Every now and then, as a ruler, you'll be faced with an enemy which is so irritatingly implacable, so utterly unwilling to just bend the fucking knee, that you are forced, forced I say, to obliterate them. Remove them completely from the gameboard. Hunt down every last one so some lost scion doesn't one day emerge to manifest their destiny all over you.
There's a cycle to it, mass slaughter. At first you revel in it, painting pictures of your might in gore and fire. Then, after you fourth or fifth genocide you start to grow bored with it all, seems like of lot of unnecessary logistics and resource expenditure if you're being honest with yourself.
Then it starts to get to you, all the pain, death and misery you're caused over the years. Cities razed to ash, cultures wiped out, kingdoms digested. Entire populations put to the sword, subject to your spears...
Before long you get angry at resistance. Seriously, are we going down this road? Why can't they see they have no chance of defying you? How fucking blind can they be? Suddenly you've come full circle. Now you're pissed again.
Because conquering is the only thing that makes you feel alive, subjugating the world. If your footwear isn't moist with your enemy's blood then the day, no matter how lovely, could've been better. You are a Dark Lord, and as such you demand a certain level of murderous destruction every day. And when you don't get it, it builds up inside you until the pressure can no longer be contained and then WHAMMO: genocide.
Oops. Shoulda bent the knee...
What brings this to mind is my current situation with Grolnherg, a nation populated by Viking-wannabes, but bigger and with gills. It's super hard to exterminate something that fights incredibly well on land, yet even better in the water. Despite what you may think, poisoning an entire ocean is virtually impossible.
I tried.
Their impact on my shipping is beginning to really poke my goat and in the old days I would've hired myself a freelance Kraken or two to deal with the situation. Possibly with the assistance of Water-Mage as well, as much as I hate to admit it.
Aqua pussies....
But I've been down that road and while it was fun in its time, eventually your grow weary of sitting for new footwear fittings. I find it's much more satisfying to go about things with a modern, forward thinking approach to the term conquer and keep the water beasties for a measure of last resort.
Today my anti Grolnherg strategy is based on several cogent points:
1) I've introduced the concept of sushi to every coastal land bordering the Grolnherg homeland. The insane demand for food that no one really likes but makes you feel cool for eating has started to decimate traditional fishing grounds of my bearded-walleye adversaries. They are almost 100'% dependent on seafood for their diet, so I'm making this food popular despite how it tastes.
I had to invent wasabi for fuck's sake.
2) I've banned all lumber imports to the fishy fuckers. They've still got adequate supplies of timber to build boats with, but it's really fucking hard to get to and without imported lumber their ship building has slowed to a trickle.
Meanwhile, my ship production is just swell.
3) I build Adventure Destinations; Haunted Ruins and Forbidding Citadels everywhere I go. Within the bounds of my empire every Friday is Free Doughnut Friday and no one else has that at a state sponsored level. The economy of many regions absorbed into my empire evolve from a back breaking agrarian based one to a lucrative and fulfilling new role in the exciting entertainment and adventuring-centric business sector.
But some cultures simply refuse to see the benefit of working within my system, where an agreeable amount of pillage and slaughter could've been negotiated beforehand, saving me a fortune on weapon maintenance and my enemy a significant amount of several generations worth of living people.
Hence, I created a fish-based doughnut for the Grolnhergers, and they WANT IT. Oh how they want it.
None resist the doughnut.
4) But I have a kraken and a squad of hyper-intelligent leviathans waiting for my word to make all the home waters of the Grolnhergers much less safe for even the meanest little boat.
Just in case.
Sometimes old school is the best school, ja?
I like to wear cutoff shorts during a genocide campaign because it makes the humiliation of my enemies just that much sweeter. Your nation and culture were wiped from memory by a guy wearing cutoff pantaloons and a filthy bathrobe for fuck's sake. What did you do wrong, as a nation?
The answer is frequently, many things. You did many things wrong and as a result I wore shorts and a tattered Motel 6 bathrobe when I strode through the blood of your nobility. Shorts with big, mud stompin, country boots, so I didn't ruin my cool, polished Dark Lord™ brand skull boots in the coagulating, miasmic gore of your former ruling class.
If these make me look genocidal, then so be it. If I had actually felt threatened, I'd put on armor.
So that, my adherents, is the way to solve a fucking Fish-Viking problem. Invent sushi and control the fishing trade. No need to genocide anything at all unless you feel like it or are having a bad day.
Cheers!
-Grim Lord Hurderoth
Law Word His Be
