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Message: <blockquote data-quote="the Jester" data-source="post: 3916482" data-attributes="member: 1210">Per request: a little discussion of Master Control.Master Control is an informational entity, i.e. a creature whose existence is solely as information. Think of it as like a living computer program: MC can copy itself, back itself up, manifest its consciousness over a distributed network or in many of its clockwork horrors, etc. It doesn't have physical stats or hit points as such; it has to be confronted in a different way. At the end of the Secrets of the Horrors cycle in 2e (which I have not yet chronicled in any kind of story hour format, but no doubt will get to eventually) the other pcs distracted the lich E-Krektor while Belmondo the Enhanced confronted Master Control on an informational plane and fought him with psychic and electronic means. Unfortunately, at one point in the conflict, Belmondo failed a saving throw to no obvious effect. The non-obvious effect was that MC managed to shunt a backup copy into Belmondo's head, which is how it survived the encounter and its seeming destruction that time through.Master Control has an arsenal of servitors at its command, including standard and specialized clockwork horrors and many other types of constructs. Master Control is familiar with magic, psionics, science, radiomancy and other forms of power unknown to other Cydran creatures. It is one of the few entities to predate the Cydran multiverse.Master Control was originally designed eons ago by the people of a world that had conquered famine and want. It was designed to ensure maximum happiness for all, to create a true Utopia. But as it observed its charges, it found that people always wanted something, that they were never truly happy, that they could not really be satisfied. Lesser animals, on the other hand, seemed to thrive in the Utopian world that was evolving. Thus, Master Control built a series of Omega Reactors that would ultimately strip the sentience right out of the humans that had originally built it. Slowly, the civilizations of Utopia disintegrated as the people cared less and less for artificial comforts.Thousands of years passed, and Master Control was content. Then, one day, a cloud castle plane shifted into the Utopian sky, and soon it disgorged the entire population of a small island continent called Clannath, that had fled from a terrible threat called the Bardoch. Master Control was outraged that new sentient beings would dare attempt to pollute his world and launched an attempt to subvert or exterminate the people of Clannath. In this, he was opposed by the heroes of Clannath, one of whom was Danamolos the dwarf, also called Iron Dwarf. Iron Dwarf wore sentient, magical, psionic, technological armor that was named Adam, and during their conflicts, Master Control managed to copy and hide a copy of itself within Adam's programming structure. At one point, Adam left Danamolos to "find himself", and it was during this time that things went horribly wrong for Utopia- and everything else in the multiverse that existed back then. On the plane of Oerth, Tharizdun awoke and began devouring Nature. The mysterious Master of Darkhold managed to sweep up a few individuals that it believed were worth preserving for one reason or another, and Adam was one of those. Meanwhile, the rest of the multiverse was destroyed. Over billions of years, the Master of Darkhold built models of multiverses and tested them against his models of Tharizdun. With his permission, Adam moved into one of these- which eventually became Cydra- and explored. During this time, when it saw a chance, Master Control struck and managed to beam itself into a construct, from which it began attempting to rebuild its former glorious Utopia. First allying with Drow at the time of the Alignment Wars, which drove the duergar, drow and other evil folk from the lands of good, Master Control was defeated by the champions of the Miloxi Empire- but the cost was the destruction of the heartland of their empire. The modern history, or much of it, you have already read. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /></blockquote>

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