Gnarls gnarled hand carefully turned over the top card of the deck. It was the Ace of Spades. A quick glimpse at his hand revealed that he had no spades. He also had no card higher than a six.

Mortis the Necromancer, Head Undertaker and Keeper of the Catacombs (and was really called Mortimer) placed down the five of diamonds. Presumably this was his weakest card, placed to draw out the better cards of others. Or maybe he also had an awful hand and was trying to bluff his way through this round. It was hard to tell. He was a Blue and you could never be entirely sure where the Blues were coming from.

To the left of Mortis was Giblet. Giblet was very old now, for a Brown. How old it was hard to say. He had out lived the previous two Overlords and Gnarl vaguely remembered him being in the army of the Overlord Hellspawn, before his untimely death at the teeth of a giant weasel. That would make him at least a hundred and twenty. Giblet was predictable. He always placed his lowest card first. He did so now. A three of diamonds.

Gnarl placed down his six of diamonds. He knew that this would be the only hand he would win in this round.

'Did you hear what the master has gone and done now?' said Giblet as he watched Gnarl take away the cards.

'No. What's he gone and done now?' asked Mortis in his hissing voice. The voice suited his robed and scythed appearance. Oddly enough it was his genuine voice. Some ninety something years ago a Halfling had smacked him in the throat with an axe. One of his fellow Blues had resurrected him. The blow had nearly decapitated him and ever afterwards he had a problems with his throat. There was only so much the body could take, magical reconstruction notwithstanding.

'He's giving Everlight back to the elves.'

'No. Surely you jest.'

'No, no jest. All former citizens of the Empire have been given two weeks to pack up and get of the island.' The perplexity was evident in his voice. 'appointed an elven governor. Some fool called Edregon.' The elves had always been a thorn in the side of the Overlords since, well, since the dawn of time really. The only reason they were never exterminated was that they were simply not worth the effort.

Gnarl kept quiet. He was usually quite adept at steering the Overlords down traditional paths, giving the Minion Tribes a satisfying sense of continuity. But this latest one had turned out to be something other than the usual barely sane, not too bright, tyrant. This one seemed to have more than a spoonful of grey matter in his skull and that worried him. An over abundance of intelligence was not an entirely useful thing to look for in a Master. The world seemed to have changed so much since he was young, all those many, many years ago.

In another part of the Doom Fortress the Overlord was thinking. It was something he did a lot more than any of his predecessors ever had. But according to the history sagas of the Blues this may have accounted for the depressing mortality rate of Overlords recently. Once upon a day all an Overlord needed to do was stomp around the place lording it over the primitive tribes of the world with his Hordes of Terror. Not so anymore. Now the world belonged to thinking tyrants, people who were more cunning than strong and more shrewd than violent.

Take the recent uprising of the elves of Everlight for instance. Upon a day, and it was not that long ago, an Overlord would have simply massacred the lot of them and burned the settlement to the ground for their insolence. It was a tried and tested method. All the other townships learn from this example and the survivors, because there were always survivors, are too terrified to try again. At least until it passes out of living memory.

But that was old school overlording. But now the world was better connected. Trade routes were abundant and with the trade, news was shared. The world was watching and the merchants were getting more and more power and butchery was bad for business. It was hard to sell things to corpses.

That was how the world was run now. Once it had been the biggest and most muscled that led hordes of psychopaths on rampages to kill and plunder and rape. Then the world had changed and the most cunning and well armed won with sneaky ambushes and shrewd strategies. Then the strength of iron and bronze had been replaced by the gleam of gold and silver and the astute and the prudent had been made king and the market place was were new alliances were formed. And now the avaricious delight of wealth was becoming hollow and the world was beginning to realize that information and news and words was what the world ran on.

When the world turns, the Overlord decided, you could either turn with it or be mangled in its gears.

Giving Everlight back to the elves, although a slight loss in revenue and taxes, would give him an unswerving ally. It may also coax the elves of the Evernight Forest out of the isolation they had been in since the Great Cataclysm. The Evernightians were an unknown quantity and as such an alliance with them would make attack unlikely. No one likes attacking the unknown, and almost everything about them was an unknown.

So rapt in his thoughts was the Overlord that he did not hear his first mistress sneak up behind him.

'Are you feeling ok, witch boy?'

'Just thinking.'

'So that's what that burning smell was.'

Keldar was the only person in this world who could get away with saying such a thing. He suspected that she knew this.

Juno he had married because she was the daughter of a prominent member in the currently strongest trading cartel in the heartlands of the former Empire, Fey he had married because she was the Queen of the Everlightians and had contacts in the isolationist Evernight Protectorate. He cared little for either of them; one was greedy, hedonistic, vain and not all that bright and the other was conniving, duplicitous, opportunistic and, quite frankly, a bit insane. Both of them were political marriages, little more than legal contracts to secure power and stabilize the newly emerging Dark Empire.

But not Keldar.

'Do you remember when we were children?' asked the Overlord.

'Of course,' She answered sitting on the carved stone bench next to him. They were on a balcony just outside the private quarters, overlooking the deep abyss. 'you liked to wear lots of metal then as well.'

'They were simpler times, were they not?' the Overlord gave a great sigh.

'What's brought on this bleak mood? Have you been letting that Fay have a go at you again?'

'No! No, nothing like that.' Blurted the gloomy ruler of the Dark Empire. Usually it was more comical than dangerous when women fought. More spiteful than wrathful. Not so with Keldar. Juno still had a cut upper lip and massive bruise from the last time had made comment that Keldar should be a serving girl and not First Mistress. Keldar still had bruised knuckles. It was a minor miracle Juno hadn't lost any teeth.

Knowing that she would find out soon enough he handed her the letter one of the Browns had given him just after breakfast.

'Oh dear.' Was all she could think to say after reading it.

'The Rhobeorians.' he said and then sighed again. The letter was straight from the northern boarder, where the Dark Empire rubbed shoulders with the Rhobeorian Sovereignty. The Sovereign, thanks to some obscure clause in an ancient treaty, was claiming the lands of the former Empire of Light. There was going to be war.

The Overlord was not against wars, quite the reverse in fact. He had long ago decided that he was never going to stop trying to conquer the world. Most Overlords in the past had reached equilibrium with the world around them. They had carved out their little empires and kingdoms and simply stopped. In that time they had grown complacent and decadent, giving in to an easy life of casual cruelty and senseless sadism. And one day a hero would always arise and cast them down to make way for the next Overlord and the cycle would just go around and around and around like some meaningless pirouette for all eternity. Every Overlord growing out of the putrid corpse of the formers accomplishments like some macabre phoenix. But that cycle had to end. The entire world would be his. There would be no torture camps, no slave gangs and no mass executions. No neighbour nations to oppose him. He would not grow soft and weak. For a regime to last all eternity, there could be no rest.

It was war right now, at this time, which was troubling. The Dark Empire had expanded too far too fast. It needed time to consolidate its holdings and organize proper garrisons of conquered territories, to bring a New World Order to the Chaos left over in the aftermath of the Great Cataclysm. His mother was right about one thing at least, Order was preferable to Chaos.

That was three months ago. This is now.

With a grunt of pain Spray collapsed to the ground. Spray was a Blue. They were all Blues. The Master, may he reign forever, had instructed the Blues to start what was known as 'The Grand Undertaking'. The first step of which was the removal of all the magical fallout from the area around the Old Tower. As such it was the Blues who were to be given the task of treading the first step, as they were the only ones who had any real skill in magic.

Gnarl had insisted on them that it was a great honour. But most of the Blues never really trusted Gnarl, and Spray certainly did not.

You could trust the Browns to be fearless, loyal and honourable.

You could trust the Reds to be cautious, cheerful pyromaniacs.

You could trust the Greens to be smelly, opportunistic and sneaky.

You could trust the Blues to be caring, introspective and diligent

But Gnarl was not of the four tribes. You could never tell where he was coming from, or where his allegiances truly lay.

From where he lay exhausted in the dirt Spray could see the circle next to them. Eight Blues standing, arms out stretched, fingertips just touching. In the middle of the circle the magic was being enclosed, the disturbance this caused was contained into a small area and the flow of magic became more predictable. As the magic bounced off the edge of the circle it met its self coming the other way and, with any luck, cancelled its self out. It was a very slow process and the strain was immense, but they were doing it for the Master. And so do it they would. Most of the good grazing land had been sullied during The Cataclysm. It had crippled the local economy that relied so heavily on mutton. They needed the land now. A growing army needed more food.

They had experimented with trying to capture the magic. A line of blues, fingertip to fingertip, from the epicentre to the nearest portal. The portal could then be used to suck the raw magic back to the tower where it could be safely contained. It hadn't worked very well. Something to do with the irregular wavelength, or so Gnarl had told them. They had burnt out three portal apertures before they gave it up as a bad idea. The last time Grubbins had threatened to leave the area without a functioning gate and let the fragile Blues try and walk back.

The Overlord looked at himself in the mirror. There was no way he could ever have passed for human. Although humans came in a variety of colours blueish grey with light grey spirals would probably cause comment, as would the glowing eyes. He had to lock the door when he needed a shave. Last time he had tried to do so one of the serving minions seen him and thought that he was trying to commit suicide. The resultant scuffle had nearly cost the Overlord an ear. The Brown, and whenever something stupid happened there was always a Brown involved somewhere, had been severely punished for his stupidity. He had been transferred to the Nordberg garrison for four months.

After five minutes of careful scraping the Overlord looked at himself in the mirror. Then promptly put his helmet back on. Even as a child he had felt the need to cover himself in metal. There was something reassuring about it, quite apart from the lovely chilly feeling against the skin.

Technically they were now at war with the Rhobeorians but no one would move an army until the weather had improved a bit, this gave them some much needed breathing room. Currently there was four foot of snow on the ground. The only creatures that seemed unharmed by it were the Reds. This was the sort of weather the Reds thrived in. Not because of the cold its self, but because they could be used as portable radiators. The other minions all gathered around them in an attempt to fend off the cold. At least in the garrisons.

Down in the Fortress of Doom it was always nice and toasty and the eternal ethnic tension between the tribes could continue all year round.

As far as the Overlord understood it every tribe had a long-standing chronic vendetta against every other tribe for the historic equivalent of 'What your Darren said about our Sara at old Hilda's funeral.' (This sort of mindset accounts for a lot of human history as well.) As Overlord all that was required of him was to cheer all sides on indiscriminately and keep score. Currently the Greens were winning.

The latest thing to stir up trouble was the Lord of the Greens suggesting that the Browns try and learn how to use a longbow. This had gone down like a sack of lead bricks for two reasons. Firstly the Reds had a monopoly on all ranged attacks and no one practically likes having their authority usurped. Secondly the Browns have always considered projectile weapons of any sort to be dishonourable, and the Browns operated on a very strict honour code, the main reason for their dislike of the Reds.

The Greens did take to using ranged weapons. This had led to a more adversarial relationship with the Browns and an intense rivalry with the Reds.

Without the unifying influence of an Overlord the tribes would have exterminated each other centuries ago.

After breakfasting with his three mistresses the overlord decided to go and inspect the Heart Guard.

The Heart Guard was the ultimate insurance against another Cataclysm ever happening again. They were fifty of the meanest, most belligerent, unflinchingly loyal Browns ever spawned. Each and every one of them a veteran of the recent conquest. There were eight of them standing with their backs to the Heart and another eight or so hidden in purpose built alcoves in the walls, all in a pattern so that they could all see who ever was in the room but you could not see more than two of them at any given time. They were each and all armed with the very best the Dark Empire could provide in terms of war gear, made to measure suits of plate and chain made by the elves of Evernight from Nordbergian steel. There was none finer. Any intruder who walked into that room would only leave it as mince. The other two shifts of them were just as dangerous.

The Heart its self was the only source of illumination in the room. Its eerie blue glow giving mundane shadows the appearance of wraiths.

It had taken them nearly a week to find the Tower Heart after they had catapulted through the gates of the Empires capital city. The place had been in uproar. More than half the population had fled to the hills, there was fire and looting and rioting in the streets. It did Gnarls heart a world of good to see it. It just proved what he had always said 'Inside even the worst saint is a spark of evil and anarchy just waiting to be let out'. In the end they found it in someone's potato cellar, it having smashed through their window and rolled stairs. The potatoes had grown to the size of pumpkins and had been baked in the ruins of the burning city.

It being snowing out on the surface the overlord decided to wander back in the direction of his private quarters.

He flopped back onto his thinking bench and watched the lavafall gloop its viscous fall to unfathomable depths. His First Mistress sat down next to him. He did not take his eyes off the incandescent molten rock in front of him.

'My dear mistress, what am I going to do?'