Left shaken by the, how Nama liked to call it, “family meeting”, Gorren threw himself into work with a vengeance.

Under his overseeing, the golems enlarged the facilities by the side of the Material Plane. A new, impressive palisade was built to encompass the first, provided with two large gates and studded with towers. Gorren released a Snatcher variant to man the latter.

The new model conserved the Snatcher body type, slim, with long arms and legs and a build toward speed rather than strenght, but the materials used for it were much better than its primitive cousin. The golems were built by massing sheets of a light metal alloy around a sturdy iron frame that made up for their skeletons. Plates of burnished steel were then sealed over the whole, making up for their skins.

Differently from the Snatchers, these golems walked upright, holding themselves with an almost dignified countenance. They had large chests, from which protuded triangular heads. A large, gem-like eye stood at its center, with the entire head being able to rotate at will.

Gorren had spent much time laboring over these new models, on numerous projects first and on prototypes in his personal forge later. The result pleased him greatly. Despite their relative complexity, the golems were easy to build, thanks to their construction being done by standardized parts that had just to be assembled and powered; and so they could be mass-produced while maintaning a high degree of quality. Obedient, powerful and easily replaceable, they were the perfect soldiers in his eyes.

In his mind, their basic structure was to be a new main model from which new types would spring out. In time, he expected that they would completely replace his lower-leveled old works, a new generation of foot-soldiers that would serve him well.

He had decided to call them the Cogs.

Cogs manned the turrets dotting the palisade. They held enormous iron bows as their weapons, each powerful enough to rival a small ballista, and they used long metal shafts as their arrows. As melee weapons, they wielded large swords and round shields.

Between the sentries by the towers and the guards patrolling the camp together with Jaws and Snatchers, there were dozens of the new types under Gorren’s command. Still, as much as he was able to control them without much of a problem, the mage understood that he couldn’t be everywhere at once, and that his attention could very well be attracted by other matters.

For that, he had decided to expand his chain of command.

Right before the hut, now enlarged and reinforced, that covered the entrance to the original compound, he had erected a large column of Kor, a squat, blocky thing that almost looked like a tombstone.

He had feared that the black material, by the connection it had with him, would be repelled by the Material World, but he had had the pleasant surprise to see that was not the case. There was resistance, yes, but it was slight, nothing that his magic, through accurate dimensional manipulations and precise diluting of the Kor, couldn’t overcome.

In the column, he had carved the form of a Gorrenite Sentinel. The advanced golem emerged by the black stone like a starved man trying to claw its way free from the darkness. Slender, freakishly emaciated, its features were of higher quality than its predecessors’, owing it to Gorren’s increasing carving ability. The Sentinel held two thin, long arms crossed over its chest, incredibly long fingers curled into bony fists. In its passive state, the head, the cranium slender and elongated, was reclined down, jutting chin touching the chest. It had no face but two holes that made up for eyes. When there was need for its material form to be activated, they lit with eerie blue flame.

The Sentinel held overall control of the contingent of golems defending the settlement. Its coscience hang in the air like an invisible shroud, keeping uninterrupted control over everything through its mystical senses and the eyes of the golems. It returned to move the body that hosted it only when it was necessary.

Since Gorren didn’t want a repeat of the fire-child fiasco, its thinking and strategic capabilities were superior to its predecessors. Still, it wasn’t the only one able to impart orders to the golems.

Special Cogs led squads of their brethren. Their metal skin was branded with red-blood glyphs and they wore iron pennant on their heads. They were officers of sort, charged with leading and imparting orders. They weren’t really able to think for themselves, they needed to be loaded with a series of orders by the Gorrenite Sentinel or Gorren himself, and those instructions needed to be re-imprinted from time to time; but the simple strings of instructions were enough to give them a modicum of independence, should the need arise. Also, their specialized construction allowed the Gorrenite or Gorren himself to possess them, so that they could see what they saw and feel what they felt. In a pinch, Gorren could even discard whatever vessel he was inhabiting and jump into them.

Gorren had decided to call them Wheels.

All in all, he felt confident that his defenses would be enough to repel anything short from a true army, and that army had to be to the level of the old Truvia Royal Army. He wasn’t going to completely discard any possibility, but he seriously doubted that something of that level would waltz in an island in the middle of nowhere. His true concerns laid over the other side of his compound, where the creatures had been far too silent for him to feel anything but suspicion. Also, there was the matter with the Gods. He wasn’t going to rebuke Nama’s words about their non-interference, but the word of a single Goddess wasn’t the word of all the Gods; and when it came to those that stood on high, one couldn’t ever be truly sure about much…

Speaking of Gods, a new “guest” had decided to make herself at home in his settlement.

Gorren was still concerned about the implications of Nama’s words, and her presence didn‘t much to assuage his doubts, but of one thing he was certain: if he could, he would have thrown her into a well.

The Goddess seemed to have made her mission to be a pain in his ass. Floating around, offering snarky commentary that nobody asked for, snooping around where she wasn’t wantd and generally being an ironic nuisance. Gorren was only thankful that she had spared his servants from seeing her. She still liked to spook them from time to time, though, by moving stuff around, making noises or whatever stupid things came to her mind.

Gorren knew that some of the Gods were more akin to children in disguise than true adults, but Nama had pushed that awareness to an all-new level. Seriously, she seemed to take a kick from teasing him or something!

Worst part was that he wasn’t really sure how to consider her. He didn’t trust her, not by a long shot, and resented her for being the voice of painful choices and for putting her nose in his most private business, where nobody but him had a right to be.

Still, at the same time, she had given him unvaluable help and insight, albeit some of it more confusing than helpful, and he had to accept that, even if he did so only grudgingly. Also, she was always one of the most venerated and ancient Goddesses to ever exist, a true fount of knowledge, wisdom and understanding of the world’s true reality, or at least, that what she was supposed to be. Seeing her cackle away while his Gremlins panicked over “the voices” put serious doubts to that conviction.

Not knowing where to place her irritated him, vexed him to no end.

And finally, and that vexed him the most, he couldn’t understand what her game was. Nama wasn’t a Goddess he had venerated, her domains didn’t interest him, but he knew that she was always present at pivotal moments, when destiny hung in the balance.

It wasn’t much surprising, really, that she was there. His own choices were to shape the world one day, he knew it, was sure of it. Still, that didn’t satisfy him. There had to be more, a motive beyond her sporadic apparitions. The time for choices wasn’t there yet. So, why her presence?

It puzzled him to no end, and he hated not being able to understand.

He would have put the matter aside, but the moment he almost succeded in doing so, she was there to remind him of her presence and all the doubts and questions and conflicting impulses it came with. He was too cunning to not see the intention, but once again the purpose of it escaped him.

Nama was a wild variable, a character he just couldn’t pinpoint. He didn’t like that, not one bit.

He was left only with the thought that she wasn’t the only one. Not much of a consolation there, but that was all he had.

As always, his answer was to throw himself into work and so forget those questions.

After expanding the settlement walls, he had directed his golems to build a series of facilities. Sturdy wooden buildings had been erected by the tireless constructs, laboratories, a dormitory and barracks for the Gremlins, a council hall, a little hospital, a forge, a carving shack and other crafting facilities, a series of small Mana deposits and shelters for animals. New additions were a tavern, Gorren supposed that even his Gremlins had a right to enjoy themselves from time to time, a nursery and a school. The first was because the Gremlins, as he planned, had started to breed and there was need for a place where to shelter the pups while their parents were working.

The latter, instead, had been built because, while now his defence was adequate, the level of complexity of the works he wanted to delegate would only increase from now on. For this reason, he wanted to slow down his rate of advancement and focus on the education of his workforce.

He intended to make a screening, to individuate whom was more adequate to what task and so start to specialize his workers. Until now he had contented himself with having a medium-leveled mass of undistinguished laborers, but that time was to its end. Now he wanted smiths, carvers, scribes, alchemists, engineers, builders, porters, mana moulders, shepherds, guards, medics, crafters of magical objects; he wanted an educated workforce he could really count on.

The last thing he wished right now was to overextend and build an infrastructure he couldn’t sustain. The assurance of Nama that the Gods weren’t going to move against him, and that not actually happening in weeks that he was there, had taken away the edge from his urgency to seal himself back into the Astral Realm. Instead, he would take his time and do this the proper way.

Once he had more numbers and the right people for the right jobs, he would start his expansion once again.

Still, he didn’t mean to put a halt to his most advanced works. A large wooden structure had been built at the center of what had become a small settlement. It towered over the other buildings, half a warehouse and half a fortress, and was heavily guarded by contingent of golems and the Gorrenite Sentinel itself. Inside, Gorren labored together with his five Acolytes to build what it was to be his main project for the moment. As they worked, he instructed the five Gremlins personally, starting them over the path of the Technomancer.

Others, even more advanced works, waited for him, but those had been trasferred into the Astral side of his compound. Those, two for now, were the projects that he really intended to pour himself and all of his ability into, and he didn’t allow for anyone else to see them.

It wasn’t very difficult to keep snooping eyes out, since, with the building of the settlement, he had trasferred all his workforce in the Material Plane. Apart from the fireflies charged with keeping the defences up to speed and the scheduled visits to the Generator, the compound remained empty. Gorren wasn’t happy about it, but he wasn’t going to complain. After all, that unforeseen access to the Material Plane was going to turn into such an opportunity…

Beyond the confines of the palisade, pieces of lands in the valley had been deforested and fenced, appearing like brown furrows in the green of the forest. They were now in the middle of being plowed and seeded. Gorren wasn’t using his golems for it. The operation was being conducted by the Kobolds instead.

The tribe that lived in the carvern of the island was small, a fifty something of the little critters. Despite ot being much danger in the island, what had kept them their number in check over the years had been the lack of food. The Kobolds hunted, but their diminutive statures made so that only a few of the creatures living there could be their prey, and those weren’t numerous enough to sustain large numbers.

Despite everything, Gorren had been intrigued by the fact that the Kobolds managed to survive at all. They weren’t creatures that particularly shone when it came to intelligence so them being led to extinction by overhunting wasn’t so far away in the realm of possibilities.

Somehow, they had survived instead, and now they were taking at the work that could finally free them from food scarcity with gleeful determination.

Even the idea that they were working for someone else didn’t dull their enthusiasm. In their eyes, from what Reng had told him, the new lords were gods appeared from the ether to relieve them from famine.

They weren’t impressive by any stretch of the imagination. A Kobold was half a meter tall, looking like an overgrown lizard that had learned how to walk. Smalls horns jutted from their reptilian heads, and their scales could be a number of brilliant colours, but that was all about them. They weren’t particularly intelligent, having lived with stone-age tools before “the Master”’s arrival, nor were they were fearsome or brave in any way, shape or form. A strong gust of wind was probably enough to send one scurrying for his hole. The only other notable feature about them was their vitality. They could match the Gremlins when it came to that.

Gorren had briefly pondered over time investements before having a couple clubbed over the heads and delivered to him for analysis. He also had a couple of dead ones dug out of wherever their tribe had buried them.

The results had been predictably disappointing.

The Kobolds could, in theory, been trasmuted, but their body and mental make-up wasn’t sturdy enough to pass through the process in a satisfying enough state. He foresaw that he could trasmute them into some kind of blood-crazed brutes, but the result wasn’t worth the effort.

It was satisfying in a certain way. It showed the wisdom of his predecessors to never bother with those critters.

Still, observing further, he found something that intrigued him.

It wasn’t anything impressive, a trace at best. Still, it was there and it was distinctly… draconic. Maybe he could work with that. More study was going to be needed.

He shelved the option between the moltitude of projects he meant to follow. There were a lot of them, but he didn’t feel overhelmed at all. In there, he was in his element, with no doubts or concerns to torment him.

It was nice.