The Failsafe Device
Something the warlords could have blown weeks ago; Tagg's regret at not doing so reframes the whole floor.
Story so far
When Akuma explains in Warlord Chat that Agatha was forced upon the War Mages as the price of system access, that she is behind the action items, and that she seeks to kill everybody and everything, Epitome Tagg responds with pure horror: "By the gods. That orc princess was right. We should have blown the failsafe weeks ago."
The remark implies the warlords have long held a destructive option they chose not to use, and that an orc princess argued for it in time to matter. Neither Tagg nor Akuma explains what the failsafe actually is or does before Akuma leaves the realm, and Carl is left with one more unanswered question stacked on top of Baroness Victory's and Zev's silence.
Role
Unused catastrophic contingency the warlords now regret withholding.
Relationships
Sources — 10 recorded facts, by chapter
- Carl's secret irreversible option, described in its own warning as more than a failsafe — the end of everything.
- Emergency shutdown tied to the containment unit that Carl fears others could trigger, and which he permanently disables.
- Emergency measure the residuals hope to force the showrunners into triggering, ending the crawl.
- A star-detonating kill switch on the Venus monitor station that Carl has already secretly disabled.
- The system-destroying failsafe the Syndicate desperately wants to know whether Carl can still trigger or block.
- The safeguard meant to bound the AI's control, now confirmed disabled out to the star.
- The safeguard everyone now knows will not fire, triggering a scramble of alliance realignments.
- The station self-destruct mechanism that, when manually triggered, darkened an entire star system instead.
- The catastrophic system-ending measure Rishi long assumed would kill everyone — never triggered, leaving the system primal.
- Something the warlords could have blown weeks ago; Tagg's regret at not doing so reframes the whole floor.