Cheap and Nasty: Weaponising Your Enemies

Cheap and Nasty 3

“Low-cost, effective tricks to keep your lair hero-free!”

Despot reveals shocking secrets to erasing adventurers! Henchmen hate her!

Have you a lair that is plagued with bothersome heroes? Can't take a nap without a howling barbarian trying to bisect your torso? Treasury depleted by the depredations of ravening rogues, money-grubbing mages, and tediously commercial Lawful Evil clerics capable of casting Resurrection for you? This irregular column aims to help you find affordable solutions to your PC Problems.

Weaponizing the Adventurers

As every disreputable villain knows, money buys quality. If you want to make fortresses more impregnable, traps more undetectable, spells more devastating or minions less inclined to betray you at the mere suggestion of a bribe or threat, you're going to have to splash out. Stronger materials, more devious lackeys and more potent magics always have their cost. And that's absolutely antithetical to our mission here - to give You, our valued reader, more snap for your silver.

As always, you can save considerably by providing your own rather than buying in. Ensorcel your own fiendish devices at a fraction of the purchase price* or breed unspeakable plant-men that subsist entirely on hate.** But even these have their costs, not least in lost opportunities. Why swelter for hours over a hot cursing-loom when you could be despoiling?

*For an overview of Do-It-Yourself lairkeeping, see our guide Vanity Lair: the Dread Fortress on a shoestring - available now in all Evil bookshops, RRP 150gp. Younger readers may enjoy Shiny Red Buttons: and other obvious traps adventurers can't resist!.

**Worth noting, though, that in slack seasons hate has been known to retail for as much as 5pp per gallon. To avoid buying in, be sure to establish a sustainable local source of hate, such as an all-night foghorn shop, Friends of Bindweed Society, tabloid newspaper or letting agent.

There is a cheap, sustainable source of scaling resources, however, and that is, somewhat counter-intuitively, your nemeses.

What the Adventurers Bring

On a global level, we villains are the movers and shakers. We unleash machinations, plots and legions of blighted echinoids wielding halberds of thrice-forged sorrow; others try to foil them. We are the inevitability of change, and others - the adventurers in particular - are the status quo.

In a lair environment, however, that situation is reversed. You dwell comfortably in your citadel, tomb or volcano, supported by a team of loyal minions; adventurers enter the lair and interfere. Thus, what they primarily bring is change.

On a more practical level, adventurers are also equipped with all manner of ropes, poles, caltrops, enchanted swords, boots, rations and so forth, not to mention thousands of gold pieces. All of these can be recycled for your own purposes. Indeed, one of the most successful business models for the modern lair is built around that principle.

Size Matters

For the cruel kobold queen or the gnomish gnecromancer, a party of adventurers is likely to tower above your minions, holding them off with superior reach and raining down powerful blows. While that height is usually an advantage, with careful planning you can turn it into a serious hindrance.

Tiny Tunnels

The most straightforward approach is architectural: simply construct your lair to fit your henchmen. Few elves enjoy crawling through extensive tunnels on hands and knees, and it's hard to make use of a 6' longbow in passages 4' across. This method has the advantage of being cheap, since it usually involves less work than constructing on a larger scale, and uses less materials.

On the downside, it's hard to establish a serious reputation without echoing halls to expound your dreadful plans, and low-hanging ceilings give far less scope for giant spiders to descend on the unwary heroes. In addition, this tactic can be too effective, giving adventurers strong motivation to mitigate their disadvantage by means of shrinking magic. If they'll always be severely penalized by their size, the downsides of being shrunk may still be outweighed by removing this environmental disadvantage.

Watch your Head

A more subtle approach is to exploit adventurer height at crucial moments, in order to catch them off-guard.

Construct a long, narrow bridge with no handrails across a chasm.* At the inner end, establish a guard post equipped with bows or slings to defend the bridge (as well as defensible walls, seats, and hydration stations). When adventurers reach the bridge, they will typically hurry forward to engage your guards. This is an excellent opportunity to place beams, wires or spider-webs 5ft. above the ground, where they can clonk hasty humans across the forehead at inopportune moments. The costs are negligible, especially where beams and wires are structural elements.

Villains with a flair for deception and engineering should consider building the bridge to seem as rickety as possible, adding patches of fake 'slime' to make it seem treacherous underfoot. This encourages adventurers to watch their feet as they cross, instead of looking up. A simple minor image or even prestidigitation can do this in a pinch. On plank bridges, attach prominent bells to some of the planks; unlike tripwires, these don't pose any hazard to your minions, but sneaking adventurers will tend to watch out for them and miss the cheesewire at ear-height.

For a premium experience, install invisible bars or force-beams, so the adventurers can't even see what's about to clothesline them.

*While bottomless pits, spikes and flames are traditional, a sufficiently high-walled swimming pool or ball pit will contain heroes just as effectively, while keeping minion attrition low.** Moreover, these can double as recreation facilities for your minions - and yourself!***.

**Modern malevological approaches reject the archaic thinking that pays no heed to minion welfare. Aside from purely pragmatic considerations of training and recruitment costs, knowledge attrition within your evil organization is a real threat to long-term survivability. A safe workplace builds minions' confidence in your leadership, improving retention of experienced minions and team spirit. Indeed, the advantages of 'soft' benefits (such as flexible working hours, on-the-clock fitness opportunities, and not falling into death-traps due to a momentary oversight) are particularly valuable to the low-budget villain unable to compete in purely monetary terms.

***While we fully support non-hierarchical teambuilding opportunities, please remain aware of workplace dynamics and avoid placing yourself in any situation that could be seen as harassing your minions, outside of contractually-agreed intimidation. Tracing another's bare, muscular abs with your spiked gauntlets while purring "I like a man with spirit" is best reserved for captured heroes.

A useful variant of this technique is the staircase. Construct spiral stairs and have your minions guard the top, rolling boulders or necromatically-empowered skulls down to assail the incoming adventurers. Hang tasteful curtains of beads, feathers, bells, seaweed, teeth or sea urchins* high enough that they will strike tall adventurers in the face, encouraging them to close their eyes. As an additional benefit, the poor housekeeping typical of evil lairs will encourage dust to settle in these devices, making them even more effective at blinding your adversaries. In many environments, unpleasant dangly things will grow without any particular effort or cost on your part.

*Spider-webs can serve the same purpose, and many minions enjoy cultivating spiders as a relaxing hobby or competitive sport. You can increase loyalty by offering the underside of your staircases as fertile ground for spider-raising, while inconveniencing invading do-gooders. Consider monthly prizes for the densest or most adhesive webs, or breeding new species that produce poison-infused silks. In damper lairs, try fungi or sea urchins for a similar effect. Not only will this be cost-effective, but your minions have personal motivation to maintain the defences, as well as professional motivation..

For staircases you expect adventurers to descend, stronger methods are available. The combination of height, stance and speed when descending a staircase means heads are closer to the ceiling than when ascending. Here, hang weights, or place invisible blocks halfway down where they can stun an unwary trespasser and cause them to fall down the stairs.

Exit Strategies

Another way to exploit size is that your diminutive troops can get out of tight places far more quickly than bulky adventurers. A tunnel that your skulking minions can run through is a crawl for an elf - a crucial distinction when that tunnel is rapidly filling with water, smoke, or bees.

Consider also the Emergency Exit. When slavering wargoats are charging full-tilt after the adventurers, they will tend to hurl themselves at the convenient human-sized door marked Exit PUSH. Ensure the top and outer part is affixed to a solid stone wall, while the lower section includes a handy flap for kobolds to slip through unhindered. The additional cost of an oversized door is minimal.

Frenemies

No doubt all of you are exhaustively familiar with the array of spells (and minions!) able to mentally dominate an invader, allowing you to turn them against one another. There are, however, some useful nuances.

Rather than controlling your enemies, use magic to warp their perceptions. While they are separated or mid-combat, make them appear as skeletal husks or screaming echidna-women. Plant illusory giant leeches upon their backs, so they will strike at one another in an effort to save them. When a scout is returning to the group, transform her appearance into that of a daemon and allow it to disperse just as they catch sight of her, sowing deep suspicion within their ranks.

Confusion can work just as well. Billowing smoke and darkness can make it hard for them to distinguish friend from foe - so send in a few hit-and-run troops, then leave the adventurers to swipe at one another in a panic. The classic Hall of Mirrors can be an excellent location for such tricks.

But why stop there? As heroes often proudly proclaim, their love and friendship are core to their success. Therefore, undermine it at every opportunity. Harsh words from a friend hurt more than the curses of an adversary, or so they tell me. Discern your foes' emotional weaknesses and points of tension. If one is sensitive about his cooking, have a sprite or enchanted glove sprinkle foul-tasting powders in the cauldron or stoke up the fire to burn it, provoking the others to complain. Inscribe complex riddles around your lair for absolutely no reason, luring intellectuals into poring over them while the muscle-bound warriors grind their teeth in frustration. Have your soldiers repeatedly challenge the boastful hero to single combat, forcing her to choose between feeling like a coward and aggravating her friends with constant foolhardiness. Equip doors with very complicated locks, and let the thief grow infuriated as impatient colleagues insist on smashing them.

Even dim-witted minions can be trained to recite phrases like "Aim for the handsome one!" and "Which of you is the leader?" to sow dissatisfaction. Devise complex moral dilemmas to fray their cohesion as they disagree on how to proceed;* one of them almost invariably has a soft heart and a love of small furry creatures, while another typically favours a utilitarian approach. Recruit pleasant retirees to watch the gates, obliging the heroes to lie to someone who reminds them of their own grandparents, since someone is almost certain to object.

* This can be achieved affordably by the power of imagination and outright lies. Few heroes will bother to check whether the crate labelled "Caution: Live Babies" is actually occupied before deciding whether to snatch it from a fire.

Power of the Mind

When all else fails, remember that your average hero is over-equipped with either courage or cunning - even both, in some cases - but common sense is a rarity. Take advantage of this by exploiting these strengths as weaknesses. Inscribe a stone wall with the words "Door of Stout Heart: Only the Brave May Pass" and watch them hurl themselves repeatedly at it until they fall unconscious. Label two corridors "Passageway" and "Trapped Passageway" and buy yourself several hours as they overthink it. Paint the flagstones of a passageway different colours at random, then write a limerick of your choice on the wall and allow them to try and solve the 'puzzle'. A charred skeleton halfway along helps to sell the concept.

If you don't have the staff to fill all your rooms, improvise. Spare grand hall? Add a large bowl of water, a few bones, and spray assorted animal musk around, then put up a sign saying "Warning: DO NOT ENTER while manticore is out of phase." Long, unguarded hallway? Buy some very convincing statues and equip them with real weapons, artfully daubed with dried blood. Obtain a few low-cost corpses from a local graveyard, apply preservatives, and place them in seats or on plinths around a central feature, so anyone approaching will have the sinister feeling they may animate at any moment.

Making the adventurers feel clever is always useful. Paint an unconvincing door on the wall and dig a pit in front of it, haphazardly covered with a sagging rug. Paint the real door the same colour as the wall as though trying to disguise it. Nine out of ten do-gooders will smugly pry open the 'secret' door and follow the passage beyond, confident it leads to some important location rather than a maze of twisty passages, all alike, or the cesspit. Scrape a conspicuous arc on the floor in front of a perfectly ordinary stone wall, then watch through spyholes as they spend hours in fruitless attempts to 'open' it and get very irritated with each other. This provides an excellent opportunity for you to slip out the back door.

Worried about your treasures? Cast a minor illusion on your most valuable items, to make them look even more magical and rather gaudy. Cast another minor illusion on some fools'-gold statuettes and gilded rings, to make them look like worthless pewter. Adventurers will undoubtedly check them for magic, see through the illusions, and reason that the items disguised as dross must be the really valuable ones while the others are unconvincing fakes.

Take care to avoid over-using these tricks, or the adventurerse will become too wary. Mix it up by throwing in some extremely obvious traps and simple riddles they can easily solve.