If you were a dark lord....

Oh to your edit first. No I love it! Challenge my ideas! It is how they evolve. I just hope you don't mind me returning the challenges.

First, I challenge your assumption, which is that for him to not care he stopped caring. You are looking at it like he desired an empire, made one, then grew bored. I think this is incorrect. I don't think he ever cared about the empire. I think he was less building an empire and more building a firewood station. What for? I dunno. I think that would be his reaction too. Not in a bad way. More like, he is a big thinker, a big dreamer. And as such, I think he is completely convinced that he will use it, more to the point I think he is convinced that building it, and seeing that much free to use resource might inspire him on what he wants to do with it.

And yeah, different guys for different jobs. lol. I didn't say there were a perfect everything, I said a perfect attack unit as they have different strengths and cross cover each others weaknesses.

Well, funny thing, Gods don't even know he exists. He is just... practical? People that can destroy him exist, he wishes to fix this situation. lol.

Okay, I love your practical thinking, but it does seem a bit limited. I don't mean that as an insult. Your practical reason for not accepting 1 teleporting beating 1,000 may be holding you back since my argument is she wins by practical means. lol. Internal consistency and practical thinking is a specialty of mine. I will admit, my own view is limited it its own way. I suck at ecomics, so thinking of the ecomics of an empire? Yeah, I would probably fail, but lets just take a look at the concept of 1000 teleports vs the scout. What kind of project are we looking at? Transportation? Well, duh a thousand are gonna be faster(maybe) it depends on the context of distance. The Scout can go really far, so if it is really far, she maybe able to pop back and forth a lot of times before they managed one trip. How about a fight? I first wish to reference I said I have characters that can survive a point blank nuke. lol. But, My scout is not that great. So, yeah, sure, a thousand teleports could in theory beat her in a fight by the sheer fact that stamina is a thing. lol. But! As you said, there are devil's advocate ways out of that. Like for example, she could run away, as mentioned she can teleport farther, so she could lose them. And add the the fact she could kill a few, run, rest, rinse repeat. Not the most fair situation, but hell, 1,000 on 1. I think that is fair. lol.

And, yes she can teach them, and that would help them, but no, never be as good as her. Though, in the Scout'c case in particular maybe she might not be able to teach them, after all, I did say she has a mental handicap.

Did I answer everything? I am enjoying this discussion.

 

Yeah I think that pretty much covers everything. If he had no reason to build the empire other than "I'd like to have access to anything I may ever need" then sure, that's a reason. I don't think it's a good one but you can work around this. It also brings up the question of why should there be an empire in the first place, but I'm sure you have reasons for that.

With the Gods unaware that they are threatened (some Gods huh) then you might run into some difficulty showing resistance to your main crew and making the story interesting in general. Personally I failed to flesh out my antagonist(s) previously and the plot was just bad because of it. So you may want to consider that, especially since you imply that the Gods are currently the only remaining threat to your dark lord. This may not be the case but if they are a priority then I assume that this implication is true.

I probably choose my words poorly when I said "beat them". What I meant is essentially "outperform them" at the relevant tasks. It may be true for an infiltration type mission but it doesn't fly for me that they'd be better at everything in the long term for a much wider range of missions and magnitudes. But my personal view shouldn't be an objection to you, so I'll concede that point as long as you thought about it . I did consider that the Scout in particular won't be able to teach very well but Tinker should be very good at it and so should Doctor and Tactician.

But yeah. That should do it, and how I'd treat my minions is indicated in my previous post. Maybe I should add that I'd be immensely possessive about them and eliminate anyone whom I feel threatens my heroes' loyalty towards me, much like you indicated for the Tactician. I'd probably go as far as making them addicted to a substance only I can provide for them, making them physically dependent on me. Or something. I'm evil after all ^^

 

Well, my plots are.... complex. I love internal consistency to the point, I have an explanation on how the world was created, the big bang, magic, all this stuff. lol And all my plots are interconnected. Surfice it to say the issue you mentioned is a problem I have had but I hadn't worte this book yet, so haven't hit the problem in this book yet. I think I got it sorted, if you want me to discuss plot. I don't mind, but I would prfer to move that privately.

And well. Outpreform. Well, again, devil is in the details. In the Scout's case she is very clumsy, she tries to anticipate needs and is wrong a lot. Like, A VERY LOT. So, doesn't outclass anyone in everything. And obviously her overall usefulness is called into question by this. Heck when she is stressed she regresses to being completely non-verbal. This again seriously strikes her overal usefulness, but she is also the only teleporter able to planet hop in seconds. In my world teleports have to mentally find where they are going. Her savantness lets her do this much faster, in seconds, over the hours the others would take. Heck the second fastest one would probably take 30 min. She can do it in 15 seconds. lol. So one of the questions I think I opened with is, would ya deal with her quirks for her skills?

Actually the tinkerer kind of sucks at teaching too. The rest are fine teachers. The tinkerer is said to be sort of pure instinct, as in she has no clue why her method works. If she tried to explain it or overthought it, she starts fucking up.

Also, the evilness of the guy can be debated. I DO consider him evil but this is not true of all my friends. In a sense, it is only his lack of valuing life. In a sense, a planet is nothing more than farm stock, it is hard for me to call that evil when we as a species well, farm! lol. I mean, he is very polite, very calm. Never would he kill his own guy. He would equate killing an ally over bad news like breaking a phone because you don't like the text message. He considers it a sign of an impatient idiot. Killing would never be done without purpose. Granted that purpose could be debated. Like, I wrote scenes of him being introduced to his elites. And in the case of the seer, cops surrounded them. He killed them all for the peace and quite while he was getting aquated to the seer. He even pardoned himself saying. "I hope you didn't care for any of them."

Last example of his manners. He found an ally to an enemy, he knocked on the door. He asked to be allowed in. The person laughed at the question since he figured it doesn't matter. I mean, would you care if the man you plan to kill says no, you can't come in. Yet, he is insulted by the idea of being called a liar and says he will obey the answer. So, the man of course says no. So the dark lord asks him to come outside. The man of course refuses. The dark lord finishes it with. "I will keep my word, do you want to see how creative I have to get in order to keep my word?" lol. He is an arrogant asshole that would murder the entire town and burry the man's home in corpses just to force him to leave. Just to keep his word. Wow that does kind of sound evil doesn't it?