Being a professional Antagonist has it drawbacks. It isn't all superchariots, VIP access, private rocs and luxury getaway fortresses. Public perception of Dark Lords frequently coincide with their success, longevity and depravity of rule.
If the people hate you just slightly less than they hate growing vegetables and being elbow deep in various livestock vaginas of a frosty night, then you're doing good. Always leave something better to hate than you. I have had great success with religion.
I've started cults for the silliest shit I could think of. Hell, when I used to hang out with the old school Hierarchy of Doom, we once bet on who could create the most ridiculous religion that was first to gain one thousand followers or ten martyrs.
Then, when I orchestrated the simultaneous assassinations of all the other members of the Hierarchy and masturbated with their blood, I won the bet. I would like to point out that polishing my samurai with their gore had nothing to do whatsoever with the contest, but was merely me grandstanding for style points.
Whatever. I was younger then.
I should at least rate a Dark Lord Hall of Fame mention for "The Armadillo Brotherhood", a society of lepers worshiping the only other species on the planet that could give them leprosy outside of other humans.
Brilliant, right?
So. Heroes.
What is a hero?
Is he an unreasonably muscular cretin waving a sword about, clad only in a furry loincloth? And if so, why? Surely some sort of armor technology would be available to his primitive culture, even if was only tree bark and woven grass or seashells.
Is he/she a greybeard mage with halitosis and a gruff but caring demeanor who happens to intensely dislike evil buggers and doings?
What about a whiny, self righteous, daffy-ass cleric who can heal mortal wounds and make zombies go "EEK"!
Doesn't matter, they all end up falling into a predictable stereotype: The badger-pelted muscle guy with a mysterious magic sword. The geriatric mage of fearsome power. The classy elf who seems like a dick but comes through in the end. The Thief Lord who has a heart of gold and is slicker than a lard handy.*1
Heroes are nothing more than the fringe talent of the sentient spectrum. They are saddled with an overwhelming hunger for glory and tray-sure while masquerading as johnny do-gooders bent on ridding the realm of evil influences and mass murderers.
Such as me.
Had they been seriously talented. like myself, then they would've succeeded as spice merchants, or cobblers, or farmers; like honest people do. Instead of being outfitted and supported by Daddy's money, such as most of the filth that dies in my adventuring destinations.
Adventuring is primarily a rich kid's pass time. Useless fourth son of a noteworthy King? Then have Pop buy you an Axe of Smiting and some Plate Mail +6 vs Flame and go hunt you down some fire critters, bound to be some gold involved somewhere. Not many poor folks are able to afford armor and equipment, training in arms or schooling in sorcery. Most regular folk don't have a magic sword or wand of fireballs passed down to them by their forebears. Let's face it, a serious lack of talent can be more than made up for by kick ass goodies only available to the very wealthy or incredibly lucky.
As a result, not many serfs become successful Heroes. They merely live short, brutal lives growing the wheat to make the bread to feed the hearty appetites of a bunch self absorbed twatfaced HEROES.
Sad really. My serfs eat pretty good because I see to it that this is so. Weak, starving people suck at everything except dying and I'm much too busy to grow my own rutabagas and raise my own cattle, therefore tiny and emaciated villagers don't work for me.
No pun intended.
Let's take St George for an example. Famous for supposedly slaying a dragon, right? What history fails to mention that the creature was indeed a wyrm, not a dragon and that ole Georgie Boy was a 28th level Paladin with a Vorpral Fucking Blade; that poor little wyrm never stood a chance. Due of the remoteness of the area he killed it in and the oppressive heat of a particularly brutal summer, by time the first witnesses arrived, the corpse of the wyrm had bloated to double its original size and looked, to some dumbfuck villager who'd never seen one, like a dragon.
I threw a party on the day my agents finally captured Sir George. We tortured him for days before my dog skullfucked him and then I hacked his head off with sharpened silver serving salver.*2 I had raised that wyrm from a maggy*3 and I missed his playful antics and the sight of him scarfing down a bowlful of kittens.
Goddamn adorable I tell you.
So again, what is a Hero? In my experience, a Hero is an arrogant little orc molester who never had to truly earn anything for themselves, but merely advanced as a result of their family's fortune and influence. They got their start through nepotism and whether or not they became legendary, they would've never survived their first dungeon if it weren't for the epic shit they were gifted with.
Now to be honest, this describes me as well since I inherited my Father's empire when I killed him, but in my defense, I DID piss away the entire thing and was forced to start all over as a Village River Bully.*4 Therefore I've seen success from both ends of the spectrum and let me tell you, I have a deep and profound appreciation for everything I've earned as opposed to all that I was given and thusly took for granted.
Hero is just the other side of the coin from Dark Lord with some slight differences:
A) We're the bad guys. Torture, rape, larceny and exploitation are sorta mandatory and creative sadism is applauded.
B) Dark Lords don't need Heroes in order to thrive, but Heroes need Dark Lords if they ever want to amount to anything. Evil can do just fine without 'good' being around, but good requires evil for it's very existence.
It's awesome.
C) Us Dark Lords typically have cooler outfits and we have Minions, while Heroes dress like cartoons and have Followers, Squires and Apprentices.
So fucking tedious.
D) The type of women attracted to mass murdering despots fuck like demons. This is a fact.
Ultimately we both seek the same things: power, wealth, really nifty shit, a comprehensive program of AgroCentric investment, the sating of our base desires and of course, status elevation. We just go about it from different angles. While I hate, loathe and willfully slaughter Heroes and their ilk, I also respect them. Sometimes. When they're worthy adversaries.
I especially enjoy letting an up and coming Adventurer 'best' me several times over the course of their career before I catch them with a concealed spring loaded portcullis, or have them stomped into an amateurish marinara by my Undead Dragon, Hershel.*5
Indeed, I was spending so much money on magic items to stock my death traps with, and was so generous with my payouts that it soon became a real strain on my empire's finances. I just wasn't seeing the return on my investments back in those days. That's when I came up with the idea of conquering a race of hardy, magic spewing little Tundra Gnomes a bit to the north of me and forcing them to enchant weapons and items on an industrial scale, thus saving me algebraic amounts of cash and expanding my lands.
It was a tough row to hoe at first until I discovered they would willingly and eagerly work for beer and liquor. Then, after I figured out a system for dealing with renegade, hammered gnomes, everything just fell into place. The magicked thousands of weapons and thingies for me, voluntarily, because I get them wasted whenever they want so long as shit got enchanted on schedule.
Saved my motherfuckin Domain.
Well, I'm pretty drunk right about now, so this is where I'm ending for the night. In closing, remember this:
Just because I'm a Dark Lord it doesn't necessarily mean I'm a bad guy. Sure I had to butcher a few hundred thousand people, but they weren't doing much anyway and the remaining population benefits greatly from the top rated
Heroes welcome...
-Lord Hurderoth
Word His Law Be, yo
*1 The quicker it gets stroked, the stronger the smell of bacon becomes, thus halving the time to orgasm.
*2 Try saying that 5 times fast.
*3 Maggy: A portmanteau of Maggot-Puppy. A baby wyrm is referred to as a 'maggy' because it looks like a giant slender maggot but acts like a dopey, acid-drooling puppy. Raising one is fun until you pass out from the fumes and awake to find it feeding on your abdominal cavity.
*4 Village River Bully: One of the lowest rungs of the Dark Lord ladder. A step above Dirt Thief, but well below Town Dickhead.
*5 Although his consistency is mediocre at best, he's great at balancing oregano to bone shards and blending fat tastefully into a final product.
