A Dark Lord’s Dilemma

ONCE upon a time, there was a powerful Sorceress with an interest in Necromancy who really wanted to do magical research. While puissant mages make people nervous, they respected her many years of keeping to herself, and left her alone to do said research.

The Bards of this land acted as semi-official bearers of news, and competed for speed and accuracy, as well as for tunefulness. Or at least, so it was historically; why would it change?

Alice was perfectly prepared to slaughter the Forces of Light.

They were largely in two places: surrounding her empty citadel, which they clearly believed was occupied and everyone simply hidden by dark magic (if they thought of it at all; surrounding a Dark Lord’s Citadel is what you do, you know.) Alternately, as they had wisely left basically a skeleton force among her major cities, she COULD simply unleash her part-inhuman army and slaughter people until the People of the West and others realized they’d been defeated.

(She could also use her little spell, but she tried not to think about that. Except sometimes at night, when she couldn’t sleep, she’d ponder Elf-land rising in flames, the self-righteous momzers insisting that everyone else help them…)

But mostly, she focused on the Army, as they were much more likely to grow restless than the spells upon which she was currently working.

Unfortunately.)

There were three problems with the “March in and destroy the other Armies” approach.

1. Alice had not wanted the war in the first place. You can be very, very ambitious without your ambition including ruling over a gigantic order of idiots who, if left to themselves, will make a mess of everything. It’s EASY for a powerful Mage to keep idiots out of her home; it’s quite DIFIFCULT to avoid meeting quite a lot of them, should she ever leave the house.

2. If she ordered her warriors to slay their warriors to make a point, that seemed kind of a stupid proof. Messy. As far from a clear, interesting mathematical proof as she could get. Also, the Lords of Light had created a VERY efficient propaganda machine, which is one of the reasons why they were the Lords of Light and Alice was just a frustrated Dark Lord.

3. If you’re a sorcerer of great power and you start dealing with Necromancy, the powers of darkness and pain are just plain unlikely to believe that this is a COINCIDENCE. They will assume you are doing something to honor them, like the power to kill people by touching them (which is why so many Necromancers are strictly one-date-only in romantic rendezvous.) Or come by to thank you, grant you a giant army of zombies made through a horrifying warping of the Way of Things, and let the dead burst out of their graves to slay their former friends and loved ones, at which point, the World would suffer a severe shortage of fresh eggs, milk, decent boots, and almost everything that Alice liked. Also, they would hog her Palantir to watch “Happy Days” eternally, all seventeen seasons of it, over and over, occasionally calling for more blood and skulls. No, thank  you.

Alice had won. And she was definitely screwed.

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