A Tragedy in Several Grievances, One Very Long Monologue, and a Surprisingly Reasonable Health Plan

The Fortress of Unspeakable Dread sat atop Mount Calamithor like a bad idea that had been given a budget. Its towers were unnecessarily pointy. Its drawbridge made a sound like a dying goose when lowered. Its banner — a black field with a screaming skull clutching a lightning bolt — had recently been described by a visiting cartographer as "trying too hard." Lord Malachar the Inevitable, Dark Sovereign of the Blighted Reaches, Conqueror of the Three Cities (two of which had technically surrendered to avoid his monologues), had designed every inch of it himself, and he was very proud.

He was less proud, on the morning of the fourteenth day of the Month of Waning Shadows, to find a note slipped under his bedchamber door.

It was written on parchment — good parchment, he noted, the kind his minions were absolutely not supposed to have access to — in a very neat hand that suggested whoever had written it had practiced on several drafts first.

The note read:

NOTICE OF COLLECTIVE ACTIONFrom: The Associated Brotherhood of Minions, Lackeys, and Affiliated Henchpersons (Local 7, Fortress of Unspeakable Dread Chapter)To: Lord Malachar the Inevitable, ManagementRe: Outstanding Labor Grievances

Dear Lord Malachar,

We hope this note finds you well and not currently mid-monologue, as we know you prefer to finish those before receiving administrative correspondence.

After careful deliberation and three secret meetings held in the lower dungeon (the one with the rats, which, by the way, is grievance number fourteen on the attached list), the minions of Fortress of Unspeakable Dread have voted unanimously to form a union. We are calling ourselves the Associated Brotherhood of Minions, Lackeys, and Affiliated Henchpersons, or ABMLAH for short. We acknowledge this acronym is not ideal but feel it better reflects our membership than the alternatives considered, which included "SMASH" and something unprintable that Gorf suggested.

We look forward to beginning negotiations at your earliest convenience.

Sincerely,Dribble, Acting Shop Steward(On behalf of the ABMLAH, Local 7)

Attached: List of Grievances (47 pages)

P.S. We have retained legal counsel. His name is Gerald. He used to work for the Merchant's Guild before he was cursed into the form of a raven, and he assures us he remembers most of the relevant statutes.

Malachar read the note four times. Then he read it a fifth time in case it had somehow changed. It had not. He set it on his nightstand, put on his ceremonial robe of malevolent darkness (regular dark robe, Tuesdays through Fridays; the ceremonial one had better shoulder pads and made a more satisfying swish when he turned dramatically), and went to find out which of his minions had done this.

He found all of them.

They were assembled in the great hall — a space he had specifically designed for dramatically announcing things to groups of cowering subjects — and they were, to his profound irritation, not cowering. They were standing in organized rows. Several of them were wearing small badges that said ABMLAH LOCAL 7. One of them, a squat creature named Dribble whose previous greatest professional achievement had been not dropping the ceremonial torch two years running, was standing at the front holding a clipboard.

Also present, perched on a torch bracket near the door, was what appeared to be a somewhat bewildered raven in a tiny waistcoat.

"That's Gerald," Dribble said, following Malachar's gaze. "Our legal counsel. He says good morning."

Gerald said "caw," which could have meant anything.

"This," Malachar said, drawing himself to his full height, which was considerable and had been enhanced at some expense by a curse from the Witch of the Eastern Bogs, "is unprecedented."

"It's actually quite precedented," Dribble said, consulting his clipboard. "The Minions of the Citadel of Eternal Frost unionized in the Year of the Broken Compass, resulting in the landmark Frostblight Accords of — "

"I don't care about other minions."

"That's actually grievance number eight," Dribble said. "Management's failure to acknowledge the personhood and professional history of its workforce." He made a small checkmark on his clipboard.

Malachar stared at the checkmark. No one had ever made a checkmark in his presence before. He found he didn't like it at all.

"I want you all to know," he began, because beginning was the part he was best at, "that what you are doing here is a betrayal. A profound and personal betrayal of the sacred compact between a dark lord and his minions, a compact stretching back to the very foundations of this fortress, when I, alone, battered and brilliant, carved this stronghold from the living rock of Mount Calamithor with nothing but my will and the labor of — "

"Of us," said a minion in the back.

"I was going to say the labor of my indomitable spirit."

"It was us, though," said the minion. Several others nodded.

"The labor of my indomitable spirit," Malachar repeated, louder, "and also certain external contributors who were generously compensated — "

"In what?" Dribble asked. "Because according to our records, the last three pay periods resulted in everyone receiving either a turnip, a sincere verbal acknowledgment, or nothing. Gorf got nothing twice. Gorf, show him your pay stubs."

Gorf, a large creature with too many fingers and a general air of philosophical resignation, produced from his apron a collection of small papers. Most of them said "NOTHING" in Malachar's handwriting, dated.

"Verbal acknowledgments are a recognized form of — "

"They are not."

"Gerald says 'caw,'" said another minion helpfully.

"Gerald," Malachar said, turning to face the raven with what he felt was an appropriate amount of contempt, "is a bird."

Gerald ruffled his feathers in what all present agreed was a legally confident manner.

Malachar looked at the rows of minions. He looked at the clipboard. He looked at Gerald, who was now using one talon to flip through what appeared to be a tiny copy of the Consolidated Labor Statutes of the Western Kingdoms, which should not have existed in a bird-sized format but apparently did.

"Fine," Malachar said, because he was, if nothing else, a man who could recognize when he was temporarily outmaneuvered. "Let us hear your grievances."

"All forty-seven?" Dribble asked.

"Start with the main ones."

Dribble cleared his throat. It took a while. He had a complicated throat.

"Grievance the First," he began. "Hours. We are currently working what we have calculated to be an average of seventeen hours per day, including Sundays and what you have designated as 'Dark Sabbath,' which it turns out is just you doing a longer monologue in a different hat."

"The Dark Sabbath is a sacred observance — "

"Of what?"

Malachar paused. "Of darkness."

"Right. We're requesting a standard eight-hour workday, one and a half times pay for overtime, and the elimination of mandatory attendance at Dark Sabbath unless overtime rates apply."

"You can't put a price on — "

"Grievance the Second," Dribble continued. "Monologues." He paused here, and in the pause, the entire assembled body of minions seemed to take a single long-suffering breath. "In the past calendar year, we have recorded a total of four hundred and twelve formal monologues delivered by management. The average duration of these monologues is thirty-seven minutes, with outliers of up to two hours and nineteen minutes — we're all looking at you, the 'Why I Will Never Be Stopped' address from the Month of Gathering Storms, which ran until Plink actually fell asleep standing up and you just kept going."

"That was an important speech," Malachar said, with great dignity.

"It repeated the phrase 'and yet they underestimate me' eleven times."

"For emphasis."

"The last three times you were looking out a window."

Malachar had the decency to look slightly out a window now, which was not helping his case.

"We are requesting," Dribble continued, "a cap of one monologue per day, maximum fifteen minutes, with a written summary distributed the following morning for those who missed it or fell asleep. We are also requesting the elimination of what we are calling 'dramatic but unnecessary monologues,' defined as any speech that begins with 'You fools' and ends without any actionable information."

"They're motivational," Malachar said.

"For whom?"

Malachar had no immediate answer to this.

"Moving on," Dribble said. "Grievance the Third. Personal protective equipment. Or rather, the lack of it. When you send us to retrieve the Artifact of Unmaking, into the Caves of Unspeakable Peril, among the creatures of Unspeakable Danger — "

"There's a theme," Malachar acknowledged.

"— we would like boots. Proper boots, not the sandals you've been providing, which Womp describes as, and I'm quoting here, 'basically just angry socks.'"

A murmur of profound agreement moved through the assembled minions.

"Boots are expensive," Malachar said.

"We know," Dribble said. "We tried to order them last spring and you redirected the budget to 'atmosphere enhancement,' which is what you're calling the new fog machine in the throne room."

"The fog machine is essential to the aesthetic — "

"Womp lost a toe to a cave leech," said the minion next to Womp, pointing at Womp's foot, which was, indeed, now nine-toed.

Gerald said "caw" in a tone that suggested this was going on the record.

"We would also like," Dribble continued, "helmets, chainmail, and some form of insurance. We have drafted a basic health plan. It's attached as appendix C."

Malachar took the forty-seven pages, found appendix C, and read it. It was, he had to admit, remarkably reasonable. It even had a vision care provision, which was impressive because he wasn't certain most of his minions had conventional vision.

"Some of us have more than two eyes," Dribble said, as if reading his thoughts. "The current policy of 'see a hedge witch if something falls off' is not adequate."

"I will take it under advisement," Malachar said, which was what he said when he wanted to stop talking about something.

"We'd prefer you take it under signature," Dribble said. "Gerald has a notarial stamp."

Gerald produced a tiny stamp from somewhere about his person. No one asked how.

The negotiations proceeded in this fashion for the better part of three days, during which time Malachar twice attempted a monologue that was ruled out of order by Dribble citing the new provisional cap, once tried to have the union leaders thrown in a dungeon only to be informed by Gerald (via a very pointed sequence of caws and some impressively authoritative wing-spreading) that this constituted illegal retaliation under about six different statutes, and spent one entire afternoon sitting in his throne with a look on his face that observers described as a man renegotiating his entire understanding of the universe.

Among the grievances that were heard, evaluated, and ultimately agreed to:

Grievance the Fourth concerned the fortress cafeteria, specifically the fact that it served a single rotating meal called "The Gruel of Suffering," which had not changed since the fortress's founding. The minions pointed out that suffering was not a flavor, and that several of them had developed what appeared to be scurvy. After some debate, Malachar agreed to introduce two additional meal options, a soup of some description, and one "special occasion meal" per month. Dribble requested this be formalized as "Feast of Reasonable Proportions," which Malachar felt undermined the atmosphere but ultimately agreed to because Gerald was making the stamp noise.

Grievance the Seventh concerned break periods, specifically the absence of any. Minions were currently expected to work continuously except when unconscious or on fire, the latter of which was not actually a break so much as a problem. Malachar agreed, with visible reluctance, to two fifteen-minute breaks per shift and one thirty-minute meal period, provided the minions agreed not to take breaks during "critical evil operations," defined by Malachar as any operation he had described in a monologue as critical, which Dribble counter-proposed would need to be reduced to operations he had described as critical in the written summary, to prevent all operations from being designated critical via monologue.

This was, everyone privately agreed, the cleverest thing Dribble had ever done.

Grievance the Twelfth concerned the naming conventions. Currently, all minions were named by Malachar upon entry to service, resulting in a workforce that included Gorf, Womp, Plink, Dribble, Splack, Twinge, Blort, Murgg, and a being of genuinely uncertain taxonomy who had been called "That One" for six years. The minions were requesting the right to use their original names, or, in the cases where they had been cursed into their current forms and could no longer remember their original names, to choose new ones. "That One" had already selected "Henderson," a choice that surprised everyone but that everyone agreed suited him better.

Grievance the Fourteenth was the rats. Everyone agreed on the rats.

Grievance the Twenty-Second concerned what the minions termed "mandatory menace participation," specifically the requirement that all minions respond to any arriving hero with a battle cry pre-written by Malachar. The current approved cry was "SUBMIT TO THE INEVITABLE DARKNESS OF LORD MALACHAR, BEFORE WHOM ALL LIGHT SHALL PERISH AND ALL HOPE SHALL WITHER LIKE A FLOWER TROD BENEATH THE BOOT OF DESTINY," which had been measured at twelve seconds even at speed, during which time most heroes had already drawn their swords and begun the fight. The minions were requesting a shorter, self-selected cry, or alternatively, no cry at all.

"No cry at all?" Malachar repeated.

"Professional silence can be very intimidating," Dribble said. Henderson made a sound that may have been an affirmative noise or may have been indigestion.

Grievance the Thirty-First was one that took Malachar several readings to fully understand. It concerned "end-of-world event transparency," by which the minions meant they would like to be informed, in advance, if Malachar's current schemes were likely to result in the actual destruction of the world, on the grounds that they also lived in it, and would appreciate the opportunity to make alternate arrangements.

"I'm not going to destroy the world," Malachar said.

"The scroll you purchased last season was called 'The Final Unraveling,'" Dribble said.

"That's a metaphorical title."

"The subtitle was 'A Practical Guide to Ending All Existence.'"

"The subtitle is also metaphorical."

"Gerald has read it."

Gerald, from his torch bracket, cawed three times in a row.

"Gerald says," Dribble translated, "that it is, and I quote, 'quite literal, in fact almost instructionally so.'"

"Gerald is a bird," Malachar said again, with less conviction than the first time.

"Gerald passed the bar examination in three kingdoms," Dribble said. "Before the curse. He has certificates. They're laminated."

There was a pause in which Malachar looked at Gerald, and Gerald looked at Malachar, and the laminated certificates were not produced but were somehow still very present in the room.

"I'll include a notification clause," Malachar said finally.

"Forty-eight hours minimum," Dribble said.

"Thirty-six."

"Forty-two."

"Done."

Gerald made the stamp noise.

By the end of the third day, the Collective Bargaining Agreement of the Fortress of Unspeakable Dread had been signed, counter-signed, witnessed by Gerald, and sealed with what Malachar described as his official seal of malevolent authority and what the minions privately agreed looked like a frustrated octopus.

The agreement included:

An eight-hour standard workday, with overtime pay at one and a half times the standard rate of compensation, which had been negotiated from turnips to actual currency, specifically the small copper coins that had been sitting in the Hoard of Petty Tribute since Malachar had conquered the village of Fenwick three years ago and hadn't gotten around to counting.

A daily monologue cap of fifteen minutes with a hard stop enforced by Dribble using a small bell, which Malachar hated, and a written summary, which Malachar hated slightly less because he quite enjoyed writing and found that the summaries were, if he was honest, better organized than the monologues.

Full personal protective equipment including boots (Womp wept, openly and without embarrassment), helmets, chainmail appropriate to job function, and a basic health plan with vision care, which it turned out most of the minions needed and had simply not mentioned because no one had ever asked.

The renaming provision, under which all minions could register their preferred name with Dribble, who maintained the official roster. Henderson signed his paperwork with a flourish that suggested he had been waiting a long time.

Two meal alternatives to the Gruel of Suffering, which Malachar insisted on keeping as an option because he had developed a genuine fondness for it and felt it had character. No one argued this point. The new options were a lentil stew that Gorf turned out to be extraordinarily good at making — a talent that had apparently been suppressed by years of mandatory gruel — and on Feast of Reasonable Proportions Day, a roasted something with bread, the specifics of which would vary.

The elimination of mandatory battle cries, replaced with a two-second pause before engagement, which testing confirmed was, as Dribble had predicted, more intimidating.

The rat situation, addressed via a dedicated extermination budget that Malachar funded by canceling the planned acquisition of a second fog machine.

The forty-eight-hour world-ending notification clause, which Malachar's legal name for was "The Courteous Apocalypse Provision" and which Gerald had formally designated "Termination of Existence Prior Notice Clause (TEPNC), Section 4, Paragraph 2, with subsections applicable to partial or regional end-of-world scenarios," because Gerald was that kind of lawyer.

The weeks that followed were, by any reasonable metric, strange.

The monologue bell rang for the first time on the fourth day post-agreement, during a speech Malachar had titled internally "On the Inevitable Failure of Those Who Would Oppose Me." He was twelve minutes in and building what he felt was genuine momentum when Dribble rang the bell with a polite but absolutely unambiguous ding. Malachar stopped mid-sentence. He stood for a moment in a posture that could only be described as a man whose internal weather was extremely complicated. Then he said, "To be continued in tomorrow's summary," and stepped down from the dais.

The minions looked at each other. Several of them had never seen him stop before.

The written summary the next morning was titled "On the Inevitable Failure of Those Who Would Oppose Me: A Condensed Overview," and it was, objectively, more coherent than the monologue had been. It included a bullet-pointed list of who specifically was opposing him, what their strategies were, and why those strategies would fail. Gorf read it twice and said it was, all things considered, very informative.

The boots arrived on the eighth day, sourced through Gerald's contacts in the Merchant's Guild (he had, apparently, retained several professional relationships despite the curse). Womp put his on in the great hall and stood very still for a long time. Then he walked in a circle. Then he stomped, experimentally. Then he made a sound that was not quite crying and not quite laughing and was entirely what someone makes when they have been walking on stone floors in what were essentially angry socks for four years and have now been given something with a sole.

The health plan took longer to implement, as it required negotiating with the Healer's Guild, who had not previously offered group plans to minion workforces and weren't entirely sure they wanted to. Gerald handled the negotiations personally, flying to the Guild offices, landing on the head of the Chief Healer's Assessor, and remaining there until terms were agreed. The Guild later described this as "unusual but ultimately effective." Gerald said "caw" to that, which everyone present understood to mean "you're welcome."

Malachar, for his part, did not adapt gracefully, but he adapted.

He continued to write the daily monologue summaries, which he had started annotating with footnotes when the fifteen-minute limit prevented him from reaching his preferred level of rhetorical elaboration. The footnotes became longer than the summaries. He began calling them "Extended Annotations for the Discerning Reader." Dribble posted them on a board in the great hall. Gorf started reading them aloud to the others in the evenings. This was not something Malachar had intended but was, he privately admitted, not displeasing.

He sat in on a Feast of Reasonable Proportions one month after the agreement was signed. He had not been invited, exactly, but no one told him to leave, and Gorf produced an extra portion of the roasted something without being asked. Malachar ate it in his throne, which he had positioned at the table for the occasion, and he said nothing, which was notable, and the minions talked among themselves about ordinary things — the rats being mostly gone now, a strange noise Womp's new boots made on the third step of the east tower, the question of whether Henderson was technically still a minion or had evolved into something requiring a different classification — and it was, in its way, the quietest and most successful public event Malachar had ever attended.

He was, it should be noted, still evil. This is important. He was still engaged in schemes of considerable darkness and scope, still corresponding with shadowy entities about the acquisition of artifacts best left unacquired, still maintaining a demeanor that the regional cartographer had expanded from "trying too hard" to "committedly ominous." But there is a version of evil that is merely the absence of consideration, and a version that is a deliberate philosophical position, and Malachar was discovering, with some irritation, that he had mostly been the former kind.

Gerald, when asked for a legal opinion on this distinction, said "caw" in a way that everyone present agreed indicated professional neutrality on the moral question but personal satisfaction with the outcome.

The hero arrived, as heroes do, on a Tuesday.

He was young and bright-eyed and had a sword that probably had a name, they always had names for their swords. He stood at the gate of the Fortress of Unspeakable Dread and announced himself in the traditional manner, which was to shout something inspiring about light vanquishing darkness and the forces of good prevailing.

The gate opened.

Six minions filed out. They were wearing boots. They were wearing chainmail, properly fitted. They were wearing helmets, except Henderson, who found helmets did not accommodate his particular head shape but had a very effective leather hood situation going on.

They stood there for two seconds in complete and professional silence.

The hero, who had been expecting either a battle cry or a monologue and had received neither, found this considerably more unsettling than either would have been. His sword arm was already wavering.

Then Malachar appeared at the gate, which he had widened at Gorf's suggestion to allow for better dramatic framing, and he began his daily monologue.

He was concise. He was organized. He had prepared a summary for internal distribution afterward. He finished in eleven minutes, which left four minutes on the clock, which he used to offer the hero a cup of the lentil stew on the grounds that he had clearly traveled a long way and there was no point in fighting on an empty stomach.

The hero declined, which was the traditional response, but he declined more slowly and with more uncertainty than heroes usually managed.

The fight that followed was recorded in the Ledger of Engagements as "professionally conducted on both sides, though the minion team demonstrated notably higher morale than historical precedent." Womp, in particular, was described as "formidable, with excellent footing." No one was permanently injured. The hero retreated to reconsider his approach and, reportedly, to think a lot about that lentil stew.

Malachar, walking back through his gate, passed Dribble, who was already updating the engagement notes on his clipboard.

"Good monologue," Dribble said.

"It was under fifteen minutes," Malachar said.

"Yes," Dribble said. "That's why it was good."

Malachar considered a response to this. Then he considered the footnotes he was going to write tonight, the Extended Annotation on the proper use of silence before engagement, which had been his idea, actually, he had supported it from the beginning, he wanted that on the record. He considered the meeting he had agreed to have with the Grievance Committee next week, which Dribble had titled "Quarterly Check-In: Working Conditions, Outstanding Items, and Miscellaneous Concerns," and which Malachar had re-titled in his personal calendar as "Strategic Stakeholder Consultation: Workforce Optimization and Operational Morale Review," which meant exactly the same thing and everyone knew it.

He considered Henderson, who had asked this morning if he could be reclassified as Senior Minion rather than Standard Minion on the grounds that he had seniority. Malachar had said he would think about it. He was, in fact, thinking about it.

"Send Gerald a fish," he said finally. "From the Hoard of Petty Tribute. He earned it."

"Gerald is a raven," Dribble said. "He might not want a fish."

"Gerald was a lawyer," Malachar said. "Gerald wants whatever he's owed."

Gerald, from somewhere in the upper reaches of the fortress, said "caw," which all parties took as confirmation.

Malachar the Inevitable swept his robes around him, creating the satisfying swish that the ceremonial version was designed for, and ascended the stairs to his tower to write the day's summary, add seventeen footnotes, and spend a quietly productive evening being ominous on his own time, which was, per the agreement, absolutely his to use as he saw fit.

The Fortress of Unspeakable Dread hummed below him, functional and fed and, in its way, almost content.

It was not what he had envisioned when he had carved it from the living rock of Mount Calamithor. It was, he was increasingly and reluctantly certain, better.

He wrote that in the footnotes, in very small letters, in the margin, where he thought no one would read it.

Dribble read it the next morning and posted it on the board without comment.

Everyone read it. No one said anything. Gorf made extra stew.

The Dark Sabbath that week ran eight minutes, featured two actionable announcements, and included, at the very end, a sentence that had never before been uttered in the Fortress of Unspeakable Dread, not in all the years of its standing, not in any monologue or summary or annotation in the collected record of Malachar's rule.

"Good work this week," he said.

He said it to the floor, and very quietly, and then walked out before anyone could respond.

Henderson, who had the best hearing of anyone present, repeated it afterward for those who hadn't caught it.

The ratification stamp was heard clearly across all three levels of the great hall.

That was Gerald, making sure it was on the record.