Evil Masterminding for Idiots!

After his third dunking, Javin sat, shivering and wrapped in a towel, on the steps of The Manor. “Sorry, Jess,” he sneezed. “No spiky armor. I’ll drown out here.” The sorceress nodded vaguely in reply – she’d been using magic all afternoon to move the most delicate of her possessions, and the effort had worn her out. Most of the boxes were inside now, and the long process of unpacking could begin soon.

Justin and Kali carried the last few items past them, up the stairs. Ker was off somewhere inside, probably practicing his maniacal laugh in celebration. Grok was good-naturedly thrashing a medium-sized alligator a hundred yards or so from the front veranda. Things were, relatively speaking, quiet.

Then the locals started arriving.

Jess and Javin watched, bemused, as one raft after another slowly and silently floated into view. Small, sturdy men maneuvered them expertly around the cypress roots, logs, and Grok and his new playmate. “Javin,” Jess said languidly, “maybe you should get Ker.”

By the time Javin returned with Ker, the flotilla seemed to have drawn itself up into some order. Jessenia waved towards the center of the mass of rafts. “Think that one’s in charge. I’m exhausted; will you deal with this?”

Ker nodded. “Come on, Javin. Back me up.” The big man beamed – hey, he might get to flip a raft over or something, you never knew. Ker stepped briskly down the front stairs and walked to the edge of the mostly-solid ground that supported The Manor. “What business have you with...” Damn it, “Names” was Chapter 6 and he hadn’t read that far ahead yet. “With us?” he finished, somewhat lamely.

The lead raft poled in closer, and Ker and Javin could see that the men on board weren’t men, per se. Built like miniature versions of Javin, only even wider, these were clearly dwarves. Swamp dwarves. “You be moving into the old Devereaux place?” the head dwarf asked.

Javin, wanting to look intimidating for the people for whom he was to be an overlord, rolled his shoulders forward and gave a menacing chuckle. Ker drew himself up and gave his best Evil Leer. “If you mean the manse behind me, yes. A new age will be beginning in this swamp, friend, so you and yours had best...”

“Ah, good,” the dwarf continued, not appearing at all intimidated. “You all be needing help? Soldiers, maybe? Guides? Cooks? You like local cooking, you see. My cousin Jean Marc, he real good at booby traps. You need someone like that?”

Ker stopped leering. “What?” he replied, baffled.

“You not taking over the world, sir? Most folks be moving into the old Devereaux place, they be trying to take over the world. Or bits of it, anyway. Last group left three, four years ago. Economy gone right to hell, sir. I ask again, you be needing help?”

“Well, ah...”

“I need a Doom Legion,” Javin piped up.

“Doom Legion! We make a damnfine Doom Legion, sir, you see. Nobody tough as a dwarf, sir. And we grow up on rafts and boats, you not find any Tall Folks better.”

“Sounds great!” the big man enthused. “Can we hire ‘em, Ker? And a cook, too? I mean,” he lowered his voice, “sandwiches are all right, but does Jess know how to many anything else?”

Ker smiled brittlely at Javin and returned his attention to the dwarf leader. “We will need support staff, yes. But I don’t know if now is a good time. Unless... well, we'd be quite willing to oppress your people into servitude, but wage labor is rather impossible at the moment."

“Don’t you worry about that, sir!” the dwarf said. “We seen this half-dozen times past fifty years or so. We work with no advances, two months. You be rolling in gold by then.”

Two months’ work with no pay? “I think we may have a deal!” Ker smiled broadly and extended a hand.

“We getting there, you right, sir. Now, we talk about interest, right?”

“Interest? I'm interested, I just told you...”

“We no paid two months, you be paying interest on backpay, sir. Compounded, sir, every two days, with rate commensurate with...” Backwater swamp yokels or not, they were still dwarves, after all.