The Impaler

Where we meet the (not so) dastardly villain and our hero has to brave a musuem.

 

Why  every fifty years  or so a new “Evil Overlord” shows up nobody knows. The last attempt at scientific research ended in failure, as you all might now. We still mourn the loss of such a brilliant young sociologist. Still, the late dr. Roberts entrusted his early research to me and it seems that so far we cannot avoid so called “Dark Lords” arising. We can, however, make them less effective.

 

How you ask? Simple. Stretch out our hands to their minions and accept them as productive members of our society. They do not serve these “Overlords” because they are evil, but because they have no choice!

 

Ouch! Who threw that egg?

 

(Dr. Gunther Schwartz’s speech that caused the famous “Black Tuesday Riot”)

 

 

 

“Where is my Evil Army of Doom?” Mrungo the Impaler, Terror of the East, Scourge of the West, Plague of the North, Wind of Death of the South, Ravager of Virgins (of Both Sexes) yelled at the top of his voice. His red eyes blazed with fire, his muscular chest heaved under each angry breath, his hands curled into fists (but not ones not tight enough for his rings to be hidden. He wanted people to notice his rings, after all. He didn’t bloody buy all those neat rubies and silver skulls just to hide them from people’s sights), he was a sight to be feared. Unfortunately, the only person around who would fear him was a thin sickly-looking man with a subservient smile glued to his face.

 

“The goblins claim they cannot work for you because of safety reasons,” he started to explain in a whiny voice, “you’ve destroyed the demands of the trollish trade unions and the orcs say you owe them money for all the physical and moral losses they have suffered fighting for your family, m’lord.”

 

Mrungo stared, his mind trying to grasp what he just heard. It sounded surreal. Surely, trolls were to stupid to form trade unions! And orcs… orcs couldn’t even count up to ten, could they? He could buy goblins refusing. You could expect anything from a goblin—though mostly, it was prudent to expect something explosive.

 

“Did the goblins’ message explode, Glarnir?” he asked.

 

“Um… Yes, sir,” his minion answered. “Brilliant deduction, if I may be so bold.”

 

Mrungo sighed a melancholy sigh.

 

 

 

It wasn’t easy being an Evil Overlord in a modern world. Back in the times of swords and arrows, vile and dark magic made a great difference. People froze in fear when a legion of rotting abominations marched towards them, chanting some unholy hymn to their creator. Oh, there usually was some brave soul, who would sneak into the Overlord's castle and slay him or her. But the point was, you didn’t get people disagreeing to join your Army of Doom on the grounds that some factory had a better Health Scheme.

 

And the pesky scientist didn’t exist back than, either. Now you had them popping up everywhere: creating better rifles and artillery, and making shambling undead abominations obsolete; researching magic, finding new spells faster than teams of mages could ever hope to do… They took apart the universe and stole all the mystery and fear.

 

But Mrungo would not give up easily. He would destroy all those silly toys that took away his power. He would bring the world to its knees for pushing him away. And he would take away the free will from those traitors too. They’d retain their minds, but their will would be his, so they would suffer for all eternity. The price of betrayal had to be bitter!

 

“Damn it!” Mrungo barked, as he tripped over some misplaced sword. He should learn to watch where he was going.

 

Secretly, in his dark heart, he harboured a fear that he was actually a disgrace to all Dark Lords and Ladies everywhere. His minions dared to disobey him overtly and he didn’t even have a dark curse plaguing him! Nothing sinister, like… like rotting alive and transforming into a fearsome skeleton with glowing red eyes, was happening to him.

 

There was also the matter of relaxing. Mrungo was quite aware that Evil Overlords ought to have… exotic tastes. Torture, orgies… such things. Mrungo on the other hand preferred Checkers. And so he summoned Glarnir to his chambers, because there wasn’t anybody else he could play with.

 

The slimy man entered the room, looking hopeful (like always). Mrungo was aware he expected something nasty and properly disgusting. It got on his nerves to tell the truth. Who was that little disgusting toad of servant to expect anything of him?! He should be damn happy, Mrungo didn’t like whipping him, right?! Right?!

 

It all ended in a whipping anyway, because the damn little creep expected things of him. Glarnir even sneaked in a whip into Mrungo’s room and left it somewhere, where it was close at hand, so he could easily grab it and strike his only servant.

 

He suspected the little slimy git provoked him on purpose. Glarnir obviously knew Mrungo would stop hitting him before he caused any real harm. Not because he liked Glarnir—he never did—but because he wouldn’t find any other servant and because he didn’t want his carpet dirty. It made him feel quite pathetic, but that feeling quickly turned it anger. All those b******s, who ought to serve him would pay. Oh, they would pay!

 

“I have the news, you requested, my lord” Glarnir said, once he was done.

 

With his large hand, Mrungo took the files and started reading them. The smile that grew on his face as he read, could have frightened even the most powerful warrior.

 

 

 

Kalliyagh ha Magra was not happy, which was not normal. Had she been a human, she would have had rosy cheeks and baked chocolate chip cookies for her grandchildren. Since she was a troll, she fried pork for her grandchildren as a treat. She was naturally jolly; she was also the President of the local trollish trade union.

 

“He’s going to try and follow his mother’s footsteps?” she asked, scratching her large hooked nose thoughtfully.

 

“Yes,” her Vice-President (a young trollish women by the name Hayannay) replied. “We hoped that studying medicine would have beneficient influence on Mrungo, but unfortunately he never managed to finish the studies. I’m afraid he tried to summon us already.”

 

“Well, we’re not joining him,” Kalliyagh snorted. “He can suck my horns.”

 

 

 

Kalliyagh naturally informed the right authorities of her findings about Mrungo and said authorities sent those to Khardur, who carefully made sure the ambassadors and Secretary Moore found about them. The New Monster Republic wanted to avoid trouble and a new Overlord was like a big flashing neon sign attracting problems and military action.

 

Still, there was nothing else Khardur could do. Somebody else might meet up with little mister Mrungo and try to explain to him that causing another war was a bad idea. The orcish ambassador wasn’t sure, who would be patient enough to attempt this. He, personally, would just rather bash Mrungo’s skull for being an idiot Overlord.

 

However, this wasn’t the thing he was supposed to concern himself with. Right now, he had to make sure his embassy was still being built; write a letter to Rana Rockjaw, in which he explained the idea of marriage to her, asked her to marry him and invited her to come here. Oh, and there was the matter of some museum being opened—he had to be there. He knew what a museum was, of course, and quite understood why they were rather important. It was just that he never was to one and was a bit worried that instead of paying attention, he’d be looking around like some idiot and asking stupid questions. Naturally, he intended to ask those stupid questions, but later and in private.

 

He stared into the mirror and started combing his hair: he was quite proud of it, actually. Most orcs had thick hair, but not could actually use a comb that wasn’t made of metal on it without destroying the utensil in the process. He didn’t intend to cut it, no matter what some of those newspapers wrote. Gerwulf was allowed to have a long braided bear, Mr. Moore had his silly mustache and Andariel overdressed on every party. Why shouldn’t he be allowed to have braids and a pierced nose? And what was wrong with his earrings? They weren’t made out of human teeth.

 

 

The museum proved to be fairly interesting, but it wasn’t fascinating, at least for Khardur. You had to be a special kind of person to find a bunch of old, dusty skeletons fascinating. Sure, somebody drew pictures—large ones—of how the owners of the skeletons looked like when they were alive and there were some funny stones and lots of loose bones.

 

“Feeling like making a necklace?” Andariel muttered, while some doctor of paleontology continued his very extatic, if boring speech.

 

“I thought it was you, who’d feel like it,” Khardur shot back.

 

“The big one’s teeth would match your cute little earrings,” the elf continued.

 

“Want me to wear feathers next time?”

 

“No, she wants them as birthday present,” Gerwulf quipped in. “Now, hush, both of you.”

 

Khardur did realize that his bickering with Andariel about his earrings had to be fairly boring to those not involved. Still, bickering was much better than outright killing each other, which had been something of racial pastime for both the elves and the orcs. Besides, he hadn’t called Andariel a pesky elf and she hadn’t made any references to him being a mindless brute. On the whole, they were acting quite friendly for an elf and an orc.

 

“He stopped talking,” hissed Andariel. “Quit staring into space and start clapping.”

 

Author's Note

Is it funny? What do you think of the characters?

Reviews

[Gabriela]

Hahahahaha. Yeah, it's funny! And the characters are really interesting and intriguing. I'm glad you posted this. Hope the other one is up soon!

[Lyndie Bolt aka JustRac..]

Your humor and tongue-in-cheeck presentation is very good. Only problem I saw was the use of sex identifiers- you switched the he/she and his/her areounf a bit and beard- had the 'd' leaft of so it read bear. So when will the next chapter be up?