The thing about suspicion is, it’s not very useful, and is often even detrimental – in normal, everyday life, for normal, everyday people – until the day that it’s absolutely necessary. And on that day, having failed to hone their capacity for suspicion, normal everyday people (to put it crudely but accurately) find themselves fucked beyond belief.

If I had grown up in a more loving, or at least a less vicious family, I likely wouldn’t have as suspicious a nature as I do. But when your older siblings play games like ‘stick your hand in this jar or else’ and said jar is sure to hold a hornet’s nest (if you’re lucky), you learn to doubt and question at a very young age indeed.

Still, I labored for years under the misapprehension that if you were unimportant enough (or at least worked very hard to never get noticed), then you could pretty much just go about your business without worrying overmuch about anyone trying to do you dirty. While I was an inmate of the Scriptorium, that worked for me more often than not. My fellow brothers were caustic, petty and vindictive, and certainly not above sticking the youngest and least important of their number with all the shit jobs – but they were also geriatric, slow moving, forgetful, hard of hearing and/or practically blind. It was not especially difficult for me to have a more or less peaceful existence, as long as I kept on my toes and out of their less-than-keen sight.

It was Chortle that taught me what the hawk teaches the rabbit: you can be as silent as a shadow and as quick as the wind, and still be made a meal of literally out of the blue, if you can’t defend yourself.

It took me months in the wilds of the Debatable Lands to put a razor edge on my suspicious nature, though, and to learn to be… proactive about whatever suspicions I might have.

Have I been wrong on occasion? Yes, though less often than you might imagine. Have I executed/assassinated/transmogrified people who didn’t, in fact, nurse secret grudges against me that they were sure to act on? Yes again. But I will point out that after they were dead or turned into semi-sentient soup, they also did not nurse secret grudges, and they definitely couldn’t act on them even if they did.

~ * ~

The thing about Mudhelm was, it was a shit town.

Look, I’d seen the spectrum – the ass-end village of Thrudd and the pinnacle of human urban achievement that was the Capital (pre-destruction). Mudhelm had none of the benefits of either. It wasn’t small enough to easily manage and it wasn’t big enough, population-wise, to be able to organize efficiently. There wasn’t even a town bell, which alright, are usually found atop kirks and I wasn’t exactly crying about Mudhelm not having a kirk. But that I meant I had to pay a few feckless roustabouts to walk around and play town crier, to get enough people assembled to make my debut as their new overlord worth bothering with.

And let’s be clear: it wasn’t about my ego. I don’t actually need people kneeling in the dirt before me to feel important, like some other Dark Lords I could name. I happen to feel important no matter where I am or who I am with. No, it was about getting word out about what my expectations were.

It’s a long-standing tradition in most cultures that ignorance of the law is no excuse to break it. That’s all well and good when Kneg the Barbarian wanders into town and starts having carnal relations with his beloved sheep in the middle of the street; nobody’s gonna cry when Kneg gets his head lopped off for bestiality. Except, perhaps, the sheep. But it’s another thing entirely when nobody under your notional rule knows that that they are, say, going to have to start paying taxes for the first time in, like, ever. Also, I didn’t even have a jail, because Mudhelm did not have a constabulary. Or magistrates. That’s because Mudhelm didn’t actually have anything you’d call laws.

From time immemorial, whatever strongman ruled the place just sent his minions to take whatever he needed/fancied from the populace whenever he felt like it. The law of the land boiled down to “Do what I say or I’ll stick you.”

Titus hadn’t been an exception. When the town’s more important citizens had banded together to oppose him, they hadn’t exactly instituted massive reforms, either. The best that could be said about them was that they actually paid a monthly wage to whoever took up arms against Titus. But as for the law of the land, it went from ‘do what I say or I’ll stick you’ to ‘do what we say or we’ll stick you,’ and going from singular to plural isn’t what anyone would call political reform.

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Anyhoo, the point was, I needed to let the citizens of Mudhelm know 1) that I was in charge now, 2) Grim was my second, 3) there was fuck-all they could do about it because of 3a) my fire thing, 3b) Grim’s armed men, and 3c) the demon Hrazz’k who was still hanging about the overthrown bastion as my backup (they didn’t need to know that 3c was a temporary arrangement).

It didn’t really need to be said that both Titus and the council were finished. The destroyed inner keep of the bastion and the corpses of three-fifths of the council hanging from the brewery’s gate really should have spoken for themselves. But there are people like Nuk in the world, as I have to constantly remind myself, who need everything spelled out for them. It’s just that way, and complaining about it is as pointless as trying to understand how anyone that dumb could have lived long enough to be weaned off of breast milk. Sometimes there are no answers. So that afternoon I stood atop an upended barrel in front of the brewery, a trio of corpses swaying gently in the breeze behind me, and gave my first public speech.

The crowd was decently sized, mostly because I’d told my hired wastrel news-shouters to emphasize the free beer aspect of the event. There was a fair cross-section of Mudhelm’s diverse population in attendance as well; humans, half-orcs, lizard men and every other kind of what-the-fuck who called Mudhelm home. I even saw a full-blooded elf standing at the back. He was impossible to miss, what with the immaculate, colorful silk clothing, the impeccable grooming, and the pulsating aura of prickishness. Anyway, the crowd was just sort of milling about in the street when Grim and I arrived surrounded by a handful of armsmen. I noticed that half of the crowd had thought to bring their own mugs, which was foresight of a kind.

The first thing I did was tack a very official-looking document to the brewery’s gate with a hammer and nails I’d borrowed from the inn. I’d spent years as a copyist working on illuminated manuscripts; I knew how to make paper and ink look important. While I was doing that, Grim had a couple of her boys roll out a barrel for me. An empty one, much to the crowd’s disappointment. I hopped up on the barrel and looked out at the crowd.

“My name is Gar. Some of you know me as the Goblin Killer. As of today, all of the properties of the former councilors Dilit, Orson, Meyrstrict, and al’Vulk have been seized and confiscated.”

“By who?” some bright spark shouted.

“By whom, but nevermind. The answer is by me.”

“And what gives you the right?”

“I was going to invite questions at the end of my speech, but never mind. I’m so glad you asked.” I pointed to the bastion, where Hrazz’k was still floating. “You see that? That awfully hard to look at ball of tentacles and maws is my very good friend who happens to be a demon. It could literally eat everyone in Mudhelm and still feel peckish. But the demon doesn’t give me the right.”

I made fire appear in my upturned hand. “I could burn the whole lot of you to ash right now, and you would scream until you didn’t have vocal cords anymore. That also doesn’t give me the right.”

I dismissed the flame and pointed to Grim. “That’s Grim. You probably know her. She’s the only one with anything like an army within a hundred miles or more of Mudhelm, and she works for me. But she doesn’t give me the right, either.

“I give me the right. If you think you have a better right to rule, then come and take it. If you just can’t accept the fact that I’m in charge, you are welcome to fuck off and keep fucking off until you come to some place far from here, and me, where you feel that fucking off is no longer required. Otherwise, it’s me who’s in charge. Next question?”

“They said there would be free beer,” said someone who knew her priorities.

“No beer until the talking is done. Next?”

“What’s yer title?” I knew the questioner this time. It was old Torg, the one who tortured the Dripping Bucket’s fiddle.

“Excuse me?”

"Them deaduns behind you was called councilors. Titus liked to be called Lord Punisher. What d’we call you?”

“Well that’s just sad,” I muttered about Titus. To the crowd I said “I’m not a lord, but I will tell you a secret. I don’t intend to be content ruling Mudhelm. I’m going to take as much of the world as I can possibly grab, and I’m going to make Mudhelm and the Debatable Lands the center of it. So I suppose you could call me Overlord, if you want to be formal. Gar works, too.”

There came a shriek from behind me and to my left. I turned and saw a matronly woman tearing at her hair. Then she was tearing at the notice of seizure tacked to the gate. I guessed she was a reader, anyway.

“Who the fuck is that?” I asked Grim.

“Orson’s wife.”

“The brewer?”

“Yup.”

“She seems more upset about the brewery than her husband.”

Grim just shrugged.

The brewer’s widow stopped shrieking at the notice and started shrieking at me.

“You! You!”

“Me me what?”

“You’ve ruined me! I’m penniless!”

“I also had your husband hanged. I really think that should be mentioned.”

“You’re evil! You’re evil!” She fell to the dirt, clutching the notice and sobbing her eyes out.

I turned back to the crowd. “One slight correction,” I said. “My official title is now Evil Overlord. You can still just call me Gar in informal situations, though.”

I kept the rest of the talk brief. Blah blah opportunities in government, especially law enforcement, report to the Dripping Bucket on the morrow for interviews, insurrectionists will be summarily burnt alive, here’s the beer and enjoy your piss-up.

People appreciate brevity when it comes to speeches, I’ve found.