[EVILNess]

Originally Posted by Krylo

Also: your progress as an evil mastermind is most of the reason I keep checking this thread. Just to be clear.

High expectations indeed. Before I continue I should elaborate a little more on the world in which I interact.

TLDR INCOMING. I am also summing up a few play sessions.

We've been playing this campaign for about 1 year and a half now, and about 5 years of in-game time has passed. I've been the ruler of this country for 2 in game years now.

I do make sure my country has as high a quality of life as I can give it. So they love me. Like North Korean leader love. It's really no surprise though since this country has basically been picked on for generations and it people were widely discriminated against, their country was poor and plague and famine were common, and its neighbors didn't respect its borders, often raiding into my country and enslaving people. Their king was a kind and gentle man who would have been a legendary leader for any big prosperous country who wasn't the world's punching bag. He was too nice. So I stepped in.

Country's poor? Bam, here are orphanages, food banks, and other public projects to give jobs and ease the burden of the poor. PROBLEM SOLVED. Oh wait, your king's weak? Bam, disinformation campaign leading to a coup instilling me as monarch. PROBLEM SOLVED. Your neighbors don't respect your borders? Bam, invade them, kill their kings, enslave the populations that have tormented you for so long, and annex their lands. Now we have new neighbors. PROBLEM SOLVED.

I also recently started a Wizard Academy (I actually have a Bard college, a fighter's guild, and have a contract with the thieves' guild making them nationally sponsored privateers). It's completely free and open to anyone who passes the entrance test, except for the fact that being in the academy means you are in my army for a period of no less than the duration on your enrollment + 5 years.

The DM actually started his new group of in my country and gave them the option of choosing to enroll in my academies and starting as level 3 and my army standard equipment and being bound by the obligations that that brings, or being freelance and starting at level 1 with the normal starting packages. They actually all chose to start in my schools.

Speaking of my army, I have been making preparations to attack the abby where a pillar is housed. I have determined that the abby houses about 10,000 fighting capable people of level 3-7 and are a mix of clerics, monks, paladins, and fighters. They aren't an army, but they live in a fortress on the top of a mountain with a spiderweb of caverns and catacombs underneath. I am currently making preparations to map the underground.

From my academy, I currently have 300 level 1-2 wizards, 150 3-5 Wizards, and 120 6-8, and 50 10+ at my disposal. That may not sound like much, but it really is. Let's say I have 50 units. Each one can have a wizard of level ten or higher, and many lower leveled to back him up.

I also have a highly funded*** Artificer research facility that has made the standard grunt equipment all be +1 (swords/maces, shields, and chain-mail). The higher ranking soldiers has exponentially better stuff. And since I require every citizen to take at least basic soldiering instructions, I have a very good army. I could honestly say with confidence I have the best trained, equipped, and most loyal army in the world.

Originally Posted by Krylo

But how many starving orphans did you feed in the process?

As for the orphans... well... ever seen the movie Soldier with Kurt Russel? Picture that, but we give them aptitude tests and stick them where they would grow the most.

We have four basic places they could go. They could be put into the wizard's academy, the rogue's guild, the fighter's guild, or the bard's college. Each of these places are place's I personally built up (Except for the Thieves' Guild, but we have a privateer arrangement with the guild leader.) The fighter's guild is basically a glorified orphanage where the students are taught to master weapons, the wizard's academy I have already explained except an orphan student isn't considered graduated until he turns 21, the rogue's guild has a contract with me to train "special" troops such as burglars or assassins, and the bard's college is where we train our bards (They make great spies.), and artificers.

Also, we managed to break through to the tomb with the pillar. You know? The one I invaded a country to get to? Its not there. Apparently you can actually move the pillars and someone thought to do this. So we have another pillar to find.

As for the other group I finally managed to get an eye on them and they destroyed the pillar for us. The reverb after effects sank actually sank the Isle that the Pillar was on. They managed to survive though. They have realized they have been tricked and while they were recovering on their boat I appeared before them. They were kinda shocked that I was still alive (They still think I am an npc.), but quickly attacked me. Them being completely wiped out and exhausted from their trek into the Isle, the loss of powers due to alignment shifts, and I being much more powerful than them I quickly subdued them.

I did not kill them though, in fact I had no intention of killing them at all even if they refused the request they were about to receive. These guys were just too much fun regardless of what their answer was. I told them such. (Classic overlord mistake I know, but PKing a whole other DnD group seemed kinda lame.)

I stepped into the room and basically explained everything to them. The pillars, their purpose, and my plan, and this is where the quality of the DM and players really shines.

The paladin who had snapped long ago from my incessant mind games had long ago traded in his alignment for Lawful Evil and his paladin-hood in for the Blackguard prestige class (although his other party members thought he was still a paladin.) and jumped at the chance for more power.

The cleric, powerless from what she did before and already teetering on the brink of insanity due to guilt over her part in my death and my mental prodding snapped when she heard she sank an island and kill hundreds of thousands of people. She decided that the true path to heal a person was to free them from this coil of mortal suffering and that I was the perfect embodiment of that ideal since I wanted to remake the world into a "better" place. She chose me as her new "God" and her fervor and devotion to me is so strong her spells work. I am now a god for a death obsessed cleric. I pulled a break the cutie!

The Rogue/Illusionist having had a taste of the good life while impersonating me coupled with me exploiting her inner insecurities of having been very poor when growing up with her master (They used illusion magic to make grass taste like real food.) she jumped at the idea of power and infinite wealth.

The fighter was actually the one to think the longest. He had surprisingly been most resistant to my mind games and was probably the most sane, still he was true neutral since the start of his character and analyzed my offer with a Spock like logic and ultimately chose to join.

I then gave them all special gems that I had personally designed and manufactured. Basically, these gems are permanent loyalty-geas stones. They imbed themselves onto your soul and can only be removed through a wish or divine intervention. Basically when you make the stone you inscribe taboos onto them and the person becomes unable to go against that. Before you cry foul on that magic item, I spent a great deal of resources (The materials required to make one of these is staggering and I made four.) to make them, and there are only 4 in existence and they aren't reusable. Trust me when I say I won't be making any more.

I had them swear me to be their leige and take the stone into themselves.

The taboos are 1) Disobeying, Ignoring, or Perverting the orders of your leige. 2) Harming your liege or allowing harm to come to your liege. 3) Trying to remove this Geas. The stone also provides other benefits including a 1 point DR to all damage and +1 to Str, Dex, Wis, and Int, and well as +2 to all saving throws. It uses no equipment slots either.

So I now own an adventuring party. They are currently searching for the missing pillar and it is their job to retrieve it and bring it back.


*** Via exports. (Well, that's not really fair, we export many other things. Our Artificers alone bring in 40% of our GNP via magic item sales to foreign powers. That's actually a part of my spy network, I put special gems in certain objects that can be activated to allow my spymasters to view through them. Not to mention the 3rd party merchants that secretly report to me.)