[Text post] Aftermath of the Automatons...
Automatons took over my spire while I was off at the Black Sword Academy, my old stomping grounds, checking out scrolls. A nice artificer offered them to me because of the cleaning goblin strike in the city, free of charge, as part of research and development. Well, they don’t clean, they threw my coffee on the floor, and they started going out over orbnet and called others of their kind to live in my home. I tried to destroy them with some spells I knew, but the artificer who made them developed their components in such a way that typical mana-form spells just slide right off of them. Frantic, I made a call over the orb for assistance.
One helpful mage suggested giving them cleaning supplies. One of them got so upset it just fell to pieces, but this angered the rest of them into attacking with lances. I got my barrier up, but because they surrounded me, took my staff, and snagged my spare orb, all I could do was stand there while they charged me. Around then, someone hit a nearby spire with an enormous fireball. From where, I don’t know, but a ping on my orb informed me a mage responding to my plea launched it.
On the recommendation of Levicius Laskatar, I modified a simple curse I had to function on anima instead of mana waveforms. That sent a curse throughout their entire horde, but it only REALLY effected the one I hit, causing it to crumble. But, I lowered my barrier to cast it and got speared through the leg before I got it back up. That made them so mad they just started destroying everything I owned. A dozen powerful mages either projected themselves or physically showed up only to join the automatons in their dancing, or to just stand there and say rude things to me specifically. This is like going to a hospital and a nurse telling you that you deserved to get hit by that drunk driver.
The Scholar of Endless Knowledge got into my messages and sent their slaver army to start rounding the automatons up, and a fierce battle began. Confused about allegiances, another powerful mage sent skeleton warriors to fight the slavers. I gave up on mediation when Zeeth the Blood Mage cast through dimensions to best one of the automatons. It was then my landlord, Lyle Blackboot (called that because of his prosthetic leg) came in. Zeeth’s spell missed, hit my barrier, ricocheted, and hit Mr. Blackboot in the black boot. A chain reaction from different wave forms dissolved him and the guy with him into ashy goop. But, because the landlord got gibbed, the barrier over the spire disappeared.
Explosion rocked everything as the spire burned to ashes thanks to a mage “heeding” my call for help. They called down incendiary fireball mortars that basically leveled the local area. A lot of Rhyhan City has tons of barriers and wards, but with the landlord transmogrified into something past tense, the barrier over the building dropped, and everything started coming down.
Just then, Ekaitz Diaz Sombra Sorcerer Bard Wilder Rubato stepped up from the onlookers and complimented the automatons, which singlehandedly calmed them down. The boss automaton agreed to an armistice, as did the surviving standard models. The Scholar of Endless Knowledge and many other mages picked up some of the automatons and left for parts unknown. The aurors, paladins, and antimagic warriors have taken up bounties to go after the arsonist, but I don’t expect anything to come of it. A strong enough mage is harder to track down than a fart in the wind. And, if that mage summoned BMW-sized fireballs from a distance of dimensions, I think the standard PD of Rhyhan City will get nowhere.
I issued a bounty for the artificer, but other than that, I’m now homeless. I have some chests of emeralds and diamonds, shelves of gold ingots, and a few dozen magical artifacts shored up in case of emergency, but the housing economy is so terrible in this city that the only way I’m getting a spire of my own is to fight the whole city… including hundreds of other powerful mages who also have their eyes set on exquisite waterfront properties and looming stone towers. This is where I have a good gig, nice coworkers, access to libraries of arcane knowledge, and a support network that only some bards have. I’d rather not leave.
Especially since I want to see if the cursed demonic monarch leagues beneath the city ever returns to its dark, infernal glory, because if it does, then I can definitely cut-in and find a nice spire of my own.
##This ends the First Arc of Lucas, the Spellblade of Rhyhan
Chapter 1 - Introduction to Rhyhan
Chapter 2 - My new job + the Great Conflagration
Event - Have you seen Mulrock the Magnificent?
Chapter 5 - The Search for Mulrock
Chapter 6 - Uncalled-for behavior
Chapter 7 - Adventurers and Automatons
Posted Jun 8, 2026, 5:04 AM UTC