A successful Evil Overlord will be very mindful of the difference between strategy and tactics. Honestly, the number of times I’ve seen people confuse the two is as astounding as it is irksome.

For those of you too embarrassed, or too afraid, to admit that you don’t know the difference, let me enlighten you:

Your strategy is the overall plan you have devised to achieve your ends, while tactics are the actual means you use to win the particular objectives encompassed in your strategy.

For those of you still scratching your pointy little heads, here’s a simple example: My strategy might call for me to, say, take the walled city of Gribble, for whatever reason (honestly, I just pulled that out of my ass. I would never try to conquer Gribble, because then I would have to rule it, and if you’d ever been there, you’d know just what a shitshow that place is. No, thank you).

The tactics I might employ to do the conquering of Gribble are many and varied. Perhaps I might encircle and besiege it, starving them into submission. Or I might try to mine under the walls. Or I might fling plague-ridden corpses over the walls. Or I might attempt to bribe someone in a key position to leave a sally gate open one night. (Heh. ‘key’ position.)

My point here is they are not interchangeable, the concepts of strategy and tactics, and if you do get them confused even after I’ve so patiently explained them, then you’re a) an idiot and b) probably going to die soon, which will be for the best, really.

~ ~ ~

When I was a child back in Thrudd, there was a man by the name of Vranson. He didn’t live in the village; in fact you might say he didn’t really live anywhere, at least as far as I knew, and he liked it that way by all accounts. He spent most of his time hunting and trapping game in the Quang Hills, coming into the village only when he had skins to sell and staples to purchase.

I only ever heard Vranson speak once, when Father Breen unwisely tried to coerce him to attend a service. Vranson said, and I quote, “Take your Light and shove it up your arse, god-licker. I’d rather die of sepsis than hear you spout shit for an hour.” Vranson had a way with words, if not with people.

When I walked into Mudhelm, I began to understand Vranson’s distaste for civilization. The villagers back in Thrudd had always stared at him when he appeared, and whispered behind his back. In front of his face, too. I quickly received the same treatment.

Mudhelm turned out to be bigger than I expected, though it was still just a pimple on the ass of the Capital. Former Capital. Whatever. It was situated in a broad, flat valley, and I’d got a pretty good look at the layout as I approached. From what I could see from the saddle between hills where the road descended to the town, most of the buildings were wooden shacks, though there were a fair number of wattle and daub huts. Smoke from cookfires drifted up into the air, blanketing the town in a brown smog. The streets were mud, and not particularly straight.

I could also see what looked very much like a fortress at the far end of the valley, as well as a few larger stone structures here and there in the town itself. And interspersed throughout the valley I saw massive gray stone columns – a few still stood, soaring a hundred feet or more into the sky, but most were cracked and shattered, leaving only stubs sticking up, like some giant’s broken teeth. They were so out of place compared to the rest of the town that I decided they must have been from some previous, more prosperous age. I also decided I didn’t give a shit about them, because they had nothing to do with Catapult, or booze, or food.

What Mudhelm did not have was a wall, or anything in the way of guards that I could see. It seemed to me that any town situated in the Debatable Lands really ought to have both. I shrugged and continued down the hill and into what passed for civilization around those parts.

Hrazz’k turned out to be right about Mudhelm, in that I saw a lot of different races and race mixes in the town. Humans counted for maybe a quarter of all the people I saw. There were a ton of half-orcs, a smattering of full-flavor orcs, one or two elvish pricks, and a lot of folks that I didn’t exactly know what the fuck they were. People with horns, people with blue skin or red, people with ears that belonged on other species of mammal as far as I knew. I saw a group of lizardmen shouting at each other – well, hissing really loudly at each other – and a lone frogman who stood on a corner with a spade in his hand, for some reason. He stared at me unblinking as I passed. Or maybe it was a frogwoman; I was no expert, nor did I care overmuch.

Say one thing for Mudhelm, it was a diverse shithole.

Whatever species they were, most of the folks I passed gave me the side-eye, and most of them held their noses or covered the lower half of their faces with hand or cloth. I tried not to be offended and succeeded, because the secret to happiness is not giving a shit what anybody else thinks. Another thing to jot down.

Anyway, after my time in the hellscape of the Debatable Lands, seeing things like houses and people wearing clothes they hadn’t skinned themselves actually had a very salutary effect on my state of mind. I felt the feral thing I had become retreat further, and the Gar who could walk down a street without scanning the ground for trip lines and predator spoor came more strongly to the fore.

I didn’t feel like the old Gar, though. Something had changed, and not just my increased tolerance for filth or my capacity to unthinkingly deal out violence. For the first time in my life, it seemed, I started to actually think, about all sorts of things, really. Things that had nothing to do with me personally, my wants or desires. I mean, I still thought about booze, boobs and Catapult burnt to a crisp as I strolled through Mudhelm, but I didn’t think of them exclusively, as I might have had I somehow been magically and safely transported to Mudhelm immediately after the rock worm attack.

Looking back, I understand now that most of my thoughts had been taken up with day-to-day survival for so long that the old Gar of gambling and flesh mongering had got suffocated, so to speak. He'd offered nothing positive or helpful to the situation I’d found myself in, and had suffered the usual fate of the useless and defenseless in times of disaster. Gar the shitty monk was a fun guy, but you didn’t need someone who had a deep appreciation for wine, gambling and women when your house was burning down; you needed somebody who could run to the well for bucket after bucket.

I wasn’t sure who I was, now. I just knew I wasn’t the old Gar anymore. I also knew that, as much as the goblin hunter I’d become had been who I needed to become out there, I couldn’t let that be who I was anymore. I didn’t want to be that thing.

That much I had concluded as I walked pretty much aimlessly through Mudhelm, soaking in the sights and filing away a thousand details as I pondered who I had been and who I might become.

Then I saw a goblin.

The little fucker was dressed up in a velvet doublet and silk hose, with a bag hat on his head and a gold chain around his neck.

I started to growl. Without me noticing it, my ax had made its way to my hand. (I didn’t summon the flame. I’d learned it was best not to start with fire when you surprised goblins, because the light gave them early warning, and they scarpered. Plus I’d got very chary with the power, even miserly, to ensure that I could call it to hand when I really needed it. I’d barely survived several situations where I spent my power too rapidly.)

The goblin took a few more steps my way, saw me, and sneered. Then he saw my necklace and his face got pale. Then his eyes went to the ax and he screamed and started running the other way.

“Gonna get me that chain,” I muttered to myself as I quickened my pace. “Maybe the hat, too.”

“So you’re him.” The voice was deep. It belonged to… something. Bigger than an orc, with skin that looked positively dead. He was standing almost in my way. I looked up and saw a face not even a mother could love, topped with a mop of black hair. Really, the guy looked like he’d been drowned and pulled out of the sea after a week. Also he smelled worse than I did, which was remarkable.

I didn’t have time to chat, though, if I was going to catch the goblin. I went to walk past him and he stuck out an arm. A very big, unnaturally long arm.

“I asked you a question,” he said.

“No, you made a statement.” I pushed past him. He didn’t physically try to stop me again, but he wasn’t done talking.

“This isn’t the wilds, goblin hunter. If you try to practice your trade in Mudhelm, you’ll be dealt with.”

I stopped, and turned around to face him.

“That sounded like a threat.”

“It was an accurate assessment of what you’ll face if you try to kill any goblins while you’re here.”

“And who is it that’s going to deal with me, exactly? You?”

“The council will put a bounty on your head. It’ll be large enough to see you gutted. Go back out to the wilds if you want to kill people.”

People. People? He’d called goblins people, which was so far from my experience that I just sort of sat with it for a while. Well, stood with it. You know what I mean.

“So you’re saying I can’t kill goblins here,” I said. “Just to verify.”

“Obviously. Unless they attack you first, which they won’t.”

“But, but, why? Goblins are nasty, murderous, vile little shits. Also cannibals. You know they’re cannibals, right? They eat their elderly.” I would never forget the time I saw a grandma goblin roasting on a spit. I’d give good money to, actually.

“Some of them, certainly. So are some humans for that matter.”

“And that asshole with the gold chain? He’s not a nasty, murderous, vile little shit?”

For the first time his dead, emotionless face cracked, just a little. I don’t know what the emotion was, exactly, that flitted across it, but it was there, and then it was gone.

“Well, he’s not murderous, anyway. He’s one of the councilors.”

“Alright, but is he a cannibal? You left that part out, I noticed.”

“No, he isn’t a cannibal,” he said, rolling his all-black eyes. I mean, I couldn’t actually tell, but I knew. “I don’t know what you’ve heard about Mudhelm, but it’s not the wilds. Folks coexist here, and it isn’t easy considering just how different we all are. The last thing this place needs is someone like you coming in and chopping up shopkeepers and tinsmiths just because you don’t like the looks of ‘em.”

The savage in me was telling me my prey was getting away. I listened to what he had to say, and then made the choice to ignore it. It wasn't as hard as I feared.

I shrugged my shoulders and said “Alright, then.” Killing goblins was more of a reflex now than anything else, I realized.. If they didn’t bother me, then I wouldn’t bother them. Besides, it would give me more time to find Catapult.

I put away my ax.

“Listen,” the what-the-fuck said, relaxing a little as well. “Here’s some advice. This is Mudhelm, and you can do whatever you want, sadly – as long as you are ready to face the consequences of your actions. You start killing people for looking at you funny, you’re going to end up hacked to pieces in the street. We’ve all had enough of pure anarchy.” He looked past me and frowned.

“You’d better make yourself scarce. Dillit will be back, soon, with some violent characters. Get rid of that necklace, and for everyone’s sake get a bath.”

I started walking away, but then stopped.

“Who are you, anyway?”

“Terces.”

“Nice to meet you, Terces. What are you?”

“I’m a troll. There’s a bath house two streets over,” he said, pointing west-ish. “They take trolls, so they’ll probably take you. Please don’t hesitate to avail yourself. Really.”

Later I learned that trolls have a very sharp sense of smell, and while they smell like rotting corpse to non-trolls, to them everyone except trolls smell either like food or like shit. I’m guessing I didn’t smell like a tasty snack to old Terces.

I decided a bath was as good a place to start as any, when it came to transitioning back to human from wild man. I ambled in the general direction Terces had indicated past more gawkers, and once I’d got two streets over, I found the bath house in short order. I also found out that they took their money up front, and I had no coin.

What I did have were a handful of gems I’d looted from one goblin nest, and a gold nugget nearly the size of my fist that I’d taken from the chieftain of another. I asked the red-faced old man who ran the bath where I could turn my valuables into spending money, and he sent me back to the street I’d met Terces on, and down three blocks back the way I’d come.

Long story short, four hours later I had a pocket full of coin, I was clean, and I had clothes on that I hadn’t skinned and sewed myself. (I actually had to cut my trousers off and then peel the deerskin away and now I will never speak of that again – and neither should you if you know what’s good for you.)

Then I found a barber, and he cut the hair on my head down to stubble and shaved off the semi-sentient thing that was my beard. When he presented me the small, silver-backed mirror to view his handiwork, I almost didn’t recognize the face staring back at me.

The fellow in the mirror was young, but he had obviously seen some shit.

It was getting on in the day when I exited the barber’s, having paid a little extra for all the critters I’d unleashed in his establishment when they’d fled from my hair and beard. He’d directed me to an inn called the Dripping Bucket, where ‘people didn’t get murdered in their bed much.’ I followed his directions and found the place easily enough. On the way, I enjoyed walking the streets without getting gawped at. Being clean, shaven, and wearing clothes that didn’t reek really helped. I’d also put my necklace away in my pack, which didn’t hurt.

The place was as ramshackle as most other buildings in Mudhelm, but it did boast a second story. It didn’t have a wooden sign, like some of the other shops I’d seen. Instead the proprietor had just hung a wooden bucket by the door on a chain; a bucket with a hole in the bottom.

I entered what was to become something of a home, for a time at least.