Wrong Done Write

Like others have said, the capability of the nanobots is limited only by time. When the war started, nanobots were used to repair field equipment over the course of weeks or months, maintaining a high level of sophistication. As the war dragged on, heavy industry was destroyed, meaning nanobots became more and more critical to making any war materiel. With each major offensive, the nanobots are stressed even more to just get equipment back up and functioning, so they are making sacrifices left and right.

You have a hodgepodge of frankenstein pieces of equipment - hovertanks with periscopes, no night vision, and segments of armor that include ceramic, reactive, and 6 inch iron plates. But it fights, and when something is damaged, a quick repair is made - if it's a simple component, it can be up to spec in hours. It it is something complex, it might take a few days that cannot be spared on the front lines, becuase there just aren't enough weapons to supply fronts on a multitude of planets with slow communications and/or resupply.

Zoombie said:

But if a book or movie ENDS, why make a sequel? Who'd be so crass and money grubbing as to make another one just to get more money...the entire idea is absurd!

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Me.

And if I can make rum and sand as a cure for psychopathy into a major plot feature, I will!

The nanobots are extremely sophisticated and quick. However they are not intuitivly or dynamicly programmed. They can take the rubbish and detrious of the battlefield and recombine it, but not reengineer it. The WW2 tech level is just sohpisticated enough that they can recombine items to make war machines. No integrated cuicuits, no processers all mechanical. What could go wrong.

Everyone is immortal and in an utterly post-scarcity society war is a recreation, nothing more. And no wars were more expensive, noisier, more destructive, had better-looking technology and industrial design, more interesting strategies, bloodier genocides, or snazzier uniforms than the total wars of the 20th century. Well, according to the questionable tastes of the posthumans of the 29th century, anyway.

Simple: Nanobots love WWII era weapons and artillery. And after the war, they'll have their own D-Day reenactments, except you'll need to bring a magnifying glass to enjoy it.

The transhumanists are playing it all out in a virtual world playing against one teenage luddite who found an old computer behind the milking supplies and... oh shit! Here comes Friar Hamm to see if I'm done milking Betsy...no time to build warp drives...I'll set it on internal combustion products.

1) One of the dungeon creatures is the Medusa Telepath to which all of the guard officers are enthralled. When she's hungry she has them send her a snack. She also guards the treasure that is comprised of the guards' bribes and stuff taken from low caliber adventurers as well as stuff the guards steal from the emperor to finance the eventual rebellion.

2) The guards are just following orders and because their contract specifies no spelunking.

3) The guards are afraid of the dark.

4) The guards don't want people to see what happens in the emperor's private play rooms.

The imperial guard was composed of cowards. They were only effective in mass combat and bullying. Each and every one of them were too afraid to enter the catacombs individually, and too distrustful of their comrades to enter in a group. The solution to the problem was simple: they let hardy adventurers do the work for them. Once the loot was retrieved, the Imperial thugs would surround the triumphant hero, relieve him of his treasures and his head and then proceed to fight amongst themselves for the biggest share.

What they didn't know, was that Thane knew the Imperial goon's simply strategy. And, he knew that there were treasures in those places that would make him powerful enough to ruin the plans of even the smartest of the vaunted Imperial Guard. Relatively speaking of course, the most intelligent of the Imps was still only marginally smarter the the local breed of pygmy goats -- still, the loot was certainly worth the effort.

The Imperial Guards wear enchanted armor and wield enchanted weapons fashioned long ago by the builders who built the castle and roads of the empire. Those structures feed energy to the Guards, enabling them to fight faster and more fiercely than they would on their own, infused with great unearthly power, and even possessed by the spirits of long-dead warriors.

The treasure-filled ruins, however, are older still. Any Guard who strayed into one would be left without the protections of the above-ground structures, and would not be able to effectively avail himself of his armor and weapons. With little need for real martial training, the guards would be unable to defend themselves down in the dungeons. That together with the perils of potentially losing these artifacts means that they steer well clear, leaving that sort of thing to unaugmented treasure hunters.

The Emperor has a pact with the ancient and powerful beings who claim the ruins as their sacrosanct territory. Even the most hardy members of the Imperial Guard know that, even if they were to plunder the ruins and survive, even entering the ruins for them counts as dereliction of duty AND high treason, because they are representatives of the Emperor and they would be entering 'foreign' territory and stealing from the Emperor's allies. If they were ever found out, they would be tried and executed.

Still, occasionally one or two have tried. The Emperor has been quick to make examples of them.

So lets have this Empire. Right. A fantasy Empire, made up of Yellow Elves, Rude Elves, Short Elves and Not Elves of varying types that I don't care about. The Emperor has been murdered and YOU are the only one who can do something. But really, you could care less cause you're too busy exploring a bunch of treasure filled ruins. But here's the thing...the ruins are all ancient, full of of treasure, and have monsters that can be handily defeated by a SINGLE well equipped, well trained treasure hunter who is not even as skilled as the Imperial army that REGULARLY PATROLS the province which happens to be the CENTER of the Empire. Most of these dungeons are within a day's WALK of the CAPITOL. Why are the dungeons not picked over? And you can't just say cause they're dangerous, because all evidence points to them being dangerous but not SO dangerous as to be impossible. So what's the deal?

Those ancient, treasure-filled ruins? They don't exist, at least not when you look at them.

See, most elven and not-elven magic ceases to work if you study it in too much detail. Something about the nature of belief requiring faith, not evidence, makes magic fail when science is applied to it. And in the same way, these ruins disappear when the Imperial Guard comes to check them out. Every patrol has found unbroken meadows and peaceful glens.

But a single, credulous person, whose mind and memory is as empty as a newborn's, can explore those ruins. That person is the chosen one, because only they are gullible and trusting enough to touch magic artifacts and walk in great halls that Could Not Be. Their touch makes the artifacts real, so they bring back to civilization magical products that few have ever seen before. That hero also uses the magic to equip himself, for in his naive explorations he has nightmares that come true about gates to hell itself.

Nobody blames him, because he is, essentially, an idiot. Except maybe the Imperial guard, who end up fighting the mess he leaves behind.