Jeff Mach's Blog, page 49

The Chosen One and the Dark Lord

(First: This is a standalone vignette; you don’t have to read anything else to read this.)

If you’ve possibly never, ever, ever seen my blog before, you might not know that (as of the time of this writing) – I’ve recently released my second novel, “I HATE Your Prophecy” (I only mention it about seven times a day.)

This is a piece I cut from the book. The Susane inside isn’t quite the Susane I wanted for that book.

But somewhere, in some world, Susane is this way. Maybe I’ll write about her at some point.

For now, have this.

_________

Susane stirred in the light, bright, cheery, expensive mithril shackles. “Why am I alive, then?” she asked. “Why are you telling me this?”

“Because,” replied the Dark Lord, “I have some bitter tea to swallow, and I don’t want to drink it alone.”

Susane looked pointedly at the table between them, upon which rested two cups of milky foam and sucrose, which might, at one point, have had a drop of tea poured into them.

“It’s a metaphor,” said the Dark Lord, tiredly.

“I get that,” said Susane. “I’m not stupid.”

“No, you aren’t. You just did a number of really, really stupid things in succession over a long time, beginning with embarking on this quest, and ending here, in manacles.”

“And you made me a prisoner instead of a corpse because you wanted to insult me? What are you, twelve?”

The Dark Lord shook her head. “There is a plague spreading over the land, and I cannot stop it, and I will need your help.”

“A plague?”

“Of stupidity.”

Susane started to speak, but the Dark Lord held up a (strangely overlarge, and very calloused) hand. “I’m serious.”

Susane looked at the older woman, who hadn’t even pulled back the hood of her cloak. “Whiskey,” Susane said, after a moment.

The Dark Lord looked down at her. “How old are you?”

“Why, is the Necromancer afraid of being a bad influence now?”

One might have expected the mage to snap her fingers for a servant, or possibly conjure something out of thin air, but instead she simply shrugged, reached into one of the folds of her garment, and pulled out a flask. She handed it over. The Chosen One took a long, long swig.

“For the record, this doesn’t mean we’re bonding,” she said to her captor. “It means that I want some kind of anesthetic if I’m going to have to continue this conversation.

The Dark Lord looked offended. “You could be in an oubliette, you know. You could be in a very dark room, lit primarily by the fires Goblins use in order to heat iron implements of flesh removal.”

Susane tilted her head. “Do these Goblins talk, and if not, is the dark room an option?”

Jeff Mach

 

My name is Jeff Mach (“Dark Lord” is optional) and I build communities and create things. Every year, I put on Evil Expo, the Greatest Place in the World to be a Villain. I also write a lot of fantasy and science fiction.. You can get most of my books right here. Go ahead, pre-order “I HATE Your Prophecy“. It may make you into a bad person, but I can live with that.

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Sober Musings

Pickle my mind in something briny,

behold: a Muse that’s laser-shiny.

It’s not a shrink ray.

No, it’s a drink ray.

It doesn’t make you tiny.

It makes your brain all misaligny.

Some guns shoot fire

Or high-tensile wire

This gun’s ordinance?

Alcoholic discordinance.

Some call the blaster “clumsy and random”

Some squads fire ten rifles in tandem,

Some eschew guns and cast flaming bolts

Some stand around open-mouthed, looking like dolts

Some cry “Havoc!” and then let loose

The Krakens of war. Now that’s obtuse:

The Krakens will their foes devour

Then stick around for Happy Hour.

And if they get into the Tequila,

They’ll hug us to death with their pseudopodelia,

And if they get to the Demon Rum,

You’d best flee fast to Kingdom come.

You’ve been at the bar for fourteen days,

With alcohol your mind to braise.

They might hold a trial (in absentia)

To see just how Absinthe’s bent ya.

And still the Muse won’t come ’round

(Though this is the bar where she’s often found.)

The secret’s not in alcohol;

It’s not in anything at all.

Inspiration’s secret home

Is not a palace of glass or chrome.

It can’t be found on any chart

Because it is inside your heart.

But you, my friend, are a heartless thing

Your heart beats from pure spite and sting

You’ll never hear the Muse’s storm

Unless you learn to reform.

…I’m joking, oh, my writer sweet

If you must find a heart to beat

Then please take mine; I have no use for it

I’m not the sort to need a Muse for it.

…Let other writers the Muses seek

And I’ll stay an authorial freak.

This is my design, and my station:

I make words from grim determination.

I wrench these words, still bloody and screaming

Out of nightmares, sharp and gleaming.

I tear these words, with ugly truth

From the misbegotten memories of my youth

I pull words, against their will,

From all those moments I used to fill

With useless things, now long discarded

From a life with which I’m gladly parted.

I write; I think; I make; I read.

And that is really all I need.

My Muse, I’ve found, truly writes best

Howling through my ribs from the cage in my chest.

 

Jeff Mach

 

My name is Jeff Mach (“Dark Lord” is optional) and I build communities and create things. Every year, I put on Evil Expo, the Greatest Place in the World to be a Villain. I also write a lot of fantasy and science fiction.. You can get most of my books right here. Go ahead, pre-order “I HATE Your Prophecy“. It may make you into a bad person, but I can live with that.

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Persephone’s Insufficient Sin

Autumn comes,

and we think of Persephone,

her seven seeds,

and how it’s fallen into folklore:

o, mortals should be careful what they eat in strange realms,

and if there are consequences, it’s their own damn fault.

I, and other modern writers,

have pointed out that this seems odd.

Persephone starved herself,

touched nothing,

but seems to have eventually given in over a few seeds,

with barely enough meat to be sucked off in the course of a span of minutes?

this seems a strange way to end a long season

of emptiness.

What do seven pomegranate seeds weigh,

half of half of half an ounce,

perhaps?

We see it as a strange act of weakness or ignorance

when, in fact,

what could require more focus,

more thought,

than deliberately chewing and eating seven seeds?

What sorceress were you,

Koré, to use your innocence as a conjuration,

your obsidian marital bed

as a touchstone,

your hunger

as a flash-point,

and your peculiar tastes

as an irresistible symbol?

As if Demeter thought to press Zeus

by bringing icy winds to mortals,

and not earthquakes to the caverns of Hades;

as if Zeus was helpless in the face of

fourteen calories of fruit;

as if you,

daughter of a Goddess,

wife of a God,

celestial being,

decided to end your chosen fast

with less protein

than you’d find in a fire-ant.

Were you really, really desperate

for antioxidants,

immortal?

7 seeds?

You transformed

rivals for the affection of Hades

into plants and trees,

you were feared Queen of the Underworld,

such that the Greeks invoked your name

in curses,

You decided on more than one occasion,

whether those in your realm

might break the chains of mortality,

and rise up again into the sunlit world.

But we’re to believe

you were unaware

of the consequences of eating

in the realm in which

you were now a monarch?

I think not.

If I had to throw me a wild guess,

an educated guess,

an over-educated guess,

I think you were having an affair with Eris

this whole time.

Because that particular Ice Age has been receding

for thousands of years

by the time

the Greeks

first spoke any of your names.

There’s something wild and chaotic about all the love-stories

of the Greek Gods, the adultery, the making love in the

shapes of birds or showers of gold,

the curious pieces that never did fit together about

your own marriage.

I think you’ve all been kissing Chaos,

but then,

as your influence waned on Earth,

you locked her away.

It was cruel,

but not abnormal,

for Gods like you.

You all loved her, which is why the myths speak of

her so seldom; because you all stand out front,

where you can be seen,

and she has that vicious little walk-on

in the Trojan War,

a certain retributive genius,

and then she vanishes.

So you’ve done something to her,

done something to Discord,

and now you don’t know how to fix it.

And that’s why we’re getting such a suberabundance

of Destructive Chaos. Not the Constructive Chaos

which can create inspiration, but the wrecking

Chaos which pulls down ideas at random,

leaving empty void in their wake.

You, Persephone,

you need to eat some more seeds,

work another magic,

bring Eris back.

Because the rest of you are amateurs at it,

and you’re all doing it badly,

and the mortal world suffers

worse than it would with 12 months of winter.

You were a catalyst for change once;

you played with our mortal lives, our crops

and our heat and our frostbite,

and you owe us one,

just a little bit.

And honestly,

you know in your own heart,

your chaos is of poor quality.

You can’t reproduce the works of a Master;

not without studying,

not without trying.

You can’t just try to make Her vanish

and expect us not to notice.

Go broil some spells.

Go carve up another pomegranate.

We’re waiting,

we’re waiting.

 

Jeff Mach

 

My name is Jeff Mach (“Dark Lord” is optional) and I build communities and create things. Every year, I put on Evil Expo, the Greatest Place in the World to be a Villain. I also write a lot of fantasy and science fiction.. You can get most of my books right here. Go ahead, pre-order “I HATE Your Prophecy“. It may make you into a bad person, but I can live with that.

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Villainpunk Is Cheating

Villainpunk is cheating, of course.

Surely you wouldn’t expect anything less from a monster?

Villainpunk is a genre which intentionally allows all the other genres of fandom to come on in, brew a nice cup of arsenic tea (the arsenic isn’t strictly necessary, but it adds flavour) – and make themselves at home.

Because there are no genre or stylistic limitations on who or what could be a fictional villain. All fandoms are welcome; and, indeed, there are many important cautionary tales about the misfortunes of those who fail to invite certain malefactors. (Do YOU want to be the monarch who fails to ask the Wicked Stepmother to the wedding?)

It’s also timely. With the power of instant, worldwide speech, we have learned, rather to our chagrin, that anybody can be called a villain. This is always been true, but the internet took that particular truth and amplified it until it managed to extrude itself into our everyday lives.

Villainpunk simply makes a natural assertion: if anybody can be called a villain, then anybody can call themselves a villain.

We tale on the names people use to hurt us, and build from them a community and a new culture. After all, if you use a weapon, like culture, against us, you should expect consequences. In our case, the consequence is creation.

Moreover, neither genres nor fandom subcultures tend to grow well when there is a lot of policing, judging, and gatekeeping. That doesn’t mean that I am recommending pure Anarchy; it means I recommend being welcoming. I have heard some extremely convincing arguments that Star Wars is basically fantasy and not science fiction. On a purely theoretical level, I agree with those arguments. On a practical level, I’m going to let science fiction keep its spaceships and its Space Battles and its space Wizards and its space swords, in the same way I’m not going to criticize someone for putting tomatoes in a vegetable salad, even though tomatoes are fruits. Having these discussions can be a lot of fun. Using these discussions to decide whether or not a person or a body of work is going to be allowed into your subculture is seldom fun.

In Villainpunk media, I care a lot about creativity and good stories and interesting characters. And I care very little whether the villain needs to be in 35% or 51% or 75% of the story for it to count as Villainpunk. In terms of Cosplay and events, I care a whole lot more whether someone is coming to an event with the desire to enjoy it and help create an atmosphere that other people will enjoy, or if they’re coming out to criticize others and bring them down, mess with others, and generally make the event a worse place.

Villainpunk is whatever you can get away with. Just bear in mind, we operate within the Villain’s Truce.

That is, we keep the villainy between each other as fictional as possible.

Because frankly, no offense intended, I don’t plan on wasting a perfectly good death ray on obliterating someone for being a jerk, when I could use it to take over the planet.

I am a Villain, after all.

Jeff Mach

 

My name is Jeff Mach (“Dark Lord” is optional) and I build communities and create things. Every year, I put on Evil Expo, the Greatest Place in the World to be a Villain. I also write a lot of fantasy and science fiction.. You can get most of my books right here. Go ahead, pre-order “I HATE Your Prophecy“. It may make you into a bad person, but I can live with that.

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The Addictive Trick

Once upon a time, there was a conjuror who fell in love with a trick she could never get right.

I won’t tell you what kind of trick (you might be tempted to try it at home). Suffice to say, it was one of those fatal tricks. That is to say, it was one of those which gave the illusion of being fatal. Something which would be terrible and tragic if it were real, but it’s not; it’s chicanery, and it’s the chicanery which makes it glorious. Because the audience gets to feel the tension of ruination, death, disintegration, that strange dark catharsis which is the snuffing-out of a soul. And they need not worry about what this says about them, because they know they’re being fooled. They know that the person isn’t really sawed in half, isn’t really stuffed in a tight box and pierced by a dozen swords, hasn’t actually disappeared, isn’t actually trying (and failing) to learn to breathe H2O or (in extreme cases) H2SO4.

Unless they were a part of this conjuror’s act.

The prestidigitator couldn’t understand it. These things are not easy to pull off. Some are very classic, and most involve a certain amount of complex machinery, which can be risky, but which also (sometimes) has certain safety precautions. It is difficult to buy or build a mechanism capable of pulling off this illusion; it is difficult indeed to learn to do it, and then you practice it and practice it, over and over, generally with a live person; and in all the practices, everything worked out fine.

But once she was on stage, everything went to Hell. Sometimes.

Oh, not visibly. That would have made this a shorter tale. Yes, the person didn’t reappear, but there were not screams or protestations. The magician would immediately cover for it, with great theatricality, telling the audience that they’d probably expected to see the person alive and intact, but that the person had, in truth, actually disappeared and “might come back”. Everyone would laugh, most of all whoever had come with the lucky volunteer. The magician would then do a bunch of patter and a bunch of talk about the joys of Magic and the pleasures of Illusion and the honor of spending an evening in such fine company, and then she would throw a sophisticated little smoke bomb and “disappear” (through a trapdoor, or a hole in the curtain, or something like that).

And then she would hightail it way the hell out of there, because she knew that person was dead.

And when she arrived here, applied to this circus, we just looked at her. Because plastic surgery only does so much, and while changing your walk and your voice is a great magician’s trick, we’d been following her career for a long time, and with interest.

She goes on at eight tonight. If you were wondering.

Jeff Mach

 

My name is Jeff Mach (“Dark Lord” is optional) and I build communities and create things. Every year, I put on Evil Expo, the Greatest Place in the World to be a Villain. I also write a lot of fantasy and science fiction.. You can get most of my books right here. Go ahead, pre-order “I HATE Your Prophecy“. It may make you into a bad person, but I can live with that.

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How To Prepare For A Geeky Convention

As a person who runs the world’s largest Villainpunk event, I am an expert in con preparation. In fact, I can sum up how to plan for a convention in less than a dozen words:

Give up. Give up NOW. Show up in nothing but Aquaman underwear and a tie and beg the front desk for a toothbrush.

However, I realize that not everyone will choose this option, because sometimes, the hotel doesn’t have very good toothbrushes. So for everyone else, I offer these handy hints:

How to avoid the stress of last-minute packing: All convention packing happens during the three-hour period after which you were supposed to leave for the event. This is unchangeable; there’s nothing you can do about it. But there is a working technique to soothe your pain:

(a) Pack for this event. You’ll be three hours late.

(b) Forget your suitcase at home. Show up naked, as instructed above. Then, just leave your suitcase untouched until the next event, and when the next event comes, you’ll totally be ready!

How to avoid getting Con Crud. (Note that I wrote this before the advent of Covid. I’ve kept it in for the day when Con Crud once again becomes worth worrying about.) Con Crud is a terrible thing – it’s the cold that spreads through an event due to the proximity of lots of people in a relatively small, enclosed space. But there’s a remedy.

(a) Get lots of sleep, take lots of vitamins, eat regularly, and have good personal hygiene habits.

(b) However, nobody actually does this. That’s okay. For a small fee, most events, including mine, will simply encase you in a huge block of Carbonite. This will prevent illness, as well as saving you money on food, and it makes packing irrelevant! It’s the perfect solution.

How to plan out all of your activities in advance.It can be hard to keep the mental focus you need in order to have good times. Fortunately, good preparation can serve you in good stead here.

(a) Think about activity you want to enjoy, and what you’ll need to do in order to get to it in the right place in the right time.

(b) Carefully place those plans within that famous suitcase full of writings which Hemingway lost on a train. When the actual event starts, simply project an aura of confidence by shouting, “SHUT UP, I GOT THIS!” and firing up your Invisibility Cloak.

How to deal with seeing your ex at events.This is a serious and difficult subject. But there’s a simple solution:

(a) Blindfolds.

(b) Not for you, of course. Convince your ex to wear a blindfold the entire event. If you and your ex are not on good terms, this is best accomplished through reverse psychology: “BOY, I BET MY EX ISN’T CAPABLE OF SPENDING THE ENTIRE EVENT WEARING A BLINDFOLD”. Post that to your social media. Your ex will be challenged by your dare and put on a blindfold just to spite you. Trust me. 2% of the time, this works 100% of the time, assuming your ex is the Ravenous Bugblatter Beast of Traal.

How to make sure you have fun at events.

(a) Just go into the event with a positive attitude, a friendly demeanor, and a determination that you want to have a good time. Don’t stress too much, don’t worry too much; the event is there to help you be happy, and all you need to do is let it!

(b) If this doesn’t work, just eat Pixy Sticks and other forms of raw sugar until you’re basically bouncing off the walls like a rubber ball being continuously shot out of cannons. Keep bouncing long enough, and eventually, you’ll probably run into your soulmate and be happy forever. If this doesn’t happen, consider the possibility that you’re in the wrong movie. Fire the director, hire a new script, and have the whole thing re-shot by Michael Bay.

Jeff Mach

 

My name is Jeff Mach (“Dark Lord” is optional) and I build communities and create things. Every year, I put on Evil Expo, the Greatest Place in the World to be a Villain. I also write a lot of fantasy and science fiction.. You can get most of my books right here. Go ahead, pre-order “I HATE Your Prophecy“. It may make you into a bad person, but I can live with that.

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Almost In Praise Of Wine

I sing now the joys of the noble grape

(I don’t know what joys,

or who let them escape)

and I sing you the horrors

of Barley the Bully

(You need to avoid it,

to appreciate it fully.)

From the noble grape man maketh Wine

Which causeth the humors to all align;

A glass of the red keeps you farther from dead,

and the white wine is subtle and smooth.

From Beastly Barley, whiskey comes

And you and your liver will stop being chums.

Your liver (be assured) has nary a crotch

Which is good, because what would kick it

is Scotch.

Wine is for the sophisticate,

And Whiskey for the degenerate,

And therefore, if you are civilized

Whiskey should be hated, and wine should be prized.

Oh, sure, there whiskeys at whom no-one sneer;

They ain’t lyin’ when they say that contain angel’s tears

But those things are rare, and besides

That fire inside, which whiskey provides?

IT’S THE DEVIL’S FIRE. I tell you truth

Who else would kindle a flame so uncouth?

No, in every whiskey is fatal fault,

Especially if it’s single malt.

And so, to the grape, I sing every praise

Pile a dozen glasses on silver trays

And take an appreciative sip,

and never let your attention slip.

For if from wine your palate wanders,

You’ll likely need some first responders;

No-one drinketh spirits wild,

Leaving their mouths cruelly defiled,

Unless they’re monsters, whose great liking

Is blood-alcohol levels spiking.

Far better to be a sipper polite

Than bust your brain on a Saturday night.

In short, remain thou debonair,

And let the fruit of the vine’s scent fill the air,

And stay away from that 80 proof,

Which emblazons the mind and raiseth the roof.

Or, if I might put it a better way:

Far from strong drink you should stay.

You keep on lapping up that wine

And me and the whiskey? We’ll get along fine.

For if there’s any knowledge eternal

It’s this: all strong drink’s infernal

So for you, stay safe on the straight and narrow.

And bury my in whiskey ’til it fills my marrow,

And if whiskey’s madness must my soul harrow,

Then when I die, preserve me in it;

pour a distillery into my barrow.

Jeff Mach

 

My name is Jeff Mach (“Dark Lord” is optional) and I build communities and create things. Every year, I put on Evil Expo, the Greatest Place in the World to be a Villain. I also write a lot of fantasy and science fiction.. You can get most of my books right here. Go ahead, pre-order “I HATE Your Prophecy“. It may make you into a bad person, but I can live with that.

The post Almost In Praise Of Wine appeared first on Worlds of Villainy.

Time-Teller

There is a tale older than Time, and I’d tell it to you, only Time is a sharp-edged, joyless, vengeance-blooded bitch—oh, mortals and immortals, you know this well; that Time is precisely that thing, that no matter what gender you attach to that word, nor what gender you try to attach to Time (and that latter is a failing enterprise—but I speak too soon. Chronology is strange, here in the floating ur-spaces made by words; Time, in particular, is a—at any rate, since I can’t speak of the one thing, let’s talk a little bit of Time.)

I am not, by nature, a speaker of the worst news. It does not always bring me pleasure, not that I create for pleasure (Creation is a painful, disjointed, ripping, tearing thing; it is having Created which is a joy; but again, that, too, is another story)—but I’ve come to talk, since it’s time, of Time. And it’s not a pretty story; Time has two faces, erosion and immobility, and neither is the sort which is aesthetically pleasing to anyone who perceives with eyes or similar sources. But it’s a true story, or true enough. Really, it’s just a bit of information:

Time probably doesn’t hate you.

And that ought to horrify you.

What has Time done to you? Aged you? Burnt you? Wounded you? Multiplied your heartbreaks? Brought you closer to Death? It’s not Time which has brought you wisdom or knowledge, should you possess those things; but it’s Time which will lend its weight to the processes through which your mind will forget some of these things, lose accuracy, become a fog when once it was a crisp, clear vista. And you might resist, and you might win; but again, that’s you, not Time.

And in all of these things, this is not Time hating you.

Ever felt like you were waiting forever, and you couldn’t stand it?

Ever felt that Time was passing so fast you couldn’t keep track of anything?

Ever feel that Time has stopped and you can’t change anything?

All these things are just perceptions, or—once in a while—momentary whims, if Time happens to have noticed you a little bit.

But imagine what it would be like if Time hated you. Imagine every injury and discomfort and wound Time has ever cost you, and realize that they were accidents, by-products, incidentals.

But it is entirely possible that you will, at some point, stand out such that Time does notice you.

You can’t fight Time, because nothing sticks to it. Fists turn aside; atomic weapons catch every atom within several city blocks, except for the ones Time chooses to inhabit; nothing wants to touch or be touched by Time, if it can possibly avoid doing so.

And thus, when Time decides to do you real damage, it takes you into its arms and hold you tightly, every part of you tries to flee the world. And every horrible thing Time has ever done,why, it shrivels into nothingness in comparison with the unmovable loop which is Time…

…unless you trap it, as I have, on the written page.

Oh, Time is furious with me. But it can’t touch me. Because I make the words go fast and slow, and in this strange little arena, it is I who control time. Here we are at the beginning of the Universe; and here we are at the beginning of the Universe which came before that; and now, with a smoothness so gliding that it barely feels like you’re crossing chasms immeasurable, we zoom through them both and into a farther future than has been invented even by the Future.

That fury-steaming creature there, that poor Power you see, waving hapless fists like a character from a cartoon? That’s almighty Time.

Time, meet Word, and beforever vanquished.

And you, reader, take these words, and whenever time moves in a manner not to your taste, when it dawdles irresponsibly or rushes immoderately, pull out these words, and know them for the Trap of Time, and take a deep breath, and move at your pace.

You give the words life; they give you Power; so it has always been, so it will always be, until (and far, far beyond) the end of Time.

Jeff Mach

 

My name is Jeff Mach (“Dark Lord” is optional) and I build communities and create things. Every year, I put on Evil Expo, the Greatest Place in the World to be a Villain. I also write a lot of fantasy and science fiction.. You can get most of my books right here. Go ahead, pre-order “I HATE Your Prophecy“. It may make you into a bad person, but I can live with that.

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Keep Your Sense Of Humor

They said, “Never lose that sense of humor,”

so I never lost it,

I held on to it in a deathly clinch,

tighter than the python

which ate my inner child;

pressed it against my chest,

so that it sand and rose with my breathing,

and I never lost it,

I never lost it,

not even when the cosmic rays hit.

not Cosmic Ray,

the guy who sold you herb

until the medical profession

put him out of business

(And he’s still bitter,

but mellow,

since it appears he’s got quite

a stash to get through.

so let’s not worry about him.)

no, I mean “cosmic rays”,

the strange stuff, still undefined,

used by unreliable narrators everywhere

to effect transformations;

I mean, nobody believes the real sorcery behind

my transformation,

so why not just throw some 1950s pseudoscience twaddle at

it,

and call it a day; but

I was talking about my sense of humor.

“Never lose it,” they said,

and I never did,

not even when my entire molecular structure

melted,

which I’m quite sure is impossible,

but since even my breakfast cereal

comes with a little screen

showing me twelve impossible things just

before I can eat breakfast,

and claiming they’re all true,

and each one worse than the last –

I’m not too worried about what’s “possible”

anymore.

I became this

Thing,

this creature out of Jungian myth,

or perhaps Reichian Orgone;

I never could tell the two apart,

except that one talked about monsters and Freud

liked him,

and the other talked about sex,

and Freud always felt a little uncomfortable,

and maybe just a little bit turned on,

I’m just saying.

“Never lose your sense of humor”; oh,

I can’t lose my sense of humor,

it’s twisted,

and misshapen

and beautiful

and horrifying,

and it’s not always funny,

this curious mutant thing,

living in my curious mutant body,

in this curiously mutated time.

I have never lost my sense of humor,

although I will admit

that most people find it

a little disturbing;

but that’s okay.

I mean, isn’t only a little disturbing

better than what you’re used to?

“Pleasure is the absence of pain”, opined Heinlein,

and if so,

I’ve hopefully granted you about four minutes of the former,

and you’re welcome.

Jeff Mach

 

My name is Jeff Mach (“Dark Lord” is optional) and I build communities and create things. Every year, I put on Evil Expo, the Greatest Place in the World to be a Villain. I also write a lot of fantasy and science fiction.. You can get most of my books right here. Go ahead, pre-order “I HATE Your Prophecy“. It may make you into a bad person, but I can live with that.

 

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Cleaning Up After A Chosen One

Yes, it’s an excerpt from my novel, “I HATE Your Prophecy” – but it’s also a standalone piece about the tribulations of being a Dark Lord. Or, as we say on Twitter, #DarkLordLife.

Grumpy servants were—once again—cleaning up the mess in the smaller and more private of the castle’s two throne rooms. It has always been a quite practical chamber; its general role was to offer a slightly simpler greeting to more frequent guests; it was not always optimal for either party to have each formal visit marked by a massive assemblage of troops, courtiers, nobles, flautists, loutists, jugglers, poets, and so forth. It was hard to have conversation over a glass of wine when people kept putting vast tables groaning with assorted butchered meats between you and your intended conversational partner.

Now, the room was mostly used for the approximately-every-full-moon visit of some murderous Chosen One.

The staff didn’t like it. It was a calculated risk, which made it an improvement over the vast majority of risks people take on a regular basis. Putting it briefly, there are relatively few situations where it makes sense to permit yourself to be attacked, in person, when you command an army and various tools, technological and sorcerous.

How plausible is it, really, that a group of even the most determined and skilled killers can make it all the way from civilized lands, through a hostile realm, and into the extremely hostile territory of a particularly loathsome foe, especially one with certain powers of divination?

It isn’t.

Unless one has a point to prove.

There are warlike cultures wherein the leader must be ready to defend against any and all comers, at any and all times, to prove one’s perpetual supremacy in battle.

These are generally cultures which don’t hold a lot of territory, because, realistically, even a leader who is capable of defeating much younger foes for a prolonged period of time is still going to suffer from the time, energy, and (in at least some cases) wound recovery necessary to schedule ‘wait for some young jerk to come and kill you’ into their daily life. To say nothing of the obvious point: while a powerful warrior can inspire an army in battle, being skilled at personal self-defense does not necessarily mean being good at commanding an armed force with maximal skill and (if possible) minimal casualties.

Sure, soldiers have plenty of reason to resent a leader who sits in a sumptuous pavilion, drinking wine and engaging in various fleshly pleasures, while they go out and fight; but that’s misuse of the privileges of rank. In theory, at least, one takes care of high-ranking officers, not because they deserve better wine and more comfortable cushions than anyone else, but because their actions and choices affect the largest number of people. A general who hangs back, surrounded by bodyguards and trying to get intelligence on the battle as a whole, is likely doing the right thing. Oh, there are times when you want someone brave of heart and strong of arm to lead the charge against the foe; but there are a lot more times when you don’t want the silly idiot giving orders to get killed, because nobody really wants the chain of command disrupted and destroyed in the middle of extended combat.

(Unless one is simply a terrible commander, and one has a very, very capable second-in-command; but that’s a tale for another time. Besides, that’s quite rare, compared to one who is a moderately capable commander, and has a lieutenant who has spent so much time plotting and scheming that there just ain’t much room left to actually get good at the job they covet.)

So no-one really loved the fact that The Dark Lord had decided to let Chosen Ones get through.

But one of the perks of power is being able to insulate yourself from things which might upset you, hurt you, annoy you. It may not be cost-effective to torture the bearer of bad news, but it sure feels good.

Only it’s not the bearer of bad news which needs your attention; it’s the bad news. Narratives get this wrong quite a lot. The more you’re able to harm your servants with impunity, for example, the more they will fear you, yes, and that has certain advantages; they’re less likely to try to take advantage of your good nature if you show them you don’t have one. But it’s not necessarily good for inspiring loyalty. You need to be fairly dumb or fairly unimaginative to stay loyal to someone who might have you tortured on a whim, and those aren’t the best qualities in an ally. If there’s one lesson Alice had learned, it people will often betray you for stupid, thoughtless, or foolhardy reasons. It’s not a good idea to provide more reasons for someone to act against your interests. The Dark Lord winced, internally, at a twinge in her left shoulder blade.

Scars are good. They help you remember some of your most idiotic moves, so that you’re less likely to repeat them.

People like to live out their stories. The Dark Lord could hardly blame them; while vast, foreboding fortresses atop mountain peaks are an excellent defensive choice, there’s something to be said for trying to be terribly clever and living in a little pocket dimension or a remote island—or, even better, living in one of those places while putting forth the rumour that you live in some particularly bleak craggy stronghold. She had her reasons, but she also wanted to live here. The Dark Lord, with the Dark Soul, in the Dark Fortress, on the Dark Mountain; it might not be the very smartest choice, but it was the one she liked, and that alone was worth some of the disadvantages.

And: she wanted real exposure to the people who were here avowed enemies.

Not reports on what they were like. Not whatever visions she could manage to scry (scrying is difficult). Not just ravens, repeating their words, or captured scrolls, giving her their information. She wanted to hear what they said and did when they got to her, when they thought they’d passed the guards and thought the Dark Lord was most vulnerable.

She wanted them to stand in front of her (they almost always did) and say, to her face (to the shadows which hid her face, specifically)—just who they thought they were, and what they thought they were doing.

There’s nothing like a primary source.

They persisted—time and time again—in believing this exciting narrative: they almost got the Dark Lord. It was very close. It was very tragic.

They truly seemed to believe she was one or two steps away from being utterly destroyed every time. They were right, although if they were wise, they would have

They wanted to believe that they had come very close, and just needed to try again, and then it would all work out the way they wanted it to.

Because that’s what humans do.

And that’s why she wanted to look at their faces, see the rage in the eyes of total strangers, hear them scream nonsense about their genealogies and absolute rubbish about her, accusing her of things she’d never even considered doing.

Because she was human, too, and she had to remind herself: if you really want to survive, as a member of this species, you need to constantly check your wants against your realities, or you will go insane with wishful thinking.

And she wanted the reminder, the constant reminder, the very physical, approximately once-every-month reminder, as a new Chosen One made their way to her door: it’s actions which make you what you are, and it’s actions taken in the grip of delusion which make you a corpse.

Jeff Mach

 

My name is Jeff Mach (“Dark Lord” is optional) and I build communities and create things. Every year, I put on Evil Expo, the Greatest Place in the World to be a Villain. I also write a lot of fantasy and science fiction.. You can get most of my books right here. Go ahead, pre-order “I HATE Your Prophecy“. It may make you into a bad person, but I can live with that.

The post Cleaning Up After A Chosen One appeared first on Worlds of Villainy.