Frank keeps walking, briskly, saying, "Why Nicholas, you sound like there is something you're hiding. You don't have a girl there do you? A pretty one? Well gents what do you say we go in unannounced and scare the living hell out of her?"

The three men chuckle awkwardly.

Wait three?

Yes, something was most definitely going on here, and it was dawning on Frank that, perhaps, all three men were in on it.

Suddenly,

"Hahaha, oh, you got me my lord!" chuckled Nicholas.

"No, actually, please, do continue on to my workshop" said Nicholas, who was now, for some odd reason, very very confident and pleased with the decision.

"Okay, I'm sick of this bullshit." Frank slapped Nicholas. Hard. He then cast Convincing on all three, saying "Tell me what the fuck is going on, NOW!"

The three men all turned and faced him.

Baes spoke first.

"My lord, I am guilty of but one lie. My prototype heart is not properly operational yet, it's a failure of a work thus far. I am sorry my lord." said Baes, his voice flat and monotone.

Baes' eyes filled with tears, and he ran away. He was truly innocent.

Nicholas spoke next.

"My lord, I am guilty of lying to you.." says Nicholas, his voice very low, and sinister.

Nicholas and James step up to Frank.

"We will tell you the truth, lord Frank.. THROUGH BLADE AND FLAME!" They screech, drawing steam pistols and rapiers.

'Note to self, apologise to Baes.' thought Frank as he drew his sword. Casting Empathy upon the two, he saw the way that they fought, learned their secrets, exposed thir techniques to his mind's eye. All of this took but a moment, and as they came upon him he was ready, parrying and riposteing in perfect counter-balance to their unique styles. He aimed not to kill, but only to wound, hoping to clear some truth out of all this mess.

The men fought frantically, swords back and forth, but Frank was always one step ahead. Slashing and nicking them with his blade, but frank  hadn't noticed the pistols in either mans hand.

BOOM!
CRACK!

Two shots were fired, one from each pistol. As the rounds were pushed out the chambers of the guns, the vents on the side of the guns hissed angrily with steam, as the pistols worked hard to load the next bullets into the chamber.

With harsh close range ferocity, the bullets tore into franks flesh. As Frank winced in pain, the man slashed at him with their rapiers. He was bleeding quite a bit, and in a lot of pain.

Frank knew how the men would fight, in what manner they would strike, how ferociously, and at what openings, but Frank was not skilled enough in combat to currently interpret all the information correctly.
He was able to parry the attacks from the rapiers, but if he did not start fighting to kill, they would kill him first.

((Frank is a fragile god, and must use the full strength and ferocity of his strikes to fight))
This message was last edited by the GM at 10:25, Fri 16 Oct 2009.

Frank clutched at his bullet wounds, letting out something halfway between a sigh and a scream. In blind anger, he blocked the two men's attacks and sent out a furious swipe at each man in turn, attempting to sever their gun hands from their arms. Knowing how they would react, he then lashed out a furious kick at Nicholas and turned his blade on James, cutting deeply into his sword arm shoulder.

"FUCK!" screamed Nicholas.

Frank had severed the mans gun hand, it fell to the floor with a heavy thud, blood going everywhere.

With swift movement, Frank kicked Nicholas right in the knee cap, breaking it, and the man dropped to the ground, shivering with life threatening pain.

"AHHH!" screeched James, as Frank plunged his sword into his shoulder, slicing furiously, and severing his whole right arm. James fell to the ground beside Nicholas, clutching at his shoulder.

Both men were lying dead still, silent, bleeding heavily.

Frank knelt down beside the men. "Now neither of you are going to die just yet, unless of course you make me angry again. You know however that I am capable of summoning help. I can save your life, or I can take it. Now tell me what the FUCK is going on."

He retrieved Nicholas' sword from his hand and held it to his throat, doing similar to James with Frank's own sword.

James was the first to speak.

"The machine god will rise, Frank. The cult will not wither at the idle hand of your petty ruling. La Machina De Rose, will rise against you, and you will face your abyssmal defeat at the hand of our god.." moaned James, blood spilling from his mouth.

Suddenly, Nicholas lashed out for his severed hand, obtaining the pistol.

"James, you fucking FOOL! You've compromised our work, and you've comprimised our plans! Your sacrfice to La Machina De Rose will be duly noted" spluttered Nicholas, and with that, he shot James in the head, and then, turned the gun on himself.

The two dead men lay before Frank.

"Oh, is that all?" said Frank.

He stood and wandered back to his manor, where he took a bath and instructed his maidbot to get his workbench ready. Luckily he had expected something like this to happen, and had prepared for it. Out of an old drawer in his desk he retrieved a small machine. Once he had activated it, he called for his maidbot and watched as she came in and simply deactivated.

When he had funded the creation of bots, he thought that giving sentience to a worker class would reap the same rewards as having a human working class; rebellion. So he had secretly installed a fuse in the workings of the original bots, and made sure that it remained in the blueprints. This fuse caused every circuit in the bot to close down, and could be operated by the sound of a high pitched C. He had then created a machine that was able to produce a high pitched middle C, the exact pitch needed therefore to shut down any bot that might turn against him.

He took apart the maidbot, whose name was Jenny, and then went upstairs and apologised to the other servant bots that she was dead, an unfortunate accident, and that they could all have the rest of the week off.

The bots looked quite shocked, but were easily dismissed.

Frank was not disturbed in his upper chamber of the Manor.

Determined to set this right, Frank stood in the southern facing window that he favoured the most, and regarded his realm. Something must be done, yes SOMETHING. There was of course, the obvious route. Kill all the bots. This would leave the realm in ruin and economic depression, and Frank would not have that. Total bot freedom was another option, but it would end similarly. And what was this about an uprising of some other god?

Determined to bring a swift end to this, Frank set out, this time asking his two best bot-guards to accompany him. To begin with, he meandered about the countryside, seeming to go no-where in particular. During this time he spoke with the guards about petty nonsenses, suddenly realising that they had friends and colleagues, that whoever in the end had created their complex brain must be congratulated. After a time of this, he sat on a bench, regarding the two bots in front of him.

"What are your thoughts on the fact that you, the bots, are the workers and that we, the humans, reap all the benefits of your work?"

Frank and his guard bots set off from Franks manor, and roamed The Curious Arris. Frank pondered heavily on the bots, especially looking at the two that were with him. Frank thought heavily over the concept of Artificial Intellegence, and how these bots were able to conspire against he, who had created them.

When questioned, one bot spoke on both their behalf.

"We couldn't care less, Lord Frank. We do our jobs happily, day by day." said the guard bot, the other one nodding in agreement.

This was all, largely irrelevant after all, for James and Nicholas - who Frank now knew belonged to some cult called 'La Machina De Rose' - were human engineers, and this had nothing to do with the worker bots, nor their sense of AI.
This message was last edited by the GM at 04:16, Sat 17 Oct 2009.

Frank pondered on this point. He stood once more, then, before moving off, asked the bots, "What would you do if something were to happen to interrupt your lives?"

While expecting an answer, he meandered off again, but this time in the vague direction of Nicholas' workshop.

"That would depend, Lord Frank." said one of the guard bots.

"That would depend on who interrupted it, and why."

The city was eerily quiet the closer Frank got to Nicholas' workshop.

Frank continued to wander, pondering heavily. Finally he said, "Well I have recently learned that a section of humans seem to want technology to rule instead of man. I was just wondering what your thoughts might be about that."

This message was deleted by the player at 07:59, Fri 23 Oct 2009.

"A machine might further understand our needs, but I prefer my Lord," admitted one of the guard-bots. The other nodded eagerly.

They were aware of Frank's temper.

Frank pondered this and continued to walk towards Nicholas' workshop. He stopped at the corner berfore he reached it and peered around, hoping that he was wrong in thinking they would be so easy to locate. Before he moved forward, though, he said to his guardbots, "So you would protect me against these men?"

"We are obliged to protect you against any threat," said the guard-bots. They were in a nice part of town, where Nicholas and the more successful engineers worked..

Frank moved forward and knocked on the door of Nicholas' workshop.

Frank knocked on the door, but there was no answer.

Frank could hear activity in the workshop, though. The chatter of deep, rigid voices, stern with the business that they had at hand. Majority sounded male, but there were several distinct female voices.

The door beckoned no response, however.

"Oh well, no-ones home"

Frank then walked back to his mansion, and locked his doors, sent away all of his bots. His vision was beginning to swim. He knew that this was the end. He gets out a piece of paper and writes on it, "Good luck Deus ex Machina"

He stood in the center of his room, knife in hand, and performed the sacred Transfusion, dedicating his soul to whatever next god comes along.
This message was last edited by the player at 01:17, Wed 04 Nov 2009.

This Realm is now Dead.