the various towns, an official system of communication (if heavily slanted towards propaganda), a semi-functional educational system able to turn out a good number of Mages, and very few bandits or monsters running free to torment the innocent. On the other hand, the educational system did everything in its power to stifle innovation on pain of death, the law enforcement was the Drake Guard, only the highest tier of society had access to healthcare (by which I mean healing magic), and sanitation was a joke.

There were about eight other areas like that where the Grand Dragons had taken an unusually intense interest in building a power-structure around themselves, but for the most part the Dragons had been content to simply pummel anyone who looked like they were building up a power base and take anything they wanted by force. In places like these, conditions were even worse. Large cities were non-existent aside from the Dragon's dens, all manner of scum and villainy roamed the countryside, and individual villages often viewed themselves as having zero common interest with their neighbors. On the other hand, it was only in these places that I was able to find Adventurer Towns, populated by monster-hunters and magic users of all stripes.

Much to my shame, it was only after getting a pretty good picture of how things were going for the humanoid species out there that I thought to check on the other Dungeons around these parts, recalling the Drake Guard's policy of repeated and thorough plundering.

Oh, the Dungeons in the places where the Grand Dragons really didn't give a shit about statecraft were doing rather well for themselves, if rather confused when some of my Clockworks showed up to give them the news and ask them how things had been going. It was the Dungeons in Regno that really infuriated me.

The first sign that anything was off was that the Drake Guard had universally vacated their bases outside every single Dungeon, but things simply got worse from there. Time after time, my creations marched through shattered corridors littered with th corpses of slain Dungeon inhabitants, every single item of value having long since been carted off. Stone walls and floors had been smashed and entire family units of Goblins and Fae had been put to the sword, leaving only a grim tableau of devastation. However, it wasn't until I thought to check why none of the Dungeons had talked to me that I discovered the depths of the atrocity that had just been committed.

Deep at the bottom of every single Dungeon, where a living, personable core once rested on a pedestal, there were only fragments. All across Regno, the Drake Guard had smashed right through the savaged defenses of the Dungeons they had spent years torturing to extract powerful artifacts and magic, and slain the being bringing the structure to life. Only once did my Clockworks encounter a Drake Guard contingent while they were still inside their victim's halls; I left a single survivor to interrogate, before checking to see if I had been too late here as well. I had.

How in the world are you even supposed to react when you find out that not only has a genocide just been committed against your own species, but also that you didn't even notice it happening until it was too late to stop it? Silently, I gave the member of the Drake Guard I was interrogating a carefully measured dose of gas-form Sodium-24; they wouldn't notice anything until long after I was done interrogating them, but neither would they be in the world much longer to keep spreading misery.

Once that unpleasantness was done and I had turned the man loose to die an agonizing death in a few days, I pretty much broke down at the enormity of what I could have prevented if I had just changed the order I had done things in. Quickly, I delegated temporary command and construction authority to my twenty highest-ranked Gremlins, ordering them to set about installing proper sanitation, travel and communication infrastructure immediately. That done, I retreated into myself to grieve. I really needed some time to process what had just happened, or I was likely to do something extremely counterproductive like set my Clockwork Knights to interrogate the entire population for Drake Guard loyalties.

[hr][/hr]

Clockwork Knight #0824971 was operating severely outside their originally designed mission parameters. Said parameters normally amounted to excessively lethal combat in which it was perfectly acceptable to reduce everything in sight to so much radioactive slag. Instead, #0824971 was acting as a visible bringer of good news and security to the people of a moderately large town near a river, a task where nuclear-powered plasma weapons were most emphatically not acceptable to use.

Currently, the human-like mediator platforms were meeting with the town's council of aldermen in the combination church and meeting-house that dominated the center of the town. #0824971 and the other Clockwork Knights had meanwhile needed to stay outside, after one of their number had crashed through the floor and into the basement due to the sheer weight of the metal making up their bodies. They had of course offered to repair the damage after hauling said Clockwork Knight out of the basement, but the whole incident was largely being glossed over by everyone involved.

Still, this left several bulky and imposing combat automatons standing in plain view of everyone in the town, most of whom looked really quite fearful regarding the whole thing. Given what these people had previously been subjected to, #0824971 figured it made sense. Their only frame of reference for what a government did was thugs backed up by a nuclear-powered dragon. The fact that the town's Drake Guard contingent had promptly been forced to either disband or be arrested for a later investigation into their actions likely hadn't made a very good impression either.

It was after an hour of general tension regarding the whole affair that events began to really occur. A woman was walking by with a small child in tow, carefully averting her gaze and gripping the young girl's hand tightly in order to keep them from escaping. The blonde-haired child in question had no such fears, calling out "Mommy I wanna go look at the shiny people!" the instant she saw #0824971 and their fellow Clockwork Knights.

#0824971 watched impassively as a brief tug of war ensued between the two, the child trying to slip out of her mother's grasp, and said mother desperately attempting to hold her child back. Ultimately, the child won and ran straight towards Clockwork Knight #0824971, her mother following desperately behind.

For the briefest of moments, the automaton measured the threat level presented by the child in order to determine an appropriate response. It took only a second in order for #0824971 to prepare the appropriate countermeasure to ensure their safety, even as the unknown child closed to within arm's reach with the extremely lethal combat automaton. The resulting encounter was over as swiftly as it began, as #0824971 offered the child an apple and asked "What is your name, little one?" crouching down as they did so.

The child snatched the fruit out of the Clockwork Knight's hand almost instantly, answering "My name's Emerald! What's yours?" before she swiftly set about demolishing the delicious fruit she had been given.

Clockwork Knight #0824971 pondered this for a few moments. They had a designation, yes, which kept them from being confused with other Clockwork Knights, but that was different from a name. A name implied identity and individuality, concepts that were quite foreign to Clockwork Knight #0824971. Eventually, the automaton answered "I was not provided with a name."

Emerald looked up from the fruit she had mostly consumed by now, before saying "Your dad must have forgotten something then." She didn't get to finish what she was about to say, as that was the exact instant Emerald's mother caught up to her, and hauled her away.

For the next several minutes, #0824971 found their thoughts persistently looping back around to that brief encounter with Emerald, and the idea of names as a signifier of personal identity. It was this persistent line of thought that lead the Clockwork Knight in question to make their first ever decision not dictated by the ethical framework they were imprinted with, the directives from the Command Network, or even the necessities of combat. With great solemnity, #0824971 sent a message into the Command Net that would have repercussions they hadn't even considered.

Clockwork Knight #0824971: I am requesting a name and cosmetic alterations to facilitate an individual identity.