Cromagh Answers!

September 15, 2003

Cromagh,

I was reading up on the California recall election and, if I remember correctly, I saw your name on the ballot. Unfortunately, I haven't been able to find any information on your political views. What is your view on protecting the environment? How about taxes? Education? What do you think of your chances and the menagerie that is your competition? Why haven't NPR, CNN, Fox, or the others covered the fact that a half-orc is running for governor of the most populous state in the union?

Watching closely,

Tad from CA

Dear, dear Tad:

Good eye! Cromagh's name was on the ballot, very briefly, but it turns out that Cromagh doesn't actually qualify for the post. Something about not being able to account for thousands of pieces of gold in undeclared income. Who knew that killing things and looting their corpses constituted taxable income?

But Cromagh might still try for the post—after a fashion. Legal elections are all well and good, but they take too long for Cromagh's taste. Besides, the person who wins is always some joker who has promised lower taxes, public safety, environmental responsibility, better education, and a couple of dozen other things that inspire people to vote for them. What's the point? The job doesn't pay that much. It's so much easier to just raise a small force of mercenaries, burn a few outlying villages, defeat the governor's army with some cunning stratagem—usually involving lots of bloody slaughter—then ride out laden with the spoils of battle. And the best part is: Cromagh doesn't have to lie to anybody while he's on the "campaign trail." (Lying is a sin before the gods, you know.)

You see, Cromagh's political views are unpopularly practical. The environment? Cromagh doesn't know why people whine about it so much. Woodsmen cutting down too many trees? Factories filling the air with pollution? Endangered species disappearing at a rate of one a day? Cromagh thinks that all those people writing letters and staging protests would be put to much better use cutting down trees, working in factories, and slaughtering exotic animals to make furs. But try telling that to your average tree-huggers' rally, and everybody looks at you like you're a demon that a priest summoned by accident instead of performing the usual baptismal rites.

Education's another laugh. So a bunch of children grow up unable to read. Hey, some of Cromagh's best troops can't read! So what if they can't do simple math? That's great! It means that Cromagh gets to divide the treasure! Education is overrated, anyway. The most lethal monsters Cromagh has ever faced in combat never went to school. Or maybe they did. It's hard to say, since Cromagh rarely takes the time to get to know his opponents before charging into combat. "Raaaaarrr! Die, you misbegotten hell-beast! Hey, is that a 'Class of the Year of the Shining River' ring? You must have gone to school with Throgar Red-Shield. You did? Heard from Throgar lately? Five kids? Wow. How about you? Any little ones? Oh. Divorced, eh? Sorry to hear about that. Still, it's better to have loved and lost, and all that. But enough about you. Prepare to die."

Nope, never happened. Anyway, it's safe to say that nobody being skewered on Cromagh's blade ever used his final breath to gasp out: "At least I learned to read at the 6th-grade level!"

And what about taxes? Cromagh's policy is simple: Give Cromagh your money or die! Such an easy concept—basic, even—yet people always get that weird look on their faces when Cromagh explains it to them, like they just can't grasp what Cromagh is saying. "But, if I give you all my money, then I won't have any money. What do I get out of the deal?" (See? Cromagh told you education was overrated.)

Of course, if you can't vote for Cromagh, you might as well vote for Arnold the Austrian. Cromagh is sure that Arnold's plans for California aren't all that different from Cromagh's: pillage, loot, and rape. (Actually, Cromagh's pretty sure that's Gary Coleman's plan, too.) Why do you think Arnold didn't show up for the debate? Kind of hard to convince people you're for gun control when you're wiping your opponent's brains off your shirt, going through his pockets for loose change, and making speeches about "der lamentations of der vimmen."

So, anyway, what was Cromagh talking about? Right—the California recall. Since Cromagh isn't running, vote for whoever you like. Just don't vote for anyone you really like, though, because when Cromagh sweeps in with his mercenary army to loot and pillage the state capitol, Cromagh intends to mount the new governor's head on a pike outside the gubernatorial mansion (Cromagh had to look that word up), as a warning to all who would oppose Cromagh's position on Proposition 13!

With any luck, though, the race for a new governer will be a five-way tie. What Cromagh really wants outside the mansion is wind chimes.

C.

Cromagh and JD Wiker are the authors of Cromagh's Guide to Goblinoids, now available on RPGNow.com.

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