An undisclosed location

While I can neither confirm nor deny the resurrection of Gar the Pitiless, he has asked me to pass on this missive from his undisclosed non-confirmable Fortress of Solitude:

Dear Peons-

Death is unpleasant. I don't recommend it, personally, but it does give one time to think. In the last few months I have had ample opportunity to condense and crystallize my decades of evil wisdom. Therefore I will, as time permits, be issuing the occasional Evil Overlord Aphorism. I hope to one day have them bound in the skins of my enemies and issued as a limited collector's edition, but we shall see.

Insincerely,

Gar the Pitiless

Sad News

The evil overlord is dead.

While one can never count a 'good' evil overlord out, Gar appears to be taking his dirt nap pretty seriously right now.

You can stay tuned, but don't hold your breath.

Career Crisis, or, Getting back on the (High) Horse, or the Power of Negative Thinking

I apologize, my minions, for such a long delay between posts. I know that some of you have been bereft without my guidance, and I would pity you, except for the whole 'pitiless' image that I must maintain -- though not for my own benefit- oh, no. An aspirational figure must always look beyond his own petty concerns and preferences. And so I must inform you that any botched attempts you made at world domination in my absence were doomed to fail due to the fact that I'm so super and you're so stupid. You should have waited for me to return.

I do, however, have a confession to make. After my arch-nemesis (Hamish the Asphyxiated) expired, it was as if a void opened up in my life. After months of planning and plotting and assorted maneuverings, I have to say I lost faith in the power of evil when Hamish was taken from my clutches. Life seemed almost pointless. I became Gar the Despondent.

However, just this morning I had a dark epiphany! I learned to see what I at first deemed a serious mishap in an entirely new light. I call it the Power of Negative Thinking.

My entire (and considerable - one might even say godlike) will was fixed on Hamish's death for months: How could the universe fail to see what had become an inevitability? Why should I be surprised that Fate or Chance heeded the titanic pressure put to bear upon it by none other than yours truly? Hamish's fate was not an interruption of my plans; oh no. The olive that blocked his windpipe, turned his face blue and had him convulsing on the carpet was nothing less than a physical manifestation of my unalloyed negative thinking! Destiny chose to do my dirty work for me, fearing my awesome powers. I would stand in awe of myself, were it not for the fact that I would then share that trait with you quislings.

With my shaken self-conviction now unshakeable, I will return to perfecting the art of Total Domination (TM) . In fact, you are permitted to wait patiently for my forthcoming book, tentatively titled "The Awesome Power of Negative Thinking" by yours truly. In fact, you are allowed send me large amounts of money to secure your copy.

why?

Unbelievable. I spend months crafting a plan to destroy Hamish, to rip from him everything and everyone he loves and cares about, and he chokes to death on an olive.

Just- I just-

Why do I bother?

A slight problem

No lesson today, my minions, just a little catch-up on my current schemes for Utter Domination, which have been set back just a scoch.

Immediately after returning from my, er, enforced vacation, I found myself spat out onto the Plain of Sorrow in an untidy pile of Gar pellets. The Plain is a place nearly as bleak and lifeless as the Abyss itself, and generally described as 'the ass-end of nowhere'. It says it on the map, actually, in parentheses. Good cartographers around here.

Anyway, through sheer force of will and a good deal of trial and error, I managed to reconstitute myself. There really is a place for everything, and everything really should be in its place. And I always thought my mother's little aphorisms were just her trite nature shining through.

I trudged my way out of the Plains, came upon a mud-walled village named Thrudd, subjugated the peasants there to my will, forcing them to clothe my sun-blistered body (no clothes in the Abyss, for future reference) , feed me from their pitiful stores of root vegetables and dried lizards, and give me their finest residence to sleep in (the mud hut that had moldy straw on the mud floor).

In the morning, after a nice bark-and-lizard soup flavoured with the ceremonial blessing of the entire village (apparently they spit in your food as a sign of respect, even awe in Thrudd), I continued my homeward journey, looking forward to finally arriving at my Dark Stronghold and reclaiming my rightful (or rather wrongful) place in the grand sheme. And a bath.

To make a long story short, it's gone.

That bastard Hamish tore it all down. I always thought the phrase 'leave no stone atop another' was just so much hyperbole. Apparently not. My Pit, my undead army, my poetry! All gone.

So. I find myself in the position that all Evil Overlords must inevitably come to at least once in their careers: Plotting my revenge.

That's all I have the heart to write tonight, dear minions. Rest assured, however, you haven't heard the last of me. Nor has Hamish.

You win when you don't lose

Generally speaking, I am against the use of foul language by an Evil Overlord. One should bring a certain level of class to the profession.

However, when your enemy banishes you to the Abyss/Null Space/Outer Void, 'never to return'; and you do indeed return, DESPITE the fact that your physical self had been broken down into particles no larger than an average raisin (if that), you are allowed and perhaps even expected to voice a few crudities.

So, to Hamish, Bringer of Light, I'd just like to say: SUCK MY EVIL, SWEATY, RECONSTITUTED BA%%S.

Evil Overlord Insomnia

It has been a considerable length of time since I last cast forth pearls of wisdom for you eager swine. I would apologize, if I could work up the insincerity. The truth is I am a rather grumpy Evil Overlord at the moment, and haven't got the energy to spare.

I've certainly been busy, what with the trammeling of peasants and the beheading of plotters, and usually a busy Gar the Pitiless is a happy Gar the Pitiless. But lately I have suffered from difficulty sleeping, and the lack of rest is telling on my generally cheerful disposition.

The first handful of nights, I shrugged it off, owing to recent stress involving certain difficulties renegotiating a contract with beings from the nether plane. But even after the dispute was resolved (satisfactorily, I might add; these infernal creatures care mainly about quantity, not quality in regards to souls, and I've got absolute scads of villages under my domination, filled with the useless elderly and infirm, nearly all of them with perfectly servicable souls), I have had great difficulty in getting a good night's rest.

I swear, without a decent night's sleep I just feel less than human in the morning. And all the wailing and hair-pulling and heaping-of-ashes and the banging outside my Stronghold gates, from the relatives of the villagers I sacrificed to Hoth the Devourer, simply isn't helping matters. You'd think they'd have a little human decency and keep it down in the wee hours of the morning, at the very least.

I mean really. It's not like their dear old Granny or whomever is dead. She'll be perfectly fine up until the moment she keels over. Certainly, once she dies she'll experience an eternity of torment in the gullet of a demon, but it's not as if her relatives are going to get postcards from the afterlife explaining all that she's going through. Honestly, these peasants have no sense of proportion.

Well. I can't say that I've necessarily passed on any advice that will further your designs on Total Domination tonight, but the writing of this has passed a half hour that I would otherwise have spent staring up at my bedroom ceiling, so I suppose it was worth it. Now to test out the boiling oil I had my troops install at the Stronghold gates this afternoon. It had better be flammable. I specifically told them to make it flammable.