Elven Diplomacy, Dwarven Issues III

"They've cut us off, closed the doors to the forest. All attempts to speak with them have been met with… uh…" Ralyf tried to explain.

"Annoyance? I think I can understand. So, the whole half-brained idea of marrying Elsei was to get someone who actually knew how to speak to others. Oy. You could have just asked her to be an ambassador, bypass the whole thing. She goes to help; you don't need to do much other than reward her." All three of the royal elves looked at each other, realizing their plan was a little over the top, with Ynshael starting to cry again. She wasn't very good at coming up with plans for emergencies like that just yet, she always turned up her actions to eleven to fix a situation. That clearly was going a bit overboard more often than not.

Whose bright idea was this?! Wait, I don't want to know, I really don't, I don't want to figure out how this even came to be…

"Ma'am, when you're available, we have something we should tell you" Jorge said over coms. They were still traveling back to the castle after their long-term surveillance mission.

"We'll deal with the dwarves, though it's not as if you really need them anymore; I'll send some of my military to the entrance of the under dark, if there really is an opening. In the meantime, I… we'll send a shipment of mithril from Olva'lore Forest. I doubt you'll even need it for weapons, I'd strongly suggest you use it for tools and the rest of your people. You're now in my empire, now you get to see what happens when my soldiers defend my empire, given how quickly they took out your escort." The empress glared at each elven ranger behind them and shook her head slowly. Each one fidgeted.

The royal family carefully thanked her for figuring this out so efficiently, though technically, they were just conquered. "No guarantees for opening diplomatic negotiations or treaties. We're just talking, nothing fancy. It's not as if you need them anymore." The empress just looked at the group sitting there in silence. None of them spoke for a minute as the grandfather clock in the corner ticked. "Ahem, now that this is under control… erm… I need you to head back to your forest… we'll be in touch. Prince Ralyf… talk to your people instead of your mother. Princess Mladris… don't… don't start anything… with anyone… at all. Just… just go see dolphins…"

Queen Ynshael and her children stood up and thanked her, excluding Mladris who just crossed her arms and scowled. "One last thing, when I show up later, and I will to get a tour of the city there, I'm going to show you how to act when visiting. I expect the same professionalism from now on." As they left the front gates, Selene leaned in to whisper to Elsei. "How old is Mladris?" she asked quietly.

"Last I was there, eighty-five to be exact, though that was three years ago. A teenager in elven eyes."

"Well that explains a whole lot. The queen seemed to also act a bit… emotional…"

"Her husband, King Alfael, died prematurely from a magic immune disease at roughly four hundred, very rare" the blonde elf told her.

I knew it! I knew planning ahead would save people from shit like that!

"Huh, so she had to handle everything he did. So… you uh… you know about Ralyf…"

"That he does not dress like the rest of us? He is not intimate with the same sex, if that is what you are referring. He just… likes… to wear women's apparel… and pink… lots of pink…"

"Ok… my gaydar is officially and completely broken then…" The blonde elf thought carefully on her choice of words to say next.

"She's… she may hope for grandchildren to be sired. As Mladris seems… prone… to rash engagement, it might be possible she would like the bloodline to somehow continue. Trying to get me to be a part of that plan was… ill thought out… we do not have much in common, beyond… similarities in clothing choice…" The empress giggled as the family left the castle gates, heading for the giant eagles. "What is gaydar by the way?"

"A sixth sense people have to determine if someone is… um… homosexual. Mine I'm willing to admit doesn't work most of the time… or at all now."

"Ah."

"Does she really know wild magic? That explanation seemed dubious at best."

"I'm… unsure on that, your majesty. It's not as if she has ever shown it before. It may be a lie to ward away those who wish to conquer the forest in case of emergency, a last-ditch effort to protect our race. Fear can be a powerful force, even against those who are stronger than you."

"But doesn't that mean she'd kill, like, half the elf population just to cast it or something? Seems like a total scorched earth policy instead of an emergency, denying the enemy of even making use of their citizens. She's honestly lucky she faced off against me instead of having anyone else to contend with. If Artinia somehow figured out it was a ruse or not, or even decided it was worth the loss of men, they could get swarmed."

"Hmm. It is possible things were meant to be." Elsei bowed and left to go with Morlan outside, with the dev sighing and getting back to the task at hand. Selene quickly swapped to Jorge in her coms and asked him what he needed. Hrist and Bryn arrived, flying in from the academy to see something interesting that Skuld had found in the mountains after some hiking.

"The gates were sealed, but we managed to get out in time. We caught wind of a few issues that were happening inside the fortress, we don't know if you'll find them interesting."

"By chance does any of it have something to do with Drow?" she asked him.

"One of them might have been that, they said something about a large tunnel dug out by something other than them … how'd you know ma'am?" Turnie questioned her.

"High elves pulled something here, they are now part of the Clockwork Empire. The royal family is… interesting…" she replied, still wondering if that was the right word to use to describe them.

"Congratulations ma'am, another part of the continent the empire has expanded to" Ethan commented.

"Yeah, well, they said they were having some issues with the dwarves and Drow. I'm wondering if they're sharing the same problem."

"We were unfortunately trying to get out of the gates unnoticed, we only stuck around for the reconnaissance mission. We could infiltrate a second time if you want us to ma'am, though it might require damaging the gate…" Orlo informed her.

"No, that's fine. Come on back, bring me the souvenirs so we can get some work done on them. By the way Orlo and Turnie, is it possible for you to get a project done on wild magic?" Orlo was silent for a moment as he talked to Turnie in machine language. Using the research stations in her inventory required an object to put into them. Without any physical evidence to test, they were useless in this regard.

"What did you have in mind? Be advised, we don't have anything to go off of, we'll be starting from scratch with no evidence, just theories and hypothesis" Turnie asked.

"I might have some information involving that. So, Dungeons & Dragons had a form of magic called Wild Magic as well. It was unpredictable at times, similar to what I'm hearing about for this, at least at the higher levels. Do you think they are the same or share a similar design?" she asked him.

Wild Magic had been a thing that she had researched long ago when brainstorming different features for games that were to become RPGs. Yggdrasil was no exception to the rule; it was to make sure they didn't intrude on any copyright claims. Unfortunately, she hadn't introduced it into that game as it wasn't quite fleshed out well enough, the rules were too vague. There were too many variables they had to work through, so it was left on the cutting room floor even after her contract had ended and the main game was released; the dev had never heard about it being picked up again, even when she was offered new contracts to help with some gacha drops to work with NDA features while she worked on another game. It might have been introduced in an expansion, but she wouldn't know about that either way.

"I can't really say; we'll need to do a lot of experimentation. The problem is, experimenting will be difficult to perform without a known fuel source here…" Orlo replied.

"Tier magic, and for that matter, your magic system, use mana ma'am, so it's not as difficult to get immunity films researched and designed. It's a tried and true mobile source coming from anyone who has a mana pool. We'd need to get a stable fuel line up… that could… that could cause some ethics concerns for you… this might not go off of souls, but it could… well… it could turn some areas into hazard zones for testing" Turnie told her. The empress cursed slightly as she remembered there were 'wild magic zones' that tapped into something called "The Weave" for wild mages to learn to harness it anywhere. For all she knew, those might not exist, or creating one might damage the landscape. They'd have to make a testing facility far away from the castle to do any of this.

"I'd like some basic experimentation done on it first, like is the fuel source souls as a fact or is this not as… invasive… towards living creatures. Let me know what you find, we'll deal with ethics concerns later once we reach that point. If it is souls, then at least we'll know this isn't the same wild magic that I know of."

"Yes ma'am, we'll get to it once we get back to the castle." The coms ended and she sat back, thinking about runecraft right after. The design of runecraft here might be similar to what she had seen for tabletop games, with a certain rune symbol casting a special spell that doesn't cost mana. That would make an impressive counter system if armor plating had this added in, potentially acting as a reactive armor paneling against explosives or other high impact strikes that didn't require replacing charge blocks. That was if it worked the same way, as there were many different runecraft systems in a lot of games, with one in particular having two different versions of it, pissing off the players quite a bit.

"So… that was a thing. Are we going to see the high elf forest in the future?" Bryn asked her.

"I have no idea. That was… very interesting. I'm pretty sure I just got my eyes opened to others not always acting in their best interest when it comes to diplomacy… I'm now suddenly worried if it will get much worse for the animal folk and orcs" Selene replied, blinking rapidly as she drank some of her tea.

Midnight

Elsei came to Selene's room once more, knocking on the door and requesting to enter. The empress opened it and let her inside, tired as usual as she woke up. "This really shouldn't become a thing, seriously." The elf looked embarrassed and kept her eyes on the ground.

"I'm terribly sorry, your majesty. I can leave if you want me to." The dev sighed and shook her head.

"No, just… if it isn't an emergency or involving something that could turn into an emergency, can it at least wait until morning? Really, I'll be all ears when the day starts."

"I'll do as you say." The empress sat down on the bed, waiting for another stint of information sharing. While she didn't pry, and frankly wasn't caring too much about her past, with the very strained meeting involving the aristocracy of her race it made sense to listen to her. People didn't need to feel like they should share their life stories, and frankly she would rather send them away if they tried to. Half of it was usually boring crap anyways, she didn't need to know the circumstances of their birth or what star they were born under.

She debated on using a spell to wake herself up, as she'd be going back to bed hopefully soon; if it took longer than expected, the dev would finally accept there wasn't going to be much sleep tonight and just get on with the day. Jeeves would have something to say about that, along with Turnie.

"Now, what did you need to talk about?" Selene slipped her legs back under the bed covers and leaned back against her pillows.

"I… would like to be the ambassador to speak with the dwarves… if you would allow me to…"

"You mean you'll head over there with Morlan and see about opening up the mine again? Well hell, I was just gonna see if there could be faster trade between Eil'Ta Forest and their southern cousins. It would make more sense to cut out the middleman as it were and get a rail line set up."

"You mean just ignore the dwarves entirely?"

"Well, yeah, sort of. Why? Do we need them? They aren't a part of the empire."

"It could be helpful to have them as an ally, or perhaps join?"

"Why? I can't think of anything they can produce that would benefit us; it's just going to be more laws we'll have to sort through, differences in opinion, I'd have to get some sort of weird council thing going for each race to have some sort of say for their people, the list kind of goes on. We're still integrating everything with the dark elves, now we'll double up with the high elves too. Adding dwarves into the mix is going to make a lot of people angry with the change in government. Not everyone agrees with everything, I'm expecting at least some malcontent civilians not enjoying the enforcement of my laws."

"It is not that… we do not yet know what is ailing the dwarves right now to close their doors to my people. If it is Drow… could it not be a threat to the empire that we are overlooking? Would it not be in our best interest to open diplomacy with their kind?" Selene leaned her head against the plush pillows and crossed her arms with her robe half covering her nightie.

"This is going to slow down what I was planning though."

"What were you planning, your majesty?"

"Silvinholm. I talked it over with Antoine. We're taking it. He even wondered why I took so long. Brynhildr wondered why I was holding back. The only thing the professor wanted was for me to look into showing mercy for some nobles, not to win them over politically. Basically… I screwed up my interpretation of what he hoped for, now I want to shoot guns and scare off the bad guys. Life is simpler that way."

"You're ready to push forward and alert them to the empire's presence?"

"Already have troops on station ready to hit the towns and villages to the north and south; 9th took a village on its way back from your forest, got eyes on a massive fort that is probably used to build up soldiers for pushes into Eil'Ta Forest. Once those are taken, Silvinholm gets conquered by the end of the day. I guess we can hold that off at least until we know the dwarves aren't up to their necks in under dark creepies. Besides… maybe the Drow might be a threat I don't know much about. Ugh… fine, we'll temporarily hold off and see about opening negotiations with the dwarves." She yawned and looked at the elf sitting straight up on the nearby couch.

"That might be best. I understand if you wish to continue with the assaults, though having your armies ahead of a force arising from the underground…"

"Oh, that wouldn't be much of a problem, I have reserves after all, and security forces would keep things in check. That's kind of why they're there. But I guess we can hold off one day or two, it's not like we couldn't take Silvinholm if anything bad suddenly happened, including that weird order from the king to kill off half the populace." She was trying to maintain a military size equal to anywhere between one percent and ten percent of the civilian population, which would be roughly five times as high as the U.S. military at its peak. Granted, the Clockwork Empire didn't have a high population quite just yet, being estimated at around eight million, including the dark elves and high elves now being small minorities.

That would increase by as much as a million once they took Silvinholm, though there were no fixed numbers that Selene was forced to stick with, given that her soldiers were built, not drafted or volunteered. If there was all out war with someone capable of harming the empire, she'd throw those numbers to the wind and gear up fully, probably exceeding the civilian population if it was needed. With her capabilities right now, the military strength she had could be considered a peacekeeping force.

"Thank you, your majesty. I know I'm asking for this… sorry you are accepting my request to go through with it."

"No no, it's fine. The fact of the matter is I do need advice once in a while and you seem to think this might be a problem we need to look into. It could also show the dwarves that… well, not every elf acts the same way as Queen Ynshael." Selene rolled her eyes and softly shook her head at remembering the silver haired elf.

"She's… never had to deal with outside forces before, her husband performed any negotiations that our people needed. She isn't incompetent, she just… things happened quickly and she's trying to keep up with all of it."

"How long ago did he pass away?"

"Fifty years ago." The dev blinked at her.

"Fifty years is considered quickly for elves?"

"Not exactly. Those years were used to rework our economy, she is quite good at that. It's just that… Queen Ynshael has not had the chance to really work on her negotiations skills."

Selene let out a dry chuckle. "I can relate sometimes. Alright, tomorrow we'll take 1st Air Fleet in and try to open diplomacy with them. We'll do it after Morlan shows me a few of the Martial Arts he's been hiding. I'll hold off on Operation: That's My City, No Touchies. You wouldn't per chance know any of those moves, would you?" Selene asked her, an eyebrow raising as she pushed some of her hair away from her face.

"I… do not… mainly because I am not normally one of the warriors of my people. My calling doesn't allow me to use Martial Arts."

"Oh! Right! You said you were a… a… what was it… Guardian Priestess. So… holy magic?" the empress said, snapping her fingers to remember what she had said her job class was.

"Some, yes. Mostly protection effects, a light number of healing spells, a great deal of exorcism and cleansing. There are a few others that… I try not to use all that often… not exactly magic…" The dev waggled her eyebrows a little. The elf probably did more to keep demons and evil creatures away than truly fight, warding off creatures in an area instead of combating them directly. There was silence in the room for a moment as Elsei didn't continue explaining the other abilities she hinted at.

"Ok… ok so I remembered that… sorry, I'm… *yawn* ready to get back to sleep. We'll worry about the dwarves tomorrow, see what's going on, then get back to taking out Artinia. While we're there, we might be able to take a slight trip up to Eil'Ta Forest and, I don't know, figure out what their afraid of. Might have a new cave entrance or something that makes them think Drow will climb up. We could close it up for them… seriously surprised they don't do it themselves… all it takes is a good engineering team…"

"That's… possible, your majesty." Elsei got up and bowed to her, heading for the door.

"Elsei. Remember what I said, if it can wait until morning… please do so."

"Yes, your majesty." Elsei left her bedroom and slipped out the doors, allowing the empress to get back to sleep.

I swear! Do elves not sleep or something?!

2nd, December

1st Air Fleet left without a single hold up, carrying the empress's entourage to the Kaldanas Mountains and to the dwarven fortress. Elsei and Morlan were astounded by the amazing capability the airship had, being a palace in the skies to them. Donovan and Melsia both joined as well, having experience with negotiations. Donovan would assist Elsei while Selene hung back and sat with the others, not wanting to cause problems. Hrist and Bryn both relaxed in street attire, not needing to armor up at all. While Hrist watched a recorded play on a small video screen that popped out above the couch she was lying on, her sister sat back with a good book and some bourbon.

"Did you bring the gift, your majesty?" Elsei asked. She stood in front of the dev as the auburn-haired woman looked her over. The clothes she was going to wear along with the armor were much higher quality than she ever wore, as the empress wanted to make sure she represented herself properly and with elegance. The blue and white armor on top of the grey uniform was supposed to give a sense of peace and tranquility, that they didn't mean any harm to the dwarves. Both Elsei and Morlan both received multiple different colored uniforms, for quite a few different meetings, some of which were to convey irritation and potential war if the people they were meeting with didn't play their cards right.

"Of course I did, this is for a king, correct?" Selene replied. She pulled out the wooden case from her inventory, a bottle of scotch from her brewery. The aging process was simply done with [Time Dilation] cast on the barrels. The spell, despite being dimensional magic, was finicky, capable of causing more harm than good if not used properly.

"That is correct, your majesty. Now, you said you'll let me speak on behalf of you?" the elf said.

"Yes, I probably shouldn't speak much unless I absolutely have to, give them a chance to realize you would rather show some respect unlike the royal family. You know, I could just stay up here and out of the way, there's no real reason to come with you."

"That would not be the best course of action. They'll want to see who they are dealing with, regardless of me speaking for you. First impressions are always done not by the messenger, but by the crown. You hold authority, I am simply going to be the voice of that authority" Elsei informed her. The dev put her hands up in surrender.

"No worries, I'll go with." Morlan laid back on a curved couch and just relaxed. He had spent two hours pushing himself in the morning to show the empress just what his Martial Arts could do. {Shatter Point} caused his weapon to pierce armor and give a good chance to break it outright once he removed the blade, though it only seemed to work on material a few tiers above what he was using. Steel didn't do anything to Carbyne, but it definitely did a lot of damage to mithril and took a chunk out of adamantium. With all defensive systems functioning in tungsten steel armor, minus external defenses such as shields or reactive paneling, the steel sword cut into the first layer of metal, but that was about it. Beyond that, no other damage could be seen, the armor was still fully functional. This was proving everything she had originally used against Hrist was holding its own long after it became obsolete.

{Grand Strike} was a wide swing that could sweep a good ten meters of space in front of him, bypassing most of the weight from anyone defending and launching them back… if it didn't cleave them in half first. The problem was Selene offered to be his target dummy with the steel sword. His attack rammed into her shield and stopped right then and there, with the warrior vibrating heavily and incapable of keeping his feet stationary, nearly breaking his arms in the process. She had to cast some healing spells on him in case there were any fractures to his bones. Provided he had better equipment, that might have knocked the dev off her feet… maybe. All she was doing was standing there and using her shield to block, no special abilities in use such as {Move A Mountain}.

There were a few other attacks he used, all of which were somewhat impressive for him to strike out with, but none of it seemed to break or even damage her defenses. They were just special attacks similar to magic, but made for warriors, as they didn't have mana. There were more than likely Martial Arts that could be used by rangers and archers, monks or thieves as well.

This seemed to mean that while these abilities and special magic were powerful, they had limits just like everything. Wild Magic, if it did in fact use souls, had a finite amount of fuel, with a high chance of instability. Dragon Lords might be able to cast it without using souls, or at least far more efficiently, though it seemed easier to just use tier magic and let this system die off. Using something just because it caused more damage at the cost of killing oneself or destroying that which they cared about looked to be incredibly foolish in the empress's eyes.

"Are you sure you do not wish to simply push for the dwarves to join the empire, your majesty?" Melsia asked as she sat next to her husband and read a book brought from the royal library.

"Give them a chance to see things are better if they join, and they'll offer it themselves. Besides, we're here to negotiate the doors to be reopened and trade to recommence with their neighbor, not to force them to bend the knee." Selene sighed and closed her eyes for a moment, smirking. "I hope we don't get a repeat of what happened with your people Elsei. Just about everyone seems to underestimate us, and it always ends badly, even when we're trying to be friendly."

"They don't know about an empire to the west, your majesty. Unknown compared to known. Artinia is the only human government they understand, which is to say, humans are… uh…"

"Dickheads that don't know what they're doing?" Selene questioned, a grin crawling onto her mouth.

"You said it, your majesty, not I." Elsei did her best to keep a smile from erupting. The trip was fast and quiet, with Majesty's Grace providing a luxurious area to relax while they traveled to the Kaldanas Mountains. There wasn't really a need to use teleportation just yet, as the time on board allowed Elsei to practice questions she thought the dwarves would ask, with Donovan reading over old books on what the dwarves had as tradition and customs. Selene would simply sit there and look pretty, answering only when she needed to.

"Ma'am, I have a slight update on the Wild Magic while you fly first class" Orlo chimed in over her coms.

"Go ahead Orlo, what did you find so far?"

"Do you want the good news first or the bad news?" He asked.

"Mmmm… bad news first, good news puts a band aid on it after."

"I'm sorry to say ma'am, but it does in fact use souls, though it may even use, well, experience as an alternative fuel source, though that is a tentative hypothesis." The dev sighed and closed her eyes, accepting it was a different system.