Kingdoms of Monsters

I have spoken at length of monsters. Of how they come to be, what they are, what drives them. Here is what it is like to be ruled by them.

Flesh Eaters

Hulking, bellicose lords in towering keeps and castles, sneering at their lessers. Brutish and direct, ever warring for slaves and man-cattle. Their enforcers are parodies of true knights, or perhaps merely with pretensions of chivalry stripped away. No subtlety exists here, and attempts at it are quashed. Foolish though they are, they oft know themselves to be so, and silence the silver-tongued and learned with a cudgel lest they poison or misdirect the masses or themselves. Bow, scrape, know your place until your dismembered corpse is in the butcher's pot, or you laugh swollen and proud with the rest of them.

The defining characteristic of such realms is tyranny. The lowborn cringe and shrink, the ogrish aristocracy jeers and batters. Raw strength and direct force rule the day. There is always a war, there is always a toll, always something being taken. The sole hope is to be tormentor rather than tormented, the boot instead of the face.

The most reliable means to their end is revolt. They are terrible in battle, and easily they are united by fear against an outside force, but the resentment within the common masses can be turned against their rulers, if you can avoid their gaze long enough. Take care, though, that in the orgy of freedom and violence another clan of hulks does not rise to replace them.

Blood Drinkers

An inverse realm, where night is the day and one sleeps while the sun shines, if they are anyone of standing. They are swift and elegant, your rulers, like a clockwork engine oiled and ticking. Always moving, always scheming, taking their due without a care. A nobility that hides its fangs behind silk, for they are the least statured of their kin, most adept at blending with the masses unless their forms are truly terrible. And they leak their essence from such paltry vessels. Blood-craving corpses and malformed grotesques, pale imitations of what they are, stalk the land with far less restraint than their makers. They surround themselves with sycophants and spies. But are as much wolves as spiders in a web. In their finery they will run you down and glut themselves on your humors should they desire it.

The defining characteristic of such realms is treachery. The gifts of such monsters spill from them like wine from an overfull chalice. Some twisted form of immortality or power is in reach for their pets and servants. With poisoned whispers they set family and fellow against each other, until nothing remains save desperate self-interest, incapable of uniting against the vipers at their breast.

The most reliable means to their end is war. Their pleas and promises must be ignored. The knots of their politicking cut. Their broods driven out of their holes and slaughtered. If left alive, they shall surely slink off to start anew.

Carrion Eaters

Normal, on the surface. A merchant republic, a worldly dynasty. But the graveyards sprawl like rot on a tree, and their ghoulish rulers hold court in the dark, carrying their missives to the puppets that act as their bureaucrats. They are careless and anarchic, keeping a light hand save when it curls into a fist to make a terrible example of those who wonder why the tombs are always empty before long. They bribe, intoxicate, pervert those who would speak out, killing the ones they can't.

The defining characteristic of such realms is apathy. The corpse eaters poison the wills of the places they infest, sapping ambition and neutering change. The people are crops, rotting in the spirit before they ferment in the flesh, hauled to the tombs for the pleasure of their masters. A pall of inaction hangs over such a land, as dead as the things which rule it.

The most reliable means to their end is subterfuge. They do not rule directly, but spread their influence through proxies and agents. Cut off the source and the sickness ceases. Delve their tombs, slay their inhabitants, survive their reprisals. Their subjects love them not, know them not, and no help shall come.

Mind Eaters

You never see them or know them. They erase traces of themselves, implant orders, nudge perceptions. They peer around the corner or from under the bed. They are everywhere and hide in the angles you cannot see because they do not want you to. Everyone is sick, twitching, forgetful. Lynch mobs form without warning, fits of hysteria swell like the tides. To pass through is possible, if you bring little attention to yourself. Stay and investigate, and you are drawn into the net.

The defining characteristic of such realms is paranoia. Few can put a name to their secret rulers, but all know something is not right. That they are haunted. That something is watching. People go missing and you do not speak of it, even as a scream is building in your lungs. Stress without release, memories smoothed over. Mad kings and fitful politics which make no sense to an outsider until he realizes they are merely lashing out against a terror they cannot name.

The most reliable means to their end is quarantine. The worms of the mind they spread must not be allowed to burrow. Towns and villages are closed, gate and mind. The heads counted, the time meticulously kept. Every gap investigated, every witness interrogated, every house that no one could remember living in burnt along with whatever writhed inside of it.

Soul Stealers 

There is only ever one, in most cases. A profane emperor, a throne in the tallest tower. Perhaps a dread king and queen, or a court of wicked magi. Rarely do such lands remained peopled for long, at least by mortals. A kingdom of the dead is more likely, silent corpses laboring at their command, or grotesque, deformed homunculi, bred for hateful servitude. Its masters are the most terrible, most inhuman things a man may become, bereft even of kinship amongst each other. No atrocity is too great, no crime too terrible. Only hunger and ambition remain.

The defining characteristic of such a realm is despair. Dread hangs over it. It is silent. It is a land of death, with what living remain herded into pens and pits to be slaughtered as needed. It is not a realm as a human would understand it, but an immense machine which turns around a single cruel center, bereft of culture, pity, or hesitation.

There is no easy way to slay such things. To war against them is to face legions of corpses and monsters. To scheme against them is to run against an iron wall. To slip into their domain as killers an exercise in utmost risk. There is no means to for revolt, no hope of containment. Determination, faith, chance, and miracle are all one can rely on, unless one can amass an army so great it may crush the cancer head-on, at great cost. The sole boon you are granted is that such is their horror that all but the devils below and the most wicked above will put aside their grievances to the end of their destruction. The other lands listed, terrible as they are, may well prove allies in such a venture. Even they would not countenance such a neighbor.

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Monsters make for poor rulers, in most cases. I imagine many kingdoms have "that family". A vampiric or ogrish house on the border, a pack of regal ghouls administering a city in squalor. After all, they still stand above the average anthropophage in terms of strength. It can be useful to have such a kennel of beasts to call upon. But they still have that tie to humanity that keeps them in check. Bereft of it, their worst impulses are realized, with these dark realms being the results. Save for the soul stealers, of course. Some evils cannot be tamed.