I wasn't joking when I said that Trog-Gob wouldn't die without my permission.
Grogar apparently knew a ton of spells that would prevent souls from departing from the physical plane, and some of them bound the soul directly to the body, to the point that even if someone were ground to meal, and then burned to ashes, and then burned again to a finer grade of ash, the poor sap would still be stuck in their physical body.
Of course, I didn't have to actually cast that spell myself. Fun fact about the Eidolon of the Grave: Once it finds the individual or individuals responsible for the deaths of those that make up its body, it won't let its victim die and/or pass on until its wrath has been fully visited upon their target. And when it strikes, it doesn't just hit the body...
...It strikes the soul itself. And you have not felt pain until you've had your soul whipped.
So, in spite of the fact that, by the third lash, most of Trog-Gob's body had been reduced to paste, he was still alive, awake, and screaming... a sound which was almost drowned out by the excited shouts and applause of the ponies watching. They say that the same crowd that cheers at a man's coronation will cheer at his execution, but I'd like to think that if the man in question was a complete asshole, the crowd would cheer a lot louder.
Meanwhile, what was I doing? The best thing I could do at the time: Stay Busy.
Yes, I was aware now that I really was in some kind of fantasy world, and in a body not my own, and if I stopped and thought about it for more than a second, I'd probably freak out, and probably not stop freaking out for several hours. However, that was not going to get me anywhere, and I was hardly someplace that would allow me the time to have a safe and proper freakout like I would have wanted. So, to keep myself from thinking about my current situation, I had to think about something, anything else.
Thus, I was reading over an interesting little black book that one of Trog-Gob's servants had given me. The servant in question had seen this book, and where it was hidden, which was why she had been one of the poor souls chosen to become a part of today's festival, in spite of her being illiterate. It turned out that my timing had been supremely fortuitous for her: A 'necro-pony' (No, I hadn't given the Eidolon of the Grave the idea, it turns out that necromorph type ponies are actually a standard type of undead here. Who knew?) had spawned just as she was getting trussed up for her turn in a 'fun' game of 'Guess Where The Red Hot Poker Will Go Next', basically a game of roulette combined with agonizing torture. And no, none of the places the poker will go are any fun at all for the pony. The Trogs who had been taking part got to find out how things went from the other side of the equation, though...
"I cannot possibly thank you enough for bringing this to me, Number Eighty-Seven," I said, as I went over the blackest little black book in history. "This will be absolutely indispensible in the days to come. Consider yourself on the palace staff: I could use a go-getter like yourself at the palace." I was honestly giving though to taking in every pony here: The palace definitely needed the staff, and given that the 'Festival' had been held only a day after the last of Trog-Gob's crops had been harvested, there really wasn't any reason to keep the ponies here. I could have all the feed and seed gathered up and moved to the palace within a couple of days, according to Bray, nevermind all the other loot. With Trog-Gob dead, there really wasn't anyone else to inherit the place, so I'd be free to... bestow it upon any Trog who managed to earn my favor.
The mare, a ginger-colored waif with a black mane, blushed deeply and bowed. "You honor me, master," she said as she raised her head. "I am unworthy."
"Then acquire worth with all the speed you can muster," I stated with a chuckle. "The times are changing, and if you work hard, you may be surprised where you find yourself this time next year..."
I was interrupted by the sound of hooves approaching at a gallop. A lot of them. I turned to the direction of the sound, and saw a massive cloud of dust in the horizon. I was no soldier, but it looked like an army was marching towards Trog-Gob's estate.
"Huh," Bray said, standing nearby, "maybe the Regency Council has decided to do something, after all..."
Looking over at the donkey, I asked, "The what now?"
"Ah, my apologies, master," Bray said, sheepishly, "things have been moving so quickly, I have barely had time to explain anything to you."
"Well," I said, watching the cloud of dust approach, "you can start now."
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Credit where it is due, Grogar may not have planned for his own death, but he did plan for when someone might try to overthrow him, or try to defy him. Since Tambelon literally occupies a world seperate from Equestria, one would have to wonder what might happen if, while Grogar was off conquering Equestria, a few trogs decided that they'd rather be in charge, rather than the big blue goat. Since Grogar would be off-world at the time, what was to prevent someone from just closing off all the routes back to Tambelon, and just declaring themselves rulers of Tambelon?
Grogar found an answer for that.
Firstly, the number of methods available to move between Equestria and Tambelon were legion: Grogar seeded the entire continent with 'Short-Jump' chambers, basically a version of the Long Jump that only moves between Tambelon and Equestria. It would be the work of eons, without any magic and a detailed map of the Short Jump chambers, to disable them all, given that many of them are deep underground. This also prevented Equestrian invasion via the Short Jump, since many of these chambers were literally just an eight foot cube with no entrance or exit, so unless you could teleport over very long distances like Grogar could, an invader would end up trapped in a dark room with limited air, and since the Short Jump was one way only...
Well, let's just say that there may be a few short jump chambers occupied by skeletons and leave it at that.
The other issue, the issue of someone declaring themself king in Grogar's absence, was easier to solve: Grogar placed a curse on the entire planet. It kinda gives you an idea of just how powerful Grogar was in his heyday, that I can say that sentence with a straight face. Saying that he placed a curse on the entire planet is a lot like saying that that he decided to rearrange the positions of all of the continents in such a way that they were more aesthetically pleasing: The amount of sheer power inherent in both acts boggles the mind.
What was the nature of this curse? Simple: Anyone who claims the position of king, prince, emperor, ruler, grand poobah, and a thousand other titles, would die. By being struck instantly by lightning. No less than one hundred times. And if the individual doing so was male, they'd be struck in the nuts each and every time.
I don't know about you, but that would make me think twice about trying to declare myself the ruler of anything.
I honestly don't know if that means that Grogar has a sense of humor, or if he just decided that it would be best to make the curse as devastating as possible to make it clear that this was one subject that he was not willing to take any shit about. Regardless, the message was made clear: Grogar rules Tambelon. To try and take control of Tambelon results in severe groinal ruin for all parties involved. By the time it had happened on three separate occasions, all of them on a bright sunny days, and a fourth one so deep underground that you could smell brimstone, the Trogs got the idea, and quit trying to declare a singular ruler of Tambelon.
But how can you have a civilization without someone in charge, or at least with some measure of authority? The Regency Council figured out a loophole which allowed them to set themselves as, if not rulers, then at least the guys who oversaw, in a general sense, the running of Tambelon as a whole.
They announced that, so long as Grogar was absent, and in the absence of a leader chosen by Grogar himself, the Regency Council would oversee the growth, development, and legislation of the realm, and would promptly hand over the reigns of power back to Grogar as soon as he appeared and demanded it. It worked: Nary a rumble of thunder was heard that day.
To their credit, the Council did a bang-up job, when they took over seven hundred years ago: They closed the breeding camps, set up a form of currency, wrote out a code of law, and began overseeing the logistics of getting Tambelon moving along. Within a century, Tambelon occupied a region that was easily twice the size of Equestria, by all descriptions, and covered the entire continent, and now there was talk of seeing about moving on to the other continents of the world. Not due to population pressures, or because of resource issues, but just because they easily could do so.
I won't go into the details of how it all works, as a lot of that is the kind of bureaucratic bullshit that would make anyone listening bash their head against the wall within sixty seconds, but it boils down to this: Tambelon is divided into four quadrants, and the Regency council has twelve members, three from each quadrant. The three that oversee their particular quadrant more or less have absolute authority there, but they have to have a majority vote amongst themselves before they make any minor legislative changes, and then, for anything major, they have to get the motion to pass through the council as a whole, through another majority vote. In the event of a tie, they invite Bray over, and he casts the deciding vote. That has happened exactly three times in seven hundred years, and none of them were particularly important or world-shaking.
Trog-Gob was confident that he could do as he pleased because he had pulled a lot of strings to arrange for three of his cronies to get the seats in his quadrant. As such, no one could touch him... or so he assumed. Of course, if the three in charge get outvoted by the remaining nine...
Bray had assumed that the Regency Council would never vote to take direct action against Trog-Gob, simply because he had a fairly large following amongst the upper classes, but either something must have happened to change their minds, or some sort of power play was going on...
------------------------------
"So," I stated, flatly, "there's a group of Trogs who are essentially in charge, but only until my return."
"Yes, master," Bray responded promptly.
"I suppose that is fair," I admitted. "Well, I wonder what they'll think of the current situation."
We were about to find out.
"COMPANY, HALT!!!"
The sound of thundering hooves stopped with startling precision. As the dust cleared, I was treated to an impressive sight: An army, no, a cavalry of hundreds of mounted Trogs stood before me. And unlike the Trogs I had seen in the crystal ball earlier, and unlike the bloated piece of shit, Trog-Gob, these actually looked respectable: Broad-shouldered and narrow-waisted, their arms rippled with muscle. They wore armor that looked plain, but functional, and perhaps more importantly, was completely uniform, implying a professional army. The only individual who was dressed differently was the commander, who had been riding a chariot, and wore a tall, crested helmet that reminded me of something like a Roman legion commander's. Perhaps more importantly, the ones that were riding, were riding ponies.
Big, muscular, heavily armored ponies.
I really should have considered the possibility that there might be slaves in service to the military. After all, human history is filled to the brim of the same thing having happened. For example, there was the caste of Mamluks in medieval Egypt, who ended up being so badass that they decided to overthrow their rulers and take power for themselves. It didn't end all that well for the Mamluks, but the point was, they eventually wised up and decided that, hey, we've got swords, why should we do what these other guys tell us?
I briefly pondered just what the ratio was between Trogs and ponies. If there were, say, five ponies for every Trog, then sooner or later, someone was going to decide that maybe the majority should get a vote in how things went around here, and then, well...
Down with Trogs, up with ponies.
For now, though, I had to admit that it made for an imposing sight: All of the ponies wore heavy armor, enough that it would make a cavalry charge a devastating prospect for anyone caught on the receiving end. Meanwhile, the soldiers riding the ponies were equally well-armored, and carried swords and shields, along with a cavalry lance. While I was certain that I was more than powerful enough to deal with an army of this size, it was still a sobering prospect, having to face that kind of a force: If this was what they deployed just to deal with a group of unlikable nobles who had no means of defending themselves and were completely unaware that an attack was coming, it implied a spectacularly large army was at the Regency Council's disposal. They had wave after wave of steel-covered meat to hide behind, if they decided to go to war against me.
A second figure stood at the side of what I assumed to be commanding officer, one I had initially overlooked. The figure was richly dressed in a silk, and very definitely feminine. And no, I wasn't talking about the fact that she had a much more pleasant-looking face, or a little shorter and significantly thinner than the rest of the Trogs present. I'll just go ahead and say it: She had... curves. Very prominent ones. I hadn't really considered the possibility that Trog females might have breasts, but this one made it abundantly clear that this was so, given the size of her endowments and the almost scandalous amount of cleavage on display.
I was more concerned with what she was whispering to the commander, though. If the next words out of his mouth included the word 'Charge', I was almost certainly in for a difficult time...
After a moment, the commander nodded, and then, in the best parade ground voice I had ever heard, he shouted, "COMPANY!!! KNEEL!!!"
As one, the riders bowed their heads, as each pony bent a knee before me. The sound of armored legs hitting the ground in a sign of obedience was almost deafening, easily loud enough to drown out the almost juvenile 'squee!' that I let out in response.
Ah, allow me to explain something to you. I suppose that it is long overdue that I told you a little about myself. You see, from an early age, I have been in love with the idea of being a supervillain. Not the 'Dictator who rules with an iron dick' type. Not the cruel and oppressive tyrant. Not the James Bond style megalomaniac. Not some psycho who was evil for the sake of being evil. No.
Growing up, my favorite villain was Doctor Doom. Bombastic, brilliant, badass Doctor Doom. Forget the movies, the kids shows, I speak only of the comic books. One of the most iconic villains that Marvel Comics ever produced. I didn't love the character because of the fact that he was powerful, smarter than almost anyone else in the Marvel universe, or the fact that, in spite of having no powers of his own, he went head to head with GODS and came out on top on a regular basis. I loved the character because, unlike most villains who ruled their own country, his kingdom was nothing like Mordor, or any sort of oppressive tyranny.
It was a paradise. Von Doom's kingdom was one where his people were healthy, happy, and prosperous. And above all else, safe. Because no one wants to fuck with the country that has a mad scientist as its ruler, as said ruler will literally invent new ways of fucking you right back. If Von Doom could have just gotten over his grudge against Reed Richards, and gotten his megalomania under control, he'd more or less be the perfect leader.
Let my enemies fear me, let my allies respect me, and let my subjects love me. What more can any leader be asked to accomplish?
Perhaps it is silly to dream of something like that, but as I've already stated, I decided at a young age that I was not going to be normal. I was going to be fucking spectacular, and I did all I could do to become so. I once, in college, submitted for an assignment the design for an orbital weapon that could launch anvils from space that, once the targeting software was available, would strike with pinpoint accuracy, while allowing the anvil to remain intact even after impact. Overkill, given the kind of destruction that projectile, given its mass and velocity, would cause on impact, but I thought it was worth it. I also included a list of alterations that could be made that would allow it to also launch, among other things, iron statues of 'Buddy Jesus', a hand flipping the bird, Uncle Sam making the 'Deez Nutz' gesture, and, for those who have no flair for style whatsoever, a basic projectile, more or less a cannonball. I got an A+, and a month later, some guys from the government came and paid me a sizable sum for the rights to the design, provided I swore never to disclose the details of how this device might be possible. Sadly, it'll be sixty, seventy years before the software makes it possible to actually allow it to strike with anything like the accuracy I envisioned, but hey, sometimes, human imagination outpaces our current level of technology, and we just have to sprint to catch up.
Sorry, I'm getting off track again, and I apologize. The point is, all I ever needed to ever make my dream a reality was a doom fortress, sufficient funding, and an army. And here I had just been given all three in one day.
Hell yes.
Fuck yes.
Hell. Fucking. YES!!!