The Dark Lord has overthrow the King

Smite Evil, abolish slavery and foul sacrifice to demons, keep the rest if it works, run glorious socialist paladin state.

So all the slaves are sex slaves?
Yikes. I can't condone a literal rape culture... I know that's an overused Tumblrite phrase, but... yeah, this time it's for real.

"I admire your dedication to the people, but I cannot overlook your use of demons among the people. Cease or face destruction."

Nations and kingdoms war all the time. Who am I to say which system is better? Political Darwinism, they'll sort themselves out. Just so long as the city endures in some form.
But demons? Fuck that. Killing time.

First, I'm going to approach it like my goblin thief would.

>The Dark Lord has overthrow the King.
>Has Stripped the nobles of hereditary rights of privilege, replacing the feudal system with a meritocracy.

Alright, that means I can get ahead if I put work in for the new ruling class! I just need an in, and I--

>Those on death row are used as sacrifices to bound succibi to this world. They are then sold as concubines to help fund the state.
>Tax systems have been reformed to formed on reasonable economics rather then the whims of Lords.

Wait, so if I do this right and get in at their side, I get my own SUCCUBUS? And all it costs is a condemned criminal? Holy shit, as if I wasn't on board already! Not to mention the ease of the tax burden to the peasantry. All 400 members of my family are gonna be happy abou--

>Slavery has been reinstated.

WOAH. woah woah woah hey now, wait a minute. Who's getting enslaved here? Cause 10 to 1 odds it's the fuckin goblins. We get pissed on more than players entering a magical realm. Consider all deals off, buddy, I ain't goin' back to no pit!

>Free basic medical care is provided by the state.
>Mandated education for all children, includes basic math skills, literacy, and basic history. Last from ages 8 to 10. Those gifted go to magic academies for further study.

That's great, but seeing as how I used to be a slave, I think it'd be easier to depose you and keep your good ideas rather than let you keep goblins in chains.

WE MUST DISSENT

some demons are ok

Now, as for how my paladin would handle it...

>The Dark Lord has overt--

DARKNESS MUST NOT BE ALLOWED TO TAKE ROOT! THE SHINING ONE PURIFIES ALL THAT IS UNCLEAN, DEMONIC! YOUR BLOODLINE WILL NEVER HOLD LANDS IN OUR REALM, AND I WILL EXCISE YOU, AND YOUR CHILDREN, AND ANYONE IN YOUR SPECIES! THE SHINING ONE PROTECTS!

What if the dark lord is the same species as your paladin?

Demon. Bad.

Smite. Kill. Bad.

If they were good they'd be like, fel spirits or something. But they're not. They're demons. QED bad.
Seriously, just never give demons an inch, ever. It all rounds off nicely then.

...I mean it depends on setting and all, but classically you just don't want to fuck with demons.

Impossible. Humans touched by the radiance would never do something so VILE as INSTATE THEIR RULERSHIP OVER A SOVEREIGN KING!

but conquest and war between human nations is fine and totally not despicable.

I'll take life in a country with a monarchy and nobility then one with slavery in it. The fact that slavery is instated suggests that there isn't even any bonded serfdom here, but a tenant farmer relationship.

tl;dr Lawful subject gonna smash your shit up.

>Has Stripped the nobles of hereditary rights of privilege, replacing the feudal system with a meritocracy.
Everything else in the thing contradicts this.
If it's a meritocracy, why is there slavery? There's no way to bootstraps yourself from being a slave.
If it's a meritocracy, why are there sacrifices from those on death row? Logically people on death row can still prove their worth by learning to make bootstraps and funding the prison by selling them.
If it's a meritocracy, why is there free medical care? Surely private doctors can make elixers of goat's tongue and bootstraps to sell to the populace instead of relying on the state to do it.

I don't believe the dark lord has any bootstraps to pull himself up by. I believe the dark lord has very loose shoes which would only serve to trip him up and would himself never survive in a true meritocracy.

>How does your character feel about this?

He just leaves the Country.
It's happened before and it'll happen again, but that's just the way of the world: adventurers, tomb raiders, curse & monster hunters, all of them high-tail it out of a country whenever a "Dark Lord" comes in to power; fleeing into nearby provinces and other countries to do their work.

Why?
Because Dark Lords are unpredictable, whimsical, and often violently shift countries economies in volatile haphazard ways. What if he starts minting paper money instead of coins? What if he makes adventuring illegal? What if he -god forbid- scraps the trains? Never bet on Overlords.

>If it's a meritocracy, why are there sacrifices from those on death row? Logically people on death row can still prove their worth by learning to make bootstraps and funding the prison by selling them.
Maybe if they've committed sucha grave crime/are such a threat it's easier to sacrifice them in the long run.

That's not very bootstraps of you.
Death row inmates should instead fight for amusement in an arena. Then they get a chance to bootstraps themselves out of their situation. If you choke someone out with a bootstrap you get to go free.

B-but my succubutt concubines...

The Dark Lord sounds a heck of a lot like a less-rapey Genghis Khan.

Depends on how slavery is used, likely fine with him and looking to get on his good side though.

If they're sex demons, it's at least a little more okay.

I think the idea of a "meritocracy" is that people come to power by their abilities, not by inheritance or election.

A typical Dark Lord has super duper magic powers, and I'm sure there's a plethora of spells that will allow you to look inside someone's head and soul, to find qualities like high Wisdom, Charisma, Intelligence, skill levels, etc. to make things work.

>Has Stripped the nobles of hereditary rights of privilege, replacing the feudal system with a meritocracy.
Yes, because this has always gone along swimmingly in the past.

If you've played Middle Earth: Shadow of Mordor, you might know how slippery a "meritocracy" can be.

"Oh shit, someone just killed my boss, I'm in charge now! Oh wait... you know it was ME who killed my boss? Oh well... clearly, he wasn't fit for the job."

It seems to be a common trait among Dark Overlords... they don't want things to be peaches and cream. They just want to keep the ship afloat.

Let's just assume he killed all of them afterwards like a sane person.

We've also had a lot of dragons and magical dark lords in past too haven't we user.

This is very appealing to me.

However I'm not so sure about slavery. Unless it was orcs and goblins, and even then I'm not so sure.

But hey, it's fucking damned sight better than most other governments.

My character reacts to this by working his way up that meritocracy with his vast knowledge and interpersonal skills.

sounds like a Free City to me user. soon enough the entire economy is going to be supported by 5 extremely dedicated prostitutes with the dark lords reputation being subsidized by more whores to boost his public appearance.

Let me get this straight....
>Birthright means nothing
>The state makes efforts to fund itself in other ways than taxing the peasantry's pants off
>Reasonable economic reforms
>Mandated education
Is he called Dark because of his physical complexion? Because he's doing literally nothing wrong.

>Slavery has be reinstated
Pobody's nerfect.

>The King is appointed by God user
That's what the Ancien Régime turned Droit Divine into. If I'm not mistaken, Droit Divine was actually an obligation rather than a justification in the Middle Ages: the duty of a king to act as God's regent on earth, rather than the privilege to do so.

WAIT A SECOND
You're literally describing Napoleon here, aren't you? The guy who did everything right except reinstituting slavery and assuming the Russians were human, and expecting Germans to be capable of anything but destruction?

Piss off, Boneparte

Napoleon summoned demons? Hardcore.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prostitution_in_France#R.C3.A9glementation_.28Regulation.29
He was the first man to state-regulate prostitution and force bi-weekly health inspection on prostitutes. He also opened up about 180 officially approved brothels in Paris alone.

Could he have summoned semen demons, I don't doubt he would've done that. All great leaders know legalizing prostitution is a good way to keep the people satisfied (scroll up a bit and see how Saint Louis figured this out the hard way).

>The Lich has ruled our nation for centuries!
>What? Oh no, it's not actually so bad, aside from conscription.
>Not while you're alive, you dolt! The living portion of the army is composed entirely out of professional volunteers.
>When you die, though, you're conscripted.

Not the demons. The mortals are the question; if there's magical means of labor that render slavery obsolete, what is the point of instituting slavery? You've got bound demons, phantom spells, and golems for all varieties of labor to be handled.

Less haughty aristocrats - safer position on the top
More free workpower (undead, war prisoners, criminals) - less taxes required

>You live in peace
>Then you die
>Then you're conscripted for 5 years
>Then you can spend the rest of eternity doing skeleton things

Other than not being able to have sex or enjoy tasty food, there's nothing wrong with this.

>Has Stripped the nobles of hereditary rights of privilege, replacing the feudal system with a meritocracy.

First that is very likely to have caused a civil war. Second, even if we a going late medieval/ early renaissance those landed nobles are a rather large part of the educated population, even so more of the well educated population. The only large groups of educated people is the retainer class of nobles ( who the dark lord just pissed off because they lost rights also), and more over the church. Seeing as the real world church generally was heavily invested in the feudal system and lost a lot of power when that system was undone it is not happy either. So their is a not small chance that said Dark Lord just started a civil war against the very people he needs to run his new type of government.

Even that gets headed off there is two new issues. Firstly when there is a turn of the governing class corruption spikes hard. The people who are now running things are not rich to the same level as the old ruling class (yet), and thus it takes a lot less money being a stake to make them think about stealing or taking bribes. Look at most post colonial governments for examples.

Second centralization ( which would be a major goal of a meritocracy) both costs a lot of money to run and in the indeterminate term is notable less efficient, especially the area of revenue collection. IRL the soft change over that a lot of European counties had from Feudalism to a administrative monarchy cause a drop in state revenue for 20 to 40 ( varies by country with larger taking longer) during the early 16th century. I would like to add that was a major era of economic growth.

Honestly even if the Dark Lord and his inner circle were geniuses things would be rather harsh for at lest 10 years for that one action. Not to say it would not have a long term payoff.

.

>Slavery has been reinstated.

I'm a bard who worships the goddess of freedom. ITS ASS WOOPING TIME (Read hide behind dorf and shove heals up his ass)

>there's no way to bootstraps yourself from being a slave
Did happen in the Roman Empire. Does that make it a good system? No. Was it common? Probably not. But you COULD do it

>Lord
Lost me at word three. We don't take kindly to kneeling southmen 'round these parts.

Nothing can be done now, after all he is the senate.

can i join?

>the

Kill it.

My Drunken Brawler Thug

"You're soigning moi checks now? Kay."

"Nah, don't want a succuboi. Too much ha- what are those green fings? OI'll take a dozen"

Hi Senate, I'm dad.

The forces of the most noble undead God-King have never been deployed in their entirety. The living army is stationed in key strategic points where superior skill at arms and individual judgement are most important, while the legions of mass-produced skeletal "levies" are used economically wherever superior numbers are required, controlled and maintained by university trained necromancers, who also scavenge usable corpses for animation from enemy forces.

Being a Legion Necromancer comes with a serious paycheck, but most don't envy the position, since their job involves being isolated for months on end with nothing but a bunch of corpses in various stages of decomposition and the enemy for company. A much more cushy job is to be a local mortician, charged with accepting "Levies" from the populace after funeral rights, rendering the body down to its bones, cremating the messier, more potentially infectious remains, and returning the ashes to the family to be placed in an urn or whatever the custom may be. The skeletal remains then have the teeth extracted for local dentists to use in their practice, and have mass production armor bolted to the body at key points for the purpose of structural integrity more than protection. All of the Revenant Legion have a steel mask attached to the skull, usually commissioned by the family as part of funerary custom. It's cheaper than a casket, after all. After that, they are stored in "barracks" throughout the country and its borders, to await deployment.

>Tax systems have been reformed to formed on reasonable economics rather then the whims of Lords.

Aristocratic societies didn't really have income taxes like we understand them today. That's more a feature of centralized states... you know, like the kind your hypothetical Dark Lord is establishing. Instead "taxes" would be income earned from land rental. (you own land, but need workers to make it profitable. So you have families who then live and work on the property and they give you a share of their production as rent). The closest thing to income taxes would be tariffs charged for transport across one's land, or for market access rights. There was generally a pretty hands-off approach to the property and (owned) income of others. Your schema also ignores the place of landed commoners, a major, yet usually overlooked component of feudal societies.

3/10, almost Danaerys Targaryean tier.

>There are Anons in this thread that think this is a good idea that would actually work
>Angers the aristocracy (loss of titles)
>Angers the merchant class (increased taxes)
>Angers the clergy (Dark Lord that sacrifices people)
>Angers the freeman (More taxes + might become a slave to some rich asshole)
>Angers the peasantry (will become a slave)

But lets assume he didn't just start a massive civil war.

The best part, the aristocracy, more wealthy freemen and the richest traders and merchants can just enslave everyone that can't defend themselves or just buy slaves from another Kingdom and out produce any poorer business that can't afford slaves.

So in the end everything becomes worse off for the majority of people, slaves won't get health care or education they're property. He just made the richest assholes richer and doomed every commoner to a life of slavery.

Sure its a meritocracy, but the only people that get to try for positions in his new Government are already the smartest and richest, they've probably received a professional education since childhood and will always out pace the lucky child of a poor bastard from a starving family that received two years of basic education.

Sorry if I'm rambling but here goes, everyone that's free to experience education and health care can already afford it and everyone that would have befitted from it are enslaved.

>The King is appointed by God user
So you are saying that the Deity that supports the Monarch line, ie Pelor/Merunes/Asura/Freiyr would now engage in a faith crusade against the Dark Lord?
Sounds fun.

Literally A-OK, as long as he doesn't try to execute or enslave me. Might offer his services to him.

>civil war
I guess the thing that angers aristocracy and clergy the most is being executed to summon succubi. I presume the Dark Lord has means to enforce that. Also, money saved by eliminating them might be used to fund education and healthcare.
I don't get how establishing meritocracy and reinstating slavery go together though. Who becomes a slave?
Also, I guess reforms in tax system doesn't necessarily mean the taxes go up, but that they are more evened out. Instead of having to pay more when the Lord feels like it, you simply pay some % of your earnings or food collected or whatever.

Oh look, a clever subversion.

Upvoted, friend! Hope to see more of you in the future!

>Hey this all sounds great! Hail the new king
You've been chosen for slave duty, report to forced labour camp 762
>H-hey! The OTHER people were supposed to be slaves!

'tax systems' doesn't necessarily refer exclusive to income tax. Could be reformations of the rent system, or abolishment of tariffs to encourage trade, or any number of things.

"Oh, another one of those practically self-overthrowing idiots."

About the only one not guaranteed to royally piss off large swathes of the population is the free medical care. Well, my character is going to take a good look at the ensuing civil war and see if any of the sides are worth supporting.

>bound succibi
I am Zalwei God of Mercy
You have broken one of the 12 tenets of Mercy prepare for destruction.

Because the plural should be succubae?

No the binding part.
.
.
.
Now prepare for Destruction.

>How does your character feel about this?
He's a Dark Lord. Any universe where someone holds that title and is taken seriously is bound to be submitted to DnD-like objective moralities. Thus meaning he's doing something fucked up, since he's the embodiment of evilness. Like hiding magic formulas corrupting our kid's minds in their course books, or using state funds to push his apocalyptic agenda, I don't know. But he's the fucking Dark Lord in a world where that title is taken seriously.
Plus I'm tired of those oh-so-clever "teh Durk lurds wus akctully teh gud guy!!!!!1!1!!! do not u feel bad for tring to ficht im anun?"