So what are the ideal minions for a Dark Lord? Undead, a savage race ala orcs or just a lot of monsters?

Self-righteous human paladins firmly convinced that they're the good guys.

Urban planning sometimes requires decisive action. Without it, the new overpass would never be built!

Yeah but why did you eat it?

Recycling is the noblest of acts.

worms and bugs and insects

if its a true dark lord then his only mininos would be darkness. maybe the moon

demons
ghosts

Highly explosive penguins is probably the optimal choice.

slimes

Truly, the Dark Lord we need.
Will you accept my fealty, o Most Reasonable One ?

Goonter, gunther, gunter, gonter, and goonther?

Robots.

>recycling is the noblest of acts
is raising undead recycling, or does it generate toxic waste ? is necromancy self-sustainable ? what about demon summoning ?
we need to build a sensible, responsible and eco-friendly business model if we want to conquer the world

Whoever he can control through what means he has available too him.
Because I read monster manuals for fun, I want my villains and dungeons to be filled with all different sorts of monsters.

Boros Battleshaping Blaze Reckoners
Dare you enter my magical maze?

A whole bunch of clones of himself with two randomly selected abnormally large body parts.

Warrior Cultists

quite frankly everything and anything they can get their hands on, world domination is not cheap and requires tons of money

Hobgoblin.
Orange is the new Green

I got a hard on for Homonculi/abomination type thingies.

Speaking of mooks.. ?

I love this post as a standalone thing. Just read this aloud to yourself.

There's far less good then there is evil, most of the time, and they tend to all be raised similarly to be good.

It reads like a shitty haiku.

mininos

Jabbering little gobold maniacs.

Goblins/gremlin creatures that are like the ones in Pathfinder so they can double as cocksleeves, a dedicated race of spies, and a set of choice martial undead, and a choice race that shows potential, but have clearly been held back and burdened by utter shit simplistic leadership without ambition.

Then you get a spellcaster, a really strong one who is smart in the wisdom department, but clearly built his/her powerbase on shaky grounds of insecurity, bring them low, make them join you, force them Khorne style to make you you're signature weapon that goes down in myth, legend, and you get the point, and play their slave mentality like the virgin failures they are:

If woman, you will have to fuck her, no exceptions, it's unavoidable.

After that you need the dedicated infamous assassin, the 'mini-you' the body double you, and the great beast that's around a Dragons size, if not a Dragon, then your Chads as fuck, possibly rare unconventional, one size category higher to support your boss-monster size mount.

Also, incredibly sweet digs in a hellish, shit, uninhabitavle location, not because you're into the scenery, but you decide to turn that shithole death countinent into a fertile land, homegrown from the blood of your enemies, because you're like a Nietzscheian Master mentality Fellow in tune with nature unintentionally by the people you grind into compost.

I mostly make it negroes and jewish and other minorities, that way my cucked players keep losing.

I see it like math: all good is essentially the same. Saying a y-intercept is found by looking at where a line crosses the Y-axis is the same as saying it’s found where you assume X is 0 in a linear function and solve for Y.
Evil is every possible variation of a wrong answer.

It is kinda funny that traditionally, Dark Lords have been portrayed as tolerant, multicultural, anti-monarchist industrialists, while the good races are either in cultural and technological stasis or stagnation. If the good races win, the world will be locked in feudal medieval stasis forever.

I really hate it when they’re trying to show that the good guys are diverse when they’re really not.
>Star Wars
Rebellion has aliens! Except they’re functionally similar to humans and share all human values and most have no speaking lines, all the important shit humans only.
It was the worst in Rogue One. If it were a biopic being watched by Star Wars characters, people would be complaining about how the only people who got any play were humans. But it’s okay because we’ve got girls and black people and Asians.

Don’t forget “basically the hero but more experience” for a dramatic one-on-one Duel.

>Noblest knights and devoutest paladins, before us lies the wretched spawning pits of the Enemy. All that stands betwixt them and our righteous fury is their pathetic, Evil walls. It is as if they believe our tide of goodness may be stopped by trifling, Evil stone. Tonight, we shall go over their wall, into their hovels, and drown them in their own blood. We will take from them everything and leave them with nothing. Show them no quarter, no mercy, only pain. Remember, any misery you bestow upon them will earn you the gratitude of the Heavens. So kill them slowly so that they may know that the Gods' have no love of their kind. Your only regret tonight should be that you could not drag out their suffering till the end of time. The cries and death squeals of their children shall be met with the chorus of Solars. Now, ONWARD!

Traditionally my butthairs. Fantasy has always been about extrapolating the present that the author lives in, to create the tale of his know evils being grander.

And guess what has been THE most important source of change, for good or ill, in the last 200 years?

A dark lord's minions can take many forms; the key element is they must be so broken and spiteful they'll sell out their own children if it lets them harm their neighbours.

- Tolkien orcs, who are sunk in total misery, bred "in envy and mockery of the Elves, of whom they were afterwards the bitterest foes"

- The Russian peasant from the story who asks a genie to kill his neighbor's goat instead of wishing one for himself

- The Trump voter delighted to lose his health insurance because "it'll piss off them liberals"

Of course the limitations inherent to such thinking are what brings dark lords down sooner or later.

Kobolds

So namely, if we can't feel good about indiscriminately torturing and killing even their infants, then they aren't good minions, right?

Himself

Pretty much. Killing children is the most efficient means of stopping evil. Let me tell you a tale of one of my sessions. Our paladin overheard two barflies mention how they had seen Kobolds climbing out of a well on an abandoned farm and attempting to trade gems for grain. This piqued the group's interest.

It took about a day to reach the farm where the kobolds were coming from. They descended into the dry well to find a platform about fifteen feet down with an opening that lead into the kobold lair. The party quickly went through slaughtering the unarmed kobolds with ease. They then decided to split up and check two branching paths. Our Ranger and Priest found an orc in a cage. She begged them to let her out and take her home, but the Priest heated the cage instead, slowly branding the Orc to death. The Paladin went through several kobold sleeping areas and found several wounded, sick, and young Kobold's huddling together. They could barely do anything except beg for their lives, so were dispatched them with ease. In the final room on the path, our Paladin found a room with several eggs on heated pedestals and a female Kobold that he didn't wait to hear about. He raised his hammer to begin smashing eggs and was held is place magically. The female Kobold begged him in broken common not to smash the eggs. Her hold person spell faltered. The Paladin asked about the eggs which he found out were kobold eggs. Then he smashed the egg mother and destroyed all the eggs open, thus clearing out the rest of the Kobold infestation.

This was something that most of the group felt good about, in and out of characters, and something that we did not question because evil races do not deserve kindness or a second chance. In a strange way, my group ends up showing more nuance and mercy in evil games than ones where we play as good aligned characters.

its communism my dude, the dark lord sings the Internationale

...Jesus Christ...

but thats utter shit setting, creating a scenario where someone is "good" or "evil" based on nothing more than existence is retarded and takes out any depth or fun from the matter
the bad guys are evil BECAUSE they act in an evil manner, the good guys are good BECAUSE they act in a good manner. for a situation where the actions outlined are anything but the most heinous act the evil races would literally be unable to preform any action not evil (which is still lazy as fuck but at least coherent), which the very actions of the kobolds contradicts

tl;dr- your setting sucks and your players are psychos

Hey! I've seen that posted before a really long time ago too

To be fair, the Kobolds were thinking about stealing the grain since their first plan failed. The adventurers were just doing some preemptive adventuring. Besides, there's no way that good races such as humans, elves, or dwarves can get along with evil races. No matter how hard they try, they'll always end up wiping each other out.

Morally bankrupt mercenaries and businessmen.

Filename

literally every race tries to wipe out other members of said race frequently

A PC in one of my games is well on their way to becoming a dark lord, and, so far, has a slimy igor-like antipaladin as a minion, as well as one of the other players, who's playing a dark magic using spellsword type of character. As far as an ideal minion? I would say that one who treads the line between indispensable and expendable juuust perfectly is pretty ideal. You want someone who's useful and can get shit done for you, but is also replaceable and not a huge deal if they die. Also unswerving loyalty, that's an important trait for a minion to have.

The setting in question in threads like these is, and has always been, up to you. This thread is an offer to think creatively and use your imagination to brainstorm and come up with cool ideas, but you seem to be more interested in regurgitating stale memes than participating.

literally everyone tries to wipe everyone out, including themselves. It's all about economic incentives.

I would say that cultists make pretty good minions for any aspiring dark lord. They're able to work together and often have some sort of magical power to make them more dangerous for your enemies, but they're also so insanely brainwashed that they'd die for you in a heartbeat and wouldn't even think of betraying you. They have combat power, can perform rituals for you, and live and breathe to serve you. What could be better?

Most bad guy societies in fantasy don't make much sense. Societies require some level of cohesion and trust to work. Yet most evil races in fantasy are backstabbing, petty dicks who literally orgasm at the thought of their children eating each other within the womb. Every member is a horrible sociopath who frames every single action as "what would produce the greatest evil." You can't buy groceries in this society without some guy trying to sell you poisoned apples just for the lulz, or another shopper trying to kill you just because she thought the celery in your cart looked better than her own. Buildings would never get built, as half the construction crew would die off in the first three days because killing the guy above you guarantees his job. These societies should be tiny, backwards, and weak as fuck. Unless they have crazy magic, they should pose absolutely no threat to the more cohesive good races. Thing that fantasy forgets is that ociopaths are societal parasites, and you can't build a whole civilization out of them.

Why are The Fates included in that picture? They're not really villains.

They were super in cahoots with Hades.

That's a pretty ridiculous thing to complain about when you have wizards casting fireballs and dragons flying around.

The Kobold is immunized against all dangers: one may call it an abomination, parasite, swindler, profiteer, it all runs off it like water off a raincoat. But call it a Kobold and you will be astonished at how it recoils, how injured it is, how it suddenly shrinks back: “I've been found out.” One cannot defend itself against the Kobold.

What it is from ?

Interesting that you lead with "cocksleeves"...

Aliens. But not Octopous like or Slime like "eldritch" no no no. More like the type of small alien that curse you from 30 km afar and makes you halucinate. Also Colour out of space.

The ideal minions are the Dark Lord himself, an incredibly fast-minded, gregarious, and curious individual who just sends his overactive mind out across dozens of golems and other platforms to go banter with folks, mess with people, and expand his complete understanding of every stage of his work. He likes to do it himself.

So we have the ideal minion : a weak coward, disloyal as fuck, with burning hatred for everyone, that you do not feel bad about killing.

I say do the opposite of that : you get a brave soldier, loyal to the bones, willing to die for the Dark Lord. He is not acting on irreasonable hatred, instead he feels the enemies of the dark lord have wronged him, or believes the dark lord is a liberator. He does not enjoy war or war crimes but will commit to the dark lord. The minions may, or may not, be humans rather than brutish creatures.
You do not have to feel bad about killing them.

Its an artifact of Tolkein. I personally try to subvert it in my settings and campaigns.

Minions. No not the animated abominations but these fuckers. They're basically goblins crossed with pikmin and come in four kinds that are identified by color and are all rather useful. They are easily made from lifeforce collected from anything you kill, can be resurrected fairly easily if the blue ones can get ahold of the corpse quick enough, are incredibly self-sufficient in terms of arming and armoring themselves from whatever the balls they find, love to loot things for you, and also love the smash/burn/kill/destroy basically anything. All you need to motivate them is to order them to do things they already wanted to do (and such things tend to be things Dark Lords do in general) and make threats of violence or commit actual acts of violence on them (again, things a dark lord would already do)

For reference, the browns are the basic borning smashy type that are stronger than the rest, the reds are spellcasters that throw fireballs and are complete immune to fire and can absorb it, greens are rogues who can turn invisible and are immune to all manner of poison and toxins, and blues have healing and resurrection magic for minions and can swim.

>Summoning /pol/.

Why user?

>So what are the ideal minions for a Dark Lord?

>tl;dr- your setting sucks and your players are psychos
Do you consider exterminating rats evil? That's what Drow, Orcs, Kobolds, and Goblins are; particularly vicious weeds that blight the garden of life and who must be pulled up root, stem for all that is good in the world. That's why they all have the evil alignment instead of neutral in the monster manual. They are genetically predisposed to depravity, which is why any violence visited upon them is an inherently good act.

You are 50+ years old

Evil races are the literal manifestation of evil. They are not human. They do not respect your life. They will kill you, screw then kill your women, and breed till your kind no longer exist. Comparing them to a human rapist is a kindness, being that they are the very stuff of evil.

Traditional evil fantasy such as orcs or dark elves are parasites which pose an existential threat to all good life. Thus it would only make sense to treat them as such. Slaying them would be akin to using anti-biotics to kill dangerous bacteria. Letting any of them, even their children or pregnant women live would be suicidally stupid since nits make lice after all.

Nobody does this anymore.

Stop being redundant.

>Skiing slippery slopes
In real life? You're right, a human-ish species with human-ish reproductive cycles needs stronger cohesion to keep societies for any amount of time. Fantasy species give you more leeway.

Take Skaven. Their entire culture and psychology is wired for immediate gratification and self-interest, with no thought to further consequences. The only reason why they get anywhere is because they reproduce and mature in fantastically rat-y fashion (fast in in greater volume than anyone else), and they hate everything else more than they hate each other.

It can be done, but it can only be done plausibly if the fantasy races involved work wildly differently from broadly human races. The belligerent overgrown fungus, the Orkz and their goblin kin are another example. Bugs of Starship Troopers fame, and every race inspired by them, seem to have a mostly singular culture of the genetic health of the species as a whole, using other species as food and genetic stock, and woe the poor hive-brain deemed weak.

Elves, more specifically, the Thalmor

>TFW you want to play these games again but you have an AMD card.

Depends on the Dark Lord's motivations, and the Dark Lord's character.

>Economic prosperity sans undesirables; charismatic/appear ""righteous""
Works best if the Evil Empire has been struggling or abused on the international stage. The DL will have in his service countrymen of various zeal. Some will keep their heads down and fight for their country, others will espouse the DL's ideals and crack down on the softer-hearted. The zealots will radicalize as many others as they can as their moral imperative. Swap Evil Empire with an increasingly neglected and radicalized people or subculture, and you have military or political revolution by a dictator.

>Power; cunning
Either similarly cunning agents with their own desires slaked by power, or easily manipulated agents as means to ends. Usually a machiavellian dick who'll use anything for political leverage. If they do have "friends", shit will probably fall apart not long after he dies.

>Revenge; a spiteful dick
So spiteful they're self-sabotaging. Only reasonable minions would have similar agendas, or some monster which can be abused and keep serving like Tolkien orcs or undead.

>The End Of The World/a clean slate for a New World; ruthless, praises ancient gods and wants to make their Truth known
Suckers for immediate personal satisfaction, other zealots of the same ancient gods, and monsters. Take the average, shit-covered peasant and offer him luxury and bitches if only he fights and dons armor that totally doesn't eat one's soul. Warp a whole culture into glorifying battle and death and give supernatural strength to perform it. Magic away the humanity left in the greatest warriors until all that's left is rage and a desire to perform suicide by ending the world. Basically, radicalize a shitload of idiots into such a frothing frenzy that the only salvation they want is to end the lies of fraudulent, arrogant civilization or the worshippers of the false gods, or die trying.

I run overlord fine on an amd card, wasaa problem?

His own enemies of course.

Undead are for liches, orcs/goblins are your best bet.

Sauron would have been absolutely thrilled to have the Thalmor around.

He should institute his own orders of religiously loyal crusaders, knights and paladins as the backbone of his armies, and build around them legions of state soldier that fight for their lands and families, and to gain social stature and economic stability for the latter.
Then he should give orcs, goblins and other dark creatures a license to pillage the lands of nearby enemy states.
Lastly, of course, a flight of dragons.

>muh shades of gray
It takes some time but as soon as the shades are clearly divided an individual can act with justice.

This. Good is not concerned with shades of gray. Moral ambiguity is concocted by evil to hide its actions and justify its existence. A paladin will realize that ambiguity is evil in and of itself. Boil away the ambiguity and outside factors and focus solely on the act, and what you are left with is an evil or a good act.

Yeah sure, and that's why alignment is such a huge factor in these games.

Outcasts given a sense of belonging. Take the isolated, the creepy, the petty power trippers, deviants, the disfigured, the bullied. Make them feel like their uniform/mask sets them beyond the common herd. Let them rape and pillage (as long as you get your cut & they know when it's time for iron disciple). Mkae sure they're set apart by a tattoo or brand so they can never be disassociated from you. 'Blood in, blood out' is a great way to ensure obedience if not loyalty.

doit

There is no such thing as a mislead villain paladin because he could just use detect evil.

I mean, the entire plot of the Star Wars prequels revolves around Sheev fucking with the Council's Detect Evil so he can work unhindered.

>So what are the ideal minions for a Dark Lord?
Sleepers.

When goblins come raiding the town, the guard and adventurers fight back.
When the crypts starts spewing forth undead, adventurers head out and stop the necromancer.

But when the enemies are being let in because the baker dropped the drawbridge, the blacksmith supplied them arms at hidden drops, and the arrowheads for the wall bowmen are blunted because the guard captain is part of the saboteurs, things get dark real, real fast.

Monsters aren't nearly as scary as the realization that your friendly neighbor you've shared meals with for years has been a sleeper all along.

Why not Dreamers instead? The Dark Lord reaches out through dreams and divine disease to bend people to his will. The afflicted can't resist, and so become the pawns in the Dark Lord's mad schemes.

A basic-tier and higher-tier minion from each classically evil race, with each of said races having its own villainous sub-ruler. These sub-rulers are controlled by a group of four evil generals, who have a four horsemen or four elements theme, possibly both. Maybe throw in a sexy villainess somewhere who dresses like a BDSM queen.

Gross!

Basically, Chads (PC heroes) vs Virgin Losers (Dark Lord's army).

This is how it works in real life too though. We're just in a timeline where the good guys lost almost every single important war.