ABC’s guide to successful corruption

Ever wanted to achieve world domination? Ever wanted to have the world do your will? If you have, then continue reading, for this is about to become your bible when corrupting people. Of course, what you can expect from this is only a short introduction, but you can’t imagine us revealing all the little secrets – take this as an inspiration, no more – every evil overlord has his/her own style…

An important ingredient when it comes to corrupting anyone is, of course, to let the person to be corrupted have a taste of how it feels to wield power – they always yearn for more afterwards! It’s a very discreet thing to do the job, as you can always say you want to let them have power, so that power is closer to the people, but in reality you keep in control and only use it to corrupt….Even goodie-goodies will fall for this, as most people desire power – or to be able to do something for which they need power, a goodie-goodie will want to help people and therefore accept the power. However, what they did not expect is that power can overshadow even the whitest of hearts…(At least if the person is influenced by other wicked powers at the same time).

A very good sign that someone is on the verge of complete corruption is denial! This state appears because the corrupted person is divided between wanting to stick with the ‘virtues’ of good and following the heart into evilness…There are different levels of denial – in the beginning, the corrupted actually do want to ‘return to the side of good,’ but later it is more because they want to follow the norms and traditions of a society….The length of the denial-period varies – only know that once the person has reached this state, there is no way back.

Yet another fantastic way to corrupt people is, of course, to bribe them, and tempt them with many fancy things: shiny jewels, fell beasts, monsters etc…That is sure to awake greed in them, make them lust for more – they grow addicted to the luxuries of evilness. Naturally, bribery is also good in other ways: if you yourself want to climb some steps up the ladder, bribery always works…

Then again there is also the ordinary way: threats etc…Scare campaigns always work and, of course, this is an essential thing to an evil rule. Still, if you want to have completely loyal underlings, you must be sure that you mix the nastiness with the other corruption-methods. Yet, I daresay most people come pretty far with this method. The only problem is that, although it makes people follow you, often enough it also has the side effect of creating enemies. These enemies can only be lulled to sleep if, for instance, they are bribed with power or fancy gifts.

There is one more method often useful when corrupting people. That is to keep your plans to yourself and keep your minions in ignorance of your true purpose. Never reveal anything you don’t need to, and even if you have to say something, remember that lies are far better. They are to know they cannot trust you and yet they cannot trust anyone but you…

Always remember that the base of all corruption is flattery. Flattery is the perfect way to have people like you and think well of you, while you are in fact planning their decapitation or something of the sort. Apart from that, to flatter in a good way, you have to practise the use of words, which will help when later doing larger acts of manipulation and persuasion.

So, now you know – the secret of any world dominator’s success begins with such simple things. And just to help you get started, here’s a dictionary with some useful words…

Dictionary of Evil Words

A
– abhorrence: a feeling of strong hatred, especially for moral reasons
B
– bribe: to give somebody money or something valuable in order to persuade them to help you, especially in doing something dishonest
C
– corruption: dishonest or illegal behaviour, especially of people in authority

– cunning: the ability to achieve something by tricking or deceiving other people in a clever way
D
– darkness: the state of being dark, evil, or frightening
– deceit: dishonest behaviour that is intended to make somebody believe something that is not true
– dishonest: intending to deceive people
E
– evil: a force that causes wicked or bad things to happen
F
– fear: the bad feeling that you have when you are in danger, when something bad might happen, or when a particular thing frightens you
G
– greed: strong desire for more wealth, possessions, power etc. than a person needs
H
– hatred: a very strong feeling of dislike for somebody or something
– havoc: a situation in which there is a lot of damage, destruction or disorder
– heinous: morally very bad
I
– ignorance: a lack of knowledge or information about something
– indolent: lazy, not wanting to work
J
– jinx: something or someone who brings bad luck; to curse someone
K
– kibosh: to thwart, prevent, frustrate
– kickback: money paid illegally to someone in return for work or help
– killjoy: a person who likes to spoil other people’s enjoyment
L
– lie: a statement made by somebody knowing that it is not true
– lure: to persuade or trick somebody to go somewhere or to do something by promising them a reward
M
– malevolent: having or showing a desire to harm other people
– minion: an unimportant person in an organization who has to obey orders, a servant
N
– nefarious: wicked, not moral
O
– ominous: suggesting that something bad is going to happen in the future
– omnipotent: having total power, able to do anything
– overlord: a person who has power over many other people
P
– power: the ability to control people or things, authority, influence
Q
– quash: to take action to stop something from continuing
R
– revulsion: a strong feeling of disgust or horror
– rottenness: the condition of being decayed, putrid
S
– slave: a person who is legally owned by another person and is forced to work for them
– sly: acting or done in a secret or dishonest way, often intending to trick people
– subterfuge: a secret, usually dishonest way, of behaving or doing something
– subversive: trying or likely to destroy or damage a government or political system by attacking it secretly or indirectly
T
– treason: the crime of doing something that could cause danger to your country, such as helping its enemies during a war
U – unlight: darkness, shadow (as in ‘the unlight of Ungoliant’)
V
– vice: evil or immoral behaviour
– void: a large empty space
W
– wicked: evil, mischievous, dangerous, harmful or powerful
– wreak: to do great damage or harm to somebody or something
– wrecker: a person who ruins another person’s plans, relationship etc.
X
– X-rated: all the corruption methods not mentioned here belong in this category
Y
– yield: to stop resisting something or somebody, to agree to do something that you do not want to do
Z
– zealous: showing great energy and enthusiasm for something, especially because you feel strongly about it
– zero tolerance: the policy of applying laws very strictly so that people are punished even for offences that are not very serious