One of the "powers" of the Minions is to swarm people with no regards for their narrative importance, that is true. Likewise, we see that Agnes is totally capable of "just shooting the evil clown".Aleph said:
Overlady: Attack of the Minions (Thread II)
- Thread starter EarthScorpion
- Start date
- Fantasy
Jonen C
F.M.D.G.
- Location
- Lincopense, Ostrogothia, Suecia
And most certainly not a protestant.BadRoad said:
- Location
- West Michigan
Admitting that she's a capital-A Assassin could still get her killed, if the Pope is a Templar.Selonianth said:
mdkcde
"Emotions are prohibited"
- Location
- Nani Sore?
I wouldn't put my bet on it, Overladyverse seems to run on Irony nearly as much as it does on Narrativium.Selonianth said:
Irony, and a healthy dose of Fuck You If You Try To Metagame Narrativium.mdkcde said:
Hence, a young female warrior of justice who gives a stirring speech before a battle is probably going to get away with it. But as soon as you start going "Oh, I'll give a speech, to show I'm the hero, and they won't shoot me in it"; why, that's when someone shoots you.
It's a universe which is, despite first appearances, decidedly Granny Weatherwax unfriendly, because if we consider stories to be lifeforms, they have immune systems. And the immune systems don't appreciate narrative parasites.
Clown: BulletSucal said:
Evil Clown: Bullet, possibly of blessed silver, if lead doesn't work
Misguided Clown: Bullet
Mimes: Fire a blank at them, then stab them when they're playing dead
mdkcde
"Emotions are prohibited"
- Location
- Nani Sore?
Hmm... I like that. It only works if you are being authentic. Must be a "Louise must die" mode on each new game plus though.EarthScorpion said:
Is this reflected in the gameplay, somehow?
horus
Lupercal
- Location
- Cthonia
dose Overladyverse stamp on all metagaming or just the cheating kind?EarthScorpion said:
Yeah, it's basically the answer to the "but you shouldn't turn into a giant snake! The Evil Overlord list says so!" sorts. No, turning into a giant snake is fucking awesome, and in Overlady often pays off because now you're a giant armoured reptile with venom and crushing coils, and swords just bound off you.mdkcde said:
Mechanically, it's a representative of the AI Director, which scales the difficulty up if you do things too early (ie, if you get too powerful too quickly), or do certain things in certain levels which you could only do with information you find out later, and which introduces some minor random elements into the success of options you choose.
Sinsystems
Patron Librarian
Like going right for the key to a treasure chest before you find the clues to the keys locationEarthScorpion said:
So what happens with the modern people who fall through portals in this world? How do they adapt to the narrative tropes? Do they gain Hero/Villian potential due to their unusual origin?
Somehow, that makes me think about cheat codes.
I wonder what kind of cheat codes Overlady would use, and how ES could make a joke about that in the fic.
I wonder what kind of cheat codes Overlady would use, and how ES could make a joke about that in the fic.
- Location
- The sixth circle of Hell (second on weekends)
- Pronouns
- She/Her
What modern people?Robotninja said:
This isn't a typical ZnT crossover. There aren't summonings from another world - or rather, the "other world" is "Pratchettian fantasy", and it's woven into the ZnT setting instead of the latter summoning individuals from the former.
I think he's talking about the demons. You know, the ones who live in a modern technological society built on massive social inequity, just like the real world. And who read books suspiciously similar to real life ones.Aleph said:
Now, now. There might a be few demons who would actually love to be part of the Overworld. Disgusting perverts the lot of them.Selonianth said:
- Location
- The sixth circle of Hell (second on weekends)
- Pronouns
- She/Her
New best word. Hee.Sucal said:
Does that make Jessica an incubuddy? Or a friendemon?
Prince Charon
Just zis guy, you know?
I'm sure she'd be a go- um, evi- ... a helpful one.Samarkand said:
A Refreshingly Wicked Interlude
A Refreshingly Wicked Interlude
Through the woods of Albion, the songs of the elves echoed through misty glades and sun-dappled canopies.
"In western lands beneath the Sun
in winter, flowers die,
the trees all rot, the waters run,
and wasted little rats chirp.
"There it is cloudless night
and shuddering beeches hold
no starry host, the great fright,
scared their lights away.
"Here at my life's end I am lingering
in deep darkness buried.
Beyond towers strong and high;
beyond all mortal sleep.
"My pain! You don't understand,
the ache of a world forlorn.
The elders in their greed and hate
would choke every newborn."
The songs of a certain kind of elf, at least. Pale-faced, their eyes adorned with dark linings, the dark elves snuck through the verdant greenery with utmost haste, only periodically stopping to pet small animals and sing depressing songs about trees. They were dressed in midnight black, and thus stood out like sore thumbs in the midday green and brown forest. They were also frolicking, but in a sinister and malevolent way as befitted their status as clearly Evil elves.
Indeed, no small number of them had engaged in wanton mass killing, and as a result their hair was braided with the severed sexual organs of plants.
Raising a hand, the depraved, wanton and degenerate foe of all righteousness who led this most vile cabal of elvenkind called a halt to their procession. "Um, Emerald," Lillysuffering Crim'sondoomblood – called 'Lilly' by her friends – asked. "Are w-we lost again?"
Emerald Leafgreen, one of her oldest friends who nevertheless refused to change her name to something more evil – citing a willingness to make her mother die of shame – shrugged. "Look, we're following what the crazy old woman in the cottage said. The spirits are telling me that we're following the signs right. And I can taste the Evil in the air."
"I feel a great wickedness consuming the sun!" declared one of the male elves, whose name was so saturated with misplaced punctuation and 'z's that no one had ever quite worked out how it was meant to be pronounced. "Watch! Darkness descends upon the Earth forever! The triumph of Evil is nigh!"
"Sure you do, Apostrophe," Emerald said, shrugging. "Or possibly it's just a cloud. Make sure you don't slip on making sure the spirits don't let anyone see us, either way."
"It is a cloud… of darkness!"
"It d-does look like it's going to rain," Lilly said, shielding her eyes. And then she perked up. "Um. I th-think I can see the r-ruins the old woman mentioned," she said. "That white thing just over there."
"Dragon. Oh killing / beast of warring / hunger and flame/ Who knows why / only ruins remain / of your castles in sky," provided Prettimas, flicking his hair to applause from the other elves for his spontaneous poetry.
So, with much skipping and occasional pauses to pet wild animals and teach them wicked ways by feeding them grass, the dark elves made their ways to the ancient ruins and the small human village built in amongst them. Unseen, they picked their way through the tiny village of surprisingly well constructed stone houses, shaped as if from wax from the ancient ruins, and the ramshackle structures around them.
"It's very… human," said the elf known as Apostrophe, nose wrinkling. "Yes, it has a decidedly human smell about it."
"I th-think that might be the pigs," Lilly said, pointing at the free-roaming, dopey-looking swine – one of them being ridden by a grubby child. There didn't seem to be anyone above the age of… wait, how was it that humans aged again? Well, none of the humans seemed to be sexually mature.
And they all looked so thin, even by the standards of human peasants. Certainly, none of them had the problems with their weight that the elven poor had, fattened on a diet of sweetened wafer-bread and excessive portions of nectar.
Lilly began to feel sorry for them. It was a problem, she knew; she was too soft, too kind to be the real force of Evil she wanted to be. And Dark Gods knew, she wasn't the right person to be leading their coven – or possibly cabal or murder; there was still some debate over that – but she was the one who had founded it. She was the one who seemed to have the motivation which led to them doing things. Left to themselves, the other dark elves would just sit around writing poetry, or in the case of Emerald stealing from the rich and forgetting to give any of it to the poor even though they were meant to be Evilly redistributing wealth.
"Who are you!" demanded a blond girl in a green dress, pointing her finger at them. She seemed to be the eldest here, as far as the elves could tell, but her too-thin face seemed younger than her body. "What are you doing here and how did you get past the… how are you here?"
"Apostrophe," Emerald growled, turning on him. "You were meant to be hiding us."
"I don't get it," Apostrophe said plainly. "No human should be able to see us. I was, like, really specific about that. Not one human, I told the spirits – very politely, of course."
"Well, that human is seeing us," Emerald drawled.
"W-wait," Lilly said, staring. "D-does that mean what I think it does?" She cleared her throat. "Um, ma'am," she tried, "y-you're not human, are you? You're… like us."
The other girl was silent.
"W-we're friends," Lilly tried. The girl looked somewhat dubious, staring at the pale-faced, spike-festooned elves, but seemed at least prepared to consider it. "We've… um, been looking for you."
"I'm Tiffania," the blonde girl said, removing her hat to reveal pointed ears. Now they looked closer, they noticed that her eyes were inhumanly large, though on the smaller side for an elf, and her cheekbones were elvishly prominent. "You've been looking for me? Well… uh, I've never met another elf before, but… um, well… I don't think you'll try to burn me, so we can probably talk. We don't have much here, but… do you want a drink of water?"
The blonde girl led the dark elves into the three storey tower which was at the centre of the village, past a mostly-empty storeroom and into a painfully clean kitchen, massaging her pointed ears. "I have to wear that outside – they just burn so easily, you know?" she said. "Mother always said that's a problem."
"Oh, w-we know," Lilly confirmed, taking a stool when offered. "That's why w-we all wear wide brimmed hats back in the S-South, when we go outside. Especially when we ride or things like that." She paused. "Y-your mother? C-can we talk to her?"
"Really? I can't ride," Tiffania said. "And my mother… she's dead."
"I'm s-sorry," Lilly said, hesitantly. "Was it…"
"They killed her when the King sent his men after my father and her," Tiffania said in a flat voice. "She… she went to slow them down, so I could escape. But they were setting fires, so I hid, and… she killed so many of them, tore them to pieces, but there were always more and…" the girl shuddered, paler than usual. "My father was a duke, and they cut his head off."
There was silence.
"She's half-human? The omens didn't say anything about them being half-human," one of the female elves muttered. "What kind of chosen one is half-human?"
"Oi!" Emerald said, turning, as Tiffania blushed and cringed. "Mort'alice-Agonylia! I know that was you! How dare you talk like that! We've been looking for her for… like, ages."
"Oh! Do," the blonde girl looked almost hungrily from face to face, "do… were you sent by my sister? Do you know what's happened to her?"
"Your… sister?" Emerald asked.
"Well," Tiffania admitted, "she's only distantly related to me, on my father's side, but she's like a sister to me and she used to help a lot, but then almost a year ago she vanished when on one of her trips! Please… does that mean you weren't sent by her?"
"Um. N-no," Lilly said hesitantly. "We weren't sent by your… um, sister." This was not going as she had thought it would go. She was not sure entirely how she had thought it would go, but it had probably involved fewer grubby human peasants, and rather more luxurious surroundings.
And the person they were looking for… she hadn't been quite so earnest and serious, in a too-thin, vaguely worried way. She had looked rather more like the person who Lilly really wanted to be, all calm and suave and seductive. Not like a hungry, fretting half-breed girl even younger than she was. Humans were meant to be the most Evil of all the intelligent races – obviously not counting things like goblins, which weren't really intelligent – but she didn't look Evil despite her human blood. She mostly looked hungry.
"Oh. Um. That's a shame. This winter has been… very hard without her to help," Tifa said, her gaze drifting away from the elves to stare out of the window. Her eyes settled on a bare little square, cleared of undergrowth, with several of those sword-shaped markers humans stuck into the ground on top of dead bodies. "There hasn't been enough food, and the Republicans conscripted the healer in the nearby village who was friendly to us. And…" her lips wobbled, as she stared at the little patch and its small mounds, "… and the healing ring my mother passed down to me ran out of magic, so… so I couldn't do enough. Because… because I can't heal and..." she blotted her eyes on her sleeve, biting her lip. "Let's talk about something else," she said, with a false brightness in her voice.
Lilly had been taught at school that it was a sign of the wickedness of humans, the way they symbolically stabbed their own dead – and also that humans were so wicked that they had to stab their own dead to stop them coming back as undead. Technically, now that she was a dark elf she should be all in favour of desecrating the dead, but these sword-markers were just rather… pathetic, in a way which made her want to cry. Branches had been tied together with twine, and some of them were adorned with flowers.
She had a horrible feeling that everything was going to go wrong, but she ignored it. Lilly lived in that state, and only about half the time did everything actually turn to ashes in her hands. So she swallowed hard, and spoke. "W-we made a prophecy," Lilly explained, fingers twining together on her lap.
"Yep!" Emerald agreed, and for a moment Lilly wanted to gag her old friend. "It was lots and lots of fun, making the prophecy, because we got… like, woah high and naked, like our Dark Goddess told us to, and then my hand turned into rainbows and unicorns and spiders and went wandering off. Or maybe it didn't. Still, prophecies are fun!"
"And… uh, when everyone w-woke up the n-next morning, we'd s-sort of f-fallen down a pit and found all these stone tablets," Lilly explained, blushing.
"Which was kinda a big problem, because we didn't have our clothes. But still! Evil demands sacrifice of primitive things like modesty!"
There was a small 'eep' from Lilly, which suggested she was quite a fan of modesty and had none-too-fond memories of the event. "Anyway, this is what the st-stones s-said," Lilly cleared her throat. "The heir of Evil will be born to royal blood, of a line of great wickedness," she began, her voice going unexpectedly sinister and ceasing to stammer. The light dimmed, as if there was a cloud in front of the unveiled sun. The air grew humid and sticky, despite how early in spring it was, and it was somehow bitterly cold at the same time.
"Always does this when we recite it," Emerald said helpfully.
"All who gaze upon them will see their great Evil, and they will be an heir to the darkest of magics. A prince denied his throne will fall prey to them. Wickedness will be their pawns and their weaponry, and ancient secrets will be whispered to them. Midday sleep will never arrive, and their servants will be feted in the eyes of the most low and wretched. Amidst a fallen world they will make their home, and there you will find them." Lilly fell silent, reaching for the water and downing almost the whole cup.
There was silence. Tiffania looked around, confused, as the weather returned to normal. "Um," she asked. "What does this have to do with me?"
The dark elves exchanged glances. It fell to Emerald to say, "As far as we have been able to tell, you are a direct heir – perhaps the last one – of the elven monarchy."
"I am?"
"Your mother was Titania Rumenea, a member of a fallen house, cast down after a failed political play for control over the Senate, who fled to the human lands to avoid charges of treason."
"She was?"
"And from what we have been able to tell, that was part of an ancient conspiracy to reclaim the throne, and that clan was actually made up of the secret descendants of the cast down royal family. Or at least, that's what the thesis we stole from the archives said, so it has to be right."
"Really?"
"Also, our Dark Goddess told us that we would find what we searched for here," Apostrophe interjected. "And when we made the mistake of questioning her, she… sucked us into her dark realm and told us we could go when we crossed the Blasted Wastes of Hathanar in a fast enough time to please her," he said in a hushed voice.
"I didn't even know elves had royal families," Tiffania said, wide-eyed. "But I don't really know anything about elves; Mama never talked about her people."
"Not any more. You see," Apostrophe said, jutting out his weak chin, "long, long ago, us elves used to have kings and queens. Oh, they were very, very powerful, and all the textbooks at school said they were vile and horrible tyrants, who harshly imposed taxes on things like tea leaves from the East, gold and silver, and – older elves still curse them for this – they took a vast percentage of the income of each man and woman, just because they were in charge! And they stole the property of the clans and the houses, and there were dark rumours that they were planning to ban indenture, which all the textbooks agree; that was a terribly wrong deed, and could not stand. Now, as we're the dark elves and we support wrong things, that means logically we're all in favour of royalty!"
"And our parents can totally suck it and be taxed at the same level the old kings and queens used to make them pay, not the pathetic level the Senate sets itself," Emerald said firmly. "They make us pay for our own education, you know! And so if we have a Dark Queen, we'll totally have the people rally behind us, and we can overthrow the old government and institute some proper social change! And redistribute income, yeah! It totally sucks that we're poor and old people, like our parents, are rich!"
"I'm confused," Tiffania said in a tiny voice. The sunlight through the window left her looking wan and washed out. "I… I just look after the children here. Some of them are… came from my father's estate, and fled here, and others… well, the Civil War left lots of orphans. They don't have anywhere to go. Some of them… their parents were executed by the Republicans, too. I never even ever knew what my mother's surname was, let alone all… this. I… I won't have to leave them, will I? Because I won't! They have no one!"
"We w-wouldn't ask you to," Lilly said in a croak, her throat still hurting from prophecy. She looked around the painfully bare kitchen. She took in the girl, too-thin despite her moderate bust which made her look older than she was, who was the one they had put so much hope in. "In f-fact," she said, "we c-can help too."
"We can?" Apostrophe asked, wrinkling his nose.
"We can," Lilly said, crossing her arms. "We… um, we need a secret base on Albion too, and this is in a really pretty forest, and… and we aren't our parents! They say greed is g-good, so charity is b-bad and so we should be doing it!"
There was an awkward silence. It was broken by Tiffania.
"Thank you so much," she said, the gratitude obvious in her voice. "You… you don't know how bad the winter was. I had to do some… not nice things to allow those of us to make it to… to make it. Anything would be better than going that hungry ever again. And… and thank you, thank you. Please, call me Tifa."
"Y-you don't have…" Lilly took a breath, "any issue with becoming the Dark Queen who'll lead us to overthrow the ways of m-men and elves?"
"If it means we don't go hungry anymore… no," the girl said flatly. "Anything which means we can avoid that ever again can't possibly be bad, and… and I don't know if we can last until harvest without… we can't last until harvest. I've already had to use my magic for things I'm not too proud of, because the peasants around here don't have much to spare, but we had less and… and without my big sister, there wasn't any money. Well. I suppose I should introduce you to the children, while you can tell me all about what you do and what you want me to do. And maybe some of your friends with the bows could go hunting and bring back some food."
"Oooh, hunting," Emerald said with a grin. "I can do that! I saw some deer on the way here, and… mmm, venison steaks."
"That would be lovely," Tifa breathed.
Lilly was a vegetarian.
Explanations were being given to a group of small, somewhat grubby human children. And the worst thing was that the children were listening. And judging.
"… and so, uh, we want them to stop cutting down trees, so d-during the night, we sn-sneak into the place where they k-keep the tools, and steal them. And sometimes we set fire to the tool sheds, so they can't progress, but we… uh, don't do that very often, because it makes lots of b-bad smoke. Um. And once we. Um. Planted a bomb, and then sent a warning, and sh-shut down the place for three whole days while they. Um. Disarmed it."
Lilly peeked at Tifa. She was looking somewhat dubious at the description of how they were thwarting the plans of Prettyrose Logging.
"I make posters and we put them up in border towns!" Apostrophe said proudly. "The people'll rise up and overthrow the plutocrats in an orgy of bloodshed and murder if only they know the truth!"
"I redistribute wealth, stealing from the rich and powerful, and then we give it to poor people. Because, right, charity makes poor people slothful and lazy and greedy, so we're causing vice by doing it!" Emerald said, nodding her head. "Also, I deduct our operational expenses from it, so I'm also stealing from poor people, which is like, double evil."
An eight-year old boy with skinned knees raised one hand. "Yeah," he said, "I got a question."
Lilly gulped. That sounded like an awfully confrontational tone of voice. "G-go ahead, small human child," she said, trying to smile at him.
"Well… right, you know how you said you went around blowin' up mines an' places they cut down trees and stuff like that, right? With your magic? Well, what I don't get is… why do you go and send warnings before you do it?"
Tifa nodded gravely. "I did find that a bit strange," she admitted, "but I didn't want to say anything. Surely you had a reason."
"W-well, yes, we…"
"What I'd do, right," the little boy said, crossing his arms, "is I'd not tell anyone, and would wait until lots and lots of people'll are in there, and then it'd be all like," he threw his arms wide, "kaboom! And there'd be lots and lots of bodies everywhere and blood and legs and stuff and you could be all laughing at it, and tell them you'd keep on doing it until they stopped cutting down trees!"
"That'd be so cool!" an older girl who looked to be his sister said. "Blood everywhere! And then you could do what the evil mages do in stories and make… like, blood golem-things to hide among the bodies and then when people went to bury the bodies, they'd be all 'om nom nom' and they'd be so scared they might die."
"And get giant eagles to fly over cities and drop poo and wee wee into water so everyone gets sick and dies! Because Big Sister Tifa told us all about high-jeans, and so you can make them be low-jeans and get sick and poo everywhere!" chirped in a mucky-looking boy with red hair and sunburn.
"You know what I think?" a piping voice said, rich in malevolent intent, but poor in years. The five year old girl hugged her grubby doll close, staring up at the cluster of somewhat shocked elves. "I think you should all go and find one of the leader people who you don't like, and offer to do things for them which are naughty, and then when you've done the naughty things, you offer to do it again, and then when you've done a few naughty things for him, you should go tell him, 'Oh, hello Mister Leader Person, remember us? We did lots of things which were naughty for you, because you told us to. Which means it's your fault. And if you don't want everyone to find out that you're naughty, you'll do things for us!' That would work much better because it's stuff that the leader person has to listen to if he doesn't want to have bad things happen to him, so he can't just say 'Oh I am all important, we can just build new stuff, who cares that it was destroyed?'."
The little girl paused, face screwed up in an expression of intense concentration. "Also," she added, "you can go 'we have your favourite doll and if you don't do what we say we'll send you back her hair, piece by piece', and no one wants a bald doll. And then when you've cut off the hair, then you start on her arms and legs and eyes so that way they know you're really, really super-serious! And I'm sure they'd listen to you if you used their children rather than their dolls!"
"Children, children, please," Tifa said, looking shocked. "You shouldn't be talking like that!"
"Th-thank you," Lilly whispered, feeling sick.
"Don't you have better manners? You should be waiting your turn to tell our visitors what you think!" Tifa cleared her throat. "And Magda, I think that was a very well-thought out idea, even though I have asked you to stop taking Hannah's dolls. Is that one of hers you have right now?"
The little girl shook her head. "No!"
"Are you lying, Magda?"
"No, I'm not! Marie-Anne is mine! We did a…" she screwed up her face, concentrating, "ne-goat-tee-eight-ted host-age exchange!"
"Um," said Lilly.
Tifa smiled broadly and ruffled the girl's hair. "That's a good girl. See how much better everything goes when we talk to each other and each person does something the other person wants! It means no one gets upset because they find their dollie's head cut off and left in their bed! Which was very naughty of you!"
"Uh," said Lilly.
The half-elf put her hands on her hips. "See!" she said, happily. "Even the children can help with the ideas!" A harsher expression crept onto her face; it didn't look like it was quite at home there, but with time it thought it might be able to settle in. "You're right, you know; I thought it was just us who suffered because of bad luck, but from what you say, everything is unfair. Well, we'll make that change. We'll make everything change. And there are lots and lots of people on Albion who quite honestly deserve everything that is coming to them. I hope we can get along and I can be the Dark Queen of Elvenkind you want me to be!"
Lillysuffering Crim'somdoomblood – who was feeling rather more like Lilly-Rose Prettyblossom-Bush at this current moment – looked around at her friends. With a sick expression, she saw the lack of sinking horror on their faces.
Through the woods of Albion, the songs of the elves echoed through misty glades and sun-dappled canopies.
"In western lands beneath the Sun
in winter, flowers die,
the trees all rot, the waters run,
and wasted little rats chirp.
"There it is cloudless night
and shuddering beeches hold
no starry host, the great fright,
scared their lights away.
"Here at my life's end I am lingering
in deep darkness buried.
Beyond towers strong and high;
beyond all mortal sleep.
"My pain! You don't understand,
the ache of a world forlorn.
The elders in their greed and hate
would choke every newborn."
The songs of a certain kind of elf, at least. Pale-faced, their eyes adorned with dark linings, the dark elves snuck through the verdant greenery with utmost haste, only periodically stopping to pet small animals and sing depressing songs about trees. They were dressed in midnight black, and thus stood out like sore thumbs in the midday green and brown forest. They were also frolicking, but in a sinister and malevolent way as befitted their status as clearly Evil elves.
Indeed, no small number of them had engaged in wanton mass killing, and as a result their hair was braided with the severed sexual organs of plants.
Raising a hand, the depraved, wanton and degenerate foe of all righteousness who led this most vile cabal of elvenkind called a halt to their procession. "Um, Emerald," Lillysuffering Crim'sondoomblood – called 'Lilly' by her friends – asked. "Are w-we lost again?"
Emerald Leafgreen, one of her oldest friends who nevertheless refused to change her name to something more evil – citing a willingness to make her mother die of shame – shrugged. "Look, we're following what the crazy old woman in the cottage said. The spirits are telling me that we're following the signs right. And I can taste the Evil in the air."
"I feel a great wickedness consuming the sun!" declared one of the male elves, whose name was so saturated with misplaced punctuation and 'z's that no one had ever quite worked out how it was meant to be pronounced. "Watch! Darkness descends upon the Earth forever! The triumph of Evil is nigh!"
"Sure you do, Apostrophe," Emerald said, shrugging. "Or possibly it's just a cloud. Make sure you don't slip on making sure the spirits don't let anyone see us, either way."
"It is a cloud… of darkness!"
"It d-does look like it's going to rain," Lilly said, shielding her eyes. And then she perked up. "Um. I th-think I can see the r-ruins the old woman mentioned," she said. "That white thing just over there."
"Dragon. Oh killing / beast of warring / hunger and flame/ Who knows why / only ruins remain / of your castles in sky," provided Prettimas, flicking his hair to applause from the other elves for his spontaneous poetry.
So, with much skipping and occasional pauses to pet wild animals and teach them wicked ways by feeding them grass, the dark elves made their ways to the ancient ruins and the small human village built in amongst them. Unseen, they picked their way through the tiny village of surprisingly well constructed stone houses, shaped as if from wax from the ancient ruins, and the ramshackle structures around them.
"It's very… human," said the elf known as Apostrophe, nose wrinkling. "Yes, it has a decidedly human smell about it."
"I th-think that might be the pigs," Lilly said, pointing at the free-roaming, dopey-looking swine – one of them being ridden by a grubby child. There didn't seem to be anyone above the age of… wait, how was it that humans aged again? Well, none of the humans seemed to be sexually mature.
And they all looked so thin, even by the standards of human peasants. Certainly, none of them had the problems with their weight that the elven poor had, fattened on a diet of sweetened wafer-bread and excessive portions of nectar.
Lilly began to feel sorry for them. It was a problem, she knew; she was too soft, too kind to be the real force of Evil she wanted to be. And Dark Gods knew, she wasn't the right person to be leading their coven – or possibly cabal or murder; there was still some debate over that – but she was the one who had founded it. She was the one who seemed to have the motivation which led to them doing things. Left to themselves, the other dark elves would just sit around writing poetry, or in the case of Emerald stealing from the rich and forgetting to give any of it to the poor even though they were meant to be Evilly redistributing wealth.
"Who are you!" demanded a blond girl in a green dress, pointing her finger at them. She seemed to be the eldest here, as far as the elves could tell, but her too-thin face seemed younger than her body. "What are you doing here and how did you get past the… how are you here?"
"Apostrophe," Emerald growled, turning on him. "You were meant to be hiding us."
"I don't get it," Apostrophe said plainly. "No human should be able to see us. I was, like, really specific about that. Not one human, I told the spirits – very politely, of course."
"Well, that human is seeing us," Emerald drawled.
"W-wait," Lilly said, staring. "D-does that mean what I think it does?" She cleared her throat. "Um, ma'am," she tried, "y-you're not human, are you? You're… like us."
The other girl was silent.
"W-we're friends," Lilly tried. The girl looked somewhat dubious, staring at the pale-faced, spike-festooned elves, but seemed at least prepared to consider it. "We've… um, been looking for you."
"I'm Tiffania," the blonde girl said, removing her hat to reveal pointed ears. Now they looked closer, they noticed that her eyes were inhumanly large, though on the smaller side for an elf, and her cheekbones were elvishly prominent. "You've been looking for me? Well… uh, I've never met another elf before, but… um, well… I don't think you'll try to burn me, so we can probably talk. We don't have much here, but… do you want a drink of water?"
…
The blonde girl led the dark elves into the three storey tower which was at the centre of the village, past a mostly-empty storeroom and into a painfully clean kitchen, massaging her pointed ears. "I have to wear that outside – they just burn so easily, you know?" she said. "Mother always said that's a problem."
"Oh, w-we know," Lilly confirmed, taking a stool when offered. "That's why w-we all wear wide brimmed hats back in the S-South, when we go outside. Especially when we ride or things like that." She paused. "Y-your mother? C-can we talk to her?"
"Really? I can't ride," Tiffania said. "And my mother… she's dead."
"I'm s-sorry," Lilly said, hesitantly. "Was it…"
"They killed her when the King sent his men after my father and her," Tiffania said in a flat voice. "She… she went to slow them down, so I could escape. But they were setting fires, so I hid, and… she killed so many of them, tore them to pieces, but there were always more and…" the girl shuddered, paler than usual. "My father was a duke, and they cut his head off."
There was silence.
"She's half-human? The omens didn't say anything about them being half-human," one of the female elves muttered. "What kind of chosen one is half-human?"
"Oi!" Emerald said, turning, as Tiffania blushed and cringed. "Mort'alice-Agonylia! I know that was you! How dare you talk like that! We've been looking for her for… like, ages."
"Oh! Do," the blonde girl looked almost hungrily from face to face, "do… were you sent by my sister? Do you know what's happened to her?"
"Your… sister?" Emerald asked.
"Well," Tiffania admitted, "she's only distantly related to me, on my father's side, but she's like a sister to me and she used to help a lot, but then almost a year ago she vanished when on one of her trips! Please… does that mean you weren't sent by her?"
"Um. N-no," Lilly said hesitantly. "We weren't sent by your… um, sister." This was not going as she had thought it would go. She was not sure entirely how she had thought it would go, but it had probably involved fewer grubby human peasants, and rather more luxurious surroundings.
And the person they were looking for… she hadn't been quite so earnest and serious, in a too-thin, vaguely worried way. She had looked rather more like the person who Lilly really wanted to be, all calm and suave and seductive. Not like a hungry, fretting half-breed girl even younger than she was. Humans were meant to be the most Evil of all the intelligent races – obviously not counting things like goblins, which weren't really intelligent – but she didn't look Evil despite her human blood. She mostly looked hungry.
"Oh. Um. That's a shame. This winter has been… very hard without her to help," Tifa said, her gaze drifting away from the elves to stare out of the window. Her eyes settled on a bare little square, cleared of undergrowth, with several of those sword-shaped markers humans stuck into the ground on top of dead bodies. "There hasn't been enough food, and the Republicans conscripted the healer in the nearby village who was friendly to us. And…" her lips wobbled, as she stared at the little patch and its small mounds, "… and the healing ring my mother passed down to me ran out of magic, so… so I couldn't do enough. Because… because I can't heal and..." she blotted her eyes on her sleeve, biting her lip. "Let's talk about something else," she said, with a false brightness in her voice.
Lilly had been taught at school that it was a sign of the wickedness of humans, the way they symbolically stabbed their own dead – and also that humans were so wicked that they had to stab their own dead to stop them coming back as undead. Technically, now that she was a dark elf she should be all in favour of desecrating the dead, but these sword-markers were just rather… pathetic, in a way which made her want to cry. Branches had been tied together with twine, and some of them were adorned with flowers.
She had a horrible feeling that everything was going to go wrong, but she ignored it. Lilly lived in that state, and only about half the time did everything actually turn to ashes in her hands. So she swallowed hard, and spoke. "W-we made a prophecy," Lilly explained, fingers twining together on her lap.
"Yep!" Emerald agreed, and for a moment Lilly wanted to gag her old friend. "It was lots and lots of fun, making the prophecy, because we got… like, woah high and naked, like our Dark Goddess told us to, and then my hand turned into rainbows and unicorns and spiders and went wandering off. Or maybe it didn't. Still, prophecies are fun!"
"And… uh, when everyone w-woke up the n-next morning, we'd s-sort of f-fallen down a pit and found all these stone tablets," Lilly explained, blushing.
"Which was kinda a big problem, because we didn't have our clothes. But still! Evil demands sacrifice of primitive things like modesty!"
There was a small 'eep' from Lilly, which suggested she was quite a fan of modesty and had none-too-fond memories of the event. "Anyway, this is what the st-stones s-said," Lilly cleared her throat. "The heir of Evil will be born to royal blood, of a line of great wickedness," she began, her voice going unexpectedly sinister and ceasing to stammer. The light dimmed, as if there was a cloud in front of the unveiled sun. The air grew humid and sticky, despite how early in spring it was, and it was somehow bitterly cold at the same time.
"Always does this when we recite it," Emerald said helpfully.
"All who gaze upon them will see their great Evil, and they will be an heir to the darkest of magics. A prince denied his throne will fall prey to them. Wickedness will be their pawns and their weaponry, and ancient secrets will be whispered to them. Midday sleep will never arrive, and their servants will be feted in the eyes of the most low and wretched. Amidst a fallen world they will make their home, and there you will find them." Lilly fell silent, reaching for the water and downing almost the whole cup.
There was silence. Tiffania looked around, confused, as the weather returned to normal. "Um," she asked. "What does this have to do with me?"
The dark elves exchanged glances. It fell to Emerald to say, "As far as we have been able to tell, you are a direct heir – perhaps the last one – of the elven monarchy."
"I am?"
"Your mother was Titania Rumenea, a member of a fallen house, cast down after a failed political play for control over the Senate, who fled to the human lands to avoid charges of treason."
"She was?"
"And from what we have been able to tell, that was part of an ancient conspiracy to reclaim the throne, and that clan was actually made up of the secret descendants of the cast down royal family. Or at least, that's what the thesis we stole from the archives said, so it has to be right."
"Really?"
"Also, our Dark Goddess told us that we would find what we searched for here," Apostrophe interjected. "And when we made the mistake of questioning her, she… sucked us into her dark realm and told us we could go when we crossed the Blasted Wastes of Hathanar in a fast enough time to please her," he said in a hushed voice.
"I didn't even know elves had royal families," Tiffania said, wide-eyed. "But I don't really know anything about elves; Mama never talked about her people."
"Not any more. You see," Apostrophe said, jutting out his weak chin, "long, long ago, us elves used to have kings and queens. Oh, they were very, very powerful, and all the textbooks at school said they were vile and horrible tyrants, who harshly imposed taxes on things like tea leaves from the East, gold and silver, and – older elves still curse them for this – they took a vast percentage of the income of each man and woman, just because they were in charge! And they stole the property of the clans and the houses, and there were dark rumours that they were planning to ban indenture, which all the textbooks agree; that was a terribly wrong deed, and could not stand. Now, as we're the dark elves and we support wrong things, that means logically we're all in favour of royalty!"
"And our parents can totally suck it and be taxed at the same level the old kings and queens used to make them pay, not the pathetic level the Senate sets itself," Emerald said firmly. "They make us pay for our own education, you know! And so if we have a Dark Queen, we'll totally have the people rally behind us, and we can overthrow the old government and institute some proper social change! And redistribute income, yeah! It totally sucks that we're poor and old people, like our parents, are rich!"
"I'm confused," Tiffania said in a tiny voice. The sunlight through the window left her looking wan and washed out. "I… I just look after the children here. Some of them are… came from my father's estate, and fled here, and others… well, the Civil War left lots of orphans. They don't have anywhere to go. Some of them… their parents were executed by the Republicans, too. I never even ever knew what my mother's surname was, let alone all… this. I… I won't have to leave them, will I? Because I won't! They have no one!"
"We w-wouldn't ask you to," Lilly said in a croak, her throat still hurting from prophecy. She looked around the painfully bare kitchen. She took in the girl, too-thin despite her moderate bust which made her look older than she was, who was the one they had put so much hope in. "In f-fact," she said, "we c-can help too."
"We can?" Apostrophe asked, wrinkling his nose.
"We can," Lilly said, crossing her arms. "We… um, we need a secret base on Albion too, and this is in a really pretty forest, and… and we aren't our parents! They say greed is g-good, so charity is b-bad and so we should be doing it!"
There was an awkward silence. It was broken by Tiffania.
"Thank you so much," she said, the gratitude obvious in her voice. "You… you don't know how bad the winter was. I had to do some… not nice things to allow those of us to make it to… to make it. Anything would be better than going that hungry ever again. And… and thank you, thank you. Please, call me Tifa."
"Y-you don't have…" Lilly took a breath, "any issue with becoming the Dark Queen who'll lead us to overthrow the ways of m-men and elves?"
"If it means we don't go hungry anymore… no," the girl said flatly. "Anything which means we can avoid that ever again can't possibly be bad, and… and I don't know if we can last until harvest without… we can't last until harvest. I've already had to use my magic for things I'm not too proud of, because the peasants around here don't have much to spare, but we had less and… and without my big sister, there wasn't any money. Well. I suppose I should introduce you to the children, while you can tell me all about what you do and what you want me to do. And maybe some of your friends with the bows could go hunting and bring back some food."
"Oooh, hunting," Emerald said with a grin. "I can do that! I saw some deer on the way here, and… mmm, venison steaks."
"That would be lovely," Tifa breathed.
Lilly was a vegetarian.
…
Explanations were being given to a group of small, somewhat grubby human children. And the worst thing was that the children were listening. And judging.
"… and so, uh, we want them to stop cutting down trees, so d-during the night, we sn-sneak into the place where they k-keep the tools, and steal them. And sometimes we set fire to the tool sheds, so they can't progress, but we… uh, don't do that very often, because it makes lots of b-bad smoke. Um. And once we. Um. Planted a bomb, and then sent a warning, and sh-shut down the place for three whole days while they. Um. Disarmed it."
Lilly peeked at Tifa. She was looking somewhat dubious at the description of how they were thwarting the plans of Prettyrose Logging.
"I make posters and we put them up in border towns!" Apostrophe said proudly. "The people'll rise up and overthrow the plutocrats in an orgy of bloodshed and murder if only they know the truth!"
"I redistribute wealth, stealing from the rich and powerful, and then we give it to poor people. Because, right, charity makes poor people slothful and lazy and greedy, so we're causing vice by doing it!" Emerald said, nodding her head. "Also, I deduct our operational expenses from it, so I'm also stealing from poor people, which is like, double evil."
An eight-year old boy with skinned knees raised one hand. "Yeah," he said, "I got a question."
Lilly gulped. That sounded like an awfully confrontational tone of voice. "G-go ahead, small human child," she said, trying to smile at him.
"Well… right, you know how you said you went around blowin' up mines an' places they cut down trees and stuff like that, right? With your magic? Well, what I don't get is… why do you go and send warnings before you do it?"
Tifa nodded gravely. "I did find that a bit strange," she admitted, "but I didn't want to say anything. Surely you had a reason."
"W-well, yes, we…"
"What I'd do, right," the little boy said, crossing his arms, "is I'd not tell anyone, and would wait until lots and lots of people'll are in there, and then it'd be all like," he threw his arms wide, "kaboom! And there'd be lots and lots of bodies everywhere and blood and legs and stuff and you could be all laughing at it, and tell them you'd keep on doing it until they stopped cutting down trees!"
"That'd be so cool!" an older girl who looked to be his sister said. "Blood everywhere! And then you could do what the evil mages do in stories and make… like, blood golem-things to hide among the bodies and then when people went to bury the bodies, they'd be all 'om nom nom' and they'd be so scared they might die."
"And get giant eagles to fly over cities and drop poo and wee wee into water so everyone gets sick and dies! Because Big Sister Tifa told us all about high-jeans, and so you can make them be low-jeans and get sick and poo everywhere!" chirped in a mucky-looking boy with red hair and sunburn.
"You know what I think?" a piping voice said, rich in malevolent intent, but poor in years. The five year old girl hugged her grubby doll close, staring up at the cluster of somewhat shocked elves. "I think you should all go and find one of the leader people who you don't like, and offer to do things for them which are naughty, and then when you've done the naughty things, you offer to do it again, and then when you've done a few naughty things for him, you should go tell him, 'Oh, hello Mister Leader Person, remember us? We did lots of things which were naughty for you, because you told us to. Which means it's your fault. And if you don't want everyone to find out that you're naughty, you'll do things for us!' That would work much better because it's stuff that the leader person has to listen to if he doesn't want to have bad things happen to him, so he can't just say 'Oh I am all important, we can just build new stuff, who cares that it was destroyed?'."
The little girl paused, face screwed up in an expression of intense concentration. "Also," she added, "you can go 'we have your favourite doll and if you don't do what we say we'll send you back her hair, piece by piece', and no one wants a bald doll. And then when you've cut off the hair, then you start on her arms and legs and eyes so that way they know you're really, really super-serious! And I'm sure they'd listen to you if you used their children rather than their dolls!"
"Children, children, please," Tifa said, looking shocked. "You shouldn't be talking like that!"
"Th-thank you," Lilly whispered, feeling sick.
"Don't you have better manners? You should be waiting your turn to tell our visitors what you think!" Tifa cleared her throat. "And Magda, I think that was a very well-thought out idea, even though I have asked you to stop taking Hannah's dolls. Is that one of hers you have right now?"
The little girl shook her head. "No!"
"Are you lying, Magda?"
"No, I'm not! Marie-Anne is mine! We did a…" she screwed up her face, concentrating, "ne-goat-tee-eight-ted host-age exchange!"
"Um," said Lilly.
Tifa smiled broadly and ruffled the girl's hair. "That's a good girl. See how much better everything goes when we talk to each other and each person does something the other person wants! It means no one gets upset because they find their dollie's head cut off and left in their bed! Which was very naughty of you!"
"Uh," said Lilly.
The half-elf put her hands on her hips. "See!" she said, happily. "Even the children can help with the ideas!" A harsher expression crept onto her face; it didn't look like it was quite at home there, but with time it thought it might be able to settle in. "You're right, you know; I thought it was just us who suffered because of bad luck, but from what you say, everything is unfair. Well, we'll make that change. We'll make everything change. And there are lots and lots of people on Albion who quite honestly deserve everything that is coming to them. I hope we can get along and I can be the Dark Queen of Elvenkind you want me to be!"
Lillysuffering Crim'somdoomblood – who was feeling rather more like Lilly-Rose Prettyblossom-Bush at this current moment – looked around at her friends. With a sick expression, she saw the lack of sinking horror on their faces.
…
The Dark and Evil Sinister Deeds of the Malevolent Supreme Lady of Darkness and Evil under whose Malignant Grasp all of Halkeginia was Darkly and Evilly Crushed by Darkness and Evil
or,
Overlady
will return this winter.
or,
Overlady
will return this winter.
…
Space saved for commentary
- Pronouns
- He/Him
...I suspect that my sister would not be out of place in that orphanage.
If it wasn't for the entire 'is Indian' thing, anyways.
If it wasn't for the entire 'is Indian' thing, anyways.
Snrk.EarthScorpion said:
I had to stop reading for a bit after this line. Too busy laughing.
What is evil? Is it evil for someone who life has dumped plenty of sorrows on, who hasn't eaten properly in months, who's been worrying that the big sister figure who's the only person she can turn to is dead and hasn't seen her in almost a year, and who's had to bury several young children over this winter from a mix of the lack of food and the way her mother's healing ring has run out of magic and she can't do healing spells... is it evil for that person, when presented with a chance to better her lot and the lot of the people she cares about to grab it with both hands? And from there, reach for the chance to get revenge on the people in the world who put her in that place?maguado87 said:
But she certainly has a strong inherited tendency towards Evil, yes. Considering her father was a Duke so vile that the King of Albion purged him and had his family crest stricken from the noble roles, and her mother - according to the dark elves - had to flee elven lands after some failed politics and a play for control of the Senate left her entire clan accused of treason... yeah.
Fragment off
The Sun Will come back
The part I stopped on was the prophecy. Am I over thinking or does that prophecy also work for humankind(Louise)?
Oh! And the Evil children, can't forget the Evil children in a terrorist training orphanage.
Oh! And the Evil children, can't forget the Evil children in a terrorist training orphanage.
The Sandman
So Zetta Slowpoke
- Location
- Wherever I am, which isn't where I'm not
Am I the only one who thought that the Dim Elves have completely missed the boat here, and that their prophecy was actually about Henrietta?
If Tiffa and Louise run into each other at some point, I think the latter is going to get a nasty shock to her worldview.
Speaking seriously for a moment here, I'd say the point where it would definitively become evil would be the point where that person could look at a similar orphanage being run by somebody on the other side that was suffering in much the same way as her own had and either not care or be openly pleased at the suffering. Up until then, well, it would only be "evil" in so far as it might negatively impact the lives of the people who normally commission the history books.EarthScorpion said:
If Tiffa and Louise run into each other at some point, I think the latter is going to get a nasty shock to her worldview.
So was the Duke vile because he considered himself to be in a genuine relationship with his elven consort (as opposed to simply using her as a receptacle for his lusts, which is acceptable so long as it's your men doing it to their women and not the other way around), or because he had the temerity to have profitable and/or militarily useful lands that were obviously not being used in the best interests of the kingdom (seeing as how the king wasn't the one who was using them)?