"Fair" Fights

"Your enemies want you to be stupid and ineffectual, just like them. Well you know what? Screw them, that's what." -Xulthar the Reviled

The same mouth-breathers who complain about your actions being "wrong" and "evil" will also rail against your so-called 'dishonourable' acts. This generally boils down to the fact that an Evil Overlord will under no curcumstances 'fight fair'. Your job is not to engage in fair fights. Your job is to win. Therefore you will make the fight as unfair as possible. The last thing you want is a level playing field.

How many times has my Army of Doom captured some hapless hero and brought him to me (rather like a cat with a rodent, actually; distasteful, but they mean well), whereupon the prisoner demands I fight him in 'honourable combat' or some other version of the same?

First, honourable combat is a feature of the code of chivalry, which is reserved for the nobility. I am not a member of the nobility. By the fool's own rules I'm not obliged to comply with his request. Second, even if I was nobly born, I'm not stupid. He's spent his whole life training to stick a sharp length of metal into his enemies, whereas I had better things to do with my time. How on earth would that ever be a 'fair' fight?

It boggles the mind. Like I'm actually going to tell my troops to stand aside while I fight this muscle-bound ox one to one. Look, Sir Whatever of Wherever, you were captured. You already lost. You are, essentially, already dead. So why on earth would I allow you the opportunity to cut me in half with that humping great longsword my men have already taken away from you? Do I look like I was dropped on my head as a child?

I mean really. Have some class. Your whining about me being 'dishonourable' is really you whining about the fact that you aren't getting a second chance that you simply don't deserve. Be a man and go get beheaded without all the snivelling.

Enforced hiatus over

My apologies for the lengthy delay between posts. We had an eensie weensie coup attempt, and I found myself briefly housed in my own Pit of Doom. Then there was the escape, the destruction of the enemy, the burning and pillaging of sympathiser villages, the days upon days of racking my brains for ingenious and ironic tortures.... In other words, life sometimes interferes with higher pursuits. One must always be on guard against the daily grind. And traitors.

In any case, today I offer only one small, albeit key bit of advice concerning the mindset of an evil overlord, brought to mind when the rebels dropped me down the Pit of Doom: Always think ahead. They didn't. If they had, they might have asked themselves if I had ever actually dispatched an enemy in this fashion.

While they would have come up with many rumours to that effect, if they'd bothered to track them down they would have found that it had always happened to a friend's brother's uncle or some such. Because, really, why would I have a humping big hole in the floor of my throne room, where I might accidentally fall in, never to return? In actuality the Pit is a rather nicely furnished studio apartment, complete with running water and an extensively stocked pantry. And an escape tunnel. And my reserve Army of the Undead.

Having the Pit is a good (meaning fear-inducing) PR move, and it usually keeps my minions in line, knowing they might be tossed in if they displease me. In actuality, I get rid of enemies in far less spectacular, and far more efficient ways.

And so should you.