Big News About Doraelan

SO, big news. Doraelan came at me the other day. Yesterday in fact. With an army at his back. And army of knights and soldiers in white and red. Fiercest normal people I’ve ever fought since that one mercenary who fought four harpies for a handful of gold coins. They attacked me. How did no one see an army of ten thousand people in white marching at us? My scouts and sentries are worthless. They all need to be replaced. Twice. Just to be sure.

In the midst of the battle Doraelan challenges me personally. As if I wasn’t going to find and destroy him. Bastard takes the time in the middle of a battle to speech at me. And dodges my crossbow while he’s at it. He’s swearing eternal vengeance and listing out my accomplishments like he’s angry and not impressed. He goes on and on. Vengeance this, justice that, smite me this other thing. Turns out, my rival villain isn’t a villain.

If any of you…ANY OF YOU…knew that Doraelan was a hero, I will destroy you and your world. And I’ll find a way to do it again. And I’ll make sure it hurts.

A HERO! And I haven’t taken him out yet? Disgraceful. Arneian bastard. And at least a third of his white clad army is Arneian. I thought I’d destroyed enough of them to never have to see any more of them again. Arneians. Always the crusading types. Cannot stand them. Could never stand them. That’s why I invaded, butchered my way through the streets, burned their cities and desecrated their temples. And HERE THEY ARE! Crusading at me.

Do you know how many of his white and red army actually walked away? Most of it. Almost all of it! He lost less than three hundred! And I lost two thousand. Mostly goblins, and they never mattered anyway, but still. It’s the principle of the matter. I am the Profane Lord! Scourge of the world! War Chief of the goblins! Tamer of the ogres! I killed and ate dragons! And these exiles…these REFUGEES think they can defeat me? ME! And they have the AUDACITY to actually win against me in the field? They attacked MY CAMP! MY CAMP! I will destroy them. ALL OF THEM! And any of you who knew Doraelan was a hero all along.

A Question About Victories

Is it really that time again? What was I thinking? Anyway, next question:

“What was the best victory you've had so far? Was it the bloodiest battle, the easiest fight, the triumph that accomplished so much for you? Are you looking forward to a particular victory?”

That’s a good question. Well, first and foremost, I’m really looking forward to sticking Doraelan’s head on a pike. That’ll be a pretty good day.

How do I choose the best victory? The most fun? My victory over the goblins was pretty fun. Little bastard thought he was winning until I kicked his head off. That was pretty fun. Not much of a victory, but fun nonetheless. Easy too.

The bloodiest was definitely the Bloody Hills. Obviously. They’re called the Bloody Hills now because of the battle. I remember that. It was after the ogres left but before I found the goblins. I had the harpies and a couple undead legions but without the ogres I really needed something more to fight. So I hired mercenaries. A lot of them. All the mercenaries in Sulwora and Etraylye. Fifty seven thousand mercenaries, five thousand undead soldiers, and…I don’t know, let’s say seven and a half thousand harpies.

I needed the hill forts and the roads in the hills, but there was some Arneian exiles camped there with an army or two. Less that a third of what I had. So I move in. It’s a good move. It’s not bad at least.

So there I am, besieging four forts at once for days. Twelve days I’m throwing everything I have at these forts when another army marches in from the south. And a couple thousand ogres come in from the north. The following couple weeks were not a pretty sight. The hills were red for months. Even the rain couldn’t wash it out. I left with twelve thousand mercenaries, fourteen thousand undead, and close enough to all the harpies. They don’t really like to be counted. But only a dozen of the Arneians left and none of the ogres. So, yeah. That was the bloodiest.

Shorlathon was probably the best. Two weeks and I took the whole region. There were lots of battles. In castles, cities, in the field, and so on, you know what the place is like. It was especially noteworthy as it was my first conquest by sea. I tore to ships apart for catapults and battering rams and camp fortifications. The goblins swam. And ran on top of each other. It was amusing.

Shorlathon was the best, the Bloody Hills was the bloodiest, and the goblins was the easiest. And killing Doraelan is my most anticipated.

A Quest About Romance

Before we begin the usual routine of you asking questions and me answering them with my usual awesome, I wanted to share something new and cool. It turns out that people are now calling me The Profane Lord. How cool is that? The Profane Lord Xultan Gorath. I like the sound of that. Try saying it with a deep voice. Yeah. The Profane Lord. It’s giving me shivers.

And now The Profane Lord will answer your question:

“What do evil overlords do for romance? I mean, even they gotta get a girl (or a guy, as the case might be), right?

So do they just subjugate attractive members of the opposite gender (or same gender, if they swing that way) to their will simply because of their sovereign power? Do people line up to get with them? Do they go on long pilgrimages to find their true love? Call up their high school sweetheart? How do evil overlords find love?”


Wow. Really? What does this have to do with taking over the world? Fine I’ll answer it.

I’ve heard of, and in some cases seen dark lords enslave concubines and mistresses. They think it’s the only way. Except for the ones who get off on the whole coercion and mind control thing. But those guys are sort of…creepy. And not in a good way. And the whole long pilgrimage thing? Yeah, that’s totally a hero thing. Those guys are so stupid. Like goblins. Yeah. Heroes are the same as goblins. I really hope that heroes read this. But they’re probably too stupid to read. And so are heroes.

As for me, I don’t have to force anyone for romance. I am a lord. There are huge numbers of women who want me. Almost more than I can handle. Almost. And it’s not all the allure of power. Or begging me to not burn their villages. But few of them have the stomach for what I do. That’s why I prefer dark mistresses.

Yeah. Female villains. Hot. And they never have any problem with me burning villages with breakfast. In fact, the ones I’ve met prefer to have breakfast and a show. The show is a burning village or city. You know, I really shouldn’t have to explain that to you. But villainesses are great. As slaughter-happy as anyone I’ve ever met. Most of the ones I know are just this side of being too murder-focused. And they hate goblins! But then again, who doesn’t?

The biggest downside is they tend to have their own things going on so they’re pretty busy. And sometimes they want me to help. Like don’t have a world to conquer of my own. Worse yet, some are trying to take over the world too. That sucks because then I have to destroy them. It’s not very fun.

In the end, I don’t really have time for dating. It just distracts me from what I’m doing and that’s not worth it. There was this one…but wasn’t really…I’m done for now. Go away. Come back next week.

A Question About Heroes

You people ask a lot of inane questions. Did you know that? Like this one:

“I was wondering what kind of hero is the most annoying--those boys from humble beginnings that are secretly trained my some teacher that helps them master their magical powers, the kind that's a valiant prince with dashing looks and incredible swordsmanship, the chosen one type... Which is the most bothersome?”

Well, that’s not quite as inane as I thought. So, let’s get to it.

Heroes? Heroes aren’t much of a bother. Sure, they can be annoying, but that’s about how it. Really. They come at me alone, or in groups of four to six. Against my hordes. It’s really hilarious. They walk into camp, preach for a while and then the goblins swarm them. Or if they come alone I like to shoot them in the head while they do their speech. It’s GREAT! “For the sake of WhatsitTown, and the good of all I will” THWACK!

Priceless.

If they come in groups, they’re just as easy. Kill the one casting healing spells and THEN let the goblins tear into them. The best ones are the ones that walk in wearing polished armor. Suckers don’t get past the third word of their speeches before the harpies swoop in on them. The harpies can’t kill them really quickly because of all the armor, but they stop preaching and swing wildly at them. Ever try to hit a bird with a sword? It’s exactly that effective.

Sometimes I don’t kill the heroes right away. Sometimes I take them alive and make them watch ask I burn their town. Or make them clean latrines.

Actually the biggest issue I have with other people is with other villains. Stubborn old warlords holed up in their private fortresses, dark wizards in towers on cliff tops and raining fireballs. But it’s not just that they’re tougher than heroes. It’s that they have armies. That takes work to deal with. The active ones are the worse because they are out in the field and I might just run into them while traveling. And those battles are always a huge mess. Huge mess. Sometimes I find them invading the same cities as me. While it’s amusing to watch the defenders panic at the sight of a horde on either side, it just makes taking the city harder when there’s another army trying to take it.

The worst of all the villains I’ve run across is this Doraelan guy. He’s a real jackass. Dresses in white with a red cape. Only good thing about him is that he hates goblins as much as I do. He doesn’t get the whole villain thing, either. He’s never conquering anything. Ever it seems. Maybe he’s one of those puppet master types. That has to difficult for him because he’s always leading armies against me for some reason. I don’t know what I did to piss him off so bad, but there it is. He probably told me when I wasn’t paying attention. If he’s not attacking me directly, he’s reinforcing cities in my path. So I have to either commit to a slog of over a week or change course. Maybe he’s trying to stop the biggest threat, me, but having everyone attack me so he can slide in when everyone’s distracted. Sneaky.

But there’s still one thing that bothers me about him. Every time we meet he challenges me to a duel in the name of Justice. Of course, I laugh and shoot at him, but he deflects it and runs, or calls his minions to attack. He’s skilled, but he’s an idiot. What the hells kind of villain fights for justice? Almost sounds like one of your wimpy heroes.

A Question on Strategies

It’s question time, minions.

“How exactly did you go about taking over the world? What strategies have you used to get so far?”

Looking for something to steal and use in your world? Good luck. You’d need to be awesome like me to make this work, and if you were this awesome, you’d already be conquering your world. But I suppose I did agree to answer the questions you ask so you could attempt to recreate my successes. Fine.

As you may have guessed if you were paying attention to my previous answers, which you clearly weren’t…

You know, if you’re going to ask questions you should at least pay attention to the answers! I am taking significant time out of my busy schedule of global conquest to answer your meaningless little questions and you don’t even read them. You know what? I should just stop now. You don’t deserve my wisdom. I’m done. I mean it.

　

　

　

　

I suppose I’m already taking time out of my schedule…a little more probably won’t hurt. But you better pay attention and appreciate it.

I decided to conquer this world many years ago, and I always knew I’d be doing it through military might. Sure, some villains like to try subtle machinations over decades to come to power without anyone realizing it until the plan is complete. While very cool, I knew this wasn’t for me because it just takes so long. I don’t want to spend decades prodding people into doing my bidding. Alright, I didn’t always know this wasn’t for me. I tried it for a while, but on a much smaller scale. Not he world, but a country. A smallish one. I spent a year and a half maneuvering from the shadows, telling people what to do and tricking others into doing things that helped me, but you have to realize that this method is just a house of cards. One jackass with the gall to not mind his own business and stick his nose where it doesn’t belong and the whole thing comes falling down.

You have to really cover your ass the whole time when you try this way. And you have to plan to fail, which struck me as odd and…backwards. But I guess that’s why it’s so cool when someone does this successfully. Even when they lose, they win in the end. But even having learned from my mistakes with this, I decided that it wasn’t the right way to go. As cool as it is to pull it off, it does mean spending a lot of time not doing a whole lot. And sometime you just have to let people do the things you need at their own stupidly slow pace. However, even in the short term and on the small scale, this is something that can be really useful. I mean, I have agents in half a dozen really big kingdoms setting up these houses of cards…house of cards-s?…whatever…they set up these crazy schemes and moves that distract the kingdoms long enough for an invasion to get a major foothold.

Some villains like the global extortion thing where they threaten to destroy the world or major parts of the world with a super spell or whatever unless they surrender control. This is pretty brutish, and cowardly. I have a few wizards on payroll that do this sort of thing in kind of smaller scale, but I really don’t like it all that much. It’s really weak as a global conquest method.

As I said before, I chose to go military. I built the hordes and invaded. I started with mercenaries and ogres and a couple legions of zombies. Then the ogres got all in a fuss about the whole head removal thing. Total overreaction on their part. I managed to send them back to their mountain and will totally conquer it later. Maybe when they calm down a little. This was about the time I found the harpies. Their society lends itself pretty well to being used for conquest. It certainly doesn’t hurt that they don’t know that they’re shock troops. They think they’re just following my armies and that they’re gathering those coins I launch at the outset of battles. They aren’t too bright. Or they just really love shiny things more than I thought. Either way, I win.

I was fighting for a few years before I found the goblins. Actually, it was a total accident. I marched into this valley/canyon/river/swamp/thing and saw houses so I decided to stay and invade. It was the goblins. We fought for a few weeks and we killed a lot of goblins. I mean, a lot a lot. At one point we piled them up and the pile was about a hundred feet wide and sixty feet high. And that was just the one week. There are SO MANY goblins. After a while the kingfish guy came to my camp, challenged me to a duel, and I kicked his head off. Turns out, goblins are really easy to conquer.

I don’t know if it was the swamp or the bodies, or the goblins, or the burning mountains of goblin bodies, but something attracted the gengaraks and I haven’t been able to get rid of them since. But they eat my enemies too, so whatever. Use what you have, right?

So my method is military conquest, but I use the destruction threat thing and the political movings and such to help conquer places that are really stubborn, or just not worth my personal attention. So, this is probably how I’ll conquer your world when the time comes. But don’t think that knowing how I’m going to do it means that you’ll be able to prevent it. Oh, no. Maybe this is one of those really subtle moves or whatnot. It’s not, but it could be.

A Question About Routine

I bold peon asks:

“What’s your daily routine like?”

Daily routine? Really? Who cares? I guess you do. Fine.

First I wake up at dawn because of the harpies. Or…harpoes as I like to think they like to be called. Anyway, the male harpies. Yes, there are some. Only about five in one hundred. And aside from the crowing, the awful, awful crowing, they don’t ever make a sound. So like I said, I wake up at dawn, angry. I throw on a dark lord cloak and step out of my tent and grab the first goblins I can see. With gloves, of course. I wouldn’t touch them with a bare hand. Eww. So I take those goblins about five steps from the tent and throw them at the nearest harpies I can find. One day I went looking for harpoes to beat to death with the goblins, but I got bored just beat one to death with the other.

As it turns out, goblins are rather well suited to being used as weapons. They’re small and light, and they flail and are oddly proportioned, but there’s something about their bone structure or something that makes them surprisingly resilient to hitting things. Or maybe it’s just that one. I don’t know, but when you use one goblin to beat another to death you’d expect the first to be in worse shape than he was. And you certainly don’t expect him to walk away.

Where was I? Right. Daily routine. Goblins are just so distracting. Even when they aren’t in the room.

So, after I throw the goblins at some harpies, I go back to my tent and try to sleep until someone brings me breakfast. I eat what I want of it and set the rest on fire. Then I put on my proper armor because you can’t start the day without getting dressed. I tend to like finishing my conquests in the morning at about this time so that if I want to spend the res of the day doing nothing I can still feel like I accomplished something even if I did all the hard work the day before. For such a long campaign it really is important to make sure you can feel like it’s worth it and that you’re getting closer every day because it will take years. And sometimes it can take two or three tries.

After finishing my conquest for the day, I like to take a nap before consulting my advisors. I tend to kill one during the meeting on alternate Tuesdays to try and keep it fresh and keep them dedicated, but it’s getting predictable. It’s almost always the new guy. I only consult with the advisors when I don’t have a conquest to start or a particularly difficult city that takes more than one day. Some take weeks. Can you believe the nerve of those places?

I eat lunch in between my nap and the advisors or in place of the nap or sometimes there’s too much fighting for lunch. The latter isn’t a problem unless there’s too much fighting for early evening snack. If that’s the case I get very upset and things start to go poorly all around. Cannons and catapults get fired wherever, fires are set, the reserves are sent in, the undead are sent in…it’s a mess. But sometimes it distracts me from the fact that I haven’t had my snack.

I eat again at dusk, then free time and then bed. Some days I throw the schedule at the harpies with the goblins and do something different but it’s important to have structure on the road so I try not to stray from the routine very often.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, talking about my routine is cutting into my valuable free time.

A Question About Minions

A future minion, whose name doesn’t matter in the face of my obvious greatness, asks:

“I was wondering what type of minions is most effective for taking over the world/keeping it under your thumb? Me and a friend were discussing this earlier, and we decided that robots would be best, as long as we had a backup team of hackers that could remotely shut them all down in the event that they rebelled against us. What is your opinion on this subject?”

Not a bad question. First, I don’t know what a rob-ot is, but I can’t imagine it’d be good for taking over the world. Now hackers? Those guys are crazy. They’re good in a fight, but they are crazy. So I killed them.

I do have to say that I haven’t finished taking over the world yet, but I have been going at it long enough that I have exceptional insight into the field of minion armies. First, you want to make sure you have the biggest army on the field. So naturally I stated with ogres. They’re big and strong and they love fighting and hate most humans and are really hard to kill. But after a few weeks they’re downsides started to become more and more obvious. They don’t like taking orders especially from humans and they’re always arguing with themselves.


And now they hate me. You make one suggestion that they all cut off one of their heads so they’d be better fighters and they turn on you. Ungrateful bastards.

So if you can’t have the biggest minions, the most numerous is a good way to go too. In that case you want minions that you can always have a lot of and can easily replace. And some big guys just in case. I find mercenaries aren’t bad. You don’t have to pay them if they die in battle, and you can pay them less if you promise them all the plunder they can carry. Just don’t tell them they have to fight with the harpies for the loot. Harpies love shiny things. And harpies are good minions too. They don’t have a sophisticated society, and they’re love of shinies means they’re easily manipulated. At the outset of each battle I launch a few thousand polished coins at the enemy and the harpies all swoop in like a cloud. The screeching gets annoying pretty quickly but they’re basically free.

Speaking of free, and much to my dismay, probably the best minions I have at my disposal are the goblins. They’re small and they smell and they’re loud and generally repulsive. But they actually do work for free, and I can never seem to get rid of them. I mean, in battles I step on at least twenty of them. And that isn’t counting the ones I stomp on for fun. They swarm at the enemy, die by the thousands, and there is still a sea of them every time I leave my tent. But I don’t have to feed them. They’ll eat anything. Cows, grass, rocks, each other, dirt, bones, and I’ve even seen them chew on shields. Of course you have to be their…high-leader-kingfish guy for them to obey. But that’s easy. Anytime one puts on a hat as big as he is, you stomp him into muck.

And then there’s the genagraks. But those aren’t so much minions as much as they just…follow the armies and eat…things. Fortunately they follow the harpies into battle, so they’re actually useful.

I also keep a group of necromancers on retainer in case I need to raise a high profile enemy as some kind of abomination/sin against nature/mockery of the gods plans. More than twenty or so and they get kind of difficult. Necromancers, I mean. I keep hundreds of the undead around. The goblins and genargraks tend to eat them. And that keeps the necromancers busy so they stop asking for a kingdom of their own. They are much too creepy to give a kingdom to.

As for keeping things under my thumb…in regions I’ve conquered, I install a puppet leadership. And to make sure people know it’s just a puppet, I publicly execute them when they stop being useful. Or every eighteen months. Whichever comes first. I tend to let them pick their own goon squad to enforce the oppression. Of course that doesn’t mean that tons and tons of goblins don’t stay behind just because. But when I finish with the world I’ll kill them all and take direct control of everything. And for the oppressing at that point, I sure hope demons are going to be the best. Because I am going to summon SO MANY demons. I mean, I can contact some now, but those are just the big ones that think they can take me and will want the world when I’m done taking it over. I’m going to take over Hell when I’m done with the lands of men and…other peoples. Whatever. I’ll get to them when I do.

That’s it for now, peons. And don’t forget, I’ll be coming for you next.