The Dark Lord's Handbook (16 page)

A man astride a white stallion emerged from the approaching cloud, and he was resplendent in plate and held a sword aloft. Morden could feel the Righteousness of this Knight as he approached. Either side of him, other knights could now be seen. They formed a wedge that Morden knew would break upon him and his army. And for the first time in his life, Morden knew the meaning of real fear.

As quickly as the vision had come, it was gone. A sound like a sigh came from the air around Morden. For a second, Morden thought there was someone else there with them. The fire in the pit flared and whatever had been there was gone.

“That was strange,” said Morden. Whatever had happened didn’t seem to have bothered Grimtooth.

“You should put the robe on,” said the old orc.

The robe looked different now; it was an ordinary looking black robe, woven tightly from a strange material. Morden stretched his hand out to touch it again, somewhat apprehensively. He didn’t want another jolt like the last. He needn’t have worried.

The material was thick but light, with a slight sheen. Morden stood to try it on. The fit wasn’t bad, and there were indeed inner pockets, one of which was perfectly sized for the Handbook. He was at first disappointed that the robe was about eight inches short of a full length and two inches short in the arm, but even as the thought occurred the hemline dropped and the sleeves lengthened.

“Now that’s clever,” said Morden. “Where did you get this, Grimtooth?”

Morden had no idea what magic was at work but there was no doubting it was not a normal robe. It felt absolutely perfect, as though it had been made for him.

“This belonged to my previous Master,” replied the orc.

Morden stopped examining the robe to look at the orc. “Your previous Master? You mean this was…”

“Zoon the Reviled wore that robe. Yes. Now try the hood and let’s see the full effect.”

Morden pulled the hood up over the back of his head and faced the orc, his hands plunged deep into opposite sleeves.

“HOW DOES IT LOOK?” asked Morden, and almost jumped out of his skin at his own voice. The question boomed out with malevolent twists and turns to the syllables as he pronounced them. It sounded like he was uttering a death sentence rather than asking sartorial advice.

The question knocked Grimtooth to his knees. “You look…you look…” Grimtooth sounded like he was in real pain. “You look scary,” he gasped. “The hood. Pull the hood back.”

Morden snatched the hood back. “Is that better?”

“Much,” gasped Grimtooth, getting slowly to his feet.

“How did it do that?” said Morden, fingering the cloth. “It has to be magic.”

“It is,” said Grimtooth. “Zoon had problems making himself heard.”

“Really? You would have thought a Dark Lord wouldn’t have that problem.”

“Well it’s all right for you, being half dragon, but Zoon was a Lich King and didn’t even have a larynx. Work it out.”

“A lich? Wow. I had no idea he was undead.”

“Undead?” asked Grimtooth. “No, he was definitely Very Dead. If anything he was More Dead.”

“More Dead? How can you be More Dead.”

“Believe me you can, and it’s not something I’d recommend,” said Grimtooth. “Why do you think he was Reviled? Not a pleasant smell I can tell you. Anyway, he put a lot into that robe. The voice thing for one and it’s also warm. He had chronic arthritis.”

“That couldn’t have been pleasant.”

“Being mostly skeletal, no it wasn’t. You really didn’t want to be around him on a cold damp day, and in his fortress it was often cold and damp.”

As Grimtooth spoke, in his mind’s eye, Morden tried to imagine what Zoon’s fortress had been like. Surely it must have had dungeons, deadly traps and a throne room with the biggest throne in the world. With a throne like that Morden was sure that no one could withstand his Will, to say nothing of how good it must have been for sitting and brooding on conquests. Then another thought struck him.

“Grimtooth, were you there when…”

“When what?”

“You know…at the end…when he became…dead dead.”

Grimtooth bit his lip and quite possibly a tear came to the orc’s eyes. “Aye, I was there.”

“Let’s sit down and you can tell me about it,” suggested Morden.

Grimtooth seemed lost in thought but then snapped out of it. He sat across from Morden and warmed his hands on the fire pit. “We had high hopes that day. Zoon had risen well, never using too much of his power so that rumour was the most that the rest of the world had to go on. All the preparations had been made and we came forth. We were going to roll across the world and make it ours. Nothing could stand in our way. Nothing except the knights.” Grimtooth sighed and stared into the flickering flame.

Morden was hesitant to interrupt but his curiosity was burning, “Knights? What knights?”

“They called themselves the Righteous Knights. Some of the younger orcs called them the RKs.”

“But who were they?”

“Pompous, self-appointed arbiters of what was right and good,” said Grimtooth with evident bitterness. “They said they defended the common man but it was the common man and not them who died in the battles. They had impenetrable armour, and wielded steel that could fell trees, while the common man was lucky if he had much more than a loin cloth and sharpened twigs at his disposal. Sure, they rescued Ladies, but only if they were beautiful and slim. If you had a skin problem and a fondness for cake, or had been swept away by a troll, you had no chance. Good luck to the troll they’d say. They had a leader, Uther the Merciless, who had…”

By now Morden was hanging off every word the orc had to say, “…no mercy?”

Grimtooth looked at Morden in a sideways fashion. “No mercy. Indeed.”

“And was it him that…” Morden made a slicing motion with one hand across his throat.

“Yes. It was Uther who cut Zoon down. But it wasn’t a fair fight.”

Grimtooth fell back into staring at the flames. Inside, Morden was screaming, go on, go on! But felt it wise to just wait for his old friend to continue at his own pace.

“They came at us across the plain, a shining steel wedge of knights with a host of plebeians in tow, just as Zoon had anticipated. They broke upon us and the slaughter was terrible. But the knights were few, and we were a horde, the like of which the world had never seen, and we had the Black Dragon Flight. Zoon let his mercenaries take the initial brunt – if they were dead they wouldn’t need paying, he used to say – and they had little choice so great was their fear of the Reviled. When he called the dragons down it was over quickly. They herded the peasants and burned them, so that the air was rich with the smell of their well done flesh. They roasted the knights in their shells. Only Uther and a handful of knights remained and they were thrown down before Zoon, crying for mercy. Oh, the irony.”

Grimtooth turned away from Morden and ran a hand over his face. “If only he’d killed them, shown them none of the mercy they had always denied others. But no, instead he berated them. He pulled that book from his robe and he read from it. He told them exactly where they had gone wrong and then he went on to how he was going to crush the rest of the world and his dominion would hold for a thousand years. What started off as a final word turned into a full blown monologue for us, his troops. I can hear him now, speaking as though it were yesterday. We were all going to have our own man-slaves, and a piece of land. ‘The world is ours!’ he said and he stretched his arms wide. None of us saw Uther pick up his sword. None of us saw him slide on his belly and then rise up and swing that damned sword. But we all saw Zoon cut down. We all saw his hand fly off. And that was that.”

“But surely the army was there, and the dragons?” said Morden in disbelief.

Grimtooth nodded, “Yes they were. But there was no Zoon. This is important Morden: the Dark Lord is all. No Dark Lord, no army. Everything goes to shit pretty quickly if the Dark Lord bites the big one.”

Though Morden wanted to know more about Zoon and the old days, he could see that Grimtooth had sunk into a melancholy contemplation of the flames.

“I’ll get Stonearm to organise us some food, and then perhaps we should rest,” suggested Morden. Grimtooth nodded without looking up.

After they had eaten, and bedding had been found, Morden and Grimtooth settled down to sleep. Stonearm had hustled and bustled about them and insisted upon there being a guard, promising he would personally see to it that not a flea got close to them.

As Grimtooth snored, Morden fidgeted, still wide awake and excited. His head was full of armies, conquests, terrible fortresses, fantastic wealth, and maybe even a not-so-good girl on his arm.

Chapter 21 Fourth Lesson – Monologue

Take care with what you say; you never know who might be listening.

The Dark Lord’s Handbook

In his dream, and he was certain he was dreaming, Morden was standing on a massive stair that led up to the gargantuan doors of his fortress. Arranged around the bottom of the stair was his army. All the preparations were over and today the terrible host was going forth to conquest.

They were chanting his name. He spread his arms to silence them so that he may speak immortal words to send them on their way.

He opened his mouth but nothing came out. It felt like the time in Bindelburg he had dreamt about being in class with no clothes on. He was suddenly naked before a horde that was to ravage the world and he had no idea what to say.

Then he remembered the Handbook. Grabbing it from the pocket where it nestled he flipped it open and began to read.

Though there are various forms of speech making there is one form that is particular to the Dark Lord and must be mastered. I present to you the art of:

Monologue

There will be times, Morden, when you feel you may as well be talking to yourself. Sometimes you will be. Regardless of the presence or lack of an audience, the fine art of monologue is one that every Dark Lord of any consequence has mastered. It is the great vehicle for your genius and will carry your immortal words to generations, long after you have settled in a nice place by the sea.

Though it may seem like a daunting prospect, monologue is an art that can and should be practised frequently. Being an inherently ironic form of communication, it is well suited to those of a bitter and twisted, and yet inspired, farseeing bent, most markedly Dark Lords; for a Dark Lord engages the full range of emotions. There is the bitter despair of having incompetent minions, and those awkward feelings you have around women. But nothing beats the glorious tirade against all that is wrong in the world and how it will be a better place once certain grand designs have come to pass.

In approaching monologue, as a novice there are certain aspects of the art that need to be made clear. Monologue is fundamentally a melodramatic art. Everything about a great Dark Lord monologue will be big. There should be big ideas, big emotions and a big performance.

Big ideas should be no problem. If you don’t have big ideas you should think about a change in career. A Dark Lord without big ideas is like a poet without a bleeding heart. Common big ideas are world dominion (a little tired but popular with your armies), challenging the gods (may defy instead of challenge), overthrowing oppressors (the irony fits the form well) and naming months of the year after yourself (Mordenuary?).

The associated plans should both be grand and beyond the understanding of the audience. This lack of their understanding will frequently lead to a strong desire to elucidate. Herein lies one of the many pitfalls and traps of monologue.

When playing an audience that is behind you – in the good, non-dagger wielding stab-in-the-back sense – then a Dark Lord is obliged to illuminate the world with his superior intellect and be overly expansive in detailing precisely how the big idea really is BIG.

If, however, there happens to be hero within earshot, re-read the section on heroes. Pay attention to the bit about them escaping certain death and how difficult they are to kill. Gloating is fine, just don’t let it run away into a full blown monologue, and NEVER EVER turn your back on a hero. EVER.

Emotionally the Dark Lord monologue should leave no doubt that you not only mean business but that to stand in your way, in any fashion, would at best be fatal and at worst lead to eternal torment. The emotions of a truly great monologue should not only engender terror, which renders well muscled heroes to piles of goo, but if done particularly well, a grudging respect, tinged with jealousy.

Practice. And then practice more. Your delivery must be perfect. Dark Lords don’t stutter nor are they ever at a loss for words. This comes from hours in front of the mirror. Try speaking your thoughts out loud, it often helps.

Oft neglected is the physical performance. You may think that words alone will be enough but image is everything. Looking the part is probably the easiest element of the performance. The black robe is clichéd these days, but it’s a cliché for a reason. It works. Menacing is good and size does matter. If there are height issues, a suitably long robe and heavy boots with a six inch sole will work wonders (though that late growth spurt you had seems to have filled you out).