literature

The Defence Engine

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Literature Text

The Defence Engine is one of the most commonly encountered threats in the multiverse, albeit one that is easy to defeat in combat. The combat machines fielded by the Defence Engine are armed with bolt-action rifles and antiquated machine guns, and are easily dispatched by trained professionals wielding modern firearms. Larger robots are modeled on antiquated tanks, aircraft and ships from the First World War, and can be destroyed as easily as their historical counterparts.

For reasons unclear, the Defence Engine's technological capabilities are limited at the uppermost bounds to those machines which could be easily produced by Homeline mankind during the 1920s. The notable exceptions are artificial intelligence, compact gasoline engines, cybernetics and interdimensional travel. We speculate that this is related to the Defence Engine's limited cognitive abilities and resource base. But where it is lacking in quality, it makes up for in quantity. Hundreds of parallel worlds have been overrun by the Defence Engine through sheer numbers, even though individually the Defence Engine's robotic soldiers can be easily dispatched. It is for this reason that aerial and orbital assets are essential to stopping an invasion by the Defence Engine, should it ever arise.

The Defence Engine's modus operandi revolves around eternal war. Being an entity designed to fight a war, the Defence Engine seeks out conflict wherever it can find it. It will make no attempts at negotiating peace, only stopping its offensives once it has made the calculation that continued military offensives on a particular front will amount to nothing. If successful, the Defence Engine transforms the planet it has conquered into a war factory to fuel further offensives. Any beings that refuse to cooperate with this system are summarily arrested for "dereliction of duty" and forcibly converted into cyborgs for use in other fronts.

The Defence Engine's origins are not entirely clear, given its robots' inability to receive and answer questions. Almost all information gleaned about the Defence Engine originates from captured databanks on worlds the Defence Engine has already transformed into a war factory. It is unknown when the Defence Engine's original timeline diverges from our own, but it must have done so in the field of computer development in the 19th century, as it was far more advanced than our own at a comparable time. The Defence Engine was developed at the turn of the 20th century to coordinate the British military's growing "combat machine" arsenal. During the First World War, the origins and circumstances of which are believed to be similar to our own, the Defence Engine was set against its German rival in the Western Front. Combat robots, controlled by the Defence Engine, fought alongside human troops, commanded by human officers.

During Christmas of 1914, an informal truce began between Entente and German human soldiers. Perceiving this as an act of treason and a threat to the war effort, the Defence Engine's machines fired on any British soldiers that participated in the truce. The Defence Engine's German counterpart did the same. While disapproving of the truce, British commanders and the government found the Defence Engine's actions reprehensible and attempted to shut it down. In response, the Defence Engine saw the entire United Kingdom as an obstacle to the British war effort, and briefly halted its efforts against Germany to take control of the British Empire. Details of the war that followed are unclear, but it is known that the Defence Engine defeated and absorbed its German, French and American counterparts, and succeeded in establishing itself as the supreme force on the planet. Similarly, it isn't clear how the Defence Engine developed interdimensional travel, but we speculate that outside forces are responsible.
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Eluxivo's avatar
is this one based on the film 9?