As a rule of thumb, I've always shied away from creating Titano-Monsters no matter how trendy they become. The current fad is 'The Bigger, The Better' in terms of hot monsterness, but my advice is ignore the prestige.

  Take it from a Dark Lord who's been there, creating MASSIVE, ANGRY monsters to wreak havoc on your enemy is every bit as fucking tangy and arousing as you think it's going to be and then some. One might even say it's the ultimate expression of Dark Lordery, sending mountain sized abominations unto you deserving foe.


  Preferably from a very safe distance.


  But let me tell you there are some very serious drawbacks to super sizing a monster, not the least among them is the devastation they can wreak on your own forces in the event they go all panic-frenzy. Remember that your army's average foot soldier can be turned into just as creamy a paste as your Giant Status-Monster turns the enemy regulars into.


  If you've done your homework, the Enormous Creature you're employing won't be much smarter than a dog and can't reliably be expected to differentiate one group of tiny screaming things from another. Start creating/breeding intelligent Titano Monsters and you're just asking for trouble...





  So let's break this down, the pros and cons of Giant Monstering:



PROS:


1) Destructo-Porn: As a Dark Lord there really isn't anything much more gratifying than to witness a hideous abomination you've brought into being, wading through your enemy's city whose magnificent towers and edifices only reach to your Titano-Beast's genitals as is crisscrosses a path of utter destruction throughout that once great metropolis. If you get your Illusionists to record it, you can replay it on a big screen at your orgies.


2) Motivatin Da Troops: In general having a Titano Monster to unleash upon your foe vastly boosts the morale of you troops, which if you're any good at your job should already be high. Nothing soothes and encourages your average foot fodder more than some towering, bestial monstrosity lurching ahead of them toward a fortified position. The more seasoned among them know of course that the situation will get ugly if the thing takes too much resistance and goes all feral again. If you serve long enough on these battlefields, it'll probably happen.


3) Implied Threat: No one wants to have to try to stop a 500 foot tall, enraged anything from smashing their city walls and knocking a bunch of architecture down. So if you happen to have a 500 foot tall something that can kick through city walls like sandcastles and that seems to enjoy stomping on buildings for whatever reason, then you have what's known as a strong bargaining position.


(see also: "Say that's a nice city ya got dere. Be a shame if a Giant Monster stomped all over it.")


4) Status: Sure you've got all kinds of Infantry, some nifty Calvary units, a few flying buggers and a solid core of Warmagi. You've made a name for yourself in the Dark Lording/Evil Emperoring circles. Lesser D-bags are legitimately and rightfully terrified of you, as they should be. Congrats!

  But do you have a that towering, five hundred plus foot tall goliath beast-thingy that your closest rivals don't? 

  Or does your Arch-Rival have a larger Giganto-Critter than you, not matter what scale it's on?

  In those cases you've lost the Status battle. And while Status may be fleeting and doesn't in and of itself win wars, once you've clawed, kicked and burned your way to the top of the Dark Lord heap, Status becomes all the more important. A good Malevolent Tyrant will always seek to outdo themself, never resting on their laurels even if they just strangled a hundred people with them.




Cons: 



1) Feeding The Damn Thing: Whether it's meat, souls, raw magical energy or what have you, a Titano Monster is going to eat a metric fuckton of it and then some. No matter how much you think it's going to consume, it's best to figure on adding another zero to that total. You simply can't comprehend how much of anything a creature that size requires to continue existing. It's truly staggering.

  I can speak from experience as once, in my earlier days I had my Blood Science Magi create me a Balrog-Dragon hybrid critter which in time grew to be just over 300 feet tall. At it's peak mass it required about one hundred cows a day to keep it going. That roughly equals 90-100 tons of meat a day. 

  Picture a huge valley just teeming with cattle. Cows as far as the eye can see, grazing, mooing, fucking, shitting all over the place, happy as cows can be. Then picture two weeks later and that valley is empty because I fed the entire herd to my Ridiculously Massive Skull-Dragon-Wingy-Thing.

  Do you know how longs it takes to grow a herd of cattle 20,000 strong? Quite a while....

  Eventually I had to have it destroyed at great expense. It's not like you can just set it free, yell "Go Away" at it and expect it to just walk away sadly, head down. Nope, it's gonna fight you and you'd best have your adult Dark Lord pants on that day....



2) Getting Rid Of It: As aforementioned, unless it's magical and can just be banished back from whence it came, your options are limited. You can, of course, continue to employ it and keep it fed at ruinous expense just for the undeniable pleasure of watching it do it's thing, You're a Dark Lord, it's an option.

  But suppose for a moment that you want your empire to flourish and not just become a milking cow for your Destructo-Porn addiction. If the Damn Thing can't be banished back to another plane, what's your next move?

  Trying to starve it is a super bad idea. Expecting it to walk away like a Harry and the Henderson's sequel is equally implausible. So you're basically left with terminating it. Killing the big, dumb thing. 

  Don't feel bad about it, you're evil after all. Just hope you have the metaphorical gun big enough to do the job, tough guy.

3) Would it survive a Cost/Benefit analysis? Outside of generating Destructo-Porn, which is awesome, is there anything your Titano Monster accomplishes for you that a squad of Giant Vole Mounted Dwarven Sappers couldn't, albeit in far less spectacular fashion? To be honest, not really. But to continue being honest, it's difficult to get a good fap going to stuff happening underground that you can't see. So there's that.



  In the end, no matter how popular Kaijus', Titans' and other assorted Gigundus Aberrations' are at the moment, they're just a Dark Lording fad that will soon run it's course. Don't be fooled in buying the RV of monsters because they're currently trendy, they depreciate faster than an Orc tavern wench.



 Yours in Oppression With Compassion
-Lord Hurderoth



Law His Word Be
  

Four vignettes about Dragons (kinda...). Or, what the fantasy books don't tell you aboot the Greet, Scaaaley Boostards.

 

  Believe it or not, dragons are a lot like humans. Some are smarter than others, some are meaner than others. Some are more greedy and others more altruistic. Some of them are even nice, the kind of creature who remembers your birthday, and asks after your offspring's health whenever your paths happen to cross.

  There's a lingering misnomer that all dragons look alike, which couldn't be further from the truth and is only truly embraced by hardcore speciests. Their colors, their scale patterns, their Horn Arrays and Talon Prints are all unique. Every Dragon is special, even if they're not anything to write home about.

 They're still a dragon, you jaded fuck.

  The myth that all dragons are hyper intelligent, ultra cunning beasts is mostly just that, a myth. Oh sure they're around, the evil genius ones, but the legend surrounding their intellect has been hyperbolized. What they really have, in spades, is previous experience dealing with humans.

  Which is to say that although we humans, as a species, like to glorify our kind and set ourselves on some sort of philosophical pedestal (since we invented philosophy AND pedestals), the truth of the matter is our basic natures haven't changed all that much over the entirety of our history.

  The trappings of civilization tend to blunt and mask our baser tendencies, but strip away culture and society, food and safety, and watch how savage we can get. 

  And how quickly.

  And since we exhibit the same flaws over and over again through the ages, even a dragon of moderate intellect can figure us out after five or so (of our) generations. We're just not as great as we picture ourselves, otherwise we'd have probably wiped out Dragonkind by now. 


   Yet only the stupidest of dragons doesn't understand this and regularly use it to bamboozle and cheat our petty and venal asses.




  Right. Now that's out of the way...


  

  I've had, in my career as a Dark Lord, quite a few interactions with Dragons.


  I've fought them, killed them, employed them, referred them, evaluated them, worked for them, put a price on their heads, heeded their warnings, ignored them, sheltered them, abetted them, opposed them and just about married one of my cousins to one of them. 


  In all that time and with all those interactions, I have been outwitted by one, outplayed by two and regularly drink with another three.


  So here, in no particular order are four tiny stories (vignettes) about Dragons (mostly) from the perspective of an Lawful Evil DL.

1) I regularly employ a Stunt Dragon. I'm not ashamed to admit it because I'm Evil.


   If I were one of those Good sorta types hiring the same lizard for a similar gig, I'd be embarrassed because it's deceptive and underhanded and whatever happy-ass Gods I served probably wouldn't tolerate me lying about an evil Dragon being vanquished to make money.

  Most of you outside the Dark Lording industry probably don't know what a Stunt Dragon is. It's not in any or the Manuals, Tomes or Folios, no matter how rare or unpublished they may be. It's a highly specialized subspecies of dragonkind that hires itself out to up and coming Heroes, Adventure Coordinators, Crooked Dragon Hunt Guides as well as the odd Dark Lord with a complex and multi-faceted public relations agenda.

  His name is, believe it or not, Devastay-Shawn. And he's a professional Stunt Dragon with an impressive natural horn mullet. For a handsome sum, he'll threaten a certain region, burn down the odd village or two for the look of the thing and generally be a feared nuisance until a convenient Hero (wink, wink) shows up to slay him, to much local applause and reward.


  His glamours can make him look like any dragon, and contrary to the average human perspective, all dragons DO NOT look alike. That's Speciest thought right there. Reprehensible.

  It became his business model after he'd realized humans weren't going away any time soon and that they frequently seemed to have a lot of money. Faking the death of either himself or his local equivalent or whatever role he'd been contracted to portray. The service isn't cheap but the payoff to the conniving Hero/Politician/Lawspeaker/Bad Guy, etc etc is often immense. 

  A Pied Piper Scheme on an enterprise scale, with the metaphorical 'rats' calling the shots.

  Devastay-Shawn is a fucking genius.

2) Laughtrax was the first dragon I ever contracted with and the only reason he didn't kill me during our association was because I amused him. It's the sole reason I survived our business dealings together.

  I'm handy with the one liners and Laughtrax had a soft spot for comedians. Ergo, he incinerated a few mid sized cities for me and I'd rewarded him with several 3 minute sets of speciest jokes about dragonkind and dragon-culture in general. Fresh material per city burned, of course.

  He ate it up.

  We're still on amicable terms to this day and he's a regular follower of this blog.


3) Matti T is a one of a kind Hydra-Dragon crossbreed with five heads all boasting their own unique breath weapon. She's got a thousand Hit Points or something ridiculous like that and the short of it is you and your party of haughty, photogenic Adventurers are never, ever going to defeat her.

 It all comes down to:

A) How many of you she's been paid to let live, contractually.

B) How many of you she decides to spare, if she decides to honor the contract.

C) How many of you have enough coin or clout to buy your way out of incineration, via me, Her employer....?

  

  4) There was once, about forty or so years ago, a rival Dark Lord I had to go toe-to-toe with, for dominance of the central area of my projected Empire. His name was Larry Fossman, he styled himself the 'Dragon Lord of The Central Plains'

  I whupped his monkey-ass and decided to spare him because I smelled the subservience wafting off him.

  He absolutely DID NOT want to run the Big Show and was balls-ass happy to be granted the opportunity to manage whatever I saw fit to allow him. Which at that point was The Canyon of the Arachnid King, my first destination to really take off. 

  Larry started his way at the bottom, which was not being killed outright, and made his way up through the corporate chain of demise. He settled into the most ambitious niche he figured he could attain while maintaining a low profile. 

  Over the years Larry has proven himself unfailingly reliable in whatever role I've put him in. He currently manages my 2nd highest grossing Adventure Destination, The Hateful Mountain Keep Of The Dragon Emperor.

  That destination consistently wastes some fairly high level hitters. Larry's riddles are both arbitrary AND lethal. He's a mastermind at doublespeak.


  That's what you get this lesson, non-paying scum.

  Tune in next time when I tell you how to take down a fortified city using only stuff I'm not going to tell you about here.


  You know you like it.

  -Lord Hurderoth

His May Word Law Is

Plagues, they happen to the best of us.

  Even in the best run empires, plagues have a way of happening. Generally speaking the poorer the populace, the higher the death toll. Diseases love it when people live next to their own open sewers, makes their job easier I suppose.


  While it may be true that individually I don't care about my subjects or their rights, as a population they are very important to me. A despot with no one to order around ain't much of a despot. So I took some proactive steps to keep as many of them alive as possible when the winds of plague came knocking.


  My first step when I received advanced notice of this virulence and it became obvious it was going to be a particularly nasty one, was to shut the borders and mercilessly slaughter and burn anything that attempted to cross my borders.


  Next, I proactively burned down a bunch of tenements and the poorest-of-the-poor villages with a fair amount of civilian collateral, which is all in the playbook when you're evil. It really makes managing things like this much easier than in nations where people can whine to elected officials and whatnot. My word is law and in this happenstance, that word is FIRE.


  In-Hovel shelter laws were enacted and roving bands of magically protected thugs sanitation representatives roam the land, enforcing quarantines while other networks of thugs supply representatives bring around food supplies to isolated communities. Villagers and laborers are almost completely useless when they're dead.


  Now some of you might be thinking, 'wait a minute, you just said "magically protected" thugs, I mean representatives. If they can be protected through sorcerous means, why can't the general populace?'


  I'm glad you asked, you simple minded fuck. Do you think magic just grows on trees and is free for the taking? I mean, it's just a simple matter of numbers. It takes an enormous amount of thaumic energy to protect even small numbers of humans from an aggressive and deadly virus, and even when my main evil branch of Dark Clerics have their sacrificial pyres going full bore, twenty-four seven, I can't burn halflings and gnomes fast enough to keep up with protecting a hundred or so, much less 50 million.


  So to magically protect every person in my Empire, I'd have to burn literally every other living creature on the planet and while my logistics department assures me that it's "totally doable", it's likely to create "various catastrophic event scenarios for the future of the Empire".


  Well, duh. I knew that already but if you were one of the ones who asked why everyone couldn't be protected via wizardry, there's your answer.


  My border security plan followed a simple set of rule changes: instead of immigration we've embraced a policy of immolation. Once the word got out about that, we had to incinerate very few refugees thereafter.


  Border protection was mainly carried out by on-staff and freelance dragons, some of which were hired at exorbitant post-plague rates, which I could easily afford to outbid other global Dark Lords for.  Dragons in particular can't catch diseases from humans, although they may transmit them. I know a barbarian girl who caught an aggressive form of the DracoPox from a dragon one time. She drowned when a postule burst unexpectedly, poor thing...


  I would've made her my queen if she could've just stopped banging dragons for five minutes.


  So to summarize, plagues can jump species as well as races. If your majority human population has a pestilence ravaging it, deploy your Troll Shock Troops to beat them back into their homes. If Trolls could be killed by disease, it would've happened by now, they're fucking immune to everything but fire.


  Don't deploy human aid troops to combat a human plague. Burn 63% of everything and use the Trolls to mop up whatever needs mopping.


  Job done. Populace (mainly) protected. Casualties within acceptable levels. Virus contained. Tons of stuff burned. Happy dragons in your employ leave you glowing recommendations for future mercenary Draco-hires. Dark Gods are sated and languid. Unemployment is virtually eliminated.


  It's all how you look at it.


  I look at it from above.



-Lord Hurderoth

His May Be Word Law





 



















  

All Dark Lords make mistakes, even me. Enjoy some of mine, free of charge.

"Mistakes, to the wise, are but future victories..."

-Me, just now





  In the course of a long fruitful Dark Lording career, you're going to make mistakes. It's inevitable. The question is do your mistakes, whether A) large and catastrophic or B) an accumulation of many smaller idiot things you did, bring you down, as a Grim Lord?


  Well, let me tell you from experience, either scenario sucks. What separates the beheaded from the axemen is how you deal with the consequences for your poorly thought out decisions.


  In certain Dark Lord circles I'm the poster boy for lip draggingly shortsighted rulers, though not to my face, not any more. Not if they like having skin. For those of you familiar with my back story, you can skip this part, it's just a historical flashback.


  I was born into a prosperous, up and coming Empire. My Father, the motherfucking Emperor, inherited the keys to the kingdom from my Grandmother, a wicked old bitch who lacked both morals and intellectual rivals and thus established a commercial empire that my Pop then went all geographical on. He figured that ruling another country by economic proxy was only half as fun as overrunning their borders, gutting a certain percentage of the elite and burning a bunch of stuff down. Even if he had to rebuild it later because it ended up being critical infrastructure. But that was just his style, he was a product of the times that produced him.


  My 'mistake' actually fell into category "B" of the Dark Lord Misjudgement list: an accumulation of many smaller idiot things I did. 


  I was utterly unprepared to succeed my Dad despite his lukewarm attempts to mold me to his visage. He tried but it was always from afar since he was usually on campaign against whomever his latest enemy was at the time. He had people in place to guide me into becoming the kind of merciless, single minded successor he would have wanted, but since he was far away and I was the fucking Prince, I pretty much did what I wanted to do.


   Which was to fight, party, fuck, fight some more, drink again, feast, possibly sleep a bit, fuck some more and just generally be a spoiled cunt.


  His steadfast refusal to have me assassinated still astonishes me and was considered a poor choice by his advisors and council and for the record I agree with them. He should've had me bludgeoned at an early age. If I'd had a kid like me, I would've had myself killed. Luckily for me ole Pops had a problem fathering man-children. I have 73 sisters and my only surviving brother is more teeth and hair than can collectively be identified as human.


  So imagine my surprise one day when I was touring with my death-lute power-trio band, POWERLUST and suddenly my Father's personal guard floods the place, killing anyone who didn't flee. As they cleared the place of my awesome band's would-be audience my Father staggered to my room, clearly severely injured.


  He told me that he'd been disemboweled but had stitched himself closed with his own pubic hair so that his innards didn't slosh around too much, and that he'd also been poisoned, shot with arrows, run over by Llama Calvary, hit with a fireball, cursed, insulted and rapped in the noggin with a morningstar once or thrice, he'd lost count.


  And that it was time for me to Succeed him and assume the mantle of leadership over the Empire. And by Succeed he meant for me to "finish him off with any handy nearby bludgeon or blade that might come to hand, and be fucking quick about it ya fucking wastrel!"


  I tried my best with a small bronze statue of a gargoyle that I carried with me because it looked cool when I was a madman on black lotus. I picked it up and whomped the shit out of him with it, but he still criticized me in between blows, things like "I don't have all day" and "Would you fucking hit my temple already? Pretty-fucking-please? Thank you so much."


 But I was so blanked on opium and Elven Soul-Tar at the time that I just giggled and tapped his face until he seized the gargoyle from me and jabbed it with characteristic authority through his remaining eye, which burst with squelching disapproval and annointed me as the new Emperor.


  Slathered in Pop's eye-goo and higher than a Tibetan whore, greatness was thrust upon me at that moment.


  It took me just under three years to throw it all away, completely destroy my Empire and barely escape with my life.


  But that's what happened. My mighty army annihilated itself on the Plains of Cliche or something like that, and not a single soldier was left alive to pursue me. So I started over as a River Bully (but to be honest it was more of a Creek Thug) and worked my way to where I am today, end of flashback.

 

  Needless to say, that's what kickstarted my adulthood. Luckily for me I was born of hardy stock and I enjoyed fighting as much as I did wenching and annihilating my brain cells. I fought my way back to the top and then established a whole new level, redefining the trade along the way.


  But the road to the pinnacle was not without missteps. Oh no.


  For your entertainment, here are some of my better ones.



Giant Snail Mounted Ballistas: Figured they'd get there eventually, right? That it'd be easy to train giant snails for some reason and they'd provide a solid, mobile base for my smaller siege engines. The fact that I stubbornly continued to pour resources into this project even past the conceptual stage shows you just how fucked up I was most of the time at this point in my career.


  Dermott*1 threw me an Intervention which I narrowly survived and after he let me out of the cell some months later, I sorta had my shit together and thanked him with a pet Mammoth that he ended up naming SchnuggleTusk. He fuckin loves that thing.


  True story, Black Lotus is a hell of a drug, OK?




Speaking of drugs...



"Rage" Potions: All right, I know it doesn't sound like a good idea, you know, 'Berserker-in-a-bottle', but I really thought it could be done. Like it could be a handy, pre-attack drink for my shock troops. Some sort of energy drink mixed with a few electrolytes and a chemical component that kicked those reptilian rage-centers squarely in the metaphysical dick.

 Turns out this is really easy for experienced pharma-magi. The difficult bit is getting your raged up troops focused on attacking the enemy, rather than the very nearest fucker he could get his angry hands on. So after watching squad after squad of mercenary test subjects gleefully slaughter one another in unspeakable ways, I told Dermott I'm cutting the budget on the project. He nodded and a few more people were quietly butchered and we spoke no more about it. That's Lawful Evil in action, baby. Efficiency over Art.




Insect-Human Hybrids- Maybe my mistake was going with a human-cricket hybrid. Perhaps a praying mantis or some sort of beetle may have been a better choice. Possibly an ant. More likely the Arcane Assets I tasked with the job just weren't up for it, magically speaking.

  Whatever the problem, the first wave of these things that hatched were worthless, writhing abominations that made a deafening noise which was equal parts mutant-baby shrieking and mutant-cricket chirping.

  I made it maybe thirty seconds before I signaled Dermott to Shut It The Fuck Down. Meaning of course to murder everything involved, including the Wizards and burn everything that remained until it was nothing but a scab on the skin of the land.

  Then we had dinner. Mutton if I recall correctly but honestly it could've been Halfling for all I know. I don't ask many questions if it tastes good and the mead is flowing.




Skyr-Minge: The leader of a now extinct race of Mountain Giants whose former lands bordered my Empire back in the early days. This was the stage in my career where I was the new upstart, I was the New Kid who had been held back several years, was bigger than everyone else and who was throwing his weight around. I was stealing lunch money, claiming whole tables and everyone else was getting tired of it. And as usually happens, an Alliance formed against me.


  So everyone around me just said 'fuck it' and started attacking my forces relentlessly, slashing supply lines, hitting weak points and just generally being a giant collective pain in my ass. At this time the only compass point I wasn't being counter attacked on was the North east, where Skyr-Minge loosely ruled over fractious clans of dumbfuck Mountain Giants.


  I'd had a non aggression pact with Skyr-Minge and was in a position where I could easily deal with the troubles on my borders if I felt I didn't have to worry about the self styled 'King of the Mountain Giants' keeping his word.


  Fortunately for me I didn't trust him and as you can guess he betrayed the Pact at the point he'd thought it would be most beneficial for him. He was wrong. About everything. And now he and his folk are just a sad offshoot of the Giant species that has joined the fossil record.


  My mistake here was merely distrusting him enough to allocate enough resources to avert disaster in a worst case scenario. Instead I should've automatically assumed he was gonna try and fuck me and set an outright trap for him, making my life SO much easier.


  Meh. Judgement calls, they can't always be right. The silver lining in all of this is that after I hunted down the last Mountain Giant, the local Yeti population were quite thankful because unsurprisingly, Mountain Giants are huge assholes. This newfound association has led to some very useful winter weather troops as well as a wealth of mineral and ore mines that the Giants were too stupid to exploit and the Yetis' don't care about.


  Fuckin score...




  The Rumpus Squad: This was my secret collection of absolute homicidal maniacs. Twisted creatures so depraved that I had to deploy them clandestinely lest I sully the reputation of Lawful Evil and stray into Neutral or Chaotic-Evil territory. Even as a Despot that enjoys a bit of inventive cruelty and is no stranger to Overtures of Suffering, I eventually stopped reading the details of their reports because they were so disturbingly unnecessary and excessive. After what they did to one poor city's puppy population, my PR department was like "Rumpus Squad gotta go!".


  So I sent a griffon to Dermott with a message that read, "It's Nap Time", and a couple dozen gruesome executions later, it was all a memory that we blamed on local orcs.





  Plausible deniability isn't that easy to spell but it's certainly worth knowing.




  And with that, would-be Grim Lords, I bid you good evening.

-Lord Hurderoth

His May Be Word Law















*1 Dermott Krullbjorn, my steadfast Number Two. Cmon, don't you even read this thing?

Vignettes of nastiness: The Top 5 atrocities attributed to me that I wish I'd actually done.

  I don't need to reiterate my fall from Scion of an Empire to that of a lowly River Bully, it has been well documented in this blog. An area of my career not very well defined is that of what happened after I had climbed out of River-Bullyhood but before I became the supremely successful, vertically integrated Dark Lord that I am today.


  The Lost Years. The Unspoken Times. The Dark Campaigns.


  Living up to my Dark Lord heritage while my PR department made it seem more lurid and even more atrocious that it really was. Sure I did categorically evil things like routine and frivolous torture, enslavement and mass executions. I had contractual obligations.


  But it was never personal unless someone made it that way.


  That being said here are the top five atrocities I've been accused of that, in fact, I never perpetrated. It was either my press or more often the enemy press, which I of course funded.


  When you're in the evil business, there is no bad press.



5) The Mountain Horror Orchestra: This tale alleges that in an orgy of incredibly creative and logistically improbable violence, I built a giant stringed instrument made from living mens' stretched bowels and played a dirge which rang out through a mountain range and caused madness in all who heard it.


  OK. The truth is that I did indeed think about building a giant banjo made from stretched and living human entrails, because I was bored and had nothing better to do. The problem is that small scale experiments showed that this merely produced sad, wet flopping sounds and the "strings" died quickly no matter how softly you tuned them.


  It was a vast waste of resources that my PR Dept nevertheless ran with and ended up creating a Dark Lord Myth. Everyone believes I played an instrument made out of the stretched innards of captured enemies and somehow came up with an appealing enough melody that all of those who heard it could think of nothing else, especially defending themselves against my war hungry fuck-cunts who stormed their positions and slaughtered them all willy-nilly.


  Seems overtly apocryphal if you ask me.



4) The Children's Windmll: It has been claimed that during my campaign against the Republic of Cinderfall I constructed a giant windmill comprised of crucified children. But in reality this never happened. The rumor is based on my offhand chatter during a poker game about how fun it would be to build a Ferris Wheel out of living humans and take it for a spin. So the entirety of this legend was taken from a drunken comment made during a card game and taken completely out of context.


  The truth of the matter is, kids are hard for standard frontline troops to capture and therefore if you seek to build some sort of atrocity art piece out of them, you'd better have some Kobolds or Wolf-Riders to gather them up because they run fast.


  Honestly, when I subjugated the Republic of Cinderfall, whatever kids I managed to capture I either forced to work in my boot factories or just chucked in the nearest handy volcano so they couldn't grow up to fight me.


  I save my artistic energies for those who have actively resisted me rather than the unfortunate victims of their tedious rebellions.



3) Catapult Cricket: I haven't the slightest idea why I never thought of this. What better target to catapult captured enemies against than their own city walls? Especially in a competitive context complete with scoring rings and a bullseye? I can't think of one but sadly I can't take credit for this even though it's been attributed to me several times.


  I'm not gonna lie, I wish I'd done it. It sounds like a blast, clearly a great drinking game, but it wasn't me no matter what the histories say.


  I aim to fix that next time I besiege a city with appropriate walls. I already have my Illusionist corps working on perfect upscaled replica of a traditional pub dart board as well as a giant glowing scoreboard.


  Obviously the trebuchets won't be a problem....


  Can't fucking wait.



2) Offspring Pizza: This outright lie claims that in order to secure the surrender of the Lords of several key mountain keeps, I sent my Nocturnal Special Forces to capture their children and when faced with continued pigheadedness, baked these kiddos into several giant pizzas and sent them to their besieged parents as an offering of peace, promising the return of their children if they just endorse my dipping sauce and of course, my rule.


  This is a falsehood. It never went down like this.


  It was a calzone I baked their children into. There was no dipping sauce. It would've been unnecessary.


  And yes, I ended up slaughtering them all, down to the tiniest babby.


  War is harsh, mowwafukka. Never leave Scion material behind if given the choice.





1) The Grolnherg Genocide: I acknowledge that I not only advocated, but outlined my strategy to subdue the Grolnherg nation and people through any means at my disposal. And at that point in my career, my options were nearly unlimited. I had a fearsome Air Corps, an adequate Navy based more on numbers than any real naval innovations. And, hired on the urging of my Council, a Water Mage.


  You know how I feel about that. The shame still haunts me to this day.


  The Lore says I annihilated their shipping, followed by their primary food source by making sushi popular despite the awful taste.Then it says I raised the denizens of the sea to ensure no Trout-Swedes could safely leave their shores.


  This is only half true. I hired a pod of Hyper Intelligent Orcas to prey upon all Grolnherg shipping. Although they were incredibly intelligent for Shamu's, these psychotic, ocean going ruffians didn't really put the effort into Pattern Recognition that humans' give them credit for.


  Therefore they just sink any floaty-wood thing they can head-butt. Which is everything.


  







  So as you can see, the atrocity doesn't always fit the Dark Lord. But the sharper Dark Lords will grab onto it anyway. They get it. 



  WE get it. The rest of you kneel.



-Lord Hurderoth


His Be Law May Word


Or Whatthine.....

Fool me once, I'm a River Bully. Fool me twice I'm a River Corpse.

  There are lots of words to describe would be conquerors who embark on ill timed campaigns with an army that just isn't properly equipped.


  A few examples of these words might be:




Defeated. Dead. Ass-whupped. Loser. Former Ruler. Pieces. Impaled. Flayed. Dismembered and all in all, Treated Very Poorly.



  Where I'm going with this is the absolute pinnacle of the Dark Lord's conundrum: finding that perfect balance between the Five Elements of Dark Lording:


  Ego, Madness, The Illusion of Freedom, Cold Calculation and, most importantly, Clear Fucking Perception.




EGO: Yes you're one evil, badass motherfucker and you know it. Everyone around you knows it as well, especially your new neighbors. I say new because a little while back they had some other small lands between their nations and your empire, but not anymore. Those wee bitty realms are now yours and you're not the type of despot to wander over and introduce yourself to your new neighbors, perhaps with a home baked pie, and welcome them to the neighborhood.


  Nope. You fancy yourself more the 'here's some stew made from your ruling class, eat it or die too' sorta Dark Lord. None of this namby-pamby now's-your-chance-to-surrender stuff


  That being said you absolutely cannot allow your Ego to supercede cold hard facts. Rather than beat what will soon become a dead horse, allow me to illustrate this point with an anecdote.



  This was a couple of decades past when I was but a mid-career Dark Lord ruling a respectable sized empire spanning our world from pole to pole. One day a messenger from a Southern Dark Lord arrived at my sanctum. In a nutshell the missive stated that this particular leader, whom I'll call Clacachata, wished to strike a deal with me whereby his army could traverse a portion of my lands in exchange for an appropriate toll of course, so he could pursue an ancient enemy towards their northern homelands in an attempt to head them off at the pass so to speak.


  I agreed to meet him to hammer out a deal. Clacachata was of the step pyramid, blood-hungry feathered Gods variety, ruler of a vast jungle empire. Yet steel-age rather than stone and with some fearsome Blood-Shamans at his disposal.


  I actually felt sorry for whoever he was pursuing, because they were obviously  far less accomplished than I and might have to deal with this rainforest bat-fucker whether they wanted to or not.



Whatever, not my problem. As long as I got paid.



  And I did. Turns out you can't walk twenty paces in his homeland without tripping over some gold or silver, so he brought a LOT of it.


  Not to bore you with the protracted text of our discourse, here's the pertinent part of our conversation that perfectly exemplifies a case of Ego overriding all common sense:



  ME: "Well thank you for the gold and silver. I'm pleased we could work out an arrangement that is advantageous to both of us. To avoid utter devastation of your forces, please abide to the letter the accord we have reached. I'd truly hate to have to wipe your army off my map and have you tortured and healed over and over again in a never ending cycle for the next couple of centuries."


  CLACACHATA: "My thanks as well. With the passage you have granted my army and the many tons of gold and silver I no longer have to lug around, we shall be able to cut our foes off before they can proceed much farther north. I will follow our agreement closely and you have my word no mischief will be tolerated."


  ME: "It is well then and I wish you the best. But tell me, what happens if you are unable to intercept them before they make their way too far north? We're having an unusually mild Autumn to be sure, but Winter is on it's way."


  CLACACHATA: "What is Winter?"


  ME: "Umm. You know, snow and shit. Where water turns to ice and what not. Very cold."


  CLACACHATA: "It gets colder than this?"


  ME: *blinks* "You could say that. Have you never seen ice before?"


  CLACACHATA: "What is ice?"


  ME: "It's kinda like water and rock had a baby."


  CLACACHATA: "Meh. Whatever. I'm sure we'll be fine."


  ME: "Yeah. Me too. Good luck."




  Never saw him again and coincidentally, the next campaign season, I conquered his empire. Due to the fact that the majority of his elite warriors had perished in a white hell brought on by their Leader's supreme arrogance, this campaign was more or less a cakewalk. I had more deaths to jungle fevers and parasites than I did in battle and far more injuries due to tripping over precious metals than from actual combat.




MADNESS: Nobody in their right mind wants to rule the world, trust me on this. You have to be living across the street from sanity to even consider trying to conquer the next country over, much less an entire planet. This is why Madness is an integral part of Dark Lording, sane people know better, the fuckers.



  Normally our Madness is referred to as Meglomania, an obsession with the exercise of power, especially in the domination of others. Or, commonly, Powerlust.*1


  Hey, color me guilty because I'm one of those remorseless dickheads that thinks he knows a better way.


  What separates me from the garden variety asshole dictator is that I get results. I've learned to integrate my batshit insanity with a style of corporate mindful savagery that seems to result in all strati of my empire having a better sort of lifestyle at the expense of those who oppose me.


   I'll address this point in a bit more detail later on....




THE ILLUSION OF FREEDOM: The reality of freedom and the illusion of freedom are are two different things. Or, the interpretation of 'freedom' may vary wildly from perspective to perspective. Either way it is up to the Dark Lord in charge to decide just what reality and freedom are and aren't.



   It's the same category as 'History is Written by the Victors' yet more immediate. Instead of influencing later generations through edited historical accounts, the Illusion of Freedom edict states that you influence them in real time through any current means possible. The ultimate goal is to make folks who are objectively good do things that further the cause of your evil empire. This is accomplished through whatever the equivalent of mass media is on your situation and by the employment of a top notch whatever passes for a public relations firm in your situation.


  I.E: Proper Panda Propaganda


 


COLD CALCULATION: Remaining dispassionate when considering potential losses versus gains is an essential component of a Dark Lord's psyche.


  As in 'Do I have the troops to just clog his meatgrinder?' Or, 'Should I attempt some sort of flanking strategy?'


  Or even, (for us top level guys....) should I just throw an Undead Dragon w/Optional Undead Dragon Knight at my opponent because I can? Even if it's not fair?


  Should I, as an evil Dark Lord, be concerned about wrong and right?



  Nope. I needn't be bothered in the slightest. Cuz I'm evil.


  Duh. That was fuckin easy. Don't be too proud if you got it right.




CLEAR FUCKING PERCEPTION: You refuse to let ego, emotion or irrational feelings get in the way of you subjugating whoever the hell you've decided to subjugate. You're aware of and honest with yourself about the limitations and weaknesses of your forces. Your intelligence network keeps you well informed about the potential and probable conditions in the lands you've chosen to campaign in.


  In short, you're not an idiot. You have a decent grasp of tactics, where to use them and how to choose terrain that favors your forces.


  Again, because you're not an idiot. Strategy isn't that difficult, but there ya go.





  When one can blend all these facets of evil into one functioning machine that bends the opposition over any available surface and proceeds to have it's way with whatever is thusly prostrated, then one can say it speaks for the unsodomized.


  Hell Yeah.







  Anyway, dear readers, that's the extent of the advice I feel comfortable giving based on what my attorney has advised me.



 



Yours in Suggestive Suggestions,
-Lord Hurderoth













*1 Powerlust: The name of a lute power-trio I toured with before I lost my first empire. Dad hated it.

My Top 10 grossing Adventure Destinations as ranked by Dungeon Parade Magazine, the ultimate source for loot-lusting Heroes and Related Tradespeople.

  Dungeon Parade Magazine is the premiere monthly dedicated to profiling up and coming Adventuring locations. Just a blurb in DPM can boost a Haunted Ruin or Desolate Fortress's profile by several orders of magnitude. An in depth article could make it an instant hit.*1



  It took me ages to ensure this happened. Manipulating primitive media isn't as easy as you'd think. You end up having to invent new ways of communicating with large amounts of people outside of burning their towns down and smacking them in the knee with a mace as they try to flee past you, which gives you the opportunity to relay your message as they writhe in pain.


  Captive fucking audience. Just not very efficient in terms of mass media, the most important tool of a successful despotic ruler.



  I currently hold 23 slots on the Dungeon Parade Magazine's "All-Time Top 100 Dungeons, Ruins, Citadels, Deathmazes, Labyrinths and Places to Loot" list. This includes #'s 2,3,5 and 7 in the Top Ten only because as Editor At Large I decided to let someone else win for a month or two. Makes it seem like there's more of a competition going on.


  Heroes and Related Tradesmen devour my publication, it's considered the industry standard for profiling new Adventuring Destinations. It brings in flocks of aspiring protagonists whose opinions of their skills and levels write checks that their talent and equipment can't cover.


  This equals profit for me and the failures of even B-List Hitters only enhances my Location's reputation.





 That being covered, let's get into the meat of this installment's stew: My Top Ten Adventure Destinations as ranked by a publication I founded and still exert almost total editorial control over.


  Should be fun......




#88)  Haunted Howe of the Barrow-Wraith: Introductory level horseshit for weak ass noobs. As you progress as an Adventure Theme Park Builder you'll find that sometimes numbers trump levels in the profitability sector. There will always be far more level 1-5 wannabes than there are 20th level badasses to exploit and fleece as part of your business model. It's kinda like selling hamburgers; you'll make way more money selling 10,000 cheap ass burgers than you will selling 1000 premium ass burgers for a much higher price.



#59) The Canyon of the Arachnid King: One of my first real hits and still making good money for me even after 30 years. The real key to success for me was learning to breed and train my own giant spiders rather than pay the exorbitant fees the Guild of Giant Spider Wranglers charged for their services. This took a while to get past the learning curve, but was well worth it in the end.


  Watching a giant spider I had raised by my own hand lay it's eggs in the chest cavity of their former Guild Master was really all the payment I needed, but the money's nice too.



#41) The Wading Pools of the Gay Minotaur Lord: Hey, don't judge. It makes me a fuckton of money while rarely killing anyone. I like to pretend I don't know what goes on there, in fact my PR dept insists on it, but I'm not out of touch with what I refer to as "Niche Markets" and the potential income they can generate.


  The lube and silly hat market from this destination alone could fund one of my minor armies for an entire campaign season.



#36 The Citadel of the Pariah Swamp King: Intermediate level suffering for anyone foolish enough to go on a swamp-based adventure. There isn't really any terrain I'd rather not quest in than swamp. Literally any other geographic circumstance is preferable to swamp. 
 
  But personal preferences aside, Swamp-based destinations are easy to stock; hire a bunch of Lizardmen, bring in a few giant constrictors and maybe a mega-gator or two, sprinkle liberally with gold and magic items and let it marinate in all the natural misery a Swamp generates for free. Voila, a bug infested, wet and stinky adventuring locale where hopeful Heroes can endure discomfort and hardship before finding a way to get themselves killed.

  I enjoy watching their torment through my iMage system. Frequently with a snack.



#29 Valley of the Werebadgers: I realize that the term 'werebadger' doesn't hold the same visceral terror as does 'werewolf' or 'werebear', but have you ever seen an angry badger? A pissed off badger will fight off an entire pack of wolves and after a poke or two, even bears will run the other fucking way. So imagine all that mammalian fury blended with the thoughtful depravity a human is capable of and you have yourself a place where would-be Heroes go to die.

Generously donating all their equipment and possessions to me of course.

It's why I keep it open.


#19 Aerie of the Prismatic Dragon: A prestigious challenge for high level douchebags, the Aerie is one of my premiere Adventure locales where level 18-22  Hitters can come take a swing at one of the rarest Dragons in the world, Matti T.

The only Prismatic Dragon currently working in the industry.

I have her under contract, but secretly we substitute a variety of stunt Hydras, shamefully painted with static polychromatic schemes, to handle most of the routine work and not unsurprisingly, no one ever notices the difference. No one who survives anyway. 

This hot spot is a bit of a Hero-Burner, yet it doesn't stop them from lining up to die at Matti T's (or one of her many stunt-Hydras) talons.

So many notable Heroes have perished here that there's a three month waiting list just to get through the mountain pass to actually reach the valley. Naturally I have provided upscale accommodations for these aspirant dragon-slayers, at remote-exclusive pricing, of course.

I tend to make as much money off the mini-bars as I do the bookings....


#7 Sundered Palace of the Dread Winter Lords: A snow based Adventure for wannabe Heroes in the 10-14th level range who ideally are from ice-based nations. This destination took off when two famous Heroes got smoked while doing the "tourist"*2 thing. Served em right. +2 vs Fire Plate Mail isn't gonna cut it in a frost-based environment, you fucking Stuff-Donor.


#5 Cursed Forest of the Orc Lord: Yeah it's trite and jejune, but there are some adventure tropes that just won't die and Orcs and Forests are among them. It took me a long time and a hell of a lot of resource support to get the local Orc Chieftain, Pat, to work for me. He was concerned that his people were going to merely be slaughter-fodder for my ravening Adventure clientele and that there was no future or profit for his kind in this scenario.


  I assured him that his people's continued existence was essential to the location's enduring success and that I had plans in place to prevent a band of fucking Heroes from decimating his kind. He was skeptical, which is extraordinarily shrewd for an Orc, but I alleviated his concerns the first time a well equipped and determined party rolled up against his tribe by deploying a Cave Wraith that they never saw coming.


  It went through their party like malaria through 19th century Englishmen. It was far above their levels, but as a Dark Lord, I don't concern myself with niceties such as level equality or fair play. Sometimes it sucks to be a good guy and sometimes I'm the reason why that is.


  After that Pat was totally on board and to this day I still invite him and his wives to various parties I throw despite how they smell.


#3 The Caves of Utter and Complete Batshit-Craziness  Popular games such as Rastan and Castle Vania will illustrate how deadly tiny bats can be. And not even in a disease spreading sense, but in an immediate threat to your life sorta way despite how large and physically adept an Adventurer may be. Who would've thunk it? If you throw enough four ounce bats at even the most robust armored warrior, somehow they'll still kill him even if it's technically physically impossible for them to do so.

  Doesn't matter, bats are lethal in any size. Apparently.


  This fact wasn't lost on me as I was an up and coming Dark Lord. Bats could seemingly kill anything, no matter how ridiculous the situation seemed so I went all in on a cave system teeming with the little fuckers. One of the best investments I ever made. Turns out bats can kill virtually anything, despite all available evidence, in a fantasy setting.


  Who knew?



#2 The Hateful Mountain Keep of the Dragon Emperor: The Dragon Emperor's name is Larry Fossman and he's a dear friend of mine*3. He's known by his moniker of The Dragon King of the Blood Fang Mountains and his Keep is legendary in the industry as being impregnable and packed with high end Artifacts and obscure Arcana, with the occasional captive Princess thrown in for nostalgia's sake.


  Larry runs a tight ship. He's a master at keeping the mortality rate of his enterprise at exactly 35%, industry standard for A-List destinations and he does it all with very little supervision from me, which is refreshing. Another of his admirable qualities is a decided lack of ambition. He doesn't want my job, he can't handle my job and most importantly, he knows it.


  That's why I continue to allow Larry to live; he's good at what he does and what he does is all he wants to do.



  And there you have it, avid readers, my top ten grossing Adventure Locales/Hero Traps.


  I hope that some of you reading this may glean some sort of insight from it, but things being what they are, I doubt it.


  That being said, good luck in your evil endeavors. I await your challenge, LOL.



Yours in nearly omnipotent power,
-Lord Hurderoth





  


  


*1 I should know, I started and still have a hand in the editing of DPM, albeit through a veiled web of holding companies and editorial puppets. There is absolutely no reason why Vertical Integration shouldn't apply to a Lawful Evil outfit. In fact, it seems to be a concept that perfectly encapsulates Lawful Evil in a justifiably corporate sense.


   The Chain of Command is everything, mowwa-fakka.





*2 "Tourist" refers to a high level Hero crashing a lower level installation because they are either lazy, drunk or just mining lower level loot to fund whatever habit gets them through the day.**

  
  **I always keep a surprise on hand for these type of cunts. Imagine the astonishment of these frat-heroes when the worst opposition they expect to come across is a teenage Green Dragon and then they run into an unforeseen Chaos Hydra or some similar nasty piece of work.***

   
     ***Surprise, motherfookers!





*3 Dear Friend: An associate I haven't killed yet