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.