M Eff the Angry, Archmage of the Ninth Circle and Master of the Iron Tower vs The Homeowners Association (NPC thread)

[King Ghidorah]

Thalamus Whisperwell liked his job. It made him feel good, serving his community. It made him feel safe, knowing that powerful forces had his back.

And yes, it made him feel important. Not just anyone could be a representative of the dreaded mystic cabal known as the Board of Directors of the Timely Tides Homeowners Association.

When wizards retire, they usually go one of two ways: either leaving behind the pursuit of scholarship in favor of hedonistic excess, funded by the triumphs of their younger days, or retreating from society into the depths of the arcane, swallowed by the mystic calling that has defined them as they fade from the world and into obscurity and legend.

When a cabal of wizards retires, that’s when things get complicated.

It leaves a power-vacuum. But worse than that, it leaves a bunch of stubborn centenarians with untold magical power, an addiction to control, and too much time on their hands. Frequently, such groups kill each other off in short order, warring over decades-gone slights and petty jealousy, leaving great mystical scars upon the land. Arguably, however, the worse outcome is when a retired cabal continues to get along – to do what they have always done, just on a much more limited scale.

That was how the community of Timely Tides had come to be. The Board had warded off several thousand acres along the equatorial coast, a great mystic Working that prevented incursions by bandits and roving monsters. They had brought in off-world contractors to construct dwellings and infrastructure equipped with conveniences seldom found elsewhere in the Hinterlands of Erde Nona, bought and paid for with the fortunes they had accrued over their long careers of scholarship and intrigue. They had established trade-routes with neighboring polities and fiefdoms, leveraging political connections and forbidden magicks to obtain favorable terms. They had sent mystic servants and invisible messengers out to communities of serfs, peasants and lesser merchants, offering a higher standard of living: paved roads, indoor plumbing, electricity and the conveniences it brings, even the deeds to their own land – in exchange for joining the Homeowners Association.

In the twenty years since, the gated community had thrived. Everyone played by the rules, living productively and well, but keeping within the bounds of the Community Standards Agreement, and other bylaws established by the HOA. Infractions were dealt with swiftly, but fairly, largely by the community members themselves – after all, it wouldn’t do to let standards slip. That was the difference between them and the people who lived out there.

Sometimes, however, a gentle reminder was needed. And when that became necessary, the first line of defense was an HOA Representative.

Towards that end, Thalamus had a clipboard. He had a number-2 pencil suitable as an arcane focus. He had a pair of khaki slacks, and sued brown loafers. He had a cell-phone clip on his belt and a button-up plaid shirt. He also had skin the color of the night sky in autumn, hair like spun silver and long pointy ears. He was, after all, an elf. Usually, that was enough.

Today, however, was going to be a challenge. Today, at around noon, a crenellated rectangular tower, one hundred feet tall and formed of overlapping slabs of thick black iron had appeared in place of one of the community’s many nigh-identical split-level three-bedroom homes. It was covered in shifting runes that glowed with the subtle and piercing blue of rural starlight on a cloudless night, and did not seem to have a door. In place of a garden, or shrubberies, there was a moat filled with softly radiant bubbling green liquid, and the property’s driveway had been replaced with what appeared to be a bottomless pit.

That alone was worthy of a hefty fine. The Board had Views on bottomless pits.

Standing on the sidewalk with a mere thirty feet of grassy expanse between him and the garish metal monstrosity, Thalamus clicked his tongue and shook his head in disapproval. According to the latest census, a copy of which the HOA rep had on hand (his clipboard was enchanted – it always had whatever paperwork he needed) this property belonged to Alanboum Haa’aarg and his three brothers. The name on the mailbox, however, was ‘Eff the Angry, Archmagus of the Ninth Circle, Conqueror of Death, Master of the Iron Tower, Esq.’

Someone had some explaining to do.

Thalamus stepped onto the lawn, noting with grudging approval that the grass, at least, continued to be impeccably maintained. In fact, it might actually be greener than the surrounding lots, though that could just be the fel shadow of the Iron Tower casting the property into darkness.

“Hello!” he called. “Excuse me! I would like to speak with the homeowner, please?”

Thalamus waited. There was no response.

The elf raised his pencil and began to prepare a spell – a simple cantrip, designed to inform a homeowner that they were expected at the door – when a figure appeared, quite literally, in a flash of sickly green light, atop the battlements of the tower.

A grinning human skeleton, skull lit from within by unholy green radiance, with a prosthetic jawbone forged of brass, scant wisps of ancient hair dangling limply from its skeletal pate, and desiccated flesh still affixed to its cheeks gazed down upon the HOA rep with naked disdain. The apparition was bedecked in finery: bracelets and rings of precious metals, jewels and chains, rubies and platinum, crimson-and-gold robes of the finest silk, with a blood-red circlet upon its brow. Diamonds were set within its rotting teeth. It was dead, it was terrible, and it was criggedy-crunk to a degree undreamed of by even the most shameless of hip-hop artists.

Thalamus stared. The figure was backlit by the afternoon sun, and some distance away, but even so his elven eyesight served him well.

He had never seen a lich before.

The creature placed its bony hands upon the black iron crenellations and leaned out over the edge of the battlements.

“Who the FUCK,” it called, its voice gravely and abrasive, “Is casting on my property?”

The HOA rep cleared his throat, made a show of consulting his paperwork, and declared himself.

“My name is Thalamus Whisperwell, and I am with the Homeowner’s Association. Are you the current owner of the property?”

The lich straightened up, the light in its eye-sockets flaring. “You’ve got to be kidding me. The name’s Eff, kid. Eff the ANGRY. It’s on the fucking mailbox. You wanna guess why they call me that?”

Thalamus thought for a moment.

“No,” he said. “Now, you’re new to the neighborhood, so you may not be aware, but –“

The lich interrupted him. “Well, then I guess you’re apathetic and intellectually challenged.”

The elf frowned. A moment of awkward silence passed as he consulted his clipboard, paper rustling as he looked for the relevant records. He flipped a page, and a sticky-note appeared, affixed to the deed-of-record for the property in question. It contained only a single sentence.

‘This shit’s mine now – Eff’

Thalamus felt a cold sense of disconnection with the reality of the situation. Nothing like this had ever happened before. Refusing to engage with the problem, he made an effort to get things back on track.

“You may not be aware, but your home is in violation of our Community Standards, as well as several of the association bylaws. While your lawn is in excellent condition, you are required to maintain a certain number of flowering plants, shrubberies, or small trees not exceeding ten feet in height in order to keep up with the declaration on community beautification and greening. Also, your home is in violation of the approved color-scheme for our community, as well as the HOA guidelines for –“

Eff adjusted the fit on his gold-embroidered crimson robes, tugging at his wide, rune-laden lapels. The heavy platinum chains around his neck, bearing a gold medallion emblazoned with his personal Rune of Power, clanked softly. The ancient skin on his desiccated brow crinkled.

“Kid,” he rumbled, his voice like the door of a long-sealed tomb, “I will straight-up turn your ass into stone. I will turn the stone into mud. I will put the mud in a bucket – and not a nice bucket either. I will summon an imp to pee in that bucket. Then I’ll disenchant the whole mess and send your still-living, piss-pickled goo back to the home-owner’s association in a gods-damn plastic bag if you don’t get off my lawn.”

Thunder rolled in the cloudless sky.

Still processing the elaborate threat, but on some level already appropriately terrified, the Home Owner’s Association representative took a step back, onto the sidewalk.

The elf was instantly ashamed. He was the authority here: this tasteless miscreant should not be dictating terms.

He still didn’t step back onto the grass, though.

“As I as saying,” Thalmus continued, again taking refuge in the familiar ritual of his job, “If you don’t change, well, everything about your residence, you’re going to be in serious violation of the terms of HOA membership, and -”

“Listen you little turd - I never joined any stupid fuckin’ HOA. ”

The representatives brain screeched to a halt. The individual words made sense, but he couldn’t resolve the sentence.

You couldn’t live in Timely Tides without joining the HOA. It was impossible.

“… what?”

Eff’s brass jaw rang like a tiny, muted bell as he clenched it against his rotted grill. The cold green glow blaring from his mummified eye-sockets dimmed and narrowed in such a way as to suggest a squint.

He growled, “I like it here, so I moved in. It’s a decent neighborhood. Quiet. Warded against monster attacks. Except for that one guy down the street who wouldn’t move his car when I asked I haven’t even had to imprison anyone’s soul in somethin’ embarrassing since I got here, and that’s usually how I gotta spend the first month. Do you know how many soul gems I got up here kid? Too fuckin’ many. Soul-gems for days, and half of ‘em are occupied by - and shaped like - dickheads.”

The HOA rep looked up from his clipboard, visibly flustered. “Ah….”

“I got ‘em at a discount two hundred years ago. It’s turned out to be way less funny than I thought it would be in the long run. Yeah, my enemies are wailing eternally inside a buncha crystal knobs, but now my laboratory’s just wall-to-wall cock-rocks. It kinda fucks up the atmosphere, and you wouldn’t believe how much some demons care about that kinda thing. Makes summoning anything except a succubus a total pain in my crumbling undead ass – and yeah, that makes for a fun afternoon, but I’m here to get some work done. Real work, not whatever the fuck it is you’re doing.”

The rep stared. He cleared his throat. This was not the way these visits usually went, not even remotely. He had many, many questions, all of them deeply troubling, and was convinced he didn’t actually want the answers to any of them – so he fell back one final time on what he did best: nebbish authoritarianism.

“Be that as it may. You’re in violation of our community standards, your homeowner’s agreement, and several association bylaws… and also probably the board’s Declaration on Sexual Morals. If you don't do something about all this I’m afraid we’re going to have to ask you to leave.”

Eff removed his withered and rotting hands, mummified skin and yellowed bones bedecked in rings of gold and enchanted jewels, from the battlements of his iron tower. He slicked back one of the scant few-dozen whisps of ashen hair that remained clinging stubbornly to his ancient skull. In a flare of crimson lightning he summoned his Staff of Power, Kataxus, to his grip: carved from the black heart of an ancient and cursed oak, graven with adamantine runes, languages unspoken since the forging of the world.

Eff began tapping it against his shoulder like an arrogant kid with a baseball-bat.

“Make me, bitch.”

 

[King Ghidorah]

* * *​

Calabash the Kempt, Marshal of the Neighborhood Watch and Secretary to the Homeowners Association, while not a member of the Board of Directors per-se was still considered a very important man in his community. He was their eyes and ears on the day-to-day happenings in Timely Tides and it was his job to keep small problems about town from becoming large ones – or large problems from becoming emergencies.

Calabash was a dwarf. He was patient, and sober-minded, and somewhat at odds with himself. His pocket-protector was never out of place despite the fact that he wrote with a quill and ink. His feet were shod in the traditional iron-toed boots of his people in spite of the fact that he hadn’t been anywhere near a mine, a battlefield, or an unpaved road in over fifteen years. He never carried an axe, wore business-casual every day complete with heavy, black-framed glasses and a tie that was entirely hidden by his expansive black beard – but held grudges with a dedication and supernatural intensity that would have made his forefathers weep with pride.

He had an office in the Timely Tides Community-Center with a single potted plant, an enchanted pet rock, a computer he had never used, a bookshelf full of dusty ledgers and a multiplexed speaker-phone/answering machine that looked like it had been recovered from a landfill.

Right now, Calabash was not having a good day.

“He said what?”

The tinny elven voice on his staticky speaker-phone hesitated for a moment, betraying obvious nerves

“Make me,” Thalamus finally repeated. “Bitch.”

Calabash leaned forward in his ergonomic wheely-chair, resting one arm upon his knee.

“That’s what I thought you said he said. You were right to call me, Thalamus.”

A breath of relief crackled from the speaker, the breezy sigh of a minor functionary who has successfully passed off a problem to his immediate superior.

“This could be a real problem Calabash. Bigger even than that bard who passed through a few years back, or even those skateboarding gnomes.”

The dwarf’s brow darkened. The issue with the bard had been easily resolved: for all of their unsavory reputation, one of the things that defined that profession was an eagerness to talk, and a need to be liked. They’d gotten her the proper permits and set her up with a stage at the seasonal fun-fair, and with a well-regarded addition to the fair’s cultural potency and a minimum number of strained marriages in her wake she’d been on her way. Conversely, upon one wall of Calabash’s bedroom was mounted a row of tiny broken skateboards, accompanied by little plaques with names and dates – but the owners were still out there. He’d get them one day – oh yes, in the name of his fathers, for peace and order in his community, vengeance would be his.

“I’ll handle it,” Calabash said, not allowing the dark direction of his thoughts to creep into his voice. “You go talk to the Winklestag household. They’ve been leaving their bins out again.”

Thalamus began to say something else, but Calabash hung up on him.

“Eff the Angry,” he muttered.

Calabash knew how to deal with recalcitrant wizards – even before he worked for a bunch of them, it was a subject he had experience with. The one thing to bear in mind was that most of them weren’t as clever as they thought they were. If they couldn’t just magic a problem away, or talk in circles about it until the other side gave up, frequently they had no idea what to do.

If the lich really had moved in without going through the proper channels, then he wasn’t bound by the geases and charms built into the HOA membership clauses. Calabash wasn’t at home with magic, but he knew contracts, and that part was simple enough. Likewise, it wasn’t hard to understand that if Eff wasn’t officially a part of the community then the town’s mythal, the great mystical web that the Board of Directors had erected to define and protect their gated suburb, would probably respond swiftly and in kind to any overt acts of aggression against Timely Tides or its citizens.

If Calabash could figure that out, then as a powerful undead spellcaster their uninvited guest was almost certainly aware of the issue.

Slowly, a plan formed. The HOA secretary set his craggy face in a smile laden with grim purpose and, pausing only to rub his pet rock for luck, reached once more for his battle-scarred speaker-phone.

 

[King Ghidorah]

Eff’s laboratory was a wonder of wizardly industry: The iron walls were traced with eldritch runes of containment, rendering them impermeable to Workings of mystic power not cast from his own hand. A great circle of summoning, nested pentagons intertwined with geometries for which there are no name, wreathed in draconic script and the language of angels occupied pride of place upon the rust-spackled floor, traced in the indelible blood of a fallen titan. Heavy wooden work-benches covered with glassware and implements of metalworking, tongs and reagents, occupied every corner, and creaking shelves laden with log-books and alchemical tomes stood at seemingly random locations throughout the room.

Nearly every level surface was, actually, as he had claimed, bedecked in screaming crystalline dongs, but it had been that way for a while, and he did his best to work with it.

As the lich toiled over his latest project, a sculpted human head of purest adamantine, using specialized sorcerous lenses and words of ancient wisdom to engrave the runes that would bind the completed automaton to his mighty will, there came a crash from somewhere outside his tower.

He stuttered at the interruption. Raw magic, unbound by the fractured incantation, whip-cracked through the room, earthing itself in one corner of his summoning circle in a shower of orange sparks and green flame.

In the center of the circle, a rabbit appeared. It had tiny red devil-horns, but was otherwise unremarkable.

Eff stood very still for exactly ten seconds. If his lungs were anything more than a pair of ancient and tattered leather sacks, he would have sighed. Instead, he strode to the center of the room and snatched the still-slightly-stunned demon-bunny from the center of the pentacle.

“C’m’ere you little bastard,” he growled, and the green glow flared inside his skull.

The undead spellcaster snapped his fingers.

Abruptly, he was standing on the battlements of the Iron Tower, looking down upon the neighborhood of Timely Tides.

There was a backhoe on his lawn, a bright yellow tractor cab with a power-shovel on the back and a bulldozer on the front. Parked next to it was a pickup truck full of loose black earth.

A group of three dwarves was using this equipment to fill in Eff’s moat.

The lich paused. Overhead, the clouds coasting through the clear blue sky, seemed to accelerate, darkening as they raced in columns towards the horizon.

There were moments, occasionally, where Eff the Angry felt like he could see the future without having to use any magic at all. It was happening right now, and what came next was going to be horrible, and he was never going to stop laughing about it, if he could only get past the interim period of unyielding rage.

“HEY!” he screeched. “YOU WITH THE BACKHOE! GET THE FUCK OFF MY PROPERTY!”

The dwarves didn’t seem to hear him over the noise of the machine, dumping another load of soil into the bubbling green trench that surrounded the iron tower. Or at least, they pretended not to.

"DON'T YOU FUCKIN' IGNORE ME!"

This time they looked up. One of them, a blond-bearded dwarf holding a clipboard and wearing a hardhat – evidently the foreman, judging by his no-nonsense flannel shirt and air of calculated observation - spat on the ground. Then they returned to their task.

Eff threw the rabbit at him, leveled a jewel-bedecked finger and spoke a word of power.

The rabbit hit the foreman in the face. There was a flash of soft yellow light.

The rabbit screamed.

So did the dwarf.

They both ran in opposite directions, tripping over themselves as the dwarf tried to run on all fours while simultaneously attempting to strip off his clothes with his teeth and the devil-rabbit tried to flee on two legs.

The remaining two dwarves, dressed in overalls, workboots and hardhats, stared slack-jawed at their bucking, leaping, half-naked boss as he staggered and rolled across the neighborhood, screaming his head off and panic-shitting as he went. Very slowly, with a trembling hand, the one piloting the backhoe turned off the machine.

“I switched their brains,” Eff explained matter-of-factly, leaning against the battlements of his tower and breaking the ensuing silence. “It's an enchantment - Eighth Circle. Nearly impossible to break if you can't get both parties back in the same place - so if you ever want to get paid again, you assholes might want to catch that rabbit.”

Abruptly, he leapt up on top of an iron crenellation. He raised his withered arms to the skies, balling his skeletal hands into fists. His silken robes flapped wildly, jeweled finery clinking and jangling amidst a sudden gale as thunder split the far horizon.

Eff the Angry crowed in triumph:

“HAVE FUN HIDIN’ FROM OWLS AND POOPIN’ OUTDOORS YOU OBSEQUIOUS LITTLE SHIT!”

 

[King Ghidorah]

Calabash the Kempt stared across the top of his desk with a look of calculated tolerance.

There was a rabbit in his office, perched on one of the folding-chairs he kept in reserve for those rare occasions that he had guests. It was, without a doubt, the angriest rodent he had ever seen. Calabash hadn’t even known that rabbits made noise, but this one was screaming at him: stomping its feet, waving it’s its forepaws, and just generally falling over itself in an apoplectic tantrum. Sitting next to it, on the floor, was a naked dwarf, bound and gagged and actually vibrating from sheer eye-rolling terror. Two more dwarves stood to either side of the little menagerie, looking embarrassed and more than just slightly concerned.

Calabash pressed his thumb and stubby forefinger against the bridge of his nose, closed his eyes, and took a deep breath.

“Take them to Perry’s Potent Potions on Main Street,” He said. “They should be able to break the enchantment. Send the bill to my office.”

The two stout workmen gathered up the rabbit and, dragging the restrained dwarf on the end of a short rope secured to his bindings, left the secretary’s office. Mutters of thanks and humiliated apologies drifted in their wake.

As the door closed behind them, Calabash’s expression collapsed into a thunderous frown. He adjusted the set of his glasses, stood up, and began to pace an angry little circuit around his office.

This mind-swapping balderdash shouldn’t have been possible. The HOA secretary was by no stretch of the imagination a sorcerer, but he knew his community, and even a registered Homeowner wouldn’t have been able to do something like that to an HOA-employed workman without some kind of response from the town’s magical defenses. There were only two satisfactory explanations – either the lich possessed such expertise in the wizardly arts that he was able to spot and exploit loopholes in the Timely Tides mythal with pin-point precision, or he’d found a way to evade its oversight completely.

Calabash stopped in front of his book-shelf and removed a ledger, its ancient cover wrapped in the cured skin of an orc, its mithril faceplate bearing an inscription in the ancient runic letters of the traditional dwarven tongue. Roughly translated, it read “A True and Accurate Record of the Grudges of the clan Cranadash: Read ye not, This Means You (Less Heir of Cranadash ye Be)”.

He hefted it, considered for a moment, and then put it back on the shelf. As annoyed as Calabash was, and as big a problem as this was rapidly becoming, no personal injury had yet been done him or any of his relatives – nothing worthy of record, anyway. Instead, he pulled his chair over to the bookshelf and, locking the wheels, stood on it so that he could reach the highest volumes. Calabash picked the heftiest one, grunting as its weight nearly threw him off balance before climbing back down with his prize gripped in both hands.

Wizards, Sorcerers, and Warlocks of Note – An Exhaustive and Accurate Compendium

It wasn’t a book he’d had much use for since getting this job, but given the nature of his employers one that had seemed a prudent purchase when assembling his references. Hopefully, its pages would reveal something about his mysterious new enemy.

Returning his chair to his desk – taking a moment to unlock the wheels, because he was after all a man who did things properly – Calabash sat down and began to read.

Twenty minutes of careful study later, he stumbled upon a name.

It was the shortest entry in the book, and Calabash would have missed it if not for the fact that it was, that he had seen, the only one in the entire compendium to feature the word ‘bastard’ as a pejorative.

“Effiochus of the Brazen Jaw,” the dwarven factotum read aloud. “Genius Arcanist, Artificer, and wooer of other men’s wives, mistresses, and female relations. Banned in perpetuity from the grounds of the University of Arcadia for being ‘A superlative Bastard and irredeemable cad, intolerably rash in word and deed, irascible beyond reason’. Disappeared in the year of the Confused Wyvern, to nigh-universal rejoicing.”

Calabash sat back and thought, stroking his beard. It was an archaic method of reckoning time, but by his figuring the year of the Confused Wyvern was near six centuries gone.

The two elven members of the Board had both been at University around that time. One had been a Professor.

Hm.

Well. None of that helped with the current difficulty. But at least it gave Calabash a more solid idea of who he was dealing with. The HOA secretary shut the book, pushed it aside, rubbed his pet rock for luck, and reached for his speaker-phone.

It was time to try something.... subtle.

 

[King Ghidorah]

Eff stood on his front lawn, the lush grass steaming and wilting beneath the supernatural cold of his skeletal tread, and looked up at his Iron Tower.

It was taupe.

He tilted his head to one side, and tapped his orbital-bone with one fleshless finger. His brass mandible slowly eased open, then clacked shut again. The green glow that illuminated his ancient skull dimmed, reducing the emerald radiance within the hollow depths of his eye-sockets to mere pin-pricks.

He gestured vaguely with both arms, a distressed little squealing noise emerging from somewhere inside his desiccated ribcage, but abandoned that too, settling for just staring.

His mighty Iron Tower, immaculate and foreboding in shades of black and rust, had been painted the most boring shade of moleskin brown imaginable. Even the shifting starlight runes which danced upon its surface had been reduced to shadows of flickering beige. It was a good paintjob, too – even coat, no streaking, and not a drop on the surrounding lawn.

Eff was having trouble processing it: not so much the fact that it was so (although somebody was going to pay dearly for that) as the matter of how it could have been done so quickly, and without him noticing. There was either some heavy-duty sorcery at work here, or someone knew a truly bad-ass general contractor.

“Well, that’s certainly an improvement”, said Thalamus Whisperwell, from the edge of the street. He made a note on his clipboard, flourishing his pen. “You’re in compliance with the neighborhoods approved color-scheme – although there are several other features of your home that still need adjusting if you want to avoid a hefty fine.”

Slowly, with a creak of ancient bone, a whisper of silk and a rattle of pimp-chains, the undead archwizard turned to face the elf.

“Did you fuckin’ do this?” he asked.

Thalamus thought for a moment, his silver hair glittering in the shadow of the Iron Tower. “No,” he said. “Not personally anyway. The Homeowner’s Association is merely encouraging your compliance.”

Eff’s staff appeared in his hand. He struck it once upon the earth; molten cracks opened in his lawn, a furnace glow of arcane fires shining from below, illuminating the lich in tones of hellish red. “You bureaucratic bitches want my compliance? I’LL SHOW YOU FUCKIN’ COMPLIANCE!”

He snapped his fingers – and felt the spell which was supposed to burn the offending pigment from the façade his mighty fortress fizzle, the arcane energies skittering away into the aether, producing nothing more than a few green sparks across the surface of the taupe tower.

Thalamus smiled serenely, making another note.

Eff whirled. He stared at the tower, eyes blazing with verdant starbursts. A sudden gale howled as he pointed his staff, and dark clouds began to roll in from the sea, casting Timely Tides in the faintly green shadows of an oncoming thunderstorm.

Arcane lightning crackled, purple and red across the face of the Iron Tower. Syllables of forbidden arcane wisdom, the black speech of devils and fiends, echoed across the neighborhood. Trees wilted. Cats yowled. In the fully-furnished kitchens of no less than three suburban mothers, batches of home-made cookies came out tasting distinctly of sulfur.

There was a final flash of sable radiance, and a moaning chorus rose from beneath the earth. The ground shook. Car alarms went off up and down the street – but the tower’s new paint-job remained stubbornly untouched.

The hellish glow receded, and the wind died down, but the sky remained dark. The lich lowered his staff. He waved his hand and all of the car-alarms died at once.

“… okay,” Eff hissed. “That’s not normal paint. I can’t sense any enchantments, though, so there’s got to be somethin’ funky mixed into the base-coat. What the fuck have you done, Poindexter? WHAT HAVE YOU POTEMKIN-STEPFORD NORMAN ROCKWELL ASSHOLES DONE TO MY TOWER?!”

Somewhat more anxiously than he would have preferred, Thalamus smoothed his wind-ruffled hair. He didn’t know what half those words meant, so there was a distinct possibility Eff had just cast another spell.

The Elf cleared his throat, doing his best to hide his anxiety. “Your tower, and again, it is a problem that you live in a tower, has been brought into –“

“Compliance. Yeah. I got that part.”

There was a misty blur of reds and golds and a rush of motion, and suddenly the lich was right in Thalamus’ face, close enough that the elf could smell the earthy scent of ancient rot mixed with the tang of exotic preservative liniments and herbs. With the strength of the grave, Eff gripped the front of the HOA representative’s shirt.

“Listen here ya little shit. This HOA crap just stopped being funny. I wasn’t kidding when we talked before - I like this neighborhood. So I’m not gonna start a mage-war with your Board of Directors. But I don’t. Like. You. And as of a few minutes ago I really fuckin’ hate whoever did this.”

The lich pointed behind him with his sinister black staff, indicating his drably appointed home. His voice dropped an octave, rumbling with the potent menace of a man who genuinely does not give a solitary fuck.

“So this is how this is gonna go. You’re going to tell me exactly what kind of magic-resistant additive there is in that paint-job, or I’m going to read your damn mind and learn it anyway, then turn you into a cactus. I’ll keep your spiky ass in a little pot by the window in my study – and water you with piss. I got a living clone-body I keep frozen in my basement, just a sexy little number I can thaw out and slip into for a bit when I miss tasting food or getting laid, and you’ve annoyed me enough that I will bust that bad boy out and attend to the matter personally, twice a week, like clockwork. And that’ll be your life now.”

Thalamus stared, goggle eyed. “Why… why do your threats always involve me getting pissed on?”

“BECAUSE YOU PISS ME OFF!” Eff roared, shoving the elf back with such force that he fell on his khaki-clad ass in the street. “IT’S FUCKIN’ SYMMETRICAL!”

The lich leveled his staff at Thalamus. The wind began to rise again as the green glow pulsed inside Eff’s fleshless skull. Lonely strands of stubborn hair flapped in the breeze, streaming from his mummified pate. His diamond-studded veneers gleamed.

“What’s it gonna be, slappy?”

 

[King Ghidorah]

The door to Calabash’s office slammed open with such remarkable force that the hinges tore free of the wall, a meaty crunch of splintering wood and the muted clatter of hard-wood hitting all-weather carpeting.

Calabash looked up from the stack of receipts, petitions and reports he was in the process of signing, annotating and filing. The dwarf adjusted his spectacles and sighed. This wasn’t entirely unexpected, but he definitely wasn’t looking forward to it.

Eff the angry strode into the room and underhand tossed a miniature cactus onto Calabash’s desk. It remained in its pot, but rolled sideways in a narrowing spiral across the dwarf’s papers, spilling potting soil everywhere and coming to a shaky stop directly in front of him.

The HOA secretary, his face a mask of professional composure, looked from the lich to the tiny shrubbery. The cactus’ lacquered pot had the screaming and tormented face of Thalamus Whisperwell emblazoned on the side – and if you squinted, there was something distinctly elfish about its shape.

He locked eyes with the lich, who was digging his bejeweled knuckles into the desktop and leaning forward across it. His gold chains jangled and his silk robes billowed. The necromantic fires of his malign and ancient consciousness blared forth from his skull in a torrent of emerald light. His brass mandible gleamed.

Calabash stroked his beard, deliberately thoughtful.

“… why a cactus?” he asked.

“Fuck the cactus,” said Eff. “I’m not kicking in your door and questioning your interior design choices – and there’s a lot to fuckin’ question about this basic-ass setup - so you better not be criticizing my choice in tormented sentient punishment-shrubs. Besides I got a much more interesting question.”

Calabash thought about this for a moment. “You did kick in my door though.” He pointed out.

Eff straightened up and crossed his skeletal arms in a whisper of priceless crimson silks. “Yeah. But I’m not calling out your shitty book-shelf or your sadness-magnet carpeting or this Ikea-ass desk. I mean, I am, but I could be a lot more thorough. That’s what I could spend my whole afternoon doing. But it’s already getting boring really fuckin’ fast and it distracts from the way more important issue of you covering my tower in a HUNDRED GODS-DAMN GALLONS OF RAHKSHASA-BLOOD INFUSED PAINT!”

The screen of Calabash’s computer cracked, a very nearly silent tink and a hair-thin fissure right down the center of the monitor.

The dwarf took the cactus and set it upright on one corner of his desk, with Thalamus’ screaming face turned to face the door. “There was also some powdered dragon scale.”

Eff spread his bony hands in a gesture of enraged confusion. “What the gold-plated fuck. Do you know how much power I’m going to have to use to burn through that kind of spell-resistance? I can either take all afternoon making a ritual out of it or give myself the worst damn headache up-casting this first-year apprentice-level bullshit like I’m trying to curse a whole kingdom! Half the point of bein’ undead is that you don’t get headaches, you beardy bitch!”

Calabash pushed the potting-soil-stained papers aside and clasped his hands atop his desk. “So don’t do it,” he rumbled. “This doesn’t have to be complicated, Effiochus. Simply abide by our community guidelines and bylaws and the Homeowners Association will not have to enforce those guidelines. Personally, I don’t think that Timely Tides is a good fit for you, but if you insist on liv-… on dwelling here, then I’m afraid you’re going to have to follow the same rules as everyone else. You’re an educated being. It’s a social contract. You must be familiar with the concept.”

Eff stared at him. With a click of ancient bone, the lich cocked his head fractionally to one side.

“Holy shit, beardo. You’re serious with this grade-school civics-lesson?”

Calabash nodded gravely. “I am always serious.”

“Well, someone’s the life of the fuckin’ party. Let me spell this out for you – I didn’t sign shit. I’m not a part or your HOA. I don’t drive a fuckin’ car, I’m not connected to any utilities, I get no benefit from any o’ yer civic infrastructure except for the RELAXING ambiance and the local cultural events, which are pretty dope considering the kinda maladjusted douchebags they got runnin’ this place. There aren’t any cops, and short of a dragonflight patriarch my tower is fuckin’ impervious to monster attacks, so the mythal’s not doing anything for me there except saving me a few spells and having to scrape the orcs off the walls afterwards. For there to be a social contract, you have to be givin’ me something in exchange for my compliance. Otherwise, you’re just an authoritarian regime.”

Once more, Eff knuckled-up to Calabash’s desk. “I get what you’re doing. There’s an implicit threat here – if you can waste that much Rakshasa blood, let alone dragon-scale, just to get up my mummified ass, then you can make things as difficult as you need to to get me to play ball. But you will not the like the kinda ball-games I play. They got names like testicle-tennis, and Your Sister. Now, I know who your bosses are, and I’m not trying to start a war but so help me FUCK if you’re gonna screw with me, I will screw right back. And I’m willing to bet I got a lot more practice screwin’ than you do.”

Calabash grimaced. This conversation was going mostly the way he’d expected it to, although the fact that the lich hadn’t reacted at all to the mention of his given name was a little disappointing, and getting Thalamus returned to his proper shape was going to be another headache and another bill to the council’s discretionary fund. The constant profanity was beginning to wear on him, though –

“Ask your dad.”

And it was increasingly obvious that simple pressure and persuasion wasn’t going to solve this problem.

The dwarven factotum stood up, and walked around to the front of his desk. He clasped his hands behind his back and looked up at his undead nemesis.

“You know, we could be civil about this. I don’t think I’m being unreasonable, asking you to abide by the standards of our community.”

Eff began to laugh, a dry rattling cackle – and then stopped abruptly.

“You painted my tower with the blood of a few dozen demonic tiger-man sorcerers just because I wouldn’t be able to magick it away without getting a migraine, looping a djinn into this mess, or losing a whole day of work. Reasonable has left the fuckin’ building, buddy: You mugged it in the parking lot and I buried it in a ditch right next to proportionate response and sexual taboo. And your community standards are bullshit. You and me? We are far from done.”

The lich turned on his bony heel, pausing for a moment on his way out the door. He peered at Calabash; his perpetual corpse-grin made it impossible to read his intention, but judging by the way he reached up and lightly touched his brass prosthesis, he seemed to be trying to recall something.

“You know, I think I actually did bang your sister. Not sure about your dad, though.”

By the time Calabash had opened his mouth to respond, the lich was already gone.

 

[King Ghidorah]

Calabash the Kempt drove a very sensible car: a black Toyota station-wagon with, excepting the custom dwarf-friendly driver’s seat and pedals, no embellishments or modifications of any kind. The radio was permanently tuned to a station that exclusively played dwarven work-hymns and vaguely paranoid political talking-points. The license-plate had the number 8 on it, and nothing else.

His daily commute, from his seaside home to the Community-Center was barely two miles - a brisk walk, even for the vertically challenged. Thus he rarely drove it except to go shopping, and when he did it was never faster than the 20 miles-per-hour mandated by the HOA ordinances.

When Calabash did take his car to work, he always parked it in his assigned spot, near the door of the Community-Center, in the shade of a venerable oak-tree.

Today, about a week after his confrontation with the undead mage, as he descended the steps of his workplace he was shocked to discover that his car had been stolen. At least, that’s what he initially assumed must have happened - because the vehicle parked in his assigned spot could not possibly be his.

It *was* a station-wagon, probably even the same make and model. And it *was* black. Only, it was a black with cloudy shades of blue and yellow, orange and purple airbrushed in, fading to a solid color speckled with starbursts, giving the impression of a night sky just after sunset. The side-panels featured a stencilled mountainscape lit by aurora, which blended into the primary paint-job.

The vehicle had a massive chromed grill which, if you had four of them welded together, could probably have been used to pen a wild boar, and the bumpers and license-plates were framed with platinum braid.

The tires were mounted on 32-inch chrome rims, with iced-out counter-rotating hubcaps, but the hydraulic suspension was riding so low that the chassis was still nearly scraping the pavement.

Worst of all, the hood was ornamented with a 1:12 scale sculpture of a nude elven maiden engaged in activities with a sabertooth-tiger which were explicitly forbidden by the Board of Directors’ Declaration on Sexual Morals. The couple was rendered in what looked, to his dwarven eye, to be genuine enchanted adamantine. That would make it functionally indestructible, and probably heavy enough to murder the car’s gas-milage.

Calabash took off his heavy black-framed glasses and squinted at the gaudy abomination. He put them back on. Then, with a glowing sense of trepidation, he pulled out his keys and pressed the remote-unlock button on his key-fob.

The headlamps flashed a distinctly horny shade of red, the doors unlocked with an audible *chunk*, and the car played an overlaid soundbite of a roaring tiger and a moaning woman.

The HOA secretary pulled at his beard, gritted his teeth, took a deep breath, and let it out slowly. He walked around the outside of the vehicle, confirming that it had his license-plates. He climbed inside, ignoring the black calf-leather interior and utterly refusing to engage with the red-silk-swaddled water-bed that had replaced the rear seats and trunk-space; The glove compartment, aside from some cheap whisky in a plastic bottle, a pearl-handled nickel-plated .357 magnum, and a roll of magnum condoms, none of which were his, did in fact contain his license, registration and vehicle maintenance history.

The driver’s seat and pedal arrangement, although sinfully luxurious and lined with golden thread, were suitable for a dwarf.

Increasingly desperate, Calabash opened the driver’s-side door, and peered at the vehicle’s serial-number where it was stamped on the frame - but even before he saw it, he already knew.

This was his car. Someone, some superlative bastard, had ‘pimped’ his ‘ride’.

The dwarf slammed the door, and, carefully controlling his breathing, began to walk away. He got only twenty paces before he stopped.

He couldn’t leave it here: the parking-lot was closed by local ordinance between the hours of seven PM and six AM. And if a man in his position didn't honor those ordinances, then what was he?

He had neither the knowledge, the tools, nor the time to reverse what had been done to his car. Calabash was going to have to drive it home. People were going to *see* him drive it home, and it would end up parked in *his* garage.

Slowly, his stubby fingers clenched into fists. His body began to vibrate. In the gathering twilight, he fell to his knees in the community-center parking lot as a roar of primal rage erupted from his throat, piercing the cloudless and uncaring sky.

“EFFIOCHUUUUUUUSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS!!!!!!”

 

[King Ghidorah]

Whenever a new resident moved to Timely Tides there was usually an official welcoming party, followed by an informal mixer, organized by the Homeowner’s Association and the neighborhood watch. It had been a couple of weeks though, and no such thing had happened for the mysterious owner of the Iron Tower. That, alongside the growing rumor that he was not only resisting but clashing with the HOA, had made Eff a subject of alarmed speculation and great curiosity among his new neighbors.

Tom and Brillyshane Winklestag were forest goblins, and although they were short and green and had long ears and tusks they came from a tradition of hospitality. Prior to the arrival of the Iron Tower their wholesome, bold, yet foreign and slightly gothic sensibilities had made them, outside of a few moody teenagers, the closest thing Timely Tides had to undesirables; Their otherwise HOA-compliant three-bedroom home had black curtains in the windows, for which they had received multiple visits from HOA representatives.

There had also been several attempts to plant unapproved herb-gardens, display works of sculpture not in keeping with the community guidelines, and install minor water-features in full view of the street; all rapidly quashed by well-meaning but slightly-too-firm neighbors - and when that didn’t work, humorless dwarves in coveralls with shovels, sledgehammers, and trucks full of sod.

So, having had some experience with the wrath of the Homeowners Association, and thinking it shameful that nobody had even said hello to their new neighbor, the Winklestags took it upon themselves to welcome the new addition to their community with a basket of home-cooked food: a rabbit-mince meatloaf, some candied spiders, and a bottle of mushroom wine.

They were somewhat stymied by the foreboding tower’s bubbling green moat and total lack of anything resembling a door, leaving them milling about on the grass, alternately staring at the tower and studying the name on the mailbox. Eventually, however, Tom spotted a shadow watching them from the battlements.

“Hello?” he called, holding up his gift basket. “We are Winklestags. Yes. And we have brought you the meatloafs. For Welcomings.”

“And Spiders,” added Brillyshane. “Also for welcomings. Yes.”

From atop his mighty (and, thanks to a team of summoned mephits armed with a swimming-pool’s worth of turpentine, once more black and foreboding) keep, Eff considered the little green people on his lawn, with their bizarre dialect and Hot-Topic-ass business-goth-casual outfits. His first impulse was to throw them in his bottomless pit - but they had brought meatloaf, and he’d never seen a goblin with an eyebrow piercing before who wasn’t leading a gang of murderous bandits or selling shady potions out of the back of a truckstop; It made the lich curious, and an inquiring mind was among his most enthusiastically cultivated attributes.

“Ehhh, fuck it. Come on up.”

With a jangle of golden bracelets, a gleam of jeweled rings and a whisper of silk, he performed an arcane gesture - and abruptly, in a flash of dazzling green light, the Winklestags found themselves standing atop the Iron Tower.

They blinked at each other. They stared at the lich, a dead man draped in gold chains and fine jewels, resplendent in a royal purple robe ornamented in platinum thread with a distinctly eastern-style dragon motif. They had never before seen such wealth in one place, let alone hanging from one person.

He was somehow already holding their gift-basket, inspecting the contents with a critical eye-socket as the wind whipped and pulled at his few remaining strands of ancient white hair.

“Candied spiders, huh? You can’t buy that at the store.”

Brillyshane stood a little straighter. She was very proud of her candied spiders. She’d caught them herself.

Supporting the basket with one bony hand, he pulled out the bottle of mushroom wine. The emerald glow in his ancient eye-sockets dimmed, suggesting a squint as he studied the label.

“...And the booze ain’t garbage, either. I think I might be in danger of liking you weird little bastards. I’ll tell you what - I was about due to take a break anyway, so I don’t have to smite your asses on principle. You take the stairs down to the parlor, and I’ll slip into something that can actually fuckin’ taste this stuff. Then we’ll see about maybe getting to know each other. Sound like a party?”

The Winklestags looked at each other. On the one hand, in person the lich was objectively terrifying, reeking of forbidden occult powers, unholy wealth, and the chill of the grave. And they were more than a little put-off by being called 'weird little bastards'. On the other hand, he appreciated candied spiders and knew good mushroom-wine when he saw it, and his invitation did seem to be in earnest - it would be rude to say no.

“Parties,” said Brillyshane. “Yes.”

“Bitchin’,” said Eff.

There was another flash, and the lich, gift-basket and all, disappeared. An awkward moment passed with only the moaning of the wind and the smell of the ocean blowing in from the nearby coast to keep the two goblins company. Just when they were beginning to wonder if maybe Eff was planning to leave them on the roof to bake to death as the Iron Tower heated up beneath the glare of the mid-day sun, a rusted floor-slab slid aside with a hideous screech, revealing a foreboding, torchlit staircase.

***

It was rare that Eff entertained guests who weren’t summoned by fel magicks, subject to fey treaties of hospitality and obligation, mighty of dignity, flame and claw, or paid a well-earned fortune, by the hour, for the pleasure of their intimate company. When he did invite more mundane guests to his tower, however, he always went out of his way to enjoy himself.

Whether or not this was good for the guests varied on a case-by-case basis.

Fortunately, the Winklestags had caught him in a good mood, and had been nothing but polite: Eff put a high value on politeness, just so long as nobody asked him to do it. More than that, they presented an opportunity to gain an advantage in his slowly escalating conflict with the Homeowners Association. Thus, the torchlit stairs led the goblins to the graven cherrywood doors of a luxurious but completely normal room which Eff used for social appointments (rather than a duplicate space furnished entirely with carnivorous mimics, or a gateway to a mirror-continuum populated by sinister, jealous reflections).

The Iron Tower’s parlor was carpeted in the shaggy black hide of a dire-bear, furnished in ancient cherrywood and rich burgundy silks. The fittings were limpid orange gold. The walls were hung with framed landscape portraiture and tasteful nudes painted from life: men and women and others, elves and succubi and celestials, statuesque ogres and even a particularly fetching human or two rendered with a steady hand and a connoisseur's eye. The coffee-table was piled high with stacks of fruits and nuts, in bowls held by geometry-defying polished obsidian sculpture.

Waiting patiently for their host upon a couch fashioned from genuine red wyvern-leather, the Winklestags discussed their situation.

‘Did you know he was this rich?’, asked Tom, in their native tongue - a series of squirrel-like chitters and hard consonants.

‘He’s a wizard, babe. A really, really old wizard. Of course he’s rich. You really need to stop being so intimidated by wealth - there are way better reasons to be frightened of an undead necromancer named Eff the Angry... Besides, it makes welcoming him into our community that much more important. If guys this loaded don’t maintain connections to people that aren’t defined by money or power then they almost always turn turbo-evil. It doesn’t work quite the same for dragons, but it plays into why so many of them are assholes, and it’s half the reason the humans produce a Dark Lord every two hundred years or so: I was reading about it the other day.’

Brillyshane had done a two-year degree in comparative sophant psychology at Arcadia University. These days she worked at an artisan bakery in the center of town, but she tried to keep her hand in just in case.

Tom nodded, and pulled nervously on one of his ears.

‘But what if he’s already turbo-evil?’

“Naaah,” said Eff, throwing open the doors and striding into the room.

He looked distinctly different; For one thing, he was to all appearances alive - a buff and vigorous mid-twentysomething with a tanned, sandy complexion and midnight-black shoulder-length curls so thick that he probably had to comb his hair with a pitchfork. For another, he was now wearing a red silk robe with gold trim, and most of his jewelry was absent - only the heavy platinum chain with its embossed runic medallion remained, dangling from his neck.

The ancient sorcerer’s voice, however, still sounded like grist in the mill of centuries, and his eyes still burned with the green flames of necromancy.

“I’m just regular-evil. Ya gotta be if you’re gonna do the undeath thing properly. And don't go comparin' me to those Dark Lord types: They can’t introspect for shit - usually don’t even realize they’re fuckin’ awful. Me, I’m all about that mindfulness crap: I know I’m bad, and I keep careful track of exactly how much. Plus, a man’s gotta have a few friends, even if he can’t fuckin’ stand ‘em. Otherwise, he may as well have just stayed dead in the first place, right?”

Tom sat up, embarrassed. “You… you speaks our language?”

Brillyshane stared: ‘You’re alive?’

Eff gestured at the coffee-table, and the fruit-and-sculpture spread was replaced by the meatloaf, spiders and wine: sliced, plated, chilled and poured, on silver trays and in crystal glasses.

“Kid, I’m twelve-hundred years old. I’ve spoken most of ‘em at one point or another. And not really, toots. I just keep a live body or two in storage for the recreational features: alterable brain-chemistry, tastebuds and touch, magnum dong - you know: the essentials. It’s a remote-control kinda deal, not a permanent arrangement. Wouldn’t have it any other way.”

The fleshbound lich pulled up an overstuffed armchair, upholstered in midnight-purple displacer-beast fur, and retrieved a glass of wine and a plate of meatloaf before sitting down. Using a dainty silver fork, he picked up his entire slice off the plate and took a bite, chewing thoughtfully.

Tom’s skin darkened several shades in a verdant blush. Neither of them had been sure exactly what to expect, but the archwizard’s casual crassness was something for which he wasn’t prepared.

Brillyshane, unbothered, sipped her mushroom wine. “So…Yes. You likes living in Timeliest Tides?”

Eff swallowed. “Is this rabbit? For a loaf? That’s a bold culinary choice. Not gonna say it isn’t workin’ for me though… plays well with the mustard-seed. But yeah. I do like it here. Nice and quiet, coastal area, bangin’ cultural festivals… little bit fuckin’ wonderbread for my tastes as far as the actual damn neighbours go, but if I could just excavate the HOA from between my mummified ass-cheeks I’d be happy as a clam.”

Tom mustered his courage. Involuntarily, the goblin glanced over his shoulder. It generally wasn’t good to speak ill of the HOA to people you didn’t know well, and what he was about to say was grounds for a visit from a street-level association representative.

“We sympathizes. Yes. The Homesowners Associociation will not lets us put my sculptures in the yard. No. Or plants our gardens for Brilly’s cooking, or paints our house the colors we like. And they keeps trying to makes us take down our curtains. No.”

Eff took a gulp of his mushroom wine. It was dreadful, tasting mostly of black earth and old milk with just a subtle alcoholic bite - which was exactly how a good forest-goblin vintage was supposed to be.

The green flames in the pupils of his puppet-body’s emerald eyes flared.

“They painted my tower the most boring fuckin’ color in the universe. And they tried to fill in my moat.”

“Is a loveliest moat,” said Brillyshane, nibbling on a candied spider.

Eff nearly spilled his wine, gesturing wildly with his glass.

“RIGHT?! Some fuckin’ people…”