Molly

Molly is the 20th hero that you will unlock at Stage 2800.

## Story

Of all the cities in Alandria, Cogwheel was the most fantastic. It was a place without poverty, or wealth, or even central government. Its roads, buildings and industrial walkways seemed to tangle in never-ending loops of incomprehensible logic. With every citizen a genius, the Gnomes of Cogwheel worked day and night to out-do each other. At the tip of every Gnome’s tongue was always the mantra: “progress and betterment”.

Most of these tiny people found a fascination at an early age, and never stopped working to learn all there was about it. Gnome Mages could be found in towers where every piece of furniture was a shaped stack of books, pausing their studies only to test their magical theories. A view atop Cogwheel might have given an observer the idea that there were festivities abound, but what seemed like fireworks were the explosive results of alchemists’ volatile experiments. Of the great engineers that graduated the famed Academy of Crafts, most lived rich lives, their projects eternally funded from the profits of their inventions. If something was not about progress and betterment, it was about betterment and progress.

Unfortunately, not all Gnomes agreed on what progress and betterment actually meant. Molly could not progress, or better, from the shadow of her sister Sely. Although Molly was ahead of even other Gnome children in ingenuity and problem-solving, the strange circumstances of her sister’s birth and physical ability constantly nudged her out of the spotlight and discussion. Almost never praised for her groundbreaking work in technomagic in arcane particle beams, she grew bitter and envious. The final straw for Molly was her sister’s graduation, when the academic council spat in the face of Gnomish culture and celebrated Sely’s brute force over valuable thought and wit. Molly went underground, taking her research with her. She had decided that if Cogwheel could not appreciate her, perhaps they needed to learn how to.

At the time, criminal activity was almost non-existent in the city. Of course, some illegality was present; it was not rare that sometimes ingredients or parts went missing from a lab here and there, swiped or even sabotaged by a competing inventor. In the darker steam-vents and shadowy sewer tunnels, invisible traders – mostly foreigners who sought to take advantage of black-market opportunities – dealt in illicit or stolen knowledge. A mind like Molly’s, driven by envy and jealousy, quickly found its place in Cogwheel’s underbelly. Soon after her withdrawal from society, things began to change.

Her activity began as rumor and whisper. Gnomes would exchange stories of a rogue inventor building and scheming beneath the city. Tremors beneath larger facilities, until then blamed on laboratory accidents, began to be the subject of conspiracy theories. That same rogue, it was said, was building a mischievous illicit city underneath Cogwheel, bent on industrial sabotage and mechanical malfunction. Equipment went missing, worked backwards, and sometimes never turned on. Truly, Molly was a menace.

On the morning of the 500th anniversary of the founding of Cogwheel, after more than five years underground, Molly was prepared to make her name. Nothing was more important in life outside the law than exploiting routine, and the almost religious proceedings of the anniversary ran like literal clockwork. At daybreak, every year, all timepieces across the city would begin to synchronize, and the city would begin to rotate on its mechanical foundations. At perfect synchronicity with the dawn, the Grand Cogitator and High Techpriest themselves would oversee the spectacle. When Alandria’s sun completely rose from beyond the horizon, the hundreds of lenses, refractors, kinetoscopes and kaleidomachinators would focus its rays into the the Arcanocrystal, very first power source utilized by the Gnomes that sat atop the central city Mechanospire. It was an artifact of absolute cultural and scientific importance, said to have powered the very first machines their tiny ancestors had built. It was a reminder that magic and might was no match for the true strength of progress and betterment, and Molly had sworn that she would have it. That artifact, powered by the sun, would be her prize – the lesson Cogwheel would learn about forgetting Gnomish values would be her greatest contribution.

The anniversary parade always begun in the steam workshops and ended with the laying of a gear at the Academy of Crafts. From there, only the officials would march to the Mechanospire, where the Grand Cogitator and the High Technopriest alone would take the open elevator to the top. Finally, they would proclaim the ceremony complete the moment the concentrated sunlight hit the Arcanocrystal.

Molly’s plan was detailed and meticulous. The parade was shadowed by her people underground from the sewers and tunnels, years in the making. In the cover of pyrotechnic smoke and the fizz-bang of party grenades, her team would replace the officials in the procession, ghosting them away through potholes and vents. Molly particularly enjoyed watching the members of the Academic Council being dragged away. To her, they were the fools who had praised Sely for being born a muscular freak. Just before the end of the parade, Molly herself snuck to the surface and took the place of the High Technopriest, as a particularly dense festive smoke-bomb was released. Joining the Grand Cogitator’s side in the Technopriest’s robes, she allowed herself a hooded smile. As they completed the march, and the spire’s elevator lifted her to the terrace, she felt her moment of triumph arrive. Ahead of her was her prize. The Arcanocrystal.

Atop the terrace, as the great machines of the city focused and the sunbeam began to fire into the ancient stone, the Grand Cogitator raised his hands to the vast crowds below. Molly stood ready to humiliate them all. As she brought her hand up to reveal her grand heist, an explosion greater than any gnome lab could produce rocked Cogwheel. The city gears stopped turning in an instant, throwing everyone off balance. Molly grabbed the Grand Cogitator before he fell from the spire. Looking up, she saw the falling barrage of eldritch artillery. Black and steaming missiles fell from the sky, confirming once and for all the Alandrian rumors: the armies of Darkness had returned.

Molly felt anger like never before. Her perfect plan was ruined, and the lesson she had prepared to teach the Gnomes was lost. Cursing and strapping a hidden harness to the Arcanocrystal, she fired a flare into the sky. Right on cue, her getaway sky-copter swooped down, weaving through the raining destruction. The High Cogitator, powerless and unable to speak, could only watch as the Arcanocrystal and Molly were sky-hooked away.

Once more the spotlight that should have been hers from the start, was stolen from her grasp. First her sister, now an entire alliance that served the Darkness. Watching her city burn as the wind swept her hair, she swore she would be back, wielding the Artifact as her weapon. The glory of Cogwheel, and the war, belonged to her. By the time it was over, everyone would know her name.

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