Düm Leavings

Beefnippers Wemon

Düm Leavings

Names: Düm Irkwell Leavings

Species: Goblin

Age: 48

Job: Advice warlock / culture warrior / career arsehole

Appears In: Game of Plagues

Düm Leavings in a black robe with his hood up

The tell-tale look of an unelected advice warlock (see more at Instagram)

The goblin's first name rhymes with 'boom', 'gloom', and 'doom'. Düm got into politics because it's the only area in which a person can legally practice warlockry. This school of magick involves communion with fiends - said entities being the pure incarnation of evil. Given that, it's no mystery that such a practice would find itself prohibited.

While no one questions politicians' relationship with the infernal, they really should do. At this point in history everyone just excepts them to rub shoulders with entities that have more shoulders than morals and more fangs than that. The politicians themselves say that sensible governance requires people who aren't afraid to mingle with the dreadful. That's total unicorn shit, of course, but as most politicians dabble, voters don't have a choice.

Düm started off working for smaller politicians - summoning familiars and horrors that could do their dark bidding. While most warlocks enjoy nothing more than engaging in their sinister hobby, Düm wanted to upend the political order entirely. He had no idea what he'd upend it too, but he did enjoy upending things.

The story of Game of Plagues is what happens when an insatiable turd meets an un-upendable problem.

You can buy Game of Plagues in eBook or paperback by clicking this link

Creation Notes

If you're familiar with the UK coronavirus situation, undoubtedly you're aware of Dominic Cummings - Boris Johnson's very own advice warlock*. Cummings has spearheaded most of Johnson's dreadful drives, although I think there's a tendency to forget that most of his aims are well within what Tories want (i.e. any Conservative government would be roughly this woeful).

This sort of thinking can become a problem as there's a tendency for the media to give the impression that a sitting government might be overall basically neutral if not for the influence of the chief adviser - so 'Rasputin syndrome'. In the book I tried to avoid having him be the true evil behind the power - more just the side-evil behind the other-evil - although I'm not sure how well I pulled that off!

I actually found it pretty difficult writing Düm as a character. Boronymous Jubbly had a very defined character to riff on, and someone like Slurdoch allowed me to default to 'evil Australian', but what's Dominic Cummings' personality?

It feels like he has one, but then you think about it, and you've no idea. We've all heard of his grand schemes - we're all used to his oily face - but when you see him speaking, there's just nothing there:

In lieu of a personality, I made him hiss and shout a lot while wearing a cowl that obscured his face. So in that sense he's very much like the real man - just a hostile nobody at the centre of chaos.

*Cummings stepped down between starting this blog post and publishing it. This is why only idiots like me write political satires of this nature - because they're inevitably out of date by the time you hit publish. Should have just done a TikTok FFS.