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.
Monday, September 24, 2012
Monday, September 17, 2012
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.
“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.
Monday, September 10, 2012
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.
“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.
Monday, September 3, 2012
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.
“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.
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