The Top 100 Things I'd Do
If I Ever Became An Evil Overlord

I object to your defamatory remarks. This is just bog-standard heroism! 

I'm a charitable soul so I do it pro bono. 

When I'm not fighting for money, I fight for what's right.

Suppose you were walking through the Cinderlands and randomly encountered a berserk golem. 

I'd destroy the golem to free the elemental spirit within.

It's a hell engine golem, so there's no elemental spirit.

I'd destroy the golem to make the countryside safe again.

The golem is about to mindlessly wander through a portal to the Elemental Plane of Fire, which will incinerate it.

If we stop it in time, we can sell the golem's parts for scrap.

Let's stipulate that if you don't fight the golem, Lyvina will kill it with create pit and falling objects. 

But she should conserve her spells. 

Let's say that you're out of Bloodrage and fast healing for the day, so if you fought the golem she'd have to spend her spells on mending your wounds.

Lyvina can convert any spells into cures, and so can Mull, and they have healing wands, too, so it's better to spend healing spells here than the create pit.

Your wizard accidentally prepared four of create pit this morning.

Okay, fine, you win, I'd rather fight the golem than watch Lyvina drop rocks on it while it scrabbles helplessly at the walls of a conjured pit.

Happy?

So according to rule forty-four I shouldn't hire you or Altronus for anything.

This isn't fair!

We don't ask for nearly as much money as someone with our track record ought be able to demand!!

You do tend to do dumb things to make fights which should be easy more entertaining, though. 

That's clearly against rule forty-four.

Your Red Mantis guys charge a fortune and act professional but I've got like two-dozen of their sawtooth sabers in my Bag of Holding.

I think the thing you should be looking at in a prospective mercenary is how cheap they'll work and whether they've succeeded at similar jobs in the past.

Maybe if you paid me I'd pass along tips about where you could find good fights, and then I could use my earnings to hire more of the people who work for money.

This seems in keeping with the spirit of the rule.

Okay, but if I get to the target first I get to keep whatever I find in their pockets.

It's a deal. 

What's number forty-five?

45. I will make sure I have a clear understanding of who is responsible for what in my organization. For example, if my general screws up I will not draw my weapon, point it at him, say "And here is the price for failure," then suddenly turn and kill some random underling.

You meet people like this in Cheliax too, I think it's kind of pathetic.

Like, if you could have killed your general there, you would have, right? But you didn't, which means you couldn't. You're angry at the guy you didn't kill, so you're trying to scare him, and you're trying to do it by saying in the clearest possible way that you can't kill him, but totally can and will kill people he likes for as long as you retain power.

How long after that do you expect to retain power?

Well, I don't know, it does show that you're dangerously unhinged, right? You'd want to tread lightly around someone with so few compunctions and so little control over themself.

I think you'd be falling for a ruse.

Sometimes Eodred would throw these tantrums, and after he'd calmed down he'd say that he lost control and didn't know what came over him. When I was a child, I threw tantrums, and attacked people four times my size, or I'd break my own toys. But when Eodred "lost control," he never swung a fist at someone larger than himself, nor broke his own things. 

Tons of Chelish people cultivate the virtue of wrath, because they want people to walk on eggshells around them or because it's an easy way to demonstrate Evil, and they want you to think "oh, those guys are wild like animals, they're totally unpredictable, they're stupid and it'll presumably bite them somehow someday but in the meantime I'd better give them everything they want and keep a wide distance." But how many of these allegedly wild people, these allegedly stupid people, how many of them scream profanity at Queen Abrogail Thrune? 

Not very many.