It's nice to occasionally get asked for advice by a fellow Dark Lord. The whole reason I started this journal was to offer helpful tips to up and coming DL's in the spirit of 'everyone hates us so let's stick together.' I realize that to some this may appear to be counterproductive, the school of thought being that ANY Dark Lord is a potential rival and thus should be treated as an enemy and thwarted at every opportunity.
To this I respond that I rule a vast realm virtually uncontested and that as opposed to conquering the rest of the world, I'm quite content to play around with my portion of it and have more or less crossed over to the boutique dungeon market via the "Dark Lord vs The Adventurers" aspect of my field.*1
It leaves me a lot of free time to pursue my less virulent interests, like ravishing my harem and adding to my awesome collection of vintage toy knights.
That being said I'd like to reprint a letter from a fellow DL who it seems is having a problem with a Dwarf infestation.
He writes:
Dear Dark Lord Hurderoth
Let me start off by thanking you for your informative blog posts, I have found them quite enlightening and entertaining.
I have come to the conclusion that it’s time to expand my empire and have my eye on a Human kingdom to the north. This kingdom is mostly human, but also has a sizable community of Dwarves friendly to the human King. They are building a good relationship and I need to nip this one in the bud right now before more dwarven weapons find themselves in the hands of human soldiers.
How do you handle a dwarf problem? It seems like “more dwarves” is the answer to all of the tricks in my bag. Is a disease killing your troops? More dwarves. Is dark magic killing your troops? More dwarves. Are hordes of orcs killing your troops? More dwarves. Are hideous monsters killing your troops? More half naked dwarves with spiky red hair and blue tattoos.
My standard policy is to enlist some hobgoblins to dress up like local elves and shoot a dozen elven arrows into a few dwarves. The resulting retaliation against “their ancient enemy” escalates into full scale war which keeps both the dwarven population and the elven population down to a minimum. It’s inexpensive and effective.
That isn’t going to work this time around though; the elves in the region have all succumbed to a magic plague that I released a year ago. It’s a nice bit of sorcery if I may say so myself, and I am willing to share the recipe with you if you want it.
I could use trickery to confuse the dwarves and have them report to the wrong battlefield. They’re notoriously slow moving, but they also have a knack of arriving “right in the nick of time”.
Do you have any suggestions?
I appreciate your considerations.
Tudenom the Vile
It's an interesting problem, Tudenom and one that I have faced more than once in my career.
Let's speak plainly, everyone knows that dwarves are greedy, small minded stubborn little pricks at the best of times. They undermine your empire, literally, and gouge the fuck out of you for weapons, catacomb construction or trap installations. Dealing with dwarves is always a headache, they are the ultimate craftsmen and the worst part of it is, they know it. They know that as a discerning and professional Dark Lord, you demand the very best in new dungeon fabrication, traps that work every time and the best weaponry money can buy for your troops.
They have you between their hammer and anvil so to speak.
So dealing with them is always touchy. You want them as far away from your lands as you can get them but at the same time, you're reluctant to just slaughter them wholesale because you may very well require their services/products in the future. I am assuming that as a Dread Emperor who is still expanding his holdings that out and out genocide is probably a last ditch option for you; quite understandable.
Let me take this opportunity to applaud your eradication of your "Tree Twat" infestation. Kudos to that! And by the use of a genetically adapted pathogen no less, very sci fi and forward thinking. When faced with the same problem years ago I kept thinking to myself "It's going to take forever to burn this fucking forest down". A magically targeted virus would've saved me no end of time and resources.
Nicely done.
So thinking about your dwarf problem I have a few suggestions for you, none of which in and of itself may bring a satisfactory result to your beard-midget problem, but using them in a synergistic approach is what worked for me.
Once, long ago, I had a similar problem with the hairy runts. I wanted their weapons and armor for my armies, but couldn't secure exclusive buying rights from them, nor at the time could afford to do so. They continued to arm my rivals and make my life much more difficult. I of course wanted to orchestrate some sort of Extinction Level Event on their asses, but couldn't allocate the assets at the point in my career, nor give up the technical advantage their arms provided me.
So I got together my finest strategists, researchers, and data analysts and we convened to come up with a multi tiered blueprint to solve our little problem. First off we identified Dwarf weaknesses:
1) Dwarves still need to eat. Despite what their PR departments profess to be "100% Self Sustaining Underground Communitites", the fact of the matter is that Dwarven nations must import food from the surface world or slowly starve to death. You can only eat so much mold and rat carcasses before your stagnant diet leads to malnutrition and birth defects.
Therefore, Dwarves rely on human nations for supplemental components of their diets, they just don't like to admit it.
2) Dwarves hate magic. Sure most of the best enchanted weapons start out life as Dwarf forged, but either Humans or Elves are ultimately the ones who embed the magicks within it. Dwarves are about as comfortable with sorcery as trout are with fire.
3) Dwarves are very lawful minded. They live their whole lives by a strict set of laws, codes defining every aspect from birth to death with astoundingly minute details which are impossibly boring to anyone who is not a Dwarf. They will happily argue a legal case for generations and many a lucky Dwarf has inherited an ongoing lawsuit that has been savored by his family for centuries.
4) Dwarves are migratory. This may not seem obvious to us humans because most of us only live a fraction of the Dwarven lifespan and to us, it seems like the stunted cunts have been 'under yonder mountain' for as long as anyone can remember. But think about it, what do Dwarves do? They mine. They mine and then they make stuff out of what they have ripped from the earth. This means that as they slowly mine out all the worthwhile ores and minerals in the area, they must tunnel further and further away from their major cities, which are really no more than glorified mining camps to them.
Sure it may take three thousand years of nonstop digging to reach the point where it becomes necessary to relocate their base of operations, but it happens.
5) As you stated, Dwarves are slow as hell. The think slow, they move with great ponderousness (except in battle) and they only embrace change at a glacial rate. This frequently works against them.
So, taking all these facts about the Dwarven people together, my privy council and I*2 came up with the following multi faceted and proactive campaign for dealing with the small, furry faced bastards.
1) My skirmishers devastated the surrounding farmlands and animal herds for hundreds of miles around, successfully depleting the available food stocks to the point where no one had the surplus food to sell to the Dwarves. Skyrocketing prices and scarce supply made feeding themselves nearly impossible. This ended the Dwarven contingent in my enemy's army as their King pulled his troops back underground to help tunnel the vast distances they needed to go in search of food sources I hadn't destroyed yet.
2) I reluctantly hired a couple of mages to summon a Balrog or two to haunt their vast underworld cities. It's hard to focus on a budding surface alliance when you have a couple of giant demons roaming your underground real estate and that your surface-dwelling, would-be allies aren't gonna be enthusiastic about going down into your dark, cramped world to fight massive, firery hellspawn on your behalf.
3) I was successfully able to demonstrate in court that I ancestrally predated Dwarven presence on the major coal fields in my empire and thusly held all mineral rights and that therefore they had no legal right to mine the rich deposits there. And with little readily available coal to fuel their huge forges, the supply of Dwarf forged weaponry slowed to a trickle at a time when I already possessed more of it than my enemy.
The best part about this is that my 'proof' is a clever forgery and that although the case is still pending, the law abiding wee fuckers respect the moratorium on mining that the combined Human-Dwarf Co-Court*3 decreed until the case is decided.
4) My researchers were able to ascertain the the Dwarf Kingdom in question was indeed close to a shift of it's Capitol. They had exhausted the mining possibilities for hundreds of miles in every direction and were within a century or two of "Following the Seam", or moving to a richer area to establish new mines.
I was able to use this knowledge to gain certain concessions from them in exchange for agreeing to let them relocate to another portion of my empire that was loaded with rich underground goodies.
After wringing these concessions out of them through brutality and guile. I'm able to maintain their compliance first and foremost by a brisk trade and Favored Nation status between our two societies, backed up by an extensive legion of remorseless Earth Elementals and really fast moving Tunnel Wyrms; the terror of anyone forced to fight in an enclosed space.
This ended my cave-douche relations problem and ultimately enhanced my symbiosis with them. They're happy as pigs in shit in the new mountain home I ceded to them, they're no longer supplying rebels and neighbors with cutting edge armaments and I didn't have to expend the energy to totally eradicate them in what would've been a protracted, ugly underground war.
I might further suggest that you commission a detailed geological survey of the Human kingdom you've set your sights on and ascertain whether it could possibly be a bargaining chip you could use in your dealings with the Dwarves. As in, "Just agree to keep to yourselves and keep supplying me with those sweet-ass swords, you little hairballs, and the iron laden highlands my enemy lives in could be yours....."
I hope this helps you craft a Dwarf Agenda that can avoid genocide, (which can get so messy) and help you maintain a strong technical advantage over your stupid fucking neighbors. It has been a pleasure to share theory with you.
Yours in mutual malevolence,
-Lord Hurderoth
MAY HIS WORD BE TRUTH BECAUSE HE SAYS SO
*1 SO much more fun than conquering everything and then trying to maintain it. INSANE amounts or work...
What's the point of clawing your way to the top if you have to spend every waking moment trying to stay there, having no time to stop and smell the roses.**
**That you planted in the gaping mouths of your conquered enemies.
*2 I really mean that I came up with the plan, but I find that letting a subordinate think they have contributed in some way makes them feel useful.
*3 The Human-Dwarf Co-Court: Something I created to keep me from having to wipe out the silly little fuckers. They love it.
