Maybe it’s then that you believe, this is the end. We’re doomed to die out here, in this backwater. We’ll never be found. But, still, you’re patient. You’re clever. You’re hard working. You spend a long time learning from your mistakes. Sometimes you venture out during Festival nights. You do experiments related to your goal. You even kidnap humans, use them as test subjects. Always trying to convey a sense of dread in those who live aboveground, always trying to make yourself larger in their minds—like a wild cat that puffs itself up in front of an enemy.

When the opportunity comes, it’s because Hoegbotton and Frankwrithe have exhausted themselves against each other—sometimes even using weapons you provided to them—and the city lies in ruins. You take a huge gamble. Why a gamble? Because there still aren’t enough of you, not compared to the human population.

You pour all of your resources into the Rising. You’re hard to kill, but you can’t possibly hold a whole city for long against an armed resistance, not if it means a true occupation. But you don’t need it to last for long. You just need to create the impression of overwhelming force.

And it works. You Rise. You use your reengineering skills and knowledge of the underground to flood the city. You use your spores like a kind of diversion, a magic show. Yes, you can kill people, but not all of them, and not as fast as the enemy thinks. Besides, fear is even more useful to you—it’s how your agents have worked throughout Ambergrisian history. Preying on the imaginations of a people raised to fear you. (Often for good reason.)

You force the combined Hoegbotton and Frankwrithe army arrayed against you to fight on your terms, on your turf. You even leave an escape route so that no one needs to fight to survive. They can just flee.

Again, it works. The resistance retreats—and when they’re far enough away, in one more spasm of energy and expertise, you cast the HFZ over your enemy, like a net, and you disperse them across the doors. Thus ending effective armed resistance, and creating more fear.

For the actual occupation, you are clever and resourceful. You enlist the remaining population to police itself, to govern itself—as much as it is able. When the situation is stable except for isolated pockets of unrest, you start to build your final attempt at a door. A way home. Two towers, which aren’t really towers but a kind of complex gateway. Situated precisely where you need them to be for success.