Book 2 - Text Updates 044
Lord Stanley the Tool glanced at the half of his monstrous sandwich which remained on the plate.
It was a lot like the half a city he'd returned to, a hundred-ish turns ago. Admittedly, that was half a city more than he had expected would be standing there after the Coalition had marched upon his capital, but it still looked all lopsided and unappealing. He still hadn't gotten used to it.
He hadn't gotten used to very much at all since then, really.
What was wrong? He didn't know. He was still Overlord, right? He had more cities than ever! Yeah, this wasn't a real good day with losing Ansom and everything, but Hamster was gonna fix all that. He wasn't sure how, but that was Hamster's problem.
Wasn't it? Sure it was. Sure it was. Hamster could handle anything. He should just sit tight and stay out of this one.
He picked a slice of pepperoni from the monumental stack of meats and cheeses, and chewed on it absently. The twoll with the "Z" name had already cleaned off the island block, and was puttering around the larder. That was probably just to look busy, for Stanley's benefit. Stanley thought that was just how it should be.
But just what in the divine crack of the Titans' holy rear ends was Hamster doing?
Rulers have a natural Thinkamancy which allows them to relay orders to their field units, even without a Thinkamancer. He had a feel for what was going on with his forces, even sitting there in a chair in his capital's garrison's larder. But he didn't know what to make of it.
The morning's developments had included the recall of the Dirtamancer from the Magic Kingdom, then Hamster promoting himself to field unit. That raised Lord Hamster's upkeep by a hundred-forty a turn, but that was cheap compared to the eighteen grand he then spent to promote a bunch of Hobgobwins to heavy. Then right after that, he harvested a whole bunch of Stanley's dwagons!
That really ticked him off. It wasn't like he had been able to go out and tame any more in the last dozen turns. All those Archons that were scouting the area were part of Ansom's big plan to take Jetstone, so Stanley had been stuck in the city. He got out of his chair and was going to go yell at Hamster about that, but then they all got un-fooded all of a sudden and they were back to being dwagons.
Only...Decrypted dwagons.
That filled him with all kinds of weird feelings. Decrypted dwagons. So would they respond to the 'pliers or the 'hammer? Would they love him or Wanda? He used the Arkenhammer to levitate back into his chair, then kept holding onto it. He didn't like the idea of dwagons that felt the same way about Wanda as they did about him. No way.
Wanda... He sighed. What was her deal? It was like he couldn't talk to her any more. But what could they talk about? She was out conquering the world for him all the time. It wasn't like he could find fault with that. At least, not until this mess today.
Which Hamster would fix. Expensively, but Hamster was good.
Yeah.
Stanley would never tell him so, but he knew Hamster was good. You never tell your people that. Then they start slacking and you yell at them and they go, "Hey! Back off, man! You said I was good!" And then what can you tell them? Just "shut up" or something.
He wished Hamster had taken him up on those mentoring sessions they talked about. Stanley had been a warlord. He had all kinds of good advice. But Hamster would just stare at him whenever he would share a pearl of his worldly wisdom. Made it not worth it.
Yeah, Hamster would be all smart and "perfect warlord-y" and everything out there today. And Wanda would be all, "I'm spooky and powerful and hot and OBEY ME!"
And he would sit here with a stupid twoll and eat a sandwich. Yeah that's glorious. The Titans' favorite son, wielding their mighty hammer. He waved it around absently, accidentally sending a little shock bolt into a nearby sack of beets. Zork or whatever his name was grunted in surprise.
He really should teach himself to use the thing better. Wanda said she thought it was a whole mess of different magicks, what'd she say...Shockmancy, obviously. Rhyme-o-mancy because it rocked out. Carnymancy because it made big flashes and sometimes could make things disappear (he never could do it on purpose, though). And what else? Changemancy? He looked at the hammer closely. There might be a lot more he could do with it besides taming dwagons, which was...Date-a-mancy, he guessed?
He liked taming dwagons, but maybe it was time to figure out what else it could do. Because when those stupid dwagons came back, he wasn't sure they would even recognize it.
It was getting lonely in the big chair again.