Rituals, Regrets, and Really Dumb People

Prologue

I think every tyrant, despot, and warlord needs an interesting backstory if they plan to rule. Doesn't matter what they rule; it could be a tiny city-state, a dark countryside filled with superstitious rurals, or even the whole world—especially If you plan on ruling the whole world.

That is my aspiration after all. I want to rule the world. The people would know no crueler a master than I, and I was happy to fill that role. People, you see, need rulers. Rulers that hold people down under an iron fist. The masses need authority, they need order, elsewise the Mainland happens. I digress, though, we were talking about origin stories. If I am an aspiring tyrant, then what of my origin story?

Well—I am sad to say that my origins are a little humbler than the more well-known scoundrels and villains. I don't have the cool backstory of Slaughterion, a genius so inspired to do evil that he created an army of roaming decapitation bots that terrorized the cities of Havensfield and Tenpals for five years. That man had a great backstory, being raised as an unrealized genius by boorish parents. He murdered them at the age of ten with his first handmade murder bot, put together with junkyard scrap.

That, my friend, is a genius who had potential.

'Well, Sanguine,' you must be saying, 'what about Dementria the Vain?' I knew Dementria before I even got to the Carcer. Her husband cheated on her with some secretary and made her the woman who would eventually be known for conquering two-thirds of Old Britannia. Two-thirds of a nation that was once an empire, mind you. She did it all with a legion of fanatical followers and conjured demonspawn. And despite her moniker, I assure you that Dementria was not really all that vain.

Oh, even better, what about Reinhardt the Vile? Reinhardt, that name just—radiates strength, and his title was well-earned. The man was a renown necromancer, a craven fiend feared from one side of the Carcer to the other side of the isle. A warlord like no other.

Reinhardt the Vile began his humble origins as a teacher until a couple of men shot him and his friend in a robbery gone bad. He survived, but his friend did not. Now, I know what you're thinking; that's sad, Sanguine. It is sad, it really pulls at the heartstrings, but the point is that it is an interesting origin story. The man lost something important to him, a part of himself, and it made him realize what a lost cause humanity was. He just wanted to be a college professor before that event happened to him and his friend, but life deals us weird hands, and he ended up being the man known as 'the Vile'.

And—I'd be churlish to not tell it, but he was my mentor as well. I—Darkness, I am sorry. I get a little sentimental talking about the old codger. Even when I killed him to take his spot—to his approval I might add—I felt bad. Only time I ever really felt bad about anything. I miss him a lot. He to tell these really funny stories to me while we were burning down little hovel-villages along the coast. They just don't make men like that anymore.

But, again, I digress.

I'm telling you all this because you don't know the misery of the position I'm in. I don't like lying, which is funny taking to light the profession I have chosen, but I really do loathe bending the truth. You see, I don't have a great origin story and it leaves me in a little bit of a predictament. When I do conquer humanity and become its blasphemous man-god, what am I going to tell the plebeian masses?

'Oh, hey, my parents were hippies and I got sent to Carcer Island for selling fake enchanting dust to a bunch of undercover cops. Here, worship this idol of Darkness in my name.'

See? Doesn't have quite the ring to it as other origin stories. I swear, it is a pain in the ass being me. How am I to get humanity to bow down to my feet when I don't have that emotional heart punch to my own origins? I guess I'll just have to force them to kneel, like I've always had to.