The Overlord’s Guide to Acquiring Minions:

[taalismn]

The Overlord’s Guide to Acquiring Minions:

So you wanna be an overlord? You got the Big Idea, the cool insignia, the proper attitude, and the ambition, but now what you need is the manpower to carry out your plans. What proper overlord doesn’t have at least one minion or lackey to listen to the rants, raves, and orders and hopefully execute the latter? Minions don’t grow on trees(unless you’ve genetically engineered them) so you’ve got to get your hordes of minions, goons, stormtroopers, pawns and living cogs from SOMEWHERE. The following are a few guidelines on just how to go about doing so:

*Hire Them
The most popular, easiest, and least illegal way to acquire minions is to hire them. If you’ve got enough money, you’ll find that the adage that somebody can be found to do ANYTHING for the right price holds true. There’s a multitude of guilds, unions, and organizations that will readily hire out mercenaries and minions for the right price. And with a wide selection of talent and expertise to choose from, an employer can pick and choose their own organization composition...as long as they have enough money.
The downside is that hirelings tend to be motivated by money and are more loyal to their contract than their employer. Few hired minions will go above and beyond the letter of their contracts for their employer, and they keep an eye on their boss’s solvency. If the paychecks start coming late or not at all, hired minions can be counted on to start jumping ship for greener pastures. Re-negotiating contracts can be a killer, especially if your minions know they have the bargaining advantage.

*Conquer Them
A favorite way, for those with the firepower, is to conquer and enslave new minions. Simply overwhelm them, capture them, force your commands on them, and whip them into shape as your new minions...or else their loved ones will suffer and what’s left of their pathetic civilization will be destroyed. Then it’s a matter of pounding them into their new place in your organization, using the miscreants and dissidents as expendable shocktroops in your future campaigns, and assimilate their civilization. You get their talents and take their stuff too, all as the spoils of war.
The downside is that it usually takes three or four generations of bloody suppression, cultural reduction, and forced conformity before you get even remotely trustworthy minions, and even then you can’t trust that you’ve gotten rid of every festering cell of rebellion. Conquered minions may seem to be taking out their suppressed anger on newer conquests, but it’s far more likely they’re sharpening their knives for a go at winning back their freedom.

*Make Them
If you’ve got enough expertise and material, making your own minions from scratch is the next most popular way(after hiring and conquest) to acquire minions. Making your own has the advantage that you know exactly what goes into them, you can shape their minds and bodies to order, and you can make more of them to order. From killer robots to vat-grown monster legions, there’s a fine tradition of making your own.
The downside is that unless you’re a very good programmer or genetic engineer, homemade minions tend to have flaws; short life expectancy, low intelligence, lack of imagination, literal interpretation of orders, allergies to catnip, or susceptibilities to pop music, to name a few. And making your minions TOO good risks them one day questioning your right to command them, because they see themselves as equal or superior.


*Buy Them
If you don’t want to waste your resources conquering and enslaving a people, buy them from somebody who’s already done it for you. There are plenty of possible sources for this category of minion, all of them illegal, if one knows where to look.
Buying minions sounds a lot cheaper than conquering your own, but quality of minions tends to be on the low side, since the ones up for sale tend to be the ones the original owners are willing to part with for the cash. Bought minions also tend to be low on the loyalty charts. The key to buying loyal minions is to treat them better than their last owners, otherwise they’ll be over the wall when your back is turned.
The downside of buying minions is that the better minions tend to be very expensive and in short supply, while the cheap ones tend to be in rather bad shape. Also, if you have smart enemies, they can easily figure out your capabilities by tracking what sort of minions you buy.

*Awe Them
Success tends to attract people, and if you’re even modestly successful as an overlord, you’ll find people coming out of the woodwork, eager to be a part of your success. Touting yourself as ‘a force of change’, the ‘wave of the future’, or a ‘revolutionary’, especially against an established order of things, is a good way to pull in minions of this category. The degree of loyalty can vary from single boot-polishing camp followers and court sycophants to cults of personality and holy warriors ready to die in your name, and Awed minions often go above and beyond simple obediance to insure they have the eye and approval of the successful overlord. Sometimes all it takes is a wave and a smile, and a reasonably charismatic overlord can win the hearts and minds of the awestruck masses.
The downside is that any reversal of fortunes or nasty secrets coming out and people will become disillusioned and begin deserting in droves. Thrill seeking minions may become bored and leave to idolate newer flavor overlords. Worse are the zealots and true believers, who may turn on you for not being what they thought you were. And then there’s the psychos, those insanely obsessed fatal-attraction types who publicly slobber all over your boots in public proclaiming their love of you, but who are essentially useless in any real capacity, or worse, committ atrocities in your name without your permission, and give you a bad rep.

*Seduce Them
Another favorite way to use success and charisma is to take Minions away from other overlords. This saves you the trouble of training your minions and also takes away resources and manpower from your rivals, so it's a double win. Seducing minions often entails offering better working conditions, more freedom, better opportunities for personal growth, and sometimes literally seduction in the carnal sense.
The downside is that seduced Minions expect their new employer to make good on their promises, and often see themselves as equals or partners in their new employer's enterprise, rather than spearcarriers. Approaching another overlord's minions and poaching them is also fraught with considerable risk, both from trying the initial approach without getting run through, and successfully pulling it off. A botched attempt can result in suddenly suspicious minions killing you off and presenting your head to their master, or a suspicious overlord slaughtering his minions for treason, making subsequent attempts to seduce them over to your side all that more difficult. Other complicating factors include seduced minions have dependents who must be gotten to safety as well, making the task of poaching help all the harder.


*Win Them
It’s rare, but in the high stakes realms of overlordship, it’s been known to have minions change hands as the result of friendly games, hardfought contests, or cutthroat wagers. Short on cash, or not willing to have their throats slit, overlords sometimes pay off their debts with minions.
Such transfers are problematic from a loyalty point of view as the transferred minions aren’t likely to be happy with the change of management. The exceptions are, of course, those times when the new overlord treats his new minions BETTER than their old one, in which loyalty is likely to soar.
The downside is that minion exchanges can carry attendant grudges, and often a loser will attempt to break the spirit of the bet by handing over the weaker or more troublesome minions. It’s also a popular way of slipping infiltrators into the camp of a rival.

*Inherit Them
The easiest way to acquire minions with regards to actual effort is to inherit them from a relative, effectively getting trained minions handed over on a silver platter. However, this is quite uncommon, as few people have the sorts of family connections that leave them minions as part of the will.
Inheriting minions doesn’t automatically provide the inheritor with loyal minions; even in the best of circumstances, the minions will be constantly comparing the new master to their old one, and transfer of loyalty may be slow in coming. The inherited minions may be more loyal to the bloodline, rather than the individual. Depending on how your late relation acquired the inions in the first place, you may have to assert dominance all over again. Also, there’s the matter of upkeep; unless the inheriting party as the resources, or they are provided as part of the transfer, the overlord may not have the means to support his new minions. Also, depending on the relationship between the inheritor and the late former master, the minions may be part of a larger plan to work posthumous vengeance on the inheriting party; beware inheritances of ninja from your hated relations, because there may be a darker plan at work.


*Rescue Them
Doing somebody a good turn is sometimes enough to secure their loyalty. Saving their lives, rescuing their planet, extracting their society from extinction-level catastrophes can earn an overlord the adulation and life-debt loyalty of entire species.
The sort of occasions that allow an overlord figure to acquire minions through acts of generousity tend to very rare, and often incur considerable risk and danger to the would-be overlord, so few take this course unless they have superior capabilities from the get-go. The most popular form of Good Deed Minion Acquisition is to combine it with some other form of acquisition, like Buying slave minions, then emancipating them, in hopes that they’ll swear loyalty out of gratitude. A darker form of Good Deed Minion Acquisition is to manufacture the crisis in the first place, then show up in the nick of time to rescue the candidate minions, disguising Conquest as a Good Deed.
The downside is that memories tend to short, and if the risks the minions undertake in service to their savior are perceived to be greater than that of the danger they were originally rescued from, the minions may declare the debt paid in full and quit their service.

[Alrik Vas]

My last Overlord did a combination of Awe, Rescue, Conquer and Inherit. I never purchased or created minions. If you don't earn loyalty, then it's not real and can easily be subverted.

[taalismn]

My last Overlord did a combination of Awe, Rescue, Conquer and Inherit. I never purchased or created minions. If you don't earn loyalty, then it's not real and can easily be subverted.

Indeed. Minmei Attack, anyone?

[taalismn]

Original If I Were An Evil Overlord list from 1990. (not the first one, the second one)

D'oh! I should add 'Seduce Them' as in subverting Minions from other Overlords, but that loosely comes under Hiring Them, I suppose.

[Tor]

In regard to either the Shifter or the Summoner, I imagine this could fall somewhere under the Awe/Conquer or Buy/Hire options. Warlocks' dealings with Elementals would either be Buy/Create for the spell versions (depending on how you interpret it, if your PPE is making a host for the AI's essence fragment, or paying it off to serve you a bit) or Awes/Seduce if you just do a PPEless ritual to summon them.

[taalismn]

In regard to either the Shifter or the Summoner, I imagine this could fall somewhere under the Awe/Conquer or Buy/Hire options. Warlocks' dealings with Elementals would either be Buy/Create for the spell versions (depending on how you interpret it, if your PPE is making a host for the AI's essence fragment, or paying it off to serve you a bit) or Awes/Seduce if you just do a PPEless ritual to summon them.

Magically-summoned Minions becomes trickier to classify. Some folks might regard Summoning as a separate category of Blackmail/Coerce not generally regarded as a popular means of recruiting mortal minions to your banner.

[Nekira Sudacne]

In regard to either the Shifter or the Summoner, I imagine this could fall somewhere under the Awe/Conquer or Buy/Hire options. Warlocks' dealings with Elementals would either be Buy/Create for the spell versions (depending on how you interpret it, if your PPE is making a host for the AI's essence fragment, or paying it off to serve you a bit) or Awes/Seduce if you just do a PPEless ritual to summon them.

Magically-summoned Minions becomes trickier to classify. Some folks might regard Summoning as a separate category of Blackmail/Coerce not generally regarded as a popular means of recruiting mortal minions to your banner.

It's really a question of if you consider temporary mind control to create minions or temporary pawns. Minions are generally permanent until expended, Summons have a timer.

[Tor]

Summons only have a timer if you're a weak-willed overlord =/

Plus you can negotiate agreements with them which bypasses the Battle of Wills if they consent to it.

They can consent under coercion too. You can threaten to kill them or chop off their limbs (not all demons or deevils can regenerate those, just some) if they don't agree to your terms.

[Alrik Vas]

Don't you not "really" kill a Demon or Devil unless you kill it in it's home realm? (i forget if that's a thing in Palladium)

So...wouldn't their bits and pieces come back if they returned to hell/hades/whatever?

[taalismn]

Don't you not "really" kill a Demon or Devil unless you kill it in it's home realm? (i forget if that's a thing in Palladium)

So...wouldn't their bits and pieces come back if they returned to hell/hades/whatever?

Indeed...there's a very nasty demonic rebirth description in the Hades book. Bloody nasty little blighters.

[KLM]

*Inherit Them
The easiest way to acquire minions with regards to actual effort is to inherit them from a relative, effectively getting trained minions handed over on a silver platter.

Actually that depends on the paranoia level of their former employer, which is usually high in the family of an overlord

[taalismn]

*Inherit Them
The easiest way to acquire minions with regards to actual effort is to inherit them from a relative, effectively getting trained minions handed over on a silver platter.

Actually that depends on the paranoia level of their former employer, which is usually high in the family of an overlord

That's why I mentioned be suspicious of gift ninja.

[eliakon]

Your forgetting the modern way, E-Bay.

[Nekira Sudacne]

Summons only have a timer if you're a weak-willed overlord =/

Plus you can negotiate agreements with them which bypasses the Battle of Wills if they consent to it.

They can consent under coercion too. You can threaten to kill them or chop off their limbs (not all demons or deevils can regenerate those, just some) if they don't agree to your terms.

And not all of them will choose to be eternal minions on pain of torture either. Plenty would rather fight to the death. after all, they will just reincarnate soon (by demon reckoning)

[taalismn]

Your forgetting the modern way, E-Bay.

That would be Buying or Hiring.

[Tor]

Don't you not "really" kill a Demon or Devil unless you kill it in it's home realm? (i forget if that's a thing in Palladium) So...wouldn't their bits and pieces come back if they returned to hell/hades/whatever?

I said 'or' not 'and'. You could either chop off their bits and keep them prisoner (and I assume if they ported back their limbs would not come along for the ride since they're no longer part of their being) or kill them. I'd prefer dismemberment, more profitable, and leaves them as less of a threat.

Hades/Dyval introduced the 'not dead until offed in home dimension' stuff I think, sometimes when they are killed offworld they might leave little bits of bone behind though.

It's also something they'd prefer to avoid. It's a huge embarassment and inconvenience for them which lowers their rank and takes them out of commission. You could kill a demon as a teenager and not worry about them revenging against you until you're a grandparent.

not all of them will choose to be eternal minions on pain of torture either. Plenty would rather fight to the death. after all, they will just reincarnate soon (by demon reckoning)

They don't reincarnate if I just remove all their limbs and toss them in a pit. Although I guess that wouldn't inconvience all subspecies equally. I'm not sure how to coerce incorporeal types like Banshees. Plus this wouldn't be a major deterrent against those demons/deevils capable of regenerating limbs after a few days.

There's also the problem of their ability to dimensional teleport. I'm not sure how hard it is to interrupt those attempts (can't dragons port in a single action?) and I think there was only 1 barrier spell in Bletherad which could nullify such an escape.

[Alrik Vas]

I think you coerce bainshee's by telling them they sing lovely and all those people they killed had it coming. then you offer them a record deal, but it's really just an excuse to send them on world tour to "sing" for the people you want dead.

[taalismn]

I think you coerce bainshee's by telling them they sing lovely and all those people they killed had it coming. then you offer them a record deal, but it's really just an excuse to send them on world tour to "sing" for the people you want dead.

Ah, Seduce them! Ego-stoking is a useful Overlord skill, as long as it doesn't look like groveling.

[Alrik Vas]

Ego stroking should definately come off more like encouragement rather than groveling. You're an evil overlord for crap's sake.

[taalismn]

Ego stroking should definately come off more like encouragement rather than groveling. You're an evil overlord for crap's sake.

"Come on! You're better than scum! You're MUCUS!!!"

[Tor]

I think you coerce bainshee's by telling them they sing lovely

Ah, Seduce them

Someone call Moira

[Blue_Lion]

Does building golem robots with a TW count as building. They are probably some of the most loyal minions I have ever seen. and harder to loose than most with the whole get better in 24 hours thing.

So building can make loyal minions.
Heck normal robots are loyal unless programed bad and can be built. Do you really think Archie 3 has trouble building loyal minions?

[taalismn]

Does building golem robots with a TW count as building. They are probably some of the most loyal minions I have ever seen. and harder to loose than most with the whole get better in 24 hours thing.

So building can make loyal minions.
Heck normal robots are loyal unless programed bad and can be built. Do you really think Archie 3 has trouble building loyal minions?

Yep. it's Building 'em.
As for Archie-3 building loyal minions? In canon, it's foolproof.
In the Shemarrian Civil War/Fanworks thread, it's blown open and ripped down.

[Blue_Lion]

Does building golem robots with a TW count as building. They are probably some of the most loyal minions I have ever seen. and harder to loose than most with the whole get better in 24 hours thing.

So building can make loyal minions.
Heck normal robots are loyal unless programed bad and can be built. Do you really think Archie 3 has trouble building loyal minions?

Yep. it's Building 'em.
As for Archie-3 building loyal minions? In canon, it's foolproof.
In the Shemarrian Civil War/Fanworks thread, it's blown open and ripped down.

Well fan fiction can very great deal from the intent of the properties controlling body.